Golden Sun: Dark Dawn/Headscratchers

• If the beastmen were created due to the Golden Sun (except for the werewolves at Garoh, which isn't even near Morgal), then how is it possible the Morgal beastmen built the Apollo Sanctum and why does the Umbra Gear can only be worn by beastmen?
  • Beastmen existed in the period before alchemy was sealed, it's just that they can only "become" beastmen when alchemy is unsealed. Except for the people of Garoh of course, but I'm guessing that's because they had a source of psynergy nearby (air's rock).
    • Air's Rock and the influence of Anemos (moonlight causes the transformation; Anemos is the moon). Personal Fanon here, Maha became permanently beastman because he mastered his powers to a point where he was generating his own alchemical influence.
    • If this were true, you'd think that someone would have at least mentioned it--if not along the course of the main narrative, then discussed by NPC characters. It isn't. And if it were the case, what happened to the beastmen when alchemy got sealed? Did they all just spontaneously turn into humans or animals? What determined who turned into what? This seems way too much like an Ass Pull to sit right.
    • Yes, they did turn into humans and animals. Who turned into what was determined by genetics or whatever, and their descendants carried those same genes, and so were still "beastmen" despite being humans and animals. Then alchemy was unsealed and their genes activated.
    • Addendum to the above: If you talk to/mind read beastmen, some of them will mention that they used to be animals (or, for that matter, humans).

• If the Sol Blade is the key that activates Apollo Sanctum, then what was it doing at Mars Lighthouse in The Lost Age? Wasn't it hidden in the Apollo Sanctum the whole time?
  • Felix put it there?
  • It's not the same Sol Blade. Putting aside the fact that Felix had no way of entering the Apollo Sanctum, the two swords are different colors and have different unleashes (barring Megiddo).
    • Discounting the fact that they both have Megiddo is a pretty big thing to discount. Come to think of it, how did the Titan Blade get where it was? What, did Isaac just decide to throw the sword into a different thematically-appropriate dungeon? I know it's difficult to return it to the Venus Lighthouse at this point, but still.

• The guy at the enterance to Harapa says he knows you are a warrior because your armor is dented. There is no metal armor at that point.
  • Poor word use or bad translation. Perhaps what he meant was that he could tell your armor had been damaged in a fight.
  • Despite there not being any metal armor game mechanics-wise, Tyrell is pretty clearly wearing a breastplate in his artwork.

• Sveta finally identifies the Chaos Hound as her brother by sniffing him after the fight. In the cutscenes before the fight, she was not only sniffing but also Mind Reading him, and didn't notice then...?
  • I'm pretty certain she did notice, but had to suppress him from assaulting her companions. She knew he was inside, fighting what he had become. He almost makes it before Blados and Chalis take matters into their own hands.
    • She also kind of thought he was dead.

• Why is it so easy? Optional bosses aside, holy balls, I barely needed to do more than mash A throughout the entire game. I didn't even bother manually distributing my Djinn until the final boss politely pointed out how strong he could be. Also, aaaaaaaaaaaagh, missable Djinn. This should not be.
  • Golden Sun never really was about challenging fights save for the Bonus Boss. The GBA games weren't that much harder to begin with or maybe we just Level Grind too much and make the game easier without realizing it.
  • Yeah, with the exception of a handful of Bonus Bosses and the final boss of The Lost Age, I never found the originals to be hard at all, at least not in terms of battles. (Some of the puzzles on the other hand...) Maybe the Nostalgia Filter has made the older games seem more difficult in hindsight, or you're just much better at games now than you were then?
  • The growth of Psynergy/class options seems to help. Thanks to stuff like Healing Wind and Djinn distribution practically necessitating not placing the characters in their base classes, the normal monsters do seem to be less of a challenge than the previous games. Do note that it's mitigated by the eclipse monsters, though, which can catch you off-guard if you're not careful.
  • I actually think Dark Dawn is a bit trickier than the first two, because the very clear plotline established in the Journal for you to follow means you're not being forced to go over areas with a fine comb, which in the first two games you were, making the missable Djinn and summons... easier to miss, until it's too late.
  • Honestly, the battles were never the main focus of the games, all the work went into Psynergy puzzles.
  • The other games were relatively easy as far as JRPG's go, yes, but nowhere near this easy. A few of the bosses (Karst/Agatio, Briggs, Kraken, etc.) in the previous games could at least focus fire hard enough to redzone someone in one turn and strain your healer a bit, and it was occasionally a good idea to have your friendly neighborhood Wind Adept loaded on items for an emergency bandaid. In Dark Dawn, every single boss up to and including Blados/Chalis/Hound did outright Scratch Damage, and your healer could actually spend most of the game on the offensive.

