Echo

Echo (デュオ Duo) is a Venus Djinni found in Golden Sun: The Lost Age. Echo is the first Djinni introduced in The Lost Age, and one of very few in the series to have lines of spoken dialogue.

As a Djinni
Echo is the first Venus Djinni - and the first Djinni overall - in Golden Sun: The Lost Age. The separate Djinn list viewable with the Select button from the status screen lists Echo and all other Venus Djinn introduced in The Lost Age before the seven Venus 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, Echo is the eighth Venus Djinni in the GBA series, rather than the first.

Basic description

 * "Attack with a double strike."

When Set, Echo increases its Adept's base HP by 9, base PP by 4, and base Attack by 3.

When Echo is unleashed in battle, the user strikes the target with an elemental physical attack 60% stronger than a  normal physical attack performed by the user. Being a Venus-based attack, Echo's battle effect is also affected by the user's Venus Power and the target's Venus Resistance.

Visually, Echo's unleash animation resembles the user leaping forward to perform a normal physical strike, but before the impact the user briefly stops in the air while glowing orange energy orbs gather above the user and form a transparent orange image of a Venus Djinni. Then the Venus Djinni moves to the base of the enemy at the moment of impact, and then a third of a second later the enemy takes another hit and is sent up into the air along with the Venus Djinni, which disappears at this point.

Damage calculation
Elemental physical attacks such as Echo use the damage dealt by the attacker's standard physical attack as the base damage to be later modified. The total amount of damage dealt by a normal physical attack is half the difference between the attacker's Attack statistic and the target's  Defense statistic, as this equation shows:


 * ''base damage = (Attacker's Attack - Target's Defense) / 2

Echo's attack then takes this base damage value and uses it in the following equation:


 * ''final damage = (base damage * 1.6) * (1 + (Attacker's Venus Power - Target's Venus Resistance) / 400)

To word this in prose, Echo takes the base damage of the user's normal physical attack, multiplies it by 1.6, and then this result is modified by how much higher or lower the user's Venus Power is than the target's Venus Resistance. The difference between the user's Venus Power and the target's Venus Resistance is divided by 400, then 1 is added to this, resulting in what can be called the "elemental damage multiplier". This number is what Echo's damage is multiplied by.

For example, if an Adept with an Attack rating of 100 and a Venus Power of 120 unleashes Echo on a monster with a defense of 20 and a Venus  Resistance of 70:


 * damage = ((Attack - Defense) / 2 * 1.6) * (1 + (Power - Resistance) / 400)
 * damage = ((100 - 20) / 2 * 1.6) * (1 + (120 - 70) / 400)
 * damage  = ( / 2 * 1.6) * (1 +  / 400)
 * damage  = ( * 1.6) * (1 + )
 * damage = *
 * damage = 72

Therefore, if Echo were to be unleashed under these circumstances it would deal   72 points of damage.

Location
Unlike most Djinn, Echo is a Djinni that is automatically acquired at a certain points in the game, and is therefore guaranteed to be among the Djinn available to players in The Lost Age.

Golden Sun: The Lost Age: Felix's small party stumbles across Echo immediately after leaving Daila south. Echo provides the two young Adepts with a tutorial on how to use Djinn before joining them on their quest. The game technically grants the player the option to refuse to let Echo accompany them, but no matter how many times Echo is refused it will be added to the Djinn collection regardless.

Analysis
General: While not the best offensive Djinni in the series, Echo is still among the strongest Venus  Djinn, due to the fact that it increases damage by a pretty strong multiplier rather than a fixed damage increase. This means that Echo becomes stronger as the party becomes stronger, as opposed to many  weapon Unleashes, most Attack-dependent Psynergies (like  Ragnarok and Planet Diver), and even other  Djinn, all of which only offer fixed damage boosts and become comparatively less powerful over the course of a game.

Much like other Djinn, Echo's main weakness is that it can only be unleashed once before it must be Set again. Manually Setting a Djinni wastes a turn in combat, so a recommended strategy is to unleash Echo and several other Djinn, perform a Summon, then use other forms of combat until Echo re-Sets itself automatically. Of course, some players may wish to keep their Djinn Set to keep their party's classes and  statistics optimized, in which case Echo likely won't be unleashed often and is no better or worse than any other Venus Djinni.

By game
Golden Sun: The Lost Age: From when Echo is first acquired all the way up until Isaac's party joins Felix's late in The Lost Age, Echo is the premier attack Venus  Djinni, sporting a damage multiplier higher than any Djinn of any other element. It will likely be used throughout the game up until that point more than the other attacking Djinn attainable, which are Steel with its +30% modifier and its health-leeching property, and Meld with its gimmicky mechanic involving an even lower modifier. As soon as Isaac joins and brings the identical Flint along with him, though, the two Djinn will both quickly be obsoleted by Geode, which has a consistent and unsurpassed damage multiplier of +90%.

As a character
Unlike most Djinn, Echo is given a speaking role and, at least for a brief time, is treated like an actual character rather than just another collectible. In The Lost Age, Echo has the role of providing players with a tutorial on how to use Djinn. Based on this, Echo, much like Flint at the start of the first game, appears to be more friendly and sociable than most other Djinn.

Story
Much like the other Djinn, Echo is released from Sol Sanctum when Mt. Aleph erupts early in the original Golden Sun, and ends up traveling far from Mt. Aleph. Quite some time following the eruption, after the Mercury Lighthouse and Venus Lighthouse are lit, Echo has apparently moved itself to just outside the village of Daila at the north end of the continent of Indra far to the south of Mt. Aleph. Daila happens to be where the group of Adepts aiming to light all four Elemental Lighthouses, led by Felix, stops by at the beginning of their quest, and when they pass through, Echo sees them as Adepts that are just starting out and volunteers to assist them. He is willing to explain how Djinn can enhance an Adept's abilities should Felix decide to have Echo explain, but if Felix repeatedly refuses to take Echo along, Echo will comically protest, promising he will not eat the group's chips or anything along those lines. No matter how staunchly Felix refuses, Echo will make himself Felix's pal in the end.

In the Japanese script Echo, like Flint, speaks in the style of a casual young male. There Echo makes no references to eating chips if refused, merely politely saying he can't allow that and begs Felix to be his friend.

Name Origin
Echo's unleash causes the user to strike twice, so the second one counts as the echo. Its tutorial on the Djinn system also echoes Flint's tutorial from the first game.