I've always maintained that the most remarkable aspect of Konami's Suikoden RPG series is how they approach the enormous number of significant characters of each new entry without diminishing, at least too much, the narrative depth required to establish them all beyond one-note and one-dimensional archetypes; especially when this is already an ubiquitous issue inherent with many JRPGs that seem to introduce characters just to serve as fodder for the player's party. It's fair to say that many RPG player characters (or PCs, to use the vernacular) are often conceived with the emphasis placed on the mechanical (their role in combat, their special abilities, their strengths and weaknesses, etc.) before the narrative; this is why the backstory box on a D&D character sheet is usually the last to be filled in during the creation process, if at all. While not all of Suikoden's cast members are particularly strong characters, most are at least memorable enough to stand out in some way thanks to a handful of personality quirks and the occupation of a distinct role in combat or as a support unit. If you were to run that Plinkett test - the one popularized by RedLetterMedia's amazing Star Wars prequel reviews that tasks the viewer to describe a character without saying what they look like, their profession or their role in the story - many more would pass that rule than fail it. JRPGs, as with any not-wholly-linear video game that gives agency to the player character to pursue the story arcs of characters that interest them via side-quests or optional lore, exhibit a rare opportunity in narrative-based media to bulk up even the most tertiary and narratively unimportant characters in this volitional manner, and the Suikoden franchise is not only no exception to this rule but perhaps exemplifies it more than any other.

That isn't to say the rest of the game isn't remarkable either: the combination of turn-based wargaming, six-person party dungeon crawling and occasional rock-scissors-paper duels that rely on some Secret of Monkey Island-style abductive reasoning based on the opponent's quips are a potent mix, and the games have a lot of distinctive recurring features and systems besides. It all helped distinguish the firs Suikoden from the already highly competitive JRPG market of the PS1 era of the 1995/96, shortly before it exploded even further with Final Fantasy VII in 1997. Compare this with Capcom's entirely competent but generic (at least until #5) Breath of Fire series which, besides for a shapechanging hero, more or less toed the line as far as the standardized Dragon Quest/Final Fantasy mold went (though it is interesting to note that the first two Suikoden games borrowed BoF's isometric viewpoint for its combat).

Crucially for our purposes, though, the Suikoden games are based - if only in spirit - on the 14th century Chinese novel Water Margin (and its slightly less ancient Japanese TV show adaptation): an epic about "nine dozen rebels chosen by destiny" to bring down an oppressive regime. Nine dozen is a lot of characters to have milling around in a JRPG; it's that Game of Thrones "too many people to follow" conundrum multiplied several times over. Yet, even early on and continuing forward, the Suikoden games have found a careful balance between story significant characters with a lot of screen time and a supporting cast of glorified extras that nonetheless offer their own dash of color to the player's growing army. The way Suikoden III specifically handles this dilemma, with its multiple discrete protagonist arcs that each allow for a small group of characters to have their moments and be fleshed out, is perhaps the most intelligent approach to this within the series.

I'm going to go over how Suikoden III in particular organizes its various cast members into tiers of importance while ensuring that even those at the bottom of the totem at least have some significant character building via a few non-crucial lore-gathering features the player is free to exploit or ignore. I should also warn you all that there are a lot of spoilers for Suikoden III here too: while we're talking about a thirteen-year-old game here it might be that you're intending to play the recently released PSN version for the first time, and so this warning is for you.

Protagonists

The game actually has five protagonists, though one is really a bait and switch.

Lady Chris Lightfellow of the Zexen Knights, Hugo of the Karaya Clan and Captain Geddoe of the Harmonian Southern Frontier Defense Force are the three chief main characters and each follows a three-part story arc before their stories merge in the game's fourth chapter.