• Is anyone else bugged by how the plot seems to just completely drop the Pysnergy Vortex issue until in the ending where a massive one is shown in the area where you first started out in the game? On top of that, there's the whole issue about Dark Psynergy that gets thrown at your face in the final dungeon when it has never been mentioned anywhere else in the game. Who else also feel cheated that you don't even get to fight Alex at all in this?
  • Anything else you want to get off your chest? In answer to all of those, they're clearly setting up for the next game, possibly more. A developer interview somewhere stated that the first two games were kind of like the prologue and now Dark Dawn is the first that will really start expanding on the Weyard mythos. So yeah, hopefully everything will be explained in due time.
  • About that, the Dark Psynergy? I believe it was Kraden who mentioned somewhere around the Eclipse Tower being turned on that after the ancient Alchemists mastered the four elements, they went on to experiment with Darkness and Light. Therefore, it isn't out of left field for their to be darkness Adepts out there. A surprise, sure, and a good one, but not an Ass Pull. They are COMPLETELY setting up for a sequel or two to deal with that.
    • And even before that, Isaac mentions the "negative energies" and how to counter them in Tanglewood, and Karis points out that we should "remember this, because you never know when it will be handy" or something like that. How's that for a Brick Joke, guys? They even lampshaded it!
    • Plus, there was Isaac's journal, where he seems certain that the Mourning Moon will reappear. The game initially looks like it will be a fairly quick trip to get the Feather, and then the rest of it will be you trying to stop the Mourning Moon's return. At the end, it appears that that is exactly the case. It's just that the trip for the Feather got sidetracked like whoa, such that the "rest of the game" needs to be is own game.

• Nowell bugs this troper. The first and only time we see her is when her younger brother gets kidnapped. And her excuse for being written out of the plot? "Oooh, I'm in love with a man who is several decades my senior." Rief might be an adept and in a good group of them, but shouldn't Nowell at least be concerned enough about her brother to see for herself that he's okay? This and her somewhat haughty attitude made her come across as a Jerkass to me.
  • It's not an unreasonable assumption to presume that the Card Soldiers also locked Kraden & Nowell out of the mountain, trapping them on the other side. And obviously Nowell is going to be playable in the next game.
  • Nowell's attitude during her one canon appearance looked like stress-induced crankiness to me. Between being hauled off to go meet Matthew, which she was clearly unhappy about (maybe she had something else she was working on?), and the Vortex her brother nearly jumped into... And I sure can't blame her for chasing after Piers. Girl's got good taste.
  • Personally it bugged me that Rief didn't bother to ask about her until you stopped by and then left Tonfon. Seriously, she was possibly being pursued by bad guys and she explicitly said she was going to meet up with you again, then you meet the guy she was last seen traveling with show up without her, and you don't ask? Sure there's a crisis going down, but I for one assumed that Nowell was nearby, shouldn't he have been worried about leaving her beind after the big bad Ju Ju in Belinsk went down?

• Okay, so I realize that Camelot couldn't just recreate the Weyard from the previous games, but it bugs me just how there's suddenly a bunch of new nations and peoples and wars and ancestors and historic ruins where there weren't any before. I mean, taking the Endless Wall, for example, just how is it that it's designed to connect to the ancient Apollo Engine thingie, manage to remain invisible for the duration of the first game, AND survive the Golden Sun event? And the big ancient engines, for that matter? Given how much emphasis the game places on the events of the previous games, it seems that they overshot the mark on this one aspect.
  • The alchemy forges and the Endless wall are inaccessible in the first game due to the mountains around Suhalla desert, so technically we shouldn't have known about them anyway (Walk through wall cheats obviously show that they weren't in the game, but that doesn't really matter). All the other places such as Belinsk are assumed to be old ruins that were rebuilt. How they survived? I don't know, although given their purpose and importance I wouldn't be surprised if they reinforced them with Psynergy somehow.
  • Taking account of Konpa Ruins' encyclopedia entry in the game, it's possible they were somehow buried under the rocks when Alchemy was sealed and reappeared to the surface when the Golden Sun event caused massive earthquakes and such.
    • Probably. Luna Tower was physically buried deep underground, after all.
  • Conversely, the presence of the TLA summon tablets and certain equipment pieces seems a bit off. Granted, the equipment initially available at Artifact stores could be handwaved as having a similar situation to high-level items in Pokémon Diamond and Pearl^[1], the Gaia Blade has a more substantial excuse; whereas for the Summons, this game is in areas covered by the first game, where multi-element summons did not exist then. Still, with certain exceptions, you'd think that they'd actually replace most of the non-Angran content with new stuff. True, some of this stuff may have (Spoiler-intensive) justifications... A Voodoo Shark Appeared!!^[2] (Fight/Swap/Status/Flee?)

