Once you get past the first dungeon in The Lost Age, it gets much better. It has a different feel than the first game though, if you ask me. It's still great, though.
I'm pretty indifferent about the Golden Sun series. I will admit that I haven't played the original GS in like forever, and I'm kind of OCD about completing the first part of a game before I move on to the second(which is why I haven't bought the DS version of Golden Sun yet). But meh. I've gotten much more focused on Black 2 ever since I've gotten it, so lack of time and interest pretty much prevents me from finishing it.
I honestly don't find GS2 all that different... and failed to finish that one. GS on the DS was just pure bad and plain ugh... such a royal drag. As for Pokemon BW, BW1 felt that way too and I didn't finish it (went up to 7th gym.) I don't know why but BW2 was significantly better for me and I was much more motivated to finish it and got to the post-game as well. I really don't know. It's Pokemon so not like plot is much better or anything, but the pacing seems to have improved and I can't point out how did they manage that.
BW2 was paced better, had better Pokemon variety, a better difficulty curve, and just overall more to do. BW were just kind of drab and underwhelming.
Ya I was pretty 'motivated' to keep going in BW2 but I can couldn't get myself to finish BW1 after the 7th badge... I honestly don't know what set them different though except maybe the nostalgic factor? It's certainly nice to see older generation Pokemon in the wild before the elite 4 by far >_>;
I think I'm probably going to be pretty disappointed when I finally play BW2. I'm kind of bored of previous gen Pokemon. With the obvious exception of Cherrim, my whole team in BW2 is going to be Gen 5. There are still so many Pokemon in that gen I want to try out whereas I always ended up with the same teams over and over in previous gens because there just weren't enough Pokemon to go around that I really wanted to put on my team.
I just want to see the old Pokemon. Not necessarily use them. I'm going to try and use the new ones so that I can recognize them. Because... I don't know what happened with Black and White when I played that. I was asleep or something. I don't remember a thing. Not one Pokemon XD How they look (except for the box art pair) or their names. I really remember about the game is bridges lol So, this will be a new experience for me - but I'll have some old Pokemon present for comfort