Suikoden Mini-Review!
I’m levelling and hoping to recruit the pirates in Suikoden but since I have around half of the 108 stars recruited and it is my second playthrough so I think I have played the game enough to review it.
Story
Suikoden isn’t ground breaking by any means since it uses the “rebel against the evil empire” storyline. There aren’t too many twists or turns in the story but I like that. Current games tend to be too busy trying to trick the gamer than actually telling you what the game is supposed to be about. The main character is a teenager/young man who is the son of a great general and is joining the Empire’s army. He is accompanied by his protectors and the people who have raised him. Their first adventures show how corrupt the Empire has become and then due to some circumstances beyond his control, the young man joins and becomes the leader of the Liberation Army. The story then follows how the character unites the lands against the Empire and liberates the world territory by territory. The dialog is done well enough and you don’t think “why am I doing this again?” too often. There’s a couple of points in the story where you end up doing “fetch quests” which are a little tedious as always. This is not a long story. I beat the game the first time through in under 17 hours. Recruiting all of the characters will take me 20-25 hours I think.
Story: 6.5 out of 10.
Gameplay and Control:
Suikoden is played mostly like any other traditional Japanese RPG. Explore the world in towns, a world map and dungeons with random encounters stopping you every few steps. There are 6 members in your party with two rows of three characters. Each character is given a range on their attack (short, medium, long). Short characters can only attack from the front row and hit enemies in the front row. Medium characters can attack from either row but do not have as powerful an attack from the back row. Long range characters can hit enemies in any row and can attack from the back row. Each character has a weapon that they start with. New weapons are not purchased but are taken to a Blacksmith and sharpened. As the weapons are sharpened they increase in power and when they gain enough power they will be called by a new name. Armor is purchased from shops and equipped. The magic system is done through “runes”. You can find or purchase runes and then have to go to a runemaster in a shop or in your castle to attach runes to a character. Some runes give attack or healing spells to the equipped character while other runes will give abilities to dash in town or caves or increase the chances of critical hits. There are also “Unite” attacks between characters that have connections in the story line that can deal greater damage. My favourite aspect of the battle system is that the experience points gained depend on the difference between your level and the strength of the enemies. So a gamer can’t “power level” without taking an extraordinary amount of time because once you are a level or two to high for the enemies in an area you will only gain 1-10 experience points per battle and you level up every 1,000 points. I do not like being forced to power level. I like advancing the story line. There is also an “Auto” command where the characters will perform normal attacks on the enemies of their choice. This can save time if you are not going to use a Rune or a Unite attack so you don’t have to cycle through the 6 character selecting “attack”.
The 108 Stars of Destiny are scattered throughout the story. Most will join you automatically as you progress through the story and depending on what you are trying to accomplish you are forced to take 2 or 3 characters with you. The remaining slots can be filled by any of the Stars that you have already recruited. Due to the levelling system it is easy to bring a lower levelled character up to the level of your other characters. Some Stars will join you after fetch quests, others will join you if you have reached a certain level while there are a few others where a walkthrough might be needed to recruit.
There are two additional modes in the game. The first is major battles. This is when your whole army will be in a battle with the Imperials. There is a paper/rock/scissors aspect of infantry charge, bow attack and magic attack. There are also special abilities like strategists boosting charge attack and ninjas figuring out what the opponent is going to do next. Each attack is led by a “team” of up to 3 of the Stars. If a Star is killed during a major battle then they are lost for the rest of the game. This leads the gamer to be cautious, especially the ones trying to collect all 108 Stars so they can carry forward the data to gain bonuses and extra characters in Suikoden 2.
The second additional mode is the one on one battle. This usually pits the main character against one of the Empire’s great generals. This is again done through a rock/paper/scissors format with attack, defend and desperate attack options. The enemy will say something before each round to give you a clue on what they can do.
The game is not difficult and as long as weapons are reasonably sharpened and armour is updated regularly the random encounters will keep the characters level high enough to deal with most boss fights. Making money by defeating enemies can be tedious though as sharpening and purchasing armour gets expensive in a hurry.
The controls are solid, as they are for most JRPG’s. Everything is self explanatory and no quick reflexes are needed during the game.
Gameplay/Control: 7 out of 10
Graphics:
This was one of the first RPG’s released on the PSOne and it shows. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Super Nintendo could handle Suikoden’s graphics. The sprites are large on towns etc. but are not especially detailed and none of the characters make too many different animations as the story goes along. The world map, towns and dungeons don’t push the PSOne’s graphics at all and the spell effects are mediocre.
Graphics: 4 out of 10
Sound:
The soundtrack is well done. There is nothing that I would listen too outside of the game but it does it’s job well enough that I don’t play with the mute button on except when I’m gathering money. The score matches the mood of the story whether someone dies or the army is successful. The sound effects are mediocre at best and don’t really add anything to the playing experience.
Sound: 6 out of 10
Miscellaneous:
Having 108 Stars to collect is fun from a “gotta catch em all” perspective. You can replay this game a few times to use different members but this wears thin after a while since most of the time you are forced to take 2 or 3 characters with you for certain sections of the story. There are a couple of mini-games that can let you earn some money a little quicker but they are a little too chance based for me.
Miscellaneous: 5 out of 10
Final score (an average) = 28.5/50 or 5.7/10.
If you want to play a traditional SNES type RPG on a Playstation system and you can find this game for cheap then this game is for you. I did enjoy playing the game but it probably wouldn’t fit on an all time favourites list of mine. If a friend owns this an you don’t have much of a backlog then by all means borrow this game and play it through. I don’t think you will regret the time spent but it isn’t like playing Disgaea or Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne where you look back on the game and think about how you enjoyed playing it.
That was fun! I haven’t actually posted a review before and I’ve always wanted to. Thanks for reading and feedback is appreciated.
