I've started playing this now and I'm loving it so far!

Seconded.

I find the emoticons to be quite daft tho.

Like the choices you have or the ones over people have? Cause the latter has always been apart of the series

Choices.

I did complete the first Golden Sun back in the day. I vaguely remember the emoticons.

What year did that game come out 1998 or so? Bit later?

I believe the first game came out in 2000, and The Lost Age was 2003.

I completed EVERYTHING on this game. I got all of my characters to Lv99 (no AR; just fight the Tua Soldiers at the Apollo Lens for easy exp; kill them with any Djinn to earn more exp that is up to 53,000 and they only have 500 health; each battle with the Soldiers gives you an automatic drop of the Water of Life) and all of the summoning.

Dullahan was a total bitch to defeat. I know a VERY easy way of defeating him. Just use your main weapons on him and very rarely rely on your Djinn against him; he uses ANY of your Djinn on standby to summon, even Coatlicue on himself if you have those Djinn on standby to summon her! I would get to Lv99 with all of your characters before fighting him (at the Apollo Lens with the Tua Soldiers). Just use defensive Djinn and recovery, and then summon them them automatically (even the weak 1 Djinn Mercury/Jupiter/Venus/Mars summonings can do up to 500 damage each; Dullahan is weak against Wind). With those Water of Life from those Soldiers at the Apollo Lens, every party member should have the max of 30 of those items each for using, along with potions and mist potions. Healing is also a MUST! Just keep slugging away with physical attacks, defensive/recovering Djinn, and standard Djinn summonings. OH, and if your character gets Haunted or even Cursed, DO NOT worry about it! The Haunt is a minor status ailment, and you can easily revive a character once he/she falls after Curse takes affect after several turns. Dullahan also summons Charon, and it will KO one of your current characters fighting. Easily revive them. I used this method just with Matthew, Karis, Tyrell, and Rief without the other four being switched in, and I easily defeated Dullahan. Oh, and it almost took me over 30 minutes just to beat him

EDIT: Oh, I DID have to use the Action Replay at three points. Since someone mentioned that you CANNOT go back to any of the first starting areas, I missed getting the Jupiter Djinn, Gust, and I was unable to access that one building to get Brick the Venus Djinn. ALSO, I forgot to get Haures (summoning) in Border Town, so I had to use the Action Replay's Walk Through Walls code just to get these three things done...

just bumping this up

i want to see what the other "warriors of vale" look like, we only got to see Issac, garet, and Kadren

two of my friends have it but i har from one of them that its only 30 hours worth of story which is a bit dissapointing. but everything on it looks amazing.

i'll buy the game when it drops to $19.99. Game bombed so it's just a matter of waitin :)