Huge Sword

A Huge Sword is a Long Sword-class Artifact weapon available in Golden Sun: The Lost Age. The sword is a pure-element weapon meaning its physical attack is itself an attack whose resulting damage is either increased or decreased based on how the user's Venus power compares to the target's Venus resistance.

Basic Description
The Huge Sword increases the wielder's base Attack rating by 155 points. It can be bought for 14000 coins and sold for 10500 coins.

The Huge Sword is only available by bringing a Golem Core forgeable material to the blacksmith in Yallam. From the Golem Core, Sunshine will create one of several possible, randomly determined items from it, including the Huge Sword. The Huge Sword must then be purchased from him. As a Long Sword-class weapon, a Huge Sword can be equipped on warrior-style Adepts, namely Isaac, Garet, Felix, and Piers. It bears a striking resemblance to Cloud's Buster Sword (from Final Fantasy VII).

The Huge Sword's Unleash effect is Heavy Divide, with the standard base activation rate of 35%, which is a physical attack with an additional 60 points of damage added, and then is affected by the user and target's Venus statistics as before. The Unleash may also decrease the target's total Defense rating by 25% (the maximum amount any character or enemy in the game can have its Defense rating decreased or increased is up to 50% from the norm, so this side effect can successfully occur twice profitably). Heavy Divide visually resembles a gigantic, jagged sword with white edges sprouting vertically out of the wielder, then slowly falling over and onto the enemy target with a heavy bounce, then retracting back into the wielder.

Analysis
In Golden Sun: The Lost Age, the Huge Sword is a very similar weapon to Golden Sun's most powerful weapon, the Gaia Blade, in that both are Long Swords whose normal physical attacks are affected by the combatants' Venus statistics. There are several differences between them: The Huge Sword does not increase Venus power and Resistance by 20 like the Gaia Blade, and its Unleash adds ten points less damage. In return, its base Attack rating is 20 points higher, and its Unleash actually has an additional side-effect which is lowering the target's Defense rating (which can be much more useful in fights against very durable enemies than using the Impair Psynergy). It can pretty much be viewed as equally worthy to the Gaia Blade. If Isaac is holding the Gaia Blade when he joins Felix's party late in The Lost Age and a Huge Sword is successfully forged at around that time, it would be sound to equip the Huge Sword on Felix so that both are strong Venus-based attackers, at least for a while until far more "ultimate" weapons can be collected.

It should also be noted that the Huge Sword is one of three possible weapons that can be forged from a Golem Core, all of them having a Venus-based Unleash effect, with the other two being the Gaia's Axe and the Tungsten Mace. It is worth comparing the three: The Huge Sword is a pure-element weapon artifact of the Venus element, and its Unleash can lower the target's Defense by 25%. The Tungsten Mace is a weapon artifact that can be equipped by more Adepts (Sheba and Mia in addition to the four warrior-style Adepts), and while having the same power levels as the Huge Sword its Unleash sometimes ignores half the target's Defense rating to increase damage somewhat substantially. The Gaia's Axe is generally maginally more damaging than the other two, and its effect may put the target to Sleep. All three of these weapons are solid and viable for use by the two Venus Adept warriors, especially if Isaac does not join up with the Gaia Blade in his possession, so deciding between the three weapons is mostly a matter of taste.