• Given that the whole big thing about the first series was that Alchemy was released back into the world, it surprised me that there didn't seem to be many more people using psynergy around. You had the descendants of the original characters, a few outliers, and that's it.
  • We're also exploring a smaller area of the world; presumably other areas with stronger influences are going to start spawning Adepts soon. And frankly, there was only one "outlier"-- Sveta. Eoleo became an Adept around the time of the first game, and everyone else is descended from Adepts who appeared in the first two games.
    • Even Sveta's status as an outlier may be in debate. There's a theory in some circles that her late human-hating father was Master Maha of Garoh.
  • Apparently you need to be a descendant of one of the Jenei tribes in order to be an Adept, plus contact with a Psynergy stone to release your potential? Maybe the Psynergy stones aren't needed anymore, what with Alchemy saturating the world again.

• WHY are Isaac and Garet the only Warriors of Vale to return?!?! This troper demands to see how the others look now that they're older, and hopes that a sequel will rectify this problem.
  • And Garet didn't even get any concept artwork.

• Is it just me, or does this game seem shorter tha the previous two? I only vaguely remember Lost Age but this game barely took me 24 hours (combined) to beat, and Lost Age has a lot of time clocked in.
  • The Lost Age had a lot of sailing and tediously-overlong dungeons that padded out the game clock.

• Was anyone else bothered by the fact that the first 4 guys you get (Matthew, Tyrell, Karis, and Rief) ended up being the most useful? I didn't really bother using the other guys at all; I switched Rief and Amiti and Sveta and Karis briefly, but Rief and Karis get access to spells that fully heal the party, and Tyrell and Matthew seem like much better versions of Eoleo and Himi. Or am I wrong in saying that the latter 4 characters are less useful?
  • Pretty much everyone else seems to prefer Amiti over Rief (though it's more like they hate Amiti less than Rief rather than liking him more). Sveta and Karis can't really be compared since they play differently, but Sveta is the most powerful character in the game IIRC. Eoleo and Tyrell are pretty much clones, so it's just personal preference. Himi and Matthew also play differently but given the game's bias towards warriors Matthew tends to be more useful.
    • Hmm well I (the OP) figured that Tyrell's pretty much the same as Eoleo, so there's no reason to use Eoleo at all, and while I'd like to use Sveta more, I feel like I need Karis out for her healing spells. I beat the game at a fairly low level (around 43), so at that point, Rief knew the Wish series and Amiti didn't, and I figured that while Himi seems like a great, versatile caster, it'd be better to use Matthew because of his physical strength. I pretty much only used the characters in their main classes (no djinni outside of their respective elements), so in my next run through I'll swap around classes and see how that changes things. But I just felt like I had no incentive to use the later characters at all.
    • There's your problem right there. You're only comparing them to their own counterpart, rather than everyone else in the party, and in their base classes no less. Tyrell may be better than Eoleo (that's actually debatable, but I'm just using it as an example) but that doesn't mean that both Tyrell and Eoleo aren't better than Rief. With the proper combination of Djinn, the Wish line can be placed on any character, which makes Karis and Rief much less valuable. This combined with the damage of most spells not scaling with level means that characters who rely on physical damage like Sveta and Eoleo will generally be superior to casters like Rief and Himi. Of course, in the end it all comes down to personal preference, with the right Djinn setup you can make any combination work.
    • I for one happen to like the sheer cool value of a laser-shooting psychic fire pirate. Who can also fly.

