Suikoden IV

Suikoden IV seemed like a return to form in a sense. There was alot of throwbacks to the first two Suikodens from the battle system to the Unite attacks, to the world map, and loads of other things. This is definitely a different beast compared to Suikoden III. The storyline is ALOT weaker, with more forgettable characters, but the battle system is a little simpler and fun. I love the non-linear-ness of the game, I wasted a good 15 hours just leveling up and looking for things. I had a few moments where I got stuck and couldn't find the indivisible trigger, but it was no where near as frustrating as Suikoden III could be. Otherwise this was a fairly easy game. Even when you do die, it takes you back to the battle that you died in, which is a HUGE improvement over the first three games. The sailing was frustrating and slow but it was satisfying finding an island no marked on your map.

Overall, the game felt short, and the story was weak. I guess this was seemed like a step forward with a big step back.

----------Battle System----------
Suikoden IV is a turn-based RPG. Each turn is presented in rounds, so you must set all of your characters moves, then watch the battle unfold. There's only four playable characters in a team this time around, which is different from the previous three Suikodens which had 6. The system plays out closer to the first two Suikoden games rather than the third one. So there's a straight line of four characters, and a line of enemies facing each other. When you submit your moves, they attack each over and then run back into place. It's kinda generic but it's less confusing than the Suikoden III or Grandia battle field.

You gain experience, money and items after you win a battle. Like the previous games you gain levels after each 1000 experience. The higher your level the harder it is to gain experience. One of the big differences in the game is you can hold up to 99 items per item. So you're never restrained by how many items you're holding. They also included loot in this game, so now you can gather tradeable items, and then trade them to tailors or blacksmiths to create accessories or armor.

The biggest thing brought back from the early two Suikodens missing from III are unite attacks. Unite attacks are special attacks only certain characters can pull off. These characters must have special bonds, and the more these two characters fight in battle, the better than Unite attack gets.

Once again, your characters only have 1 weapon in the game, but they can gradually upgrade them for a fee, up to 15 levels. Another thing brought back from the first two Suikoden games is adding elementals to your weapons. Each character can equip up to 3 Runes, like the previous two Suikodens. Some Runes will grant you magical attacks, some Runes will grant you battle assistance for example higher counter rate. Eventually if you get two characters with different Runes up to level 4, you can then combine their level 4 magics for a massive attack.

The 108 Stars of Destiny is basically the same as it ever was. The goal of the 108 Stars is to gather 108 recruits to join your army, the more you get the better off you are in the game. Most of the 108 are fighters, but alot of them work for you on your ship, for example the Lotto guy Bang can't fight, but you can visit him anytime to play the lotto. Gathering the 108 Stars is rather easy, not quite as easy as III, but it's still no where near as difficult as Radiata Stories. Some recruits just require you to initiate a chat with them, while some blatant just ask for an easy to find item, while others just mention the name of a person so you obviously have to bring that bring that person to him.

One-on-One Duels and Turn-Based Strategy battles are back and so far Suikoden IV has improved on them. I've reviewed all four Suikodens up to this point and I must say that these One-on-One Duels are actually fun. It's basically the same as the first three games. It's basically a battle of rock-paper-scissors. The character you are dueling will spout a line, and its your job to guess what that line means. If he says "I'm going all out!!", then he's going to use his special move (scissors), so you must attack (rock) to counter. You fight until someone loses. While it's basically the same as the others, the hints are easier to figure out and the health bar of each character is longer, so the battles mean a little more this time.

The Turn-Based Strategy battles are the best yet because when they set a goal, like "Kill all enemies", they MEAN it this time. The last few Suikoden games all had predetermined battles, so no matter what you did, it probably wouldn't matter much. This is like a real turn-based strategy game like Fire Emblem and nearly as fun. The battles can be extremely short and easy though. Basically this time around you are fighting with ships. You must assign each ship with a captain, the captain gives you movement bonus'. After that you can assign up to 4 Rune Cannon shooters, this allows you to shoot down the opposing enemies ship. Then you can assign up to 4 fighters. This allows you to guard or attack an enemy with people by boarding their ship and instantly killing them if you wipe out their guard. It's pretty fun but can get way to easy because if you over power your guard characters, then you can wipe out the entire map in a couple turns.

There was only to real dungeons in the entire game. This is a HUGE flaw. Suikoden games aren't known for good dungeons, but holy crap. Even these two dungeons don't require any thought or anything. You'll find a couple treasures and a few split paths, but nothing a novice couldn't figure out in mere minutes. They fix this by adding random encounters in TOWNS. Some are small, like bees near an Inn or something like that, but some have soldiers by the beach and other random stuff.

----------Characters / Story----------
You play as "Hero", a nameable silent protagonist void of any personality. You and your friends are new recruits in the army. During a routine mission fighting pirates, you get attacked by a man holding the True Rune of Punishment. The wielder of the True Rune of Punishment slowly dies, and it's then past on to the closest host. The True Rune is eventually graphed to the Heros arm and he must go on a journey to free himself from his eventual fate while fighting the evil forces of the Cray Trading Company army.

The story was probably my biggest disappointment with this game, especially just coming off of the excellent Suikoden III. The characters in this game are not nearly as developed as the previous game. The story felt short and rushed along. I also can't forgive another silent protagonist. There's been very few good ones and the hero in this game is probably the worst of the worst. You'll get a few pieces of dialog text to choose from, but this is no Knights of the Old Republic, whatever dialog you pick really doesn't matter. If you DO pick the bad you, they'll just re-ask you until you pick the right one.

----------Graphics----------
The graphics aren't great by any means. Ok they're not really good either. The character models are much different compared to Suikoden III, but I imagine if the developers made Suikoden II into 3D the characters would look closer to the Suikoden IV models. Compared to Suikoden III, which had a nice anime look to it, the models in IV look alot more proportional to their characters. The characters eyes are small and legs are long, they look more human, like in Final Fantasy X but less detailed.

The water effects look like crap in this game. There's some really bad distance effects during cutscenes that look down right awful on an HD TV. The game was overall tiny with only a few islands to visit, and maybe 2 real dungeons in the entire game.


----------Sound----------
The music is ok, the opening theme has a nice island flavor to it but the rest is standard stuff but kinda forgettable at the end of it all. This is the first Suikoden game with voice overs, it only took them four games to do it but I'm glad they did. It's a shame the main character is a mute though. Either way, the voices are pretty good. The dialog is only voiced out during major parts of the story but it's enough to grasp.


----------World Map----------
The entire world map of Suikoden IV is covered in water. The game centers around the island nations, so you need a boat to travel to each island. Traveling can be extremely slow in this game, plus there's a high random encounter rate, so it can be annoying. Navigating your boat is fairly easy, when you NEED to go to an island, it will be marked on your map and all you have to do is point it in that direction and hold down the R button for speed. The hard part is navigating your boat into a harbor or shore line because if you get anywhere near an island or anything that can't be landed on, then you're boat will start turning around on it's own with no manual controls for a little while. It can be frustrating.

Fairly early in the game you'll find the classic character Viki, who teleports your characters to previously visited towns. She will be the most useful character in the game.


----------Time to Complete Game----------
35:57:06


I got to the final save point at 34:57 hour mark. That additional hour is spread between the final boss, the final cutscenes and the longest credits I've ever sat through in my entire life. The final boss MIGHT of been 20+ minutes, the final cutscenes were about 5-10+ minutes, but credits must of been the rest. After you beat the game you can save your cleared data and you can restart the game.