Haze

Haze (ハイド Hide) is a Jupiter Djinni found in Golden Sun: The Lost Age and Golden Sun: Dark Dawn.

Haze is the fifth Jupiter Djinni in Golden Sun: The Lost Age. The separate Djinn list viewable with the Select button from the status screen lists Haze 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, Haze is the twelfth Jupiter Djinni in the GBA series, rather than the fifth.

Haze is the fourteenth Jupiter Djinni in Dark Dawn.

Basic description
When Set, Haze increases base HP by 10, base Defense by 2, base Agility by 3, and base Luck by 2.

When Haze is unleashed in battle, the selected ally receives an effect that lasts throughout the turn: all actions any enemy can take through this turn will not do anything to the targeted ally, whether the enemy targets the ally specifically or encompasses the ally in an area-of-effect, and whether it is a normal attack, Psynergy, or Monster Skill. This effect has the "strikes first" property, meaning it will be the first performed action in a given turn regardless of the agility rating of the user and any other combatant in battle.

In The Lost Age, Haze's unleash animation visually resembles user summoning the purple image of a Jupiter Djinni above the target, and the Djinni immediately turns white and fades out from the bottom up, while several four-sided sparkles rotate around the target's body. These sparkles are purple in the first instant but quickly take on a mixture of red and green colors. Once the ally is affected by the buff, the ally's battle sprite takes on the form of a white outline of the sprite's animated shape, with everything inside the outline visible, and remains this way until the turn's end. In Dark Dawn, the user summons the 3D model of Haze above the user itself, and Haze takes a moment to float around and fade out while essentially the same four-sided sparkle effect takes place around the target's body, just larger and rotating a little slower. Once the ally is affected by the buff, the ally's battle model this time turns transparent and a deep dark blue, while the weapon the ally is holding, though transparent in the same way, retains its colors and details. In both cases, the game reports that the ally "vanishes into thin air!"

Locations
Golden Sun: The Lost Age: Haze is located in Apojii Islands, in the right area that is the edge of Gaia Falls. To get to its position at a ledge hanging over the literal end of the world, you need to have acquired the Sand Psynergy earned at Gaia Rock. Then in the town area, walk right along the beach until you get to a series of rocks, and cast Sand to bypass the rocks. Cross over in to the next screen upon the shallow water, go down, and perform what might appear to be suicide - jumping down over the waterfall and off the edge of the world. You land on a small ledge directly below you, thankfully. Go upward into a small cave area, and cast Whirlwind on the third of four bushes; the entrance revealed directly leads you to the Djinni for you to collect. Go back to the cave area, and go out of the southeast exit and cast the Lash Psynergy on the coiled rope to let yourself back onto land.

Golden Sun: Dark Dawn: Haze is one of the five Jupiter Djinn that Sveta carries along with her, along with Fleet, Breeze, Bolt, and Waft. When she joins the party temporarily in Teppe Ruins in the middle of the game, these five Djinn can similarly be arranged and made use of by the party. Even if these Djinn are arranged among other Adepts by the time she leaves, though, these five Djinn will disappear, while the other Djinn that may have been assigned to Sveta will return to the other Adepts. Later in the game, during the long cutscenes that take place in early Belinsk Ruins, Sveta permanently joins your party again, and this time Haze and the other four Djinn are obtained and made usable for the rest of the game. Incidentally, the official game ordering of the Djinn assumes that these five Djinn are found in Belinsk Ruins, rather than earlier in Teppe Ruins, which is why the Jupiter Djinn that are found between Teppe Ruins and Belinsk Ruins - Sirocco, Wisp, and Puff - are ordered before Sveta's own five Jupiter Djinn.

Analysis
Haze is typically thought of as a Flash / Chasm that applies to a single ally rather than a whole turn, and while that may be a valid viewpoint when considering everything in practical terms, technically Haze does a lot more for the single ally than that. Flash and Chasm are Djinn that are famous for quickly setting up an extremely powerful defensive effect that lowers all damage the party takes from enemy attacks down to practically nothing. Haze is similar to these Djinn in that it sets up a super-protective effect and does so with increased priority, but only targeting one ally. It is quite trivial on its own that Haze prevents all damage the target takes rather than 90 damage.

However, Haze prevents the targeted party member from literally anything an enemy can do, including side effects such as statistical debuffs and status conditions. Unlike Djinn that lower the damage the party takes, Haze makes an ally immune even to enemy summons and monster skills like Djinn Storm. Nonetheless, Djinn like Flash and Chasm are still far better to use because, in affecting the whole party, you can more or less guarantee the shielding won't go to waste. Haze is intended to fulfill the concept of allowing a particular ally that must survive a particular turn to be able to do so with certainty.

Ability analysis
Golden Sun: The Lost Age: The Mercury Djinni Shade is given to you much earlier in the game, and while it isn't as powerful as Flash (which won't be acquired until much later in the game when Isaac's party joins), even its effect of lowering all damage your party takes by 60% gives Shade a lot more opportunities to be useful than Haze. While Haze would be the only other damage-lowering effect the party has before the reunion, Haze generally isn't used due to how it is limited by being single-target. Haze is basically obsoleted for certain once Flash arrives along with the rest of Isaac's party, though its protection against the Djinn Storm monster skill may give it some odd value against the final boss and the superboss Dullahan.

Golden Sun: Dark Dawn: Haze basically has the same problems in this game as the last, which are exacerbated for several reasons. While Haze happens to be given to you for free, being one of the Djinn that Sveta brings with her when she joins in Belinsk Ruins, the Venus Djinni Chasm can be found in the same dungeon pretty quickly. The decreased threat level of the game's enemies and bosses undermine the usefulness of all defensive effects in general that the party has access to, even the aforementioned protective Djinn, so Haze basically becomes a novelty. At any rate, if Haze is going to be used, it should be traded from Sveta onto Karis or some other non-attacking Adept because Sveta is oriented toward dealing physical attacks.

Name Origin
Haze is traditionally an atmospheric phenomenon where dust, smoke and other dry particles obscure the clarity of the sky.