• How come Kraden looks EXACTLY the same while Isaac and Garet visibly aged? I suppose Kraden was already 70 when he was affected by the Golden Sun event, so he might not look that different, but I just find it weird that he did not change at all while Isaac and Garet look a lot older. Though to be fair, if Isaac didn't age and Matthew grew up looking exactly like Isaac despite the generation difference...that would be kinda squicky.
  • Well, his hair looks a bit whiter, so I guess he did age somewhat. As for Isaac and Garet... female fanservice?
  • Isaac and Garet didn't biologically age as much as it appears. They wore different hairstyles and grew facial hair to give the appearence of aging.
  • While hair style is the main physical difference for Garet and Isaac, I'd point out the a larger difference could be contributed to the two of them being teens at the end of TLA. There is a much greater difference in appearance when the person aging is younger.
    • Agreed. It's easier to notice aging in a 20-something thsan a guy who's seventy. Plus Isaac and Garet are apparently living active lifestyles (is it just me or does Garet have a beer belly?), so they've changed with the working out. Plus the facial hair helps a lot.

• Why is it that Obaba is still alive in Dark Dawn? I'm figuring that she's at least Kraden's age, if not older. Also, considering that she didn't get exposed directly to the Golden Sun like Kraden and all of the Warriors of Vale, it would make more sense for her to be dead, or at least much older looking than she was in Lost Age.
  • Even in olden times, it wasn't unheard of to have people living into their eighties, but then that would mean that she's not long for the world.
    • She's 30-year-old Eoleo's great-grand-mother and she already looked older than sin in TLA. She's just the contrary of Too Cool to Live - too badass to die.

• In the fourth quarter of the game, the adepts go on a rescue mission at sea to retrieve two important NPCs. Because of all of the shoals and ice in the region, the path to get to where these NPCs are has plenty of bottlenecks. One of those bottlenecks passes right by the Mercury Lighthouse. One of the party members is Mia's son. Why doesn't he make a mention of how he can see home and wonder about his mother? Especially since said bottleneck, like most of the shoal/floe area, is within the Eclipse Zone and the Lighthouse is dark! You'd think he would express some sort of concern.
  • Does he ever actually say he lives in Imil? Who's to say Mia ever returned home?
    • Can't check right now, but isn't this mentioned in an encyclopedia article? If not hers, her children's?
    • There's definitely a reference to Mia in one of the books in Kolima:

The Goddess of Imil: A priestess in the village near Mercury Lighthouse is truly holy. Thanks to her tireless devotions, the old and sick of Imil never suffer from their ailments.

• • Remember, this is Rief, the same kid who didn't even remember to ask about his own sister when she mysteriously didn't turn up with Kraden.
  • I'm going with "Big permanent light thing is keeping the monsters away"
    • You apparently missed the part about the Lighthouse being dark while it was in the shadow of the eclipse.
    • I'm more inclined to believe it's the epic-level Mercury Adept and her two apprentices.
  • Rief was belowdecks reading and nobody else registered it as important at the time?
  • Rief is well aware of how badass his mother can be (remember, even Agatio didn't want to mess with Mia), and isn't worried?

• Not really a Just Bugs Me, but rather something I'm curious about. What exactly would the Grave Eclipse mean for the Anemos, since we know that there are still people up there thanks to Sheba's existence? Do they just put on extra-strength sunblock, or something?
  • One assumes they have buildings they can retreat into.
    • Or worse, they all burned to death from the moon absorbing so much light.
      • It's the Tower absorbing light, not the moon. Though we don't know how the moon plays into this, really--did it just follow the sun around? Then why didn't the shadow move? Was the moon even needed for starting/ maintaining the Eclipse? Was there a moon before Anemos flew off? I think they just call it an Eclipse because it looks like one, what this the giant circular shadow. In reality, (I think) the giant circle of shadow is just thearea that the Eclipse Tower is sucking light from.
  • Or perhaps nothing at all happens to them, since just because the moon is in a position to block out the sun when viewed from the ground doesn't mean that it's receiving any more light than it normally would. What bugs me about this is that the entire landmass of the moon is apparently the size of a city large by medieval standards.
    • Perhaps it's closer to Weyard's main mass. One imagines the Anemos people would still need to breathe, so leaving the atmosphere is unlikely.
      • Maybe they just moved their city TO the moon, instead of becomeing it?

