Let's Play Golden Sun #05 - Phenomenal Cosmic Powers

[@Kraleck]

Djinn not only make enemies give more Experience when doing an elemental weakness kill, it also increases their item drop rate. You may not exploit the RNG for rare drops, HCB, but this mechanic is very useful for actually grinding for them semi-legitimately. Although, there's a few rare drops in Golden Sun: The Lost Age that are bugged to not drop unless you fudge the roll with RNG manipulation AND a Djinn-kill (and at least one of those is from a foe in the Super Boss's dungeon).

[@kl4969]

I wouldn't call that a bug. The 2nd game just has a (slightly) better RNG process so it's (slightly) harder to cheat the drops. You can still get the drops legitimately without Djinn.

[@arkbuble]

So you could say you will.... Stay away from the summons?

[@TheGamedawg]

I think it will be a fun challenge to beat this game without using summons, however could you, perhaps in some small inconsequential battles, show each one off once? The animations for the summons are one of my favorite parts of the game!

[@DongusMcBongus]

This is true.

[@nleseul]

What we do know is that caulking the wagon and floating it across never ends well. The game's use of cutaways to random NPCs for exposition is an is an interesting storytelling mechanic that seems fairly unique to this game. I'm really impressed with the quality of the writing here, in general.

[@RyoCaliente]

You are at least going to show off the Summons at least once though, right? They're too cool to just banish 100 %!

[@Seegtease]

I must have really sucked at this game back in the day when I played through it. I didn't ban summons and I recall having a few trouble fights.

[@firedrake110]

Seegtease was one the frog? Because if you don't realize the trick, the frog can be mean lol Also, the Kraken is a nice little spike in difficulty

[@Seegtease]

firedrake110 It was over 10 years ago, can't recall. I just know I died a few times. Then again, HCBailly has a way of making even Four Warriors of Light look easy.

[@Baladucci]

He's also going through all the side areas, doing a decent amount of backtracking, and fighting every enemy he comes across (for the most part). It'd be hard to be underleveled or underequipped for any fight.

[@kamikiku]

A fjord is a really deep valley caused by glaciers. A ford is a shallow part of a river that can be crossed by wading. I'll let you decide which one you meant ^^

[@HCBailly]

I'm an engineer, not a geologist. :P

[@nameinvalidLOL69]

Banning summons from the two games... Even for a super secret boss in the second game? Are you insane?!

[@ScottMtc]

Yes. On his forums he said he almost gave up on beating that boss without summons, but then he found a way to do it reliably. I can't wait to see that battle :D

[@firedrake110]

"That boss" has a reliable pattern of attacks off a hard reset, making it at least possible, though djinn storm is likely the most brutal attack in the series

[@geoserenity]

Always go out of the way to find djinn for they make you powerful and give you fun classes to try out. Because just making isaac a lord is no fun (and boosting characters is more important than unleashing djinn and summoning imo)

[@fmisback]

Geo Belmont the class system is one of the funnest part of the endgame so I hope he'll show it all off at the least!

[@CottidaeSEA]

Isaac wrecks stuff as a Lord though. I don't remember exactly how I distribute my djinn, but I'm pretty sure Isaac gets Jupiter djinn for one reason or another. The class system really is fun though. It'd be cool if you didn't end up with really shitty combinations for one or two characters just to get specific classes though.

[@crono276]

My first playthrough I just gave all characters their innate element djinn. The second one I tried to mix it up, but didn't have enough to go around, so some were less powerful than others.

[@MattKimura]

Im really getting into this game again with this playthrough!

[@TheLuckystrike2000]

As a little grinding tip, south of Vault where the broken bridge is, if you're south east of that where the land juts out south, you can meet up with enemies later on in the game - as a bonus, they'll also drop items that you can sell on for a good amount of money which in my experience is tricky to come by in the early part of the game. If you mention this already in a later video HC, my bad but I thought I'd throw it out there.

[@MrZoichi]

I never knew that summons were that powerful. It stands to reason though because Judgment could annihilate almost any regular enemy for most of the game.

[@carolsymphony9673]

One other thing I don't think was mentioned is that whenever you summon, you gain an elemental power boost. The amount of power depends on the tier of the summon. For example, if you use the tier one 'Venus' summon, you gain ten points of Venus power. If you use the tier two summon Venus, Ramses, you gain 30 power points. By and large, power boosts don't help too much in the early game, but they can be quite useful later on, especially when it comes to healing psynergy, until the boss removes it with break. One thing to keep in mind is that your elemental power has a cap of 200, I think.

[@HCBailly]

Yeah, I forgot to mention that, because I never use summons. However, you did inadvertently give me a way to test something by reminding me of that. Thanks!

[@InterestEPC]

Don't worry much about how Djinni is actually pronounced (I generally don't pronounce it as "genie" but then again I usually just avoid the singular form entirely and informally use Djinn for both singular and plural even if it's entirely wrong to do so). It's pretty difficult to not pronounce it literally in any case. Also wow you mentioned the "Djinn Kill" Method. For some reason a fair number of Golden Sun players don't know about it. As mentioned below it increases experience and coins gained by 33% and also greatly increases the drop rate of any items the enemy may be able to drop. It's vital for some RNG manipulation tricks for big drops later on. However, I also learned that Djinn Kills can be a little imprecise and based strongly on a character's elemental power which punishes creative class usage - there's more info about this part out there. I also tend to ban out summons but I only ban level 3 or above. This is purely for personal reasons (I like using a certain summon in the second game not for the damage but for its secondary effect). Finally, I like to aggressively unleash Djinn as a general rule. They hit insanely hard and have other useful effects that really speed up battles. Might seem cheap but most normal battles are a joke in the Golden Sun games anyways.

[@tmoran527]

Itty bitty living space!

[@SierraGustafson]

I always liked the concept of having a mind-reader in my team such as Ivan and (later on in The Lost Age) Sheba. By the way, are you going to change your icon?

[@geoserenity]

Seda Raybrandt huh? Oh yea, he changed his icon from when he did disgaea 2...

[@Cheerfuljochan]

Even though Summons are banned, will you showcase all the summons at least once when you get them HC? :O

[@Lightgod87]

He'll showcase them for the case of demonstration, otherwise, summons are banned 100%.

[@Vexominous]

For me, it was always weird to give a Djinn to someone of a different element, I always played mono.

[@lakekoocanusa]

As a person who loves this game so much, it is kind of odd that whenever I play, I always play as a single elementalist. This game is pretty easy regardless. I wonder if you will get into the mechanics of double, triple, double-triple, or triple-triple elemental parties? As a singles player myself, one of the mechanics of the Djinn that I know of, is that if you start getting a lot of them, it will change you further the more you get. For example, I want to say it's three, five, and seven, Venus Djinn, Isaac will class change. At four Venus Djinn, he gains the resurrect spell. I think you need four Venus djinn in his single class to get his Gaia spell. Plus more. Stuff like this is true for ALL the party members. Another quick note about summons late game is that it starts to get dangerous. With each Djinn you gain stats. So at end game, you have a lot of stats just from the number of djinn. If you have a lot on standby or recovery, your stats are "normal" or as far a this game is concerned, fairly low. you mentioned that you can just about one-shot bosses with the higher level summons, if they are all on standby or recover, the bosses can just about one-shot you. I will, however, just about summon Zephyr every boss fight as that Djinn's abillity is nearly invaluable. for longer fights. I'm sure you will probably go over it, but there is also tiers of summons. At tier two Venus, you can bring the fear of ancient Egypt on those who stand against you for example. The highest tier of summons in this game are great, you can bring your unholy judgement upon your foes, or the god of thunder, or rain the fire of the cosmos upon their heads, or my favorite is you can summon a snow-cone maker.

[@SomeGuy712x]

(14:02) A Djinni that's not set is considered to be on standby, I believe.

[@HCBailly]

Yeah, my brain was experiencing lag, at the moment.

[@MAGNUS-8M]

If Oregon Trail taught me anything, it's that you're gonna drown in two inches of water if you try to fjord through any river. Also I can shoot lots of buffalo and cause mass extinction, then only be able to bring back 200 pounds of food. I do kinda feel like replaying this game again just to try the different job classes and possibly no-summoning as well. I did basically summon-rush the whole time last I played.... well, the first time I played on the real cartridge I didn't really know about optimizing things or doing anything other than terrible awful level-grinding, so when I used summon-rushing I was able to get by without level grinding at all. But since summon-rushing leaves you vulnerable for a brief time anyway, I'm sure I could get by with the right classes being used... I just always got overwhelmed by that point and gave up to just use same-element settings the whole game.

[@masterar8274]

Hey HCBailly! Loving this LP so far; this is one of my all-time favorite series! I completely agree with banning summons in the game, but what do you think about showing them off in unimportant battles? Some of them are really impressive, especially in the second game.

[@praisetheffun8802]

I know you said you aren’t going to use summons at all. But could you just show each of them off on a trash mob, just once? They do look cool and have neat effects, just to demonstrate for the audience :)

[@Lightgod87]

He'll showcase them for the case of demonstration, otherwise, summons are banned 100%.

[@luthe25]

I remember the Djinni in this game were both a bit confusing and amazing. I remember going through both games twice and my first time around, I usually kept whatever element Djinni (or planet...as I referred to them sometimes) on the character of the same element, but my 2nd time around, I found it interesting to mix around the different Djinni on each character. I'm interested on how you are going to work these Djinni HcBailly.

[@EldritchGoddess]

i know you said no summons 100%, might i ask for 1 battle to show them off? they do look cool

[@HCBailly]

Yeah, I'll probably make a bonus episode with that, once I have 4 of each Djinn.

[@AzureIV]

That poor Djinni. Bad HCBailly! Stop making them cry with your constant "no" spouting.

[@HCBailly]

I'm sharpening my knife, kupo!

[@BleeProductions]

BOOM! We get our nut. HURRAY!

[@kevinyee9550]

Fun stuff

[@ToHoldNothing]

Isaac and Garet appear to be around 17, so they're not as young as other protagonists, though I guess they're still fairly young by legal standards, not adults

[@kholdy4]

I'm glad you ended up banning summons after I suggested it, should make the fights a lot less faceroll! Also, the reason Isaac and Garet were chosen by the Wise One actually makes perfect sense if you think about the very end of TLA - not gonna go into any details here though.

[@HCBailly]

Thanks. I almost had to break the ban for THE superboss in the next game, but with some help, we were able to find a method that didn't require them. Even without summons, boss fights don't take an obscenely long time to kill, so I was fine with the ban.

[@professorpengu502]

Djinn in anything is plural

[@Sephiroth1204]

I was trying to place the title but then I realized this is the episode where you meet the Djinni. Nice xD Also, a JRPG where you aren't banished from your village? What is this sorcery?!

[@flash4354]

Holograms Adept style!

[@flash4354]

Fun fact: Echo wouldn't eat your chips.

[@BlueCrimson10]

HCBailly, at the risk of insulting your intelligence, you know you can put Djinn on set or standby instantly by just pressing R on the Djinn screen, right? I assume you do, since it's really most useful when you have multiple Djinn you want to set or standby.

[@HCBailly]

Yeah, I just wanted to show off the effects of setting Djinn, for this episode.

[@autobotjazz1972]

Itty bitty living space is implied in the video title , i hope that doesn't apply to Hc Baily's home.

[@Shadowhaze08]

Phenomenal Cosmic Powers and Itty Bitty Living Space right? 😂

[@BinaryDood]

wait... no use of summon....

[@cedars8571]

Holy crap NO SUMMON RUN.. Interesting 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔

[@liticusc1372]

Are you going to play golden sun the lost age after you finish this?

[@HCBailly]

Yes, my default plan is to have TLA immediately follow this.

[@liticusc1372]

HCBailly Alright! Watching these videos actually got me back into playing this game series

[@seankalifut9948]

HCBailly Cool. These are among my favorite games including Dark Dawn.

[@CottidaeSEA]

Djinni is the same thing as genie. It's from Arabic, and djinni is the romanization while genie is the anglicization of the word.

[@avakann4512]

I know you're going to be playing TLA, but are you doing to be playing the third game in the series?

[@HCBailly]

I'll think about it, though I'm not going to play it right after TLA.

[@arkbuble]

BTW are you going to ban the OP Djinn later on? (Flash for example)

[@HCBailly]

No, though I hardly ever unleash Flash, anyway. It doesn't seem necessary to me.

[@brigbjones]

NO SUMMONS?!?! but that's like, half of the cool stuff in the game! If you don't use summons then a lot of superbosses are just a waste of time.

[@HCBailly]

If I use summons, then every battle is a waste of time. I could just summon rush everything without consideration for strategy, which I would think isn't very entertaining to viewers and myself.

[@pinfarmer]

Do some Ys book 1 and 2 fam.

[@theoh1938]

Aww banning summons? Can you at least show off the big summons?

[@HCBailly]

I'll show them off, eventually.

[@dannish8119]

Oregon is pronounced the same as organ.

[@kauedasilva3932]

Well I don't like setting different Djinn to a character that isn't suited for that element.

[@Kaosubaloo]

I think you have the singular and plural pronunciations backwards. Djinn is singular and Djinni is plural. At least that's how the games use them.

[@HCBailly]

No, it's the other way around, as I said. Notice how when Flint addressed himself to the party, he referred to himself as the Venus Djinni, singular. He also said later, "After being unleashed, we Djinn (plural) will then stand by to be summoned." The dictionary also refers to Djinni as singular and Djinn as plural.

[@Kaosubaloo]

I stand corrected. In hindsight I'm pretty sure I've always called them "Djinn" regardless of tense, but even when you know better, it's hard to break a habit like that when you've been saying it wrong for literal years. XD