| Golden Sun | |
|---|---|
 Golden Sun's logo as of Golden Sun: Dark Dawn | |
| Genre(s) | Role-playing video game |
| Developer(s) | Camelot Software Planning |
| Publisher(s) | Nintendo |
| Creator(s) | Hiroyuki Takahashi Shugo Takahashi |
| Artist(s) | Shin Yamanouchi |
| Composer(s) | Motoi Sakuraba |
| Platform(s) | Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS |
| First release | Golden Sun August 1, 2001 |
| Latest release | Golden Sun: Dark Dawn November 29, 2010 |
Golden Sun[a] is a series of fantasy role-playing video games developed by Camelot Software Planning and published by Nintendo. It follows the story of a group of magically-attuned "adepts" who are charged with preventing the potentially destructive power of alchemy from being released as it was in the past. Players navigate characters through the game's world by defeating enemies, solving puzzles, and completing assigned missions to complete the storyline.
The original two games, Golden Sun and Golden Sun: The Lost Age, were released in 2001 and 2002, respectively, for the Game Boy Advance. A third game, Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, was released for the Nintendo DS in 2010. In Golden Sun, the player controls protagonist Isaac and his companions as they journey through the world of Weyard to prevent a group of anti-heroes from releasing a mysterious power called "Alchemy" to the world. Golden Sun: The Lost Age follows the surviving members from the previous game's antagonists as they continue to pursue the release of Alchemy by lighting four elemental lighthouses. Golden Sun: Dark Dawn takes place thirty years later and follows the descendants of the previous two games' heroes as they navigate a world adapting to the presence of Alchemy.
The series has received generally favorable reception from critics. The first Golden Sun game has been widely lauded as among the best games for the Game Boy Advance, with the first game receiving Nintendo Power's Best GBA Game of 2001 and ranking in IGN's Readers Choice Top 100 games ever, as number 94. The Lost Age performed even better than its predecessor, ranking 78 on IGN's Readers Choice Top 100 games ever. Dark Dawn, while still scoring highly on Metacritic's aggregation of critic scores, was less well received. Sales figures for the first two Golden Sun games exceeded one million in the United States and Japan, a figure that Dark Dawn failed to exceed.
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