Chain

Chain is a Venus Djinni found in Golden Sun: Dark Dawn. Numerically, it is the twelfth numbered Venus Djinni in Dark Dawn.

=In Dark Dawn= "Entangle a foe so each ally can attack."

The Djinn Guide entry for Chain reads as follows: "This spirit represents earth's binding powers and is first met on  Warrior's Hill. Chain's attacks hold a foe in place to help allies  coordinate strikes."

Location
Chain is found in the southwest corner of the exterior screen of the dungeon Warrior's Hill, the first dungeon generally traversed once the game's late oceanic segment begins. Chain can only be reached later in the exploration - first, Harun Channel must have been visited, and its flow of water must have been let loose to start the rotation process of inactive watermills in Warrior's Hill. Then, a puzzle must be solved based on the newly rotating cogs and mechanisms to get the second, upper left of the dungeon's three turquoise towers to rise out of the ground and allow you to walk out of its front door. Once outside this upper-left tower, climb the tree to the left of it and hop left and travel down to where Chain is "hiding". It must be fought in order to be earned.

Description
When Chain is Set onto an Adept, it increases base HP by 8, base PP by 4, and base Attack by 3.

When Chain's battle effect is used, the 3D model of Chain appears above the target and floats around and off the screen briefly as a very long, thin, dark-gray metal chain coils around the target from behind the camera, until the target is covered in several loops. The wrapped enemy visually shrinks and briefly pulsates in size twice to simulate a "squeeze", and just as that happens, your first party member performs a normal physical attack, and the other three party members perform their normal physical attacks in order, each one starting their attack animation while the previous party member's attack animation is in the midst of being carried out. Naturally, downed party members do not contribute to the chain. The chain disappears once the fourth party member's hit passes by.

The mechanics of this attack sequence are almost exactly as its appearance onscreen would suggest - each non-downed party member deals a Venus-aligned physical attack with their weapon equal to their normal physical attack, with each hit scoring its own damage result that is shown on screen. Each of the participating party members' respective Attack ratings and Venus power ratings apply. This does not "use up" any of the action turns of the other Adepts besides the user, so if any of the other Adepts have been ordered to, say, perform a normal physical attack on the target on the same turn the holder of Chain makes use of Chain, the other Adept would appear to execute two attacks on that turn. (Of course, the normal attack that the other Adept was selected to use this turn is subject to Critical and Unleash chances, unlike the attack that was spurred on by Chain.) However, if the target dies over the course of the flurry of hits, the remaining hits will not re-target to other enemies and will be negated.

Ability analysis
Chain is a strangely powerful maneuver that has very good potential to deal very high amounts of damage, and even if none of the currently-battling Adepts have particularly high attack ratings, if the four Adepts are all alive then this should prove itself to be far and away the most powerful attack Djinni in the Golden Sun series. A high-attack-power Adept using a high-damage-multiplier attack like a Chaos Lord unleashing Geode will probably not do as much damage as Chain because this attack is essentially the sum total of the individual attacks of four separate characters all at once, being carried out only at the expense of one character's turn. Because Chain is based on all of the battle's currently-battling Adepts, it is not important which Adept uses Chain, meaning that Chain is just as powerful when used by a low-attack "mage-style" Adept as when it would be used by a warrior. Of course, Chain would end up quite weak if only one or two Adepts are not downed at the time it is used.

Chain ends up the most damaging effect on any Adept that doesn't even consider weapon assaults as one of their offensive options. Chain's effectiveness can be maximized when put on the weakest Adept because it allows that Adept to score a lot of damage even while the other, more combat-oriented Adepts use their own powerful skills. While the total damage output of Chain would always end up being very powerful if you have a full party on hand to support it, the damage output can easily be maximized - equipping higher-attack weapons on all Adepts and putting them in more Attack-boosting classes will make Chain's results noticeably better than otherwise, and putting Sveta into Beastform will also boost the overall damage output significantly. The practical results of group-attack-boosting effects like High Impact/Angel Spear will be higher than they normally are because all four of the party members that would make use of the extra attack for the sake of Chain are enhanced at the same time. This is especially true of the Mars Djinn Forge and Stoke, which are the same as High Impact but doubled in effectiveness.