Tornado Lizard enemy line

The Tornado Lizard, Storm Lizard, and Tempest Lizard are enemies that are battled in Golden Sun. These monsters, resembling very large bipedal lizards, are palette swaps of each other that have differing levels of power and defense and are fought in different locations in the games. All three variants are fought individually in scripted encounters, two of those are actual Boss encounters, and one of those bosses is an optional boss that can be fought repeatedly.

Tornado Lizard
A Tornado Lizard is a normal-sized orange level 25 variant with a green underbelly and light blue eyes. In Golden Sun it is battled throughout Suhalla Desert, but not as a random monster. As hinted in cutscenes both in the desert and in the nearby town of Suhalla, the various whirlwinds that pop up to block off vital paths throughout the desert are caused by these monsters. Stepping into a whirlwind will lift you up into the air, and after a moment you will be flown out of the desert and plopped back onto the overworld in front of the entrance to the desert, forcing you to go through the desert all over again. To pass beyond each whirlwind, you have to defeat the monster, and to initiate a battle with a Tornado Lizard, let yourself get caught up in a whirlwind, open your Psynergy menu, and cast the Douse Psynergy. Once defeated, the Tornado Lizard and its accompanying whirlwind will remain gone from that screen of the desert until you exit Suhalla Desert and reenter it, in which case all defeated Tornado Lizards will respawn.

Obviously the Tornado Lizard's stats and ability to act multiple times in a turn, almost like a boss, are adjusted to provide multiple enemies' worth of challenge in a battle. Its rather powerful abilities and the fact it likely can't be defeated in one turn like many random monsters even though you're focusing all four Adepts on it means it can do a rather hefty amount of damage before going down.

A Tornado Lizard's statistics are as follows:

A Tornado Lizard uses these battle commands: This Flame Dragon uses the following battle commands:

Storm Lizard
The Storm Lizard is a huge, light-green level 28 variant with a violet underbelly and violet eyes. In Golden Sun, near the end of Suhalla Desert, you'll find a much larger whirlwind that pursues you until you either get caught up in it like a normal whirlwind or exit the desert (this technically makes this boss fight skippable with fast enough running, but the tornado will remain in its starting location in the desert for if you go back to it, so you can come back for the boss battle later). It operates just like a Tornado Lizard's whirlwind - it will transport you to the beginning of the desert unless you cast Douse while caught up in it, beginning the battle with the boss.

Particularly to a party that has missed a good number of the game's Djinn up to this point (ideally there should be 6 Djinn for each party member at this point), this can be a legitimately difficult boss battle, as the monster is essentially an enhanced Tornado Lizard with several abilities made twice as strong and with a huge amount of HP. The fact its small PP meter allows limited usage of its Psynergy spells hardly detracts from its challenge, because it alternates between its attack and its powerful, multi-target, PP-free monster skill Wing Stroke, and since it acts twice per turn it's entirely possible for it to use Wing Stroke twice per turn. This emphasis on power and repetition makes even a full Summon rushing tactic - where all Adepts use their most powerful summons on the first turn and try to fell the boss afterwards while in a weakened state - very risky and possibly unsuccessful, as the Storm Lizard would very likely down the whole party before it is defeated, at least if each Adept does not have two extra Djinn Set onto them to increase their classes. Helpful measures would include having Mia use Wish Well, getting the Mars Djinni Flash nearby and using it for important group protection (and possibly using Granite for the same purpose), and having Adepts in general use a Set Djinni on one turn and use a 1-Djinni Summon on the next for a more flexible blend of offensive and defense.

The Storm Lizard's statistics are as follows:

The Storm Lizard uses these battle commands:

Tempest Lizard
The Tempest Lizard is a huge, dark-purple level 28 variant with a red underbelly and light green eyes. In Golden Sun in Suhalla Desert, you'll see a large pink whirlwind visible at the right of the second screen, which is near a cave exit. To reach this somewhat hidden portion of the screen, use Reveal to get yourself to where you find the Mars Djinni Flash, enter the nearby cave, and follow it until you get to the pink whirlwind. It operates similar to a Tornado Lizard's whirlwind - unless you cast Douse while you're up in midair, which will initiate a boss battle, you will be transported out of the desert.

