Golden Sun impressed people back in the day because its graphics showed the GBA was capable of being more than a glorified SNES. And with the N64 having had like 5 RPGs and the Pokemon generation having aged a few years, Golden Sun was well-timed to introduce or reintroduce Nintendo fans to the genre. As a result it gets a bit overrated because of nostalgia.

The combat and class systems are okay but the game doesn't do much interesting with them. The dungeons are heavy on puzzles and some of those are pretty neat. Solid soundtrack. Unfortunately the story is poorly paced and the characters are bland. And you can’t even just ignore these to focus on the production values and gameplay because there are very long segments of tedious dialogue. Most of it is characters reacting, rehashing the same things over and over, and outright parroting each other's lines, with very little of meaning actually being said. It's too bad this game only had one silent protagonist instead of four.