• As much as I loved Dark Dawn, one thing really bugged me. Why do we never get any exposition on what is happening presently until it's ridiculously late into the story? Okay, yes, we all guessed that Arcanus was Alex but the heroes didn't know that. Neither did they know that the Umbra Clan existed until the last twenty minutes. Seems to me like we could've gotten this information earlier.
  • Related to that, why the hell didn't Kraden answer any of the party's questions about what was going on? He'd just go "Oh, I'll tell you later", and it turns out that "later" meant "two minutes before fighting the final boss". Screw you Kraden.
    • Let's give him credit: possibly, he had more of an idea of what Arcanus' plans were and it's a case of We Would Have Told You But... ... ... Or not.
  • Sequel Hook!
    • Unfortunately, Dark Dawn's sales kind of sucked, probably because of how they handled the plot, so now it's not likely any of those Sequel Hooks are ever going to get resolved. Again.
    • You don't know that. You're just being insufferably pessimistic.
    • Half a million is still pretty good for an Eastern, non-Final Fantasy, non-Pokemon turn-based RPG, so unless Camelot is stupid and take those numbers at face value, the franchise won't die any time soon. Plus, while I won't say that word of mouth on the plot didn't damper some sales, you're acting as if that's the only it didn't sell as much as the previous two. The genre itself is dying out in popularity, and the DS itself has a compounded problem of being a slowly dying handheld (yes, even at the time of Dark Dawn's release) that people pirate the hell out of.

• How did Ryu Kou know that the energy inside the Magma Orb would destroy them all? He'd never even seen it before. Even if it's true, he has no reason to know that.
  • My guess is that he didn't and was bluffing. Matthew's group didn't know about the Magma Orb until Blados and Chalis told them, and even then they gave little info, only referring it as being a power source for the Alchemy Dynamo. With that little knowledge about the orb, it's probably a safe bet they allowed Ryu Kou to run off with it and stop him later than spook him and risk getting nuked.
  • The Magma Orb is basically a tiny battery for a huge friggin machine. That's a lot of power in a tiny package. You don't want to suddenly let that much densely packed energy loose.

• Why doesn't Karis know Reveal? She's Ivan's daughter, and Ivan himself learned it from another Jupiter Adept. I mean, at least Mind Read got handwaved, but come on. There's no excuse other than Gameplay and Story Segregation.
  • ... because considering how Ivan and Sheba mastered Mind Read on their own but had to be taught Reveal, it is higher level Psynergy than Mind Read?
  • Reveal is kind of a Zen power, and Karis apparently didn't get that kind of training. Okay, so Ivan didn't either, but I think his temperment is more Zen than his daughter, so he was able to pick it up more quickly. I guess.

• Konpa Ruins have a way for Kraden, Nowell, and Rief to inside (With with the water puddles and vines), I can understand that they used Cold Snap to get there, BUT don't you need the Ice Queen's Gem to use Cold Snap?
  • Kraden mentions specifically that it was Nowell's Psynergy that got them into the ruins, so presumably Nowell knows Frost/Cold Snap/equivalent.
    • Alright. Also, What happan to Frost's Utility? In fact Why did Frost got replaced by Douse?
    • Maybe it's a gender thing? All the playable Water guys have had Douse by default; Mia didn't, but she's the only playable Water girl in the series to date, so maybe Water girls get Frost/Snap/equivalent as their default utility spell and have to learn Douse...
    • The Psynergies got changed a bit in an effort to balance stuff. For one, you don't need to give Matthew a Fire Djinn to get Growth, which makes way more sense since Growth is such a basic sort of Venus Psynergy, plus it gets used a lot.

• Himi can't be a Samurai, Why is that?
  • Because she's a girl?
    • That actually has some merit. A quick glance on The Other Wiki shows that samurai-equivalent lady warriors (onna-bugeisha) did exist in feudal Japan, but trained in different weapons and combat styles from their male counterparts, and were usually the ones to keep the home front while men traveled to war. Himi's inability to access the Samurai class just might be a reference to the gender differences of the warrior-nobility.
  • Another possibility: Himi is good, but not nice or honorable. Her base class is a holy Shrine Maiden, but her other unique class is a poison-using necromancer. Not really samurai material, that.

