I'm not sure what other people's appeal to the Golden Sun series is, other than a nostalgic throw-back to elder era jRPGs. For me and a lot of fans however, its that they are the spiritual successors to the Shining franchise. Which themselves were insanely generic and had a tendency to be boring. But if you were captured by their magic, for some reason those issues didn't become a problem. That was me. I can fully admit their faults. And I don't blame anyone for not getting attached. You're really not missing much. They're not epic. We just consider them fun and nostalgic

I can't really help otherwise as I haven't played any of the other games on the list. So I'm just letting you know its probably okay that you don't like the game. I think most people prefer the second one anyway. And it doesn't sound like your interest will be piqued enough to play through both lol