Unleash
- When used in battle, Djinn are also described as being "unleashed." This article, however, is only about weapon unleashes.
- For a sortable list of unleashes and their effects, see Unleash/List of Unleashes.
In the Golden Sun series, whenever a character is issued the standard "Attack" command, they may instead carry out a specialized Unleash effect specific to their currently equipped weapon. This is reported in the battle prompt as "[Character]'s [weapon] lets out a howl! [Unleash name]!"
In Golden Sun and Golden Sun: The Lost Age, most equipment Artifacts feature a single Unleash, exclusive to themselves, whereas none of the common and generic weapons bought at vendors feature any Unleashes whatsoever. In Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, on the other hand, every weapon in the game now has anywhere between one and four available Unleashes, which the game randomly chooses between whenever the character Unleashes with it, and these Unleashes have to be unlocked one-by-one on a given weapon by landing attacks with it (or other weapons of the same class that are at least about as strong) to generate "mastery" for it.
At least in the GBA series, Unleashes are functionally separate from critical hits with normal attacks, but one passing mention of both systems as one encompassing concept occurs in-universe in the first game. After Isaac, Garet, and Ivan's innate Psynergy protects them from a transformation curse in the Kolima region without them willing it, they speculate on whether this subconsciously accessed Psynergy within themselves is also the reason they land critical hits in battle "when they need it." Garet portrays it as a power that they should try learning to control on their journey.
In Golden Sun and The Lost Age
Despite the mechanical differences between the GBA duology and Dark Dawn pertaining to the availability of an Unleash on a weapon, Unleashes always carry out as attacks similar to Ragnarok and Odyssey. Unlike "spell"-like Psynergy that deals flat damage values, these are physical attacks that take the character's Attack rating and the target's Defense rating into account. This is typically modified by the addition of flat damage, then aligned to one of the four Elements (so that the damage also takes into account the character's Power value in that element and the target's corresponding Resistance). A fair fraction of Unleashes also carry a chance to apply a secondary effect, in most cases reduced in likelihood by the target's Luck; these effects include applying a status condition or a debuff such as a temporary Attack, Defense, or Agility reduction, replenishing the user's own HP or PP, or even applying a separate multiplier to the resulting damage.
When an Unleash is "procced", an exclusive attack animation or battle effect sequence takes place instead of the Adept's usual routine of lunging forward to swing their weapon. In the cases of the few Unleashes that may randomly apply an extra multiplier, the animation is adjusted to reflect that. For example, the signature Unleash of the endgame-tier weapon Tisiphone Edge, Vengeance, always depicts a horned female humanoid shooting a series of seven arrows through the target's position; normally, all but two miss, but if the damage happens to be doubled, five arrows will hit instead, and if the damage is tripled, all seven arrows will strike the target.
Regardless of the game, the base likelihood that a weapon will Unleash is a specific percentage assigned to the weapon itself; in the GBA duology, this is almost always a 35% base proc chance (with a select few having a 40% chance instead). This activation rate can be increased by equipping special equipment described in Dark Dawn as "Increases Criticals" (though this is erroneously localized in the GBA games as "Increases Evade"). Equipping an item like Hyper Boots, which adds 12% Unleash Rate, increases what would be a 35% activation rate to 47%, and wearing a similar item in every slot can stack up these bonuses and result in an Unleash activation rate that is very close to guaranteed.
In Golden Sun: Dark Dawn
In Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, all weapons, including common weapons bought at vendors and weapons that might have Use effects (but excluding Rusty weapons), now have at least one Unleash to speak of. In many cases, these are "generic" Unleashes distributed among large numbers of the available weapons and do not align damage with an element, such as "Critical Strike" (a non-elemental x1.5 damage multiplier) appearing on weapons ranging from Wooden Stick to Thanatos Mace. Incidentally, the GBA series' occasional "critical hits" that occur separately from Unleashes, where the camera zooms into the Adept making their jump-attack to deal 25% increase damage, are removed from the game, with the revised Unleash system taking its place in premise (and enemies can no longer critically hit the party with normal attacks).
Unleashes without their own elemental alignments will inherit an alignment if featured on a weapon that automatically aligns its basic attacks with an element, like the Fire Brand striking for Mars damage both with its normal attacks and when it happens to Unleash the normally non-elemental "Fearless Attack" for x1.7 damage and a chance to lower the target's HP to 1.
Weapons in Dark Dawn are now capable of unleashing one out of anywhere between one and four Unleashes listed in their "personal Unleash lists"; many of these Unleashes are distributed among more than one weapon, and this can include Unleashes formerly considered "signatures" of earlier weapons appearing as "lesser Unleashes" on later weapons. For example, the late-game-tier Fire Brand's "Purgatory" also appears as one of the "lesser" Unleash outcomes of the "ultimate weapon," the Sol Blade. Generally, weapons found earlier in the game have fewer total possible Unleashes, and the strongest weapons often have a total number of four – but this is not always the case.
Many of the new Unleashes distributed among weapons feature multipliers in the range of x1.5, x1.7, and so on, in stark contrast to Unleashes returning from the GBA games, which add flat damage values (like the Giant Axe's "Meltdown" adding 47 flat damage). Because enemies and bosses across the board feature significantly higher Defense values in Dark Dawn than in the GBA games, the flat-damage Unleashes often hit for more resulting damage than these multipliers. The player would have to go out of their way to increase their Attack statistics as high as possible to make Unleashes using less impressive multipliers at least as strong as the ones that add flat damage.
