Attack (command)

To Attack is a basic, yet extremely practical, in-game command of party members in battle during Golden Sun games. Put very simply, it's when a selected party member physically attacks a target on the opponent's side, and damages the target's HP meter based on how the party member's Attack rating compares against the target's Defense rating.

Obviously this is a ubiquitous staple and convention of almost every fantasy Role-Playing game ever made. In the Golden Sun games, however, the Attack command has a particularly unique significance in the overall scheme of battling methodology, compared to other RPGs' battle systems. A large percentage of the game's equippable weapons (the primary pieces of equipment that increase Attack Rating) have what are called Unleash effects, which are bolstered attack-based magic effects that have a chance to automatically commence in place of a normal attack whenever the equipped Adept uses the Attack Command. Unleashes almost always takes the equipped Adept's attack rating and damage the target with an effect that is a dramatic enhancement of what would otherwise have been a banal physical attack. Because of the nature of Unleash effects hidden within each weapon, this makes physical attacks often the most powerful method of dealing sharp amounts of damage to individual targets on the battlefield; to compare, Psynergy spells and Djinn effects are a variety of effects that do less powerful elemental damage to multiple opponents at a time or to provide support to your own party, and Summon sequences are colossal maneuvers that do heavy elemental damage to all opponents at once but leave the summoning Adept weaker as a result.

Critical
A Critical is a completely random event during battle. The player will strike a foe and do damage slightly more than they normally would. This is not to be confused with an Unleash, which can only be used with an Artifact. Conversely, Artifacts are capable of both Criticals and Unleashes.