Gale (Djinni)


 * This Djinni appears as an enemy that can be battled.

Gale (ガスト Gust) is a Jupiter Djinni found in Golden Sun: The Lost Age.

Gale is the eleventh and final Jupiter Djinni in Golden Sun: The Lost Age. The separate Djinn list viewable with the Select button from the status screen lists Gale and all other Jupiter Djinn introduced in The Lost Age before the seven Jupiter Djinn from the original Golden Sun, most likely because all the Djinn from the original game can be gotten all at once late in The Lost Age. However, the original Djinn are ordered before all of the Djinn introduced in The Lost Age in the Djinn inventory screen while they are allocated to characters. By this order, Gale is the eighteenth and final Jupiter Djinni in the GBA series, rather than the eleventh.

Basic description

 * "Blast enemies with a wind strike."

When Set, Gale increases its Adept's base HP by 10, base Agility by 5, and base Luck by 3.

When Gale is unleashed in battle, the user deals a Jupiter-based attack equal in power to the user's normal physical attack with an additional 60 damage points added to the result. If the target is not felled by the damage of this hit, there is a chance the target will be removed from the battle. It will not count as a felled enemy, so it will not give its experience, coin, and random drop rewards. The target will always gives its rewards like normal if Gale does the sufficient damage necessary to reduce its HP to zero.

Visually, Gale's unleash animation resembles the user summoning the transparent purple image of a Jupiter Djinni above the party. Then, an intricate purple whirlwind-like effect that is thickest at the enemy side and stretches across the screen to the point the Jupiter Djinni is at will manifest and churn, representing the Djinni blowing the enemy away from it - this is practically identical to the visual of the Jupiter Djinni Whorl, only reversed to give the illusion of wind being blown out rather than sucked in. The enemy will be pushed back from its position on the field briefly, but will return if it was not blown away. If it was blown away, the battle text will read "[Monster] was blown away!" while the monster stays in its far-back position, and then the enemy sprite will instantly disappear into thin air as the next action of the turn begins.

Location
Golden Sun: The Lost Age: Gale is located in the deeper, later part of the optional Treasure Isle dungeon that is accessible only with the Lift Psynergy that comes with Isaac's party when they join late in The Lost Age. Gale is in a particularly large room with several Lift-able boulders, presented as a puzzle just like the puzzle in Shaman Village Cave that rewards you with the Mercury Djinni Eddy. What is often not realized by players, though, is that Gale is not required to be "trapped" by a boulder that has been Lifted up (as pictured), because it will not try to get away via the space to its right even if the space is empty; all you need to do is to reach it and you will engage in the battle. See here for enemy statistics.

Analysis
General: Gale is a rare effect that attempts to remove the enemy from the battle once the hit has been carried out. Removing the enemy is essentially the same as inflicting instant death on it, but with one critical flaw: the enemy's EXP, coin rewards, and droppable loot will not be awarded like when you fell an enemy normally. This generally makes Gale a highly frowned-upon Djinni because unlike a Djinni or effect that inflicts instant death, Gale is likely to deny you the rewards you would want for going through random battles. (Naturally this blowing-away won't work on bosses with their high Luck ratings.) It has a pretty high set damage bonus of 60, and its blowing-away effect does not happen if the hit actually would KO an enemy anyway, but generally one would want to rely on other attacking Djinn to avoid any risk of not getting the payoff of defeating a monster. In Dark Dawn, the Mercury Djinni Geyser has the same "blowing away" chance.

By game
Golden Sun: The Lost Age: Gale is generally not looked on favorably when compared to the instant-death-capable Jupiter Djinni Whorl; while Gale has 20 more attack points, Whorl's instant-death effect can still earn rewards such as experience and coins. Generally, the best offensive Jupiter Djinn are brought over from the first Golden Sun when Isaac's party joins Felix's. Smog has the same high damage bonus as Gale and may inflict the arguably-useful Delusion condition. There is also Squall, which has both a damage multiplier of 1.4x (most useful when unleashed by an Adept with high Attack) and the chance to inflict the more frequently beneficial Stun condition. There is even Wheeze found earlier in The Lost Age to consider, with nearly the same attack bonus as Gale and the damaging Venom status condition.

Surprisingly enough, there exists an environment where Gale's effect can actually be quite useful: the Battle Mode, where EXP and coin rewards do not apply and the only objective is to win battles against increasingly buffed-up monsters with your party still intact. In this context, Gale's monster-removal effect truly is analogous to an instant-death effect like from Whorl, and Gale proves itself all the more useful than Whorl because it has 20 more bonus set damage to inflict if the enemy is not successfully blown away. Gale is good to use against a particularly tough non-boss monster from time to time.

Name Origin
A gale is a strong blast of wind, and a gust is a sudden blast of air.