• This may have been covered before, but why did they feel the need to change the name of Frost, Parch and Pound?
  • They're the battle-useable versions?
  • Because all the cool kids name their own Psynergy.

• Boreas. Giant iron horsetrain. What.
  • Rule of Cool? Frankly, the one in the first two games was a giant snow-cone maker. And Thor got a dye job and a new hammer. And Coatlicue is still a healing Magical Girl, who in fact seems to have lost the snake motifs in her design...

• Who are everyone's other parents? Seriously, these people were awesome enough to marry and bone the Warriors of Vale, surely you can run with that?
  • And why doesn't Jenna live with her damn husband and son? Unless theres some Brokeback Goma going on....
    • The parents are probably people we never even heard of, for one thing. For another, the relationships (most of them) may not be very happy or even meaningful, when you take into account the slower aging process of the Warriors of Vale - for all we know, considering it's been 30 years and the kids aren't even 17, our heroes (exempting Issac and Jenna) married people considerably younger (say, 10 years?) than them to try and mitigate the process. Being demi- or quasi-immortal has a habit of rending apart 'normal' relationships after all.
    • Not to mention the part where Jenna's brother seems to have gone down in history as a villain, while Isaac is universally admired. That could put some stress on a marriage.
  • Perhaps after sinking so many ships, Camelot's waiting to see what the fandom decides on this front so they can Troll us again?

• Okay, how the HELL does the Eclipse Tower work?
  • Okay, so it starts at dawn, except the Eclipse shadow is a circular shadow, as though the noon sun was being eclipsed, instead of a big ol' black bar across the world, like it would be if the dawn/ morning sun was being blocked. Or possibly an elipse, but no, it's a circle that doesn't move.
    • The explanation I came up with is that there is no actual eclipse going on, it just looks like there is. Basically, the sun is shining normally but the Eclipse Tower is absorbing all the sunlight in a certain radius (Kraden sort of says this). This has the side effect of making it possible to look directly at the sun, as per a real eclipse (a child NPC mentions that he can look straight at it). It's also important to note that the Eclipse Tower is apparently only absorbing sunlight, or else Harapa and Champa would be screwed out of their magic light and fire.
    • Also, what happened when natural night fell? Did the Tower absorb starlight too, which would somehow be enough to keep those monsters at bay otherwise? But why didn't they show up on cloudy nights?
  • Another thing--was the moon even necessary for starting or maintaining the Eclipse? It was a full moon the night before, but the sun and moon weren't in the correct positions for an ecipse when it happened at dawn. I can't remember if the cinematic showed the moon moving into position in front of the sun....
  • My thought was that there was a magnetic field of some sort holding the sun and moon in place, shrouding some areas in darkness while others were in perpetual daylight. Yeah, I'm suggesting some sort of giant Alchemy-powered tractor beam.

• If the flying city of Anemos is the moon, and Anemos didn't disappear until the Lighthouses were extinguished, why the hell is there moon symbology everywhere? Maybe the Sol Sanctum was modified afterwards to house the Elemental Stars, hence the moon stuff, but the Alchemy Well used the Luna Mask and was definatley built DURING the golden age, while Anemos was still on Weyard. They didn't HAVE a moon back then!
  • Also, I need to look at this stuff again, but I'm pretty sure Kraden said some interesting stuff about the sun and moon rooms in the Sol Sanctum somehow being important, but not really knowing how. Oh my god they thought of everything. Not a Just Bugs Me, but oh my god.
  • Mentioned above on this page is the possibility that the moon already existed, the Anemos simply moved their city to it instead of actually becoming it. Also, Dark Dawn has already proved that stories can change a bit in the retelling, so there's that to consider as well.

