Golden Sun: The Lost Age - Opinions

-- TL;DR --
This is a good sequel to an average game, and thus merely an above-average RPG, even by GameBoy standards.
The Djinn system is very well done and creative, but hampered due to interference by other, less well-done systems.
It does become the most powerful aspect of the combat later on, although sadly at the expense of much of its creativity due to the lowered opportunity cost of using it.
Bosses are cool, random battles still suck, the graphics are still crazy good, everything takes forever to do, the story is meh, and the dialogue is alright now.

-- Review --
I wasn't planning to beat Golden Sun: The Lost Age so soon after the first (read: immediately), but because I didn't see the end of GS 1 coming at all, I figured I might as well finish the story after the cliffhanger.
The sequel definitely improves upon the first in a few important areas. Dialogue is much less inane and actually humorous now. The intro of the game is over in a few minutes instead of an 1.5 hours.
Although it takes a while to actually fight a boss, the dungeons start earlier, and are more varied than the first, but bigger than necessary.
Bosses seem too uncommon actually, and the decision to have dungeons without bosses seems bad since typically the boss fights are the highlight of any RPG worth its salt.
Djinn are occasionally scattered on the world map, which gives some of those dead-ends a purpose (although the map is still WAY too barren).
I enjoyed riding the boat (even if it is a bit tedious), but I really wish fast-travel was unlocked before the last area of the game.
The world in The Lost Age is significantly more open than GS1, so deciding returning to an area takes significantly longer than before.

Djinn also have a bit more variety, although most of them aren't useful in boss fights, which is the only place you'll actually use them.
Multi element summons are also a thing now, and they often scale to be more powerful than the default ones.
Many of these also provide special effects on top of damage, which gives you another way to buff attack, agility, or even heal on characters which otherwise can't.
I really appreciate most of the Djinn additions since the best part of the combat system is the creativity and freedom it provides.
Unlike equipment, Djinn aren't character-dependent, and while I didn't overhaul my loadouts as much as in GS1, I had a much more varied set of Djinn on everyone this time around, which gave me a ton of options when a fight got tough.

Most of the fights, though, aren't really tough.
The hardest one I found was blocking an endgame reward, and was one of the only times I actually wasn't overleveled beyond belief.
This fight was amazing, since I actually had to adjust my equipment and strategy to beat it. I do wish the other 3 fights like this weren't so hidden, as I would have liked more difficulty in the game.
The lack of difficulty is largely enforced by the constant random battles, which are often more reliably repelled by fighting instead of running away.
Even with a lowered chance to encounter, I still had to constantly squash weak enemies the whole game; I really wish the level threshold for eliminating encounters altogether was a lot lower.
Unless you know exactly where to go in each dungeon, odds are you'll be fighting too many unavoidable small fights as you backtrack, making you overpowered for the boss which kills the need for creativity in battle.
You can just spam the same attacks over and over with an occasional heal when you get hit.

Most bosses also fight alone, which makes basically all magic worthless since it's much more efficient to either use Djinn or basic attacks without multiple targets.
In fact, after you get enough Djinn to cycle, you never need any magic at all except for the multi-heal and +resist type spells.
After a point, I stopped struggling with PP entirely, and often got through the whole dungeon with nearly everyone at full stats by the end.
Most bosses are rather resistant to magic anyway (compared to physical), and since a vast majority of them hit you with visually flashy magic instead of basic swipes, you never have to buff defense.
This shift in favor of strong physical attacks and support abilities makes Ivan/Sheba markedly less useful (they mainly used support Djinn for me) and even Piers/Mia if not equipped correctly.

The dungeons themselves are nothing spectacular apart from a couple novel themes.
The 'puzzles' of both Golden Sun games make Zelda dungeons look interesting, because they rarely have any depth to them.
There aren't enough side effects to messing with the moving parts of the puzzles, so they're often trivial to solve once you see the whole layout.
Unfortunately, "seeing the whole layout" is the main aspect of nearly every puzzle in the game.
Basically every time there's a fork in the road, there's a right way and a wrong way.
If you're lucky, the wrong way will have an item; otherwise, it's a dead end that allows you to see the right way to the end of the puzzle.
There's no decision making or thinking associated with this, you merely guess.
"Team Left" became my mantra throughout the game because I simply found it less likely to lead me towards a brick wall.
The overabundance of this dead-end pattern makes the dungeons seem big and empty, which wouldn't be so much of an issue if you weren't also punished with random encounters for every wrong path you take.