Chris is the acting head of the Zexen Knights: a cadre of well-armed (and well-armored) warriors that protect the fledgling, vaguely-European state of Zexen from its neighbors the Grasslands, as well as other nearby hostile countries like the affluent Tinto Republic and the theocratic Harmonian Empire (I'd love to talk about Suikoden's geography one day too: the five core games in the series are set on the same planet, showing off various major historical events from different eras and continents). The game also goes into her struggles as the Zexen Knights' apparently sole female member, complicated further by her role as their commander, and also presents a mystery with the disappearance of her father which eventually convinces her to temporarily leave the Zexen Knights to investigate matters within the Grasslands in a not particularly convincing disguise.

Grasslands resident Hugo, meanwhile, is forced into a conflict with Zexens after the villains of the story manipulate the two nations into war. This war claims the life of his friend Lulu early on - the culprit is Chris, driving a wedge between the two eventual allies - and that of his home village in the classic JRPG trope. Though Hugo is young, reckless and hotheaded, he's also the chief's son and thus there are many expectations for him; expectations that don't include flying into Zexen territory on his griffin mount and causing a vengeful fracas. Suikoden III naturally grooms him to be the primary player character for the late-game, but like Final Fantasy XII has enough self-awareness to concede that yet another brash youth with androgynous good looks and surfer hair isn't going to be everyone's ideal choice for a nation-unifying hero and presents two excellent alternatives.

Geddoe would be the second of those alternatives, with Chris being the first. A taciturn mercenary prone to following his gut and apparently blessed with dozens of high-up connections across the world, he and his squad have been employed by Harmonia to protect its southern border where it meets with the Grasslands. As a result, while he's not particularly welcome anywhere in the Grasslands or Zexen, neither is he being chased off with pitchforks and torches. The SFDF to which Geddoe belongs largely recruits mercenaries and soldiers of fortune because they're less likely to draw attention (though I'm sure with Harmonia's penchant for turning newly acquired populaces into "third-class citizens", they're also considered extremely expendable). Geddoe's wisecracking team of hard-drinking and hard-fighting mercenaries - all of which are named after playing cards, though for many these are aliases - seem to be intended for the game's grown-up audience. It's rare that a JRPG acknowledges its older playing base, though it's appreciated whenever they do. Following the FFXII analogy above, Geddoe is more your Basch fon Ronsenburg: stoic, determined, goodhearted yet world-weary and clearly hiding something important from his compatriots.

Thomas actually takes up the hero spot on the game's "tablet of stars": an enigmatic piece of masonry that ascribes each of the 108 stars of destiny from the novel to the game's cast of characters. The Tenkai star is always the protagonist, and while Thomas is scarcely the game's hero he does have his own special optional chapters to follow and a smaller side-story that ties into the core game. Chiefly, the most important aspect of Thomas is that he is the young Master of Budehuc Castle: the game's requisite headquarters for the player's armies. Recruited characters go to the castle to set up businesses, provide services or wait around to be brought along on missions. Budehuc enjoys an oblique status as being neither the property of Zexen or the Grasslands but freely offers sanctuary to citizens from either nation. The meek and polite Thomas tries to improve the crumbling manse's fortunes, and eventually learns to stand up for himself when the Zexens demand that the castle and its Master obey Zexen law and cease any and all new businesses that lack the necessary and restrictive paperwork from the overly bureaucratic merchant nation (who also insist that the castle's Grasslander population must all leave once the war begins). It's an odd but welcome change of pace because every one of the more physically impressive heroes begins at something like level 15-20 with a whole squad of capable default characters to back them up, whereas Thomas and whatever followers he can recruit are closer to level 1. The game uses an algorithm that generates level-appropriate encounters for each of the game's frequently revisited areas, and you'll find that the regular monsters you've been tearing through with Chris's knights and Geddoe's mercs appear as single foe bosses during Thomas's chapters.