• Why is there specific cultures and settlements for Mars, Mercury, and Jupiter Adepts, but none for Venus? And why is Venus ALWAYS paired with Mars? (Okay, maybe because Venus is for women and Mars is for men, but still...) Seriously, Prox is all Mars Adepts, but Vale has Venus and Mars Adepts. (And POSSIBLY Mercury Adepts, though I guess they're rare there? But probably no Jupiter Adepts.)
  • The Ankhol doesn't really count. Obaba, and by extension her grandson Briggs and great-grandson Eoleo, are (the last?) descendants of the Ankhol. Obaba is a smith, which could be Venus related (metal=earth) or Mars (forge=fire), so that could be either way. But Eoleo is a Mars Adept, not a Venus Adept, so it looks like the Ankhol was a blending of Venus and Mars Adepts as well. Considering that the main protagonists are all Venus Adepts, it seems rather strange to have Venus be the only one NOT associated with its own special ancient civilization like everyone else.
    • Obaba has a line specifically indicating her affinity is for "fire and the forge", so she's Mars.
  • Wouldn't the Izumo island place in The Lost Age be the Venus specific settlement because it has Mt. Mikage/Gaia Rock? Plus, you get Sand psynergy in there, and Lady Uzume and Susa are Venus Adepts as far as I remember.
  • Venus & Mars are closely related, and Mercury and Jupiter are closely related. Remember how Kraden identified the first two as "warm" elements and the latter two as "cold" elements in The Lost Age? Remember how Venus Lighthouse gave a boost to Saturos & Menardi in The Broken Seal? Even in the game mechanics, class-changing an Adept of one element with Djinn of their partner element results in stronger classes, usually with a whole extra tier of development, compared to doing so with Djinn of an opposing element. There's no real explanation yet, though someone around here suggested it may have to do with Darkness and Light Psynergy now that we know about them, since Darkness is also established as "cold" and Light as "warm".

• The Grave Eclipse was how the Tower collected its power. What was it collecting it for?! This is the key to everything! Like what the hell Alex is up to! It has to do more than making Beastmen blond!
  • Speaking if, where did Alex run off to? I think his last few lines, as you're trying to climb the Apollo Lense, are transmitted telepathically, based on the text boxes. I might be wrong. But yeah, after he delayed Blados and Chalice we don't see him again. Did he pull of another Mount Aleph and run off somehwhere to collect the power we were transmitting? Dammit, I need to go over to the WMG now...
  • Yeah. Ten to One he flew off and dove right into the heart of Eclipse Tower right before all the light got dispersed.

• Okay, from the end of the game, this is REALLY bugging me. So you have to collect the Umbra Gear to access the Apollo Sanctum (Apollo Sanctum, Sol Sanctum... ??? Nevermind, later.). You need it because the Apollo Sanctum is so blindingly bright that being exposed to so much light will injure and eventually KILL you, especially on the firing platform. This Sanctum is located on the Endless Wall... which is entirely in the Eclipse's shadow. How the hell is it so bright here? Shouldn't the Tower be sucking up this light? There's a ton of it, it's the right kind of light to feed the tower since the laser does shut the tower off, and it's just sitting there, not a hundred miles away (I think, ugh, I need to check). How is there any light there to focus at all? Weyard is a flat world, they could fire the laser from anywhere and hit the tower as long as there's no mountains in the way.
  • Well, maybe that's why it's so friggin CLOSE to the damn thing, considering the changes in geography that Alchemy has caused at the end of every damn game so far. It's how they ensure that the friggin laser beam will be in range of the Eclipse Tower even after Alchemy is violently restored.
  • Maybe because it was so high up. The Eclipse has a certain radius laterally. Perhaps the Apollo Sanctum mountain is so high up that it escapes the Eclipse's range vertically. Note how the Apollo Approach is in the Eclipse, but once you reach the gate, there is no more darkness. Alternatively, perhaps all this light is being fueled by the Alchemy Forge and Alchemy Well. The thing appears to be solar powered, but there has to be a reason the Forge and Well are necessary.
  • Heck, maybe the light is being sucked up, and the Apollo Sanctum is just so powerful that it produces light far faster than the Eclipse can absorb it.

• How the hell did Alex survive the Golden Sun? Mt. Aleph COLLAPSED WITH HIM ON IT. Is he a god or something? How did that not kill him?
  • Here's a thought. Remember that emergency force-field Psynergy Isaac & Co. used in Kolima?
  • Also, regarding your second-to-last question... yes, almost.
    • He can also fly and teleport.
  • At this point he basically is a minor god. I mean sure the Wise One still handed him his ass, but I'm just assuming mountain-dropping isn't high enough on the power scale to kill either of them.
  • Remember the very first cutscene of the game? Maybe that giant airship was sent to save him.

• It is rather obvious that the Party was manipulated from the very beginning into powering up the various Psynergy structures. However, how did the villains know that the party/ Kraden's group were traveling, and how did they know where they were?
  • Alex warping, applied to espionage. And being Darkness Adepts, Cloak Psynergy is probably also a good bet. And they appear to have much more advanced Alchetek than the rest of Weyard...
    • Cloak is a Mercury Psynergy. Also, with all that Magitek, couldn't Alex have placed a tracking device on Rief when he was tied up?

• Eoleo was kept in a wooden cage. And he apparently could not escape. Why?

"It sure takes the fight out of you to be strung up like a piece of meat, I guess."

—NPC Guard in Belinsk Castle, paraphrased

• • Also, he doesn't show any signs of being equipped or battle-ready until you leave Belinsk and he joins the party.
  • In addition, the cage is also kinda right next to the castle and all the royal guards.
  • I think the OP's point was a that a wooden cage shouldn't be able to hold a fire adept. But I'm with the guy above me, in that there were guards.

• Briggs is mortally wounded and dies. YOU HAVE A HEALER, RIGHT THERE.
  • You likely have no less than five healers (one of them presumably professionally trained by his mother), and at least one who can outright Revive. Tyrell is the only one in the party thus far whose default class can't heal.
  • I guess you can assume this character (and the others who get killed during that event) couldn't be healed because they were so wounded as to have...bits missing.

• Speaking of the various death spoilers during that segment, was I the only one bugged by how Kraden plays it up as this desperate, frenzied evacuation, but the monsters attacking were only slightly more difficult than the ones you were already fighting, and really only about as difficult as regular monsters in the other games? Not to mention you hold three burials, dig two graves, construct a coffin, and mess around with a klutzy old man and his spilled tea before bothering to pack up.
  • Actually, I usually do the teatime bit before recovering the hostages and triggering the... you know.
  • Well yeah, but doing it during turns it from a standard funny-old-man moment to a positively epic Failed a Spot Check.
  • The comment (from Amiti, I think) about the party being jumped by monsters every few steps kind of bugged me, every time I've played through that bit I've got into exactly one shadow-monster fight (the scripted one in the opera house) between the start of the eclipse and reaching the boat.

• Why were our heroes shocked to learn that Tret and Laural are trees? Even if Isaac and Garet never told them about that part of their journey, they went through the Psynergy Training Grounds, where Tret was part of the obstacles. No way they could've missed that, so what gives?
  • I chocked it up to "Wow, it wasn't complete bullshit", given how... inaccurete the training grounds were..
  • Also, you're a 17-year-old kid who just met a pair of giant talking trees. You're going to be at least a little surprised.
    • Especially if, like Amiti, you've been raised to revere talking trees as gods...

• Why are the first four characters such blatant clones of their parents? I mean Karis and Tyrell have some changes but Mathew and Rief could be replaced with their parent's sprites and animations for all the difference it would have made. For the most part I can understand the weapon and armor, but Mathew has such a unique heritage that it's highly disappointing that his default class is the same "Slayer" as his father and uncle.
  • Maybe they wanted to ensure the players had something familiar to work with? Or even encourage Class and Level System tomfoolery?

• Unless Darkness Psyenergy is all that and a bag of particularly overpowered chips, how exactly is it that the Apollo Sanctum's power being so intense even the Umbra Gear can't withstand it for long applies to your party and ONLY to your party? Alex whizzes around in the light like nobody's business, and the other bad guys can hang out and ambush you even in bright spots. It seems like unless darkness adepts are able to completely evade the human-destroying power of the sanctum's light, then the drawback of reaching the sanctum applies to you and only you. Alex is a frigging Mercury Adept, and Golden Sun or no Golden Sun, he's not even getting sunburn waltzing around with no protective gear on! Secondly, why exactly would the ancients, who were presumably not Dark Adepts, build a gun that kills whoever fires it?! I could see the Grave Eclipse being a wayward piece of tech that needed power so great it requires Heroic Sacrifice to use as a countermeasure, but considering that the Apollo Lens is horrendously inefficient compared to the other lost technology it's like the only alchemic device meant as a weapon was also the most Awesome but Impractical device the ancients ever built!

1. ↑ the previous generation sold off the less useful uniques and the shopkeepers are only authorized to sell them to those with enough power/skills to wield them
2. ↑ in the form of what certain items found in Angran dungeons were doing outside of Angara in TLA then?