The psynergy system itself which is used to solve the dungeon's puzzles is fine, even if it is a bit slow to use.
I got wise to the fact that most interactable elements in Golden Sun were highlighted when using Reveal early on, so I started taking notes on where to come back.
Essentially, I was listing locked doors I found, and returning to them once I had the key.
This worked well in the first half, since the doors were obvious, but because later game powers interact with more inconspicuous environmental elements, my list was suddenly rendered incomplete, and I was forced to remember what I had seen, rather that what I had written down.
This was a surprise that revitalized the game's feeling of adventure, since I now possessed all the keys, but no locks. If I was more keen on exploring my way to 100%, I would have like to go back to earlier areas and see what was now possible.

One knock against the psynergy system is the clear uselessness of many skills.
Throughout the game, it is evident that general powers like Move, Pound, and Frost are used regularly, while others, like Force, Grind, and Douse are Carry are limited to very specific places.
I'm convinced that some, like Ply, have absolutely no use in The Lost Age (I only used it twice in the first game).
In fact, since I apparently missed the Cloak spell in GS1, I went back to look where I could have used it and found that it had 2 uses in the first game and a total of 0 in The Lost Age.
This decision to bombard you with necessary abilities (all of which take up inventory space) but only make a few of them commonly needed reminds me of HM's in Pokemon.
I simply designated a party member to hold every gem, while everyone else enjoyed pockets full of healing items.
Since only the 4 original party members in The Lost Age learn character-specific abilities, the others have little reason to be made useful.
If they didn't simply bring along their sack of ability upgrades, but instead had certain skills only they knew (from the first game), it would add a more reasonable gameplay reason for their joining the party, rather than them essentially just being the bearers of the Lift Gem.

Another annoying thing Golden Sun did specifically with the Reveal ability was that it taught you how to use it in seemingly random places, but almost never hid anything in random corners ever again.
Throughout both games, I constantly checked blank walls and dead ends for secrets, but came up empty nearly every time.
In basically every situation where Reveal is required, it is clearly conveyed somehow, except for one specific instance in the last dungeon of GS1, where the critical path is indeed hidden behind a secret door on a random wall.
The fact that The Lost Age doesn't hide anything on random walls meant nothing, since by the time I played it, I was already conditioned to expect at least one thing tucked away in a random corner.
Not knowing this, I still routinely scoured each and every dungeon and town for secrets, all thanks to that one time something actually was there.

Aside from this, all the other times I was stuck involved me missing something easy, save for one.
As the most egregious example of obscure quest requirements, the residents of Shaman Village, when initially met, refuse to talk with you, and only mention the citizens of Contigo as being trustworthy people when pried for secret info.
The Contigo residents, however, make no mention of Shaman Village at all, which is on an entirely separate island to their own, and instead speak of their own issues.
In reality, Contigo is wholly unassociated with Shaman Village, and the real solution to gaining their trust is by giving the leader the Shaman Staff, an item I received in the first game nearly 40 hours before and hadn't seen mentioned in nearly 20.
While it had been occupying a space in my inventory for all that time, and it had also appeared initially in the inventory of both Ivan and Sheba, who are implied to be long-lost citizens of Contigo, there appears to be no definite clue aside from the name that helps to associate the staff with the village.
Until then, I was certain that the staff was originally owned by Hammett, Ivan's mentor, who is not said to be from Contigo.
Furthermore, I saw no instance of Hammett mentioning Shaman Village at all.
This was the only part of the game where I felt stuck due to something unfair, and I don't know why a solution this obtuse was placed on the plot's critical path.

Overall, the Golden Sun: The Lost Age is a good sequel to an average game, making it only a good-enough game at the end of it all.
The story in this one has the same problem as the first (where it just kind of abruptly ends), but there's more of an epilogue (and no cliffhanger) this time so I guess that's fine.
Random battles continue to be a garbage mechanic in my eyes and significantly contribute to most of the negative impressions I had with both games.
In a system where you can always avoid fights, I see myself liking the game much more, although the tedium of the dungeons would still be a drag.
I can see how people with more patience than me might consider this a top-tier game, but it's hard for me to positively view an RPG, or any game for that matter, that plainly feels like it doesn't respect your time.