Another function new to Unleashes in Dark Dawn is that some of them now hit adjacent targets as well, with enemies next to the selected target taking 80% of the attack's overall "force". Some of these new Unleashes are now these sorts of "physical area attacks", but some of the returning Unleashes from the GBA series have retroactively been made into area attacks as well. A particularly spectacular example of this is the "Rising Dragon" Unleash of the Masamune, which now hits up to three targets; whenever its chance to potentially double its own damage kicks in, the Masamune can potentially blow away an entire group of enemies in one move. A couple late-game Bows even feature an Unleash called "Star Dust", with an area spread of up to five targets total.
A consequence of this system, where virtually every weapon contains multiple Unleashes to choose from, is that weapons are now vastly more randomized in their performance whenever you happen to Unleash with them. Many weapons' most desirable Unleashes lie at the end of their Unleash lists, and equipping Unleash-boosting gear like Mythril Clothes only increases the probability of initiating the Unleash-choosing process to start with; the relative probabilities of each Unleash in the list will remain unchanged. In the example of the Masamune above, the Masamune may instead deal "Double Attack" or "Combat Dance" for more straightforward x1.6 and x1.5 damage multipliers, making the best case scenario of Rising Dragon hitting for double damage significantly rarer.
Mastery system
- For a full list of every mastery point "milestone" on all weapons in Dark Dawn, see Unleash/Mastery Requirements (Dark Dawn).
When a weapon's list of possible Unleashes is brought up in the item menu, which Unleashes are currently unlocked on that Adept corresponds to how much "mastery" is currently filling up a "Weapon Skill" gauge listed above them. Mastery in a given weapon is generated every time the Adept lands a physical hit with it, with bonus mastery separately awarded for proccing an Unleash with that weapon and felling at least one foe with the attack.
While the weapon has any amount of mastery in its Weapon Skill gauge, the first Unleash in the list will be unlocked (which is indicated by it having a green background). The gauge is divided into four "quarters" by markers; when the accumulated mastery has surpassed the "25% mark", the second Unleash in the list (if any) is unlocked, and the 50% and 75% marks represent when the third and fourth Unleashes in the list (if they exist) are unlocked. When the Weapon Skill bar is fully filled up, the Adept will enjoy a slight Attack increase while equipped with that weapon, and the last Unleash in the list will also have a slightly higher probability to be randomly chosen than each of the preceding Unleashes.
Behind the scenes, a given Adept has a mostly hidden "total mastery value" for each class of weapon they can equip, one that is shared between all weapons in the class for that Adept. If an Adept fills up a weapon's Weapon Skill bar to its maximum (where their mastery total will be capped and unable to increase further even if that Adept continues to attack with that weapon), potentially several of the weapons "higher up on the ladder" will have their Weapon Skill bars partially filled out as well in exact accordance with the total mastery value, and any and all weapons "lower on the ladder" will unavoidably be fully mastered even if the Adept never attacked with those.
The above mechanics are given shape by each weapon's Weapon Skill bar representing what can be called a "mastery range" for the weapon class' total mastery value to work its way through, with separately defined minimum and maximum benchmarks. For a specific example, the Broad Sword's mastery range technically extends from 90 to 170 points. If Matthew lands a hit with the Broad Sword while his total mastery value for Long Sword-class weapons is between 0 and 89, he will generate much more mastery than normal, and will only start generating normal amounts of mastery (with accompanying bonuses for Unleashes and kills) while his total mastery value is between 90 and 169. If his mastery gain would bring him past the 170 cap, it will instead stop at 170, and it will not be capable of progressing beyond that until Matthew equips another Long Sword-class weapon that has yet to reach the end of its own Weapon Skill bar.
Meanwhile, the next Long Sword-class item on the ladder, the Storm Brand, has a mastery range of 136 to 240. If Matthew's total Long Sword mastery is at 170 because he had reached that cap for the Broad Sword, he will already have accumulated 35 mastery points in the Storm Brand, which is enough to put that over its 25% mark and unlock its second "Hurricane" unleash for immediate use. If Matthew never equipped the Broad Sword and has very low total Long Sword mastery, he will have to battle with the Storm Brand longer before it reaches its minimum benchmark of 136 and unlocks its first "Critical Strike" Unleash.
On the other hand, Matthew's progression from 90 to 136 total Long Sword mastery will play out much faster using the Storm Brand instead of a Broad Sword because that stretch of values falls within the Storm Brand's "catch-up range", whereas it is enclosed within the Broad Sword's "current range", where mastery gains are lower. By the time Matthew will have started filling in the Weapon Skill bar for the Storm Brand, he will already be over halfway through the mastery range (and thus the Weapon Skill bar) for the Broad Sword. Incidentally, the Long Sword-class weapon with the highest mastery range is the Darksword (477 – 765), which is slightly higher than the Sol Blade (454 – 730); if either Matthew or Tyrell fully masters the Darksword, he will have fully mastered every other Long Sword-class weapon in the game, and will have done so quicker than accumulating mastery on them in order.