The fifth protagonist is the mythical Flame Champion himself: a character who the player names before the game begins. He saved the Grasslands nation from being annexed by the Harmonian Empire fifty years ago, which causes some confusion when there are rumors that he has reappeared to protect the country once again. As a bearer of a True Rune and the immortality such a powerful artifact brings, however, it's entirely possible he's still out there somewhere as youthful as ever. Theoretically. I'll put the rest behind a spoiler block (even though I'm not being particularly sensitive about spoilers elsewhere) because it's a neat narrative twist: The Flame Champion's been dead for years. He still lived in a magically concealed location in order to protect it, but chose to remove it from his person and instead grow old with the love of his life. You eventually meet his widow as the wizened village elder of Chisha, and she helps direct a few of the characters to where the True Fire Rune is kept. The legend of the Flame Champion and his name still resonates with the Grasslanders, and when the new Flame Champion is selected out of Hugo, Chris and Geddoe they invoke the original's name to inspire the Grasslands into action against the invading Harmonians.

Anyway, the point here is that all these characters (with the exception of the enigmatic Flame Champion) are given quite a lot of space to flourish as characters and could each stand alone as the game's hero. Each has a dramatic arc that takes them across the country on their own personal journeys - journeys that occasionally intersect with one another - and they acquire new allies and enemies along the way. Importantly, each of the separate chapters reveals more of who the true enemy is and their intentions, allowing the player to piece together the big picture from all these diverse Rashomon-style perspectives on the same major events shortly before the game inevitably spells it out as it heads towards the denouement. This is comparative to every other Suikoden game which has but a single hero, and they tend to be the silent protagonist type (which is extra weird given that they're invariably the charismatic commander of an entire army) that the other major characters mostly talk around.

Major Characters

I'll be getting less in-depth with this group out of necessity, as I've registered twenty-six characters that I would consider critically important to the narrative, if not necessarily expanded upon with a similar degree of exposure as the player characters. You have the four villains of the game who get their own special post-game chapter to fill in some story gaps; the five other main knights of Zexen (and Chris's squire, Louis); the pompous yet wise Sgt. Joe who acts as Hugo's mentor, Hugo's doomed best friend Lulu, his chieftain mother Lucia (who was first introduced in Suikoden II as a younger woman) and his inexplicably-named griffin mount Fubar; Geddoe's five teammates and their eventual Karayan protégé Aila; and Thomas' stalwart companion and bodyguard Cecile: a twelve-year-old girl in full plate armor who acts as Budehuc's commander of the guards (and, for much of the game, the only guard). There's also the comic relief character Lilly who joins Hugo at one point of his journey, the spoiled daughter of the president of the Tinto Republic and another Suikoden II carry over; Hugo's other mentor Jimba; the leader of the Harmonian forces Sasarai and his spy Nash, who helps Chris as her guide when she decides to go incognito. Finally, there are the game's customary strategists, who present the game's army battles and work on creating ambushes and surprise reinforcements that are as much of a dramatic surprise to the player as they are to the enemy forces.

That's a fair number of characters to get enough time in the limelight that you're able to clearly discern their personalities, motivations and even a dramatic arc or two, but that's the benefit of a video game with a JRPG's runtime: you can fit enough story events in there to fill an entire miniseries and still leave plenty of room for the general gameplay.

We'll take the Zexen Knights as an example. In Chris's first two chapters they're introduced as a group of loose archetypes: Borus is impetuous and quick to anger, Percival is more temperate and laid-back, Roland is an elven archer with a gruff and taciturn demeanor, Leo is the burly heavy who can put away his booze and is often the brunt of jokes and Salome is the intelligent strategist of the group and is savvy enough politically to keep the Knights in good stead with the Zexen's ruling council. As the game continues, however, these characters are established further and given their own little details to flesh them out: Borus is haunted by the bloody ferocity with which he attacked the Karayan village in the game's early chapters; Percival is revealed to have come from humble beginnings as the resident of a farming village, and is both embarrassed by and proud of his origins when he takes Chris to see the village's harvest festival; Roland is shown to be missing his homeland and the company of other elves if you happen to bump into him as a town NPC as another character, and when he joins the base he is reportedly seen talking to the female elf that is part of the game's musical troupe (i.e. the in-game Sound Test mode); Leo is shown to frequently get into drinking and endurance contests with other manly sorts around Budehuc Castle in the late game; and Salome is shown to be working with Geddoe in one of his chapters to prevent Budehuc from being forcibly taken over by his fellow Zexens, ably demonstrating how his moral center extends to ensuring the peace between Zexen and its neighbors even when it means going over the heads of his superiors.

And this is just from a narrative standpoint, as each serves a different role in combat as well: Borus is a front-line fighter who hits hard and quickly while being too tough to hurt in return, though is useless from a magical standpoint; Percival's skills makes him suitable as an excellent dual fighter-mage; Roland is one of the more defensive archers in the game; Leo is slow but very powerful and works well as a tank; and Salome is an able healer and support mage who is able to wear better armor than most mages which does wonders for keeping him alive. The upgrade systems behind Suikoden's character progression is versatile enough that you'd be fine with taking on a team of your favorite characters without getting stymied by difficult boss battles, though some fighters are still inevitably more powerful than others - especially with those that only join the army towards the end of the game.

Minor Characters

I simply designate minor characters as those who are less instrumental to the main plot, but serve to deliver a few lines or add to the number of perspectives discussing the game's events. These characters show up for brief periods of the game and support, advise and assist the more important characters in their endeavors. They include the ragtag group of vendors and staff that help Thomas settle into Budehuc Castle and will appear to lend their two cents whenever a major event concerning the castle occurs. There's the Saint Lua Knights; a trio of children who pretend to be brave warriors and help Hugo when he first arrives in the Zexen capital during his initial story chapter. There's the enigmatic maidens of Alma-Kinan village: a forest village of exclusively-female mystics who are interested in Chris and her potential as a True Rune holder. There are the representatives of the stalwart Duck People, the warlike Lizard People, the other Karayans who support Hugo, a rival team of Geddoe's within the SFDF with which they share an adversarial relationship, a knight from the nearby Camaro Free Knights territory and a barbarian from the Nameless Lands far north who assist Hugo in locating the Flame Champion. A travelling knight from the Maximillan Knights and his squire Rico help Chris when she's travelling without her knights, and there's a small arc involving the proud citizens of the conquered and annexed village of Le Buque and their cavalry that ride giant flying bugs called mantors.

Again, this is an awful lot of characters and in this case they're more the type that come and go with a minimal amount of backstory and development. However, the game distinguishes each of them enough that they feel like real people, albeit real people in a video game about magic runes that also includes bipedal lizards and ducks. You can easily imagine they all have lives going on that the game isn't interested in covering in too much detail to ensure that the story-critical characters are getting the lion's share of the screen time.

With cases like the above and the even less story-critical characters that make up the rest of the one-hundred-and-eight, the player can avail themselves of the castle's detective, who will hunt down facts and details of any character the player wishes for a little bit of extra backstory. They can go visit them in the castle and get their perspective on the conflict and their role in same. Many are joke characters that lend some levity to the game's more dramatic themes of colonialism, war and subjugation, while others serve as a window to the wider world of Suikoden outside of the game's immediate setting. It's often required that the player jump through a few hoops to recruit them in the first place, which also provides a sense of who the characters are. Suikoden encourages experimentation when forming parties, trying out and developing characters through the standard JRPG random encounter-based dungeon-crawling gameplay to see how well they perform in roles of the player's choosing: if they want someone with weak defense but a whole lot of offensive power because they already have a tank character that has a special rune that draws away the attention of enemies, or they have some other equally specific party build in mind, then they can build and test their ideal customized teams via the game's immense selection of characters.

Suikoden's always corralled their vast casts with the greatest of care, introducing characters from earlier games at different points of their lives and playing fast and loose with fan favorites like Viki and Jeane, generating mysteries behind those characters and their bizarre ubiquity in a series that spans hundreds of years. Whereas any other adaptation of Water Margin (which is indeed called Suikoden in Japan) would balk at trying to shoehorn in far too many characters for the sake of fidelity to the source material, Suikoden embraces it and clearly has fun creating a menagerie of dramatic and comedic characters to fill each game's quota. It's why the series remains one of my favorites of the JRPG genre.