Alright… Okay. This is – different.

The “this” that is, in fact, “different,” is Golden Sun for the GameBoy Advance. Personally, I haven’t played an RPG like it in… Well, I never have.

Why do I say that? Well, to be brutally honest? I couldn’t give less of a damn about what happens to the characters. The story is useless and silly. It’s full of trite conversations, questionable amnesia (“He kidnapped who? Me!? Oh yeah…”), and an incomprehensible need for painful backtracking.

I recommend everyone with the SNES Pocket buy it. If you haven’t already.

What’s this, you may be asking to yourself, or perhaps carving into your flesh with a bowie knife. I understand. (Except for that carving thing – ick.) It’s one fine game, is what it is. (The game, that is, not the carving. Again – ick. [Parallelism!])

Golden Sun features a bunch of strange looking Pokémon rejects called Djinn (that’s D-Jinn, aspirate your “J”, jackass) that bond to characters, boosting stats, providing new spells and abilities, as well as summon attacks. That’s right, RPG fans, it’s the GFs, except with the lack of the sucking we’d all hoped for. You put the little rat bastards on a character, altering their class title and the spells they’ll learn upon leveling up. The more Djinn “on” when a character levels, the better. You can also have them standby, which makes them ready to summon. The more of a type that are standing by, the bigger the summon. (four types – earth, wind, water, fire – I feel like it’s the seventies all over again… Wait, how would I know?)

Another neat thing in the game is the command system – turn based, relying on agility to determine order, (and also, possibly, difficulty of the action, I’ll get back to you on that one). Here’s the fun bit: you select actions for all four of your characters at once, and they proceed to carry them out. If an enemy’s turn comes before your slower characters (the dumb redhead for me, results may vary) they go first. Simple as that. And if the action you’ve selected can no longer be performed? Oops. Once you adjust to not just slapping the select button and relying on the game to slide attacks over once an enemy’s dead, this is an extraordinarily fun system. You start to judge enemies, estimating attack power and hit points, and when you accurately pull of some ridiculous marshalling of the troops to take out three nasty enemies in two turns, you get one of those good feelings I’ve heard so much about.

Oh – the puzzles are inhuman, track down a guide; I suggest gamefaqs.

Let me drive a point home though, ladies. If you want character development, this game is not for you. Your character (default: “Isaac”) never speaks, and you will soon wish that everyone else in the world followed his example. You will not care about these characters. Stubbornness and the desire to destroy monsters is the only reason this world will be saved.

So, if you’re looking for something to gallivant around the town with, get this. Duh. It’s a portable system, didn’t you notice?