Golden Sun holds a place in my heart as the first JRPG I played that had me do more than just click Attack for the majority of turns. A lot of older titles suffered in that regard, but Golden Sun addresses it with regenerating PP and free Djinn actions to encourage you to explore your toolkit. Puzzles were also fantastic.
Skip the DS game though, it's bad.
I don't often preorder, but when I do it's because I know I won't regret my purchase, and I know I want a physical copy to arrive on day 1. Of course I know there's some risk, but if I felt a game really was that risky then I would wait, I just buy the ones I feel are safe bets.
I know what developers and series I like, and if one of my favorite games is getting a sequel I know I'm playing it. Even if the sequel isn't quite as good as the prior game I liked, they're never bad enough for me to not want to play them at all.
I suppose it helps that my tastes lie far enough outside the kinds of mainstream AAA games that are prone to totally botched launches that I've never been truly burned.