Crystal


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

Crystal (ママン Maman) is a Venus Djinni found in Golden Sun: The Lost Age.

Crystal is the eleventh and last Venus Djinni in Golden Sun: The Lost Age. The separate Djinn list viewable with the Select button from the status screen lists Crystal 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, Crystal is the eighteenth and final Venus Djinni in the GBA series, rather than the eleventh.

Basic description

 * "Restore HP to all allies."

When Set, Crystal increases its Adept's base HP by 10, base Psynergy Points by 5, and base Defense by 2.

When Crystal is unleashed in battle, all non-downed Adepts in the current battling party are cured by 50% of their maximum HP meters.

In The Lost Age, Crystal's unleash animation visually resembles an orange image of a Venus Djinni entering the ground underneath the center of the party and making a visually-elaborate orange circle spread out across under the whole party's feet. When the rotating circle is fully formed, it projects a collection of vaguely defined orange energy collections that float upward through the party.

Location
Golden Sun: The Lost Age: Crystal is findable in the optional dungeon Yampi Desert Cave, an optional endgame dungeon accessible only with the Teleport Psynergy. When you eventually get to its area, you will find a group of sand on the ground where something under the sand appears in four designated spots in a predetermined pattern and at a moderately fast rate. Find a place where it appears, and at the moment the moving sand appears in front of you, cast Scoop - you can use the Select button to open the Psynergy menu and take your time casting Scoop while the sand pile is frozen in place by the fact that your game's Psynergy menu is open. Crystal is automatically battled once it is unearthed. See here for enemy statistics.

Analysis
General: There are very few healing effects in any of the games that restore HP based on a percentage, and such effects that heal the whole group are rarer. Crystal is a directly superior version of the Djinn that restore HP by 30%, but it still receives strong competition from the presence of group healing Psynergies, the Wish Psynergy series being the foremost example. Not only are the Psynergies easier to perform, reliably strong, and oftentimes distributed on multiple Adepts because of how many classes they are on, they do not put a Djinni on standby and potentially lower the user's class. This generally means that Crystal distinguishes itself from other group healing effects by being a particularly strong group heal that also partially sets up for a Venus summon, so this is probably the best use of the Djinni in battle. In Dark Dawn, the Mercury Djinni Coral is this Djinni's identical equivalent.

By game
Golden Sun: The Lost Age: Crystal is an upgrade over the Venus Djinni Flower and the Mercury Djinni Spritz. If the endgame party's levels happen to be very high and have very high HP ratings, Crystal will heal roughly as much as Pure Wish, or even more in specific situations. This can allow a warrior Adept without the Wish series to perform a rough equivalent to it once, should the player deem that necessary in a late-game boss battle. This scenario is uncommon because a party that is developed enough to have Adepts with the Pure Wish Psynergy will be thoroughly well-healed for the most part anyway.

Name Origin
Crystal is a solid material, whose constituent atoms, molecules, or ions are arranged in an orderly repeating pattern extending in all three spatial dimensions. Crystals have been used in traditional medicine for a long time by Native Americans and the Chinese among others, which explains the healing effect of this Djinni.

Maman, on the other hand, is French for mother; it may refer to the concept of Mother Earth, a common mythological concept. Earth-Mother Goddesses are often healing and protective deities as well, giving their life and energy to protect their children – the living things of this world. This fits in neatly with the healing nature of this Djinni.