Wednesday, November 29th

Golden Sun 2: The Lost Age

GS2 is a bit of an oddity for me; the puzzles feel unnecessary, yet are enjoyable.

For example, one puzzle came up twice where you enter a room and it is partially filled with sand (which you can walk on). On one side of the room is a locked door, the switch to open it is midway through it. At some points in the sand there are invisible buttons that raise the sand level. If it gets to high it covers the door switch.

There is virtually no way know WHERE the sand raising buttons are before you step on them. But even on the second time I was not annoyed or bored by such luck and memory based puzzle.
Why?

I think it is because of two factors: First, ease of dealing with the puzzle. It is a very simple puzzle to understand, and especially important, to interact with. The player never is confused about what is going on. Second, it takes two minutes max. GS(2) is filled with these micro puzzles. They don't take huge amounts of thinking or time, but they give an instant reward that pushes the player forward.

Later posts on the same games will probably be much shorter.
Also, later posts will probably be better.