Suikoden

I have some mixed feelings about Suikoden, I liked the battle system, it reminded me of Breath of Fire a little bit. I liked the "Unite" attacks too, but they seemed underutilized in this game, not quite the power that Chrono Trigger had or anything. You could only use the Unite attacks with relating characters, say for example the two fishing brothers, if you have them on your party then they can both use a special attack unqiue to them. Otherwise, the battle system is very basic and very easy too. The dungeons were complete disappointments, there just wasn't that many of them and the ones you finally got to where short and easy.

I hated the whole battle field segments, as they did nothing but add more to the storyline. I liked the story for the most part but I also have big mixed feelings with that aswell since alot of whats going on has no logic at all.

Suikoden was a good game, but I hope the series gets better as I play along.

----------Battle System----------
Suikoden is a turn-based RPG, each turn is round based, so for example, you set up all of your attacks, then watch round take place. The player or enemy with the best speed will attack first and the worst will go last. You can choose up to 6 people within your party. You can recruit up to 108 characters, so you have alot of characters to choose from overall.

You don't equip new weapons for your characters, but rather they keep one single weapon through out the entire game, but you can level up that weapon through blacksmith shops, and attach special crystals to the weapon to give them new powers. There is a huge amount of armor you can buy for your characters, a helmet, armor piece and 2 accessories. This is alot considering how little money monsters give you, how pricey armor is and how many characters you can get into your party.

Each character can attach Runes to themselves as well. These Runes will give them magic abilities, or special non-magic based abilities, like Double experience or higher Counter chance. Magic is a little different than usual in Suikoden. You have four magic slots, level 1-4 magics. Say your character is at level 20 and he has learned 2 magics, then he'll have 5 level-1 spells, and 3 level-2 spells. You can use these spells only in battle, so for example your character can only use 5 level-1 spells. If he runs out of level-1 spells, then that's it until he finds an Inn and recharges his magic, there's no items to revive your magic.

You gain levels and experience after each battle like most RPGs, but it's a little more similar to Strategy RPGs. At each 1,000 experience points your character will gain a level, once you go over 1,000 the experience ticker will go back to zero. This is similar to Final Fantasy Tactics or any of those, except they only have 100 experience points per-level. The higher the level of your character the harder to gain experience though.

Dungeons are the weakest point in Suikoden, they're often very short, linear and easy. I only encounter maybe 2 or 3 puzzles in the entire game through dungeons, otherwise most dungeons just require you to go from point a to point b, while fighting a million random encounters and picking up treasure chests until you fight the boss. Boss fights rarely take strategy, but they are TOUGH. The hardest thing about the game is the boss fights because about half of the time the game doesn't give you a warning of a boss fight like a save point. If you die during a boss fight, then they give you the option to "Give Up" or "Try Again", to bad the option of Try Again is useless because all it does is send you back to your last save. It would be quicker to hit the reset button.

Suikoden has two features that separate itself from most RPGs, the first is the 108 Stars. This feature is the ability to recruit a TON of characters in the game. While you don't really need this many, each character adds more to the story and adds to your army (see below). This is really the only sidequest in the game too, but its a lengthy one at that. You can't just walk up to a character and buy their services like say Paladins Quest for the SNES. You have to persuade them fetch missions or having the right person in your team or being at a certain level. Most goals are easy to recruit a person though. I didn't attempt to get every one and still got a ton of characters. The more people you gather the bigger your headquarters will get too.

The other big thing about this game is the battle field battles. These battles remind me a little of Dragon Force in looks. You have an army at one side of the field, while your enemy is at the other. You get to pick a choose of 3 attacks and 1 special move. The strategy is completely random until you get a few good members in your team to help with the special options, for example you can spy on your enemies next move to get an advantage. After you pick your move of either Charge, Bow or Magic, then both army will go at it. The strategy is total Rock Paper Scissors, if you choose Charge and the enemy picked Bow, then you would have advantage. If you picked Charge and the enemy picked Magic, then they would, but if you both picked Charge, then it would be a stale mate. Each army starts with a certain amount of men and you fight until the enemy is totally wiped out.

----------Characters / Story----------
You play as a silent hero, you get to name him at the start of the game. The hero is the son of a respected military general, and a rookie recruit in the army. The hero finds himself in some trouble with the army and evades the country, where he gets mixed up with a secret rebel army. This is realizes there's something wrong with his homeland and he must take action to stop it.

The story was fairly progressive for an early 32bit RPG, I mean, alot of people within the story die, there's some mild cursing, and there's plenty of twist you won't expect, but some scenes are borderline stupid. I really dislike the scenes where your army fights a rival army, where 10,000+ people die in the process, and the commander of the rival army joins your team after his defeat at the drop of the hat. It just doesn't make sense!

The hero doesn't talk, but you get to choose his dialog scenes with yes or no type questions. It's nice to have a dialog tree, but more than half of these don't make a difference at all and you will end up with the same result anyways.

----------Graphics----------
Ok, the graphics are pretty basic 2D within towns, dungeons and world map, and in a faux 3D style during the battle system. I love 2D RPGs, I think they age the most gracefully over time, but Suikoden has a very old Sega Genesis styled graphics with very washed out colors that become very drab.

There's no anime or cgi cutscenes but some dialog scenes have a little action to them. Character's just don't stand around or walking in place, they show real action and movement during dialog scenes, like for example, pulling out swords or holding hands, and other subtle things.

Towns and