However, this boss has several very notable characteristics to it in field terms. If you defeat the boss in the desert, its pink whirlwind disappears - but if you leave the desert and reenter it, the boss and its whirlwind reappears the same way normal Tornado Lizards reappear in the desert, making it the first of two repeatedly fightable boss in the Golden Sun series, the second being the Dim Dragon Plus. What's even more interesting is what happens if you let it carry you off-screen: You are dumped onto the overworld map not around Suhalla, but at the secret dungeon Crossbone Isle, with the Tempest Lizard's tornado nearby at the beach portion. This is the "main" way of accessing Crossbone Isle. Here, you may either enter Crossbone Isle by walking into its center portion and explore, or get caught up in the whirlwind and either use Douse to fight the Tempest Lizard here or ride it back to Suhalla. Like in Suhalla Desert, if you defeat the boss here, its whirlwind disappears from the overworld portion of Crossbone Isle, but immediately respawns upon entering and exiting the nearby Crossbone Isle location, and you can fight it and slay it as many times as you like this way.

Since the repeatedly fightable Tempest Lizard is located so close to the location on Crossbone Isle that causes it to reappear after it is defeated, this makes for a very good way to level-grind for EXP, coins, and Potions. If you have all Djinn and are at a high enough level, it becomes easy to repeatedly slay the monster by having everyone use 4-Djinn summons on the first turn to reduce it to near-zero health, then have Isaac down it with a usage of an offensive Venus Djinni like Flint or Bane, so that you get the enhanced EXP and Coin rewards for your kill. Because of it's under-40 luck stat, it is very possible to inflict venom on it with Bane, making for an extremely quick battle. After slaying it, heal and walk around the overworld until your Djinn have recovered, put as many Djinn On Standby as needed, battle the Tempest Lizard again with your four summons and one Venus Djinni attack, reap your rewards, and repeat. You can be at a very statistically high level with a lot of free Potions to play around with using this method.

As an actual boss monster, since this boss is a slightly enhanced version of the already powerful and durable Storm Lizard, if you battle it as soon as you are able to (and you can battle it even before the Storm Lizard when you first explore Suhalla Desert), you'll likely have a very difficult time. It is the toughest boss monster outside the game's final boss encounters and the optional battle with Deadbeard at the bottom of Crossbone Isle, but pretty much the same strategies and battling conduct used for the Storm Lizard apply here. Since it can be fought anytime, many players wait until after having been powered up by endgame content (getting more Djinn, equipment like Dragon Scales and Gaia Blade from Venus Lighthouse, etc) before coming back to Suhalla Desert for the Tempest Lizard to either fight it or let it take them to Crossbone Isle.

The Tempest Lizard's statistics are as follows:

The Tempest Lizard uses these battle commands:

Story relevance
This line of monsters has a slight bearing on the plot of Golden Sun. As resident monsters in the Suhalla Desert, these whirlwind-making beasts made the desert blustery to begin with, but were formerly not so violent, which made passage through the desert turbulent but doable. They are viewed by the people of the town of Suhalla as the spirits of the desert which have become angered by the colonization of the northern part of Gondowan by the Angaran city of Tolbi. The eruption of Mt. Aleph rains Psynergy Stones down across the world, driving many beasts in general mad and violent, including these monsters, making the desert impassable to normal folk.

Babi, the lord of Tolbi, had previously held the Laliveran girl Sheba captive in his palace, but eventually he orders his soldiers escort her back to her hometown, which requires a trip across the desert. Most of the soldiers escorting Sheba across the desert perish from attacks by ravenous Tornado Lizards cloaked in their powerful whirlwinds, while Sheba herself becomes lost in the desert, but the few soldiers that survive watch as Saturos' group then crosses through the desert, then appear to use water to make the lizards drop their whirlwinds before slaying the beasts. (This would mean that the Mercury Adept Alex uses water-based Psynergy on a Tornado Lizard to make it reveal itself, then Saturos and Menardi slay it with their own powerful abilities.) The surviving soldiers then gather buckets of water from Suhalla and douse it on a Tornado Lizard's whirlwind in an attempt to get back to Sheba, but are no match for the monster's combat abilities, and end up in Suhalla badly wounded and in bed.

Isaac's party, having been in pursuit of Saturos' group for a long time, stop in Suhalla and hear the wounded soldiers' accounts of their experiences in the desert and what might have happened to Sheba in there. That clues them in as to how, when they try to cross the desert and get caught up in a whirlwind, they are to cast the Douse Psynergy to allow themselves to properly battle the monster within. The foursome of Adepts defeat each Lizard they come across, and make it through the desert. They find later that Sheba was captured by Saturos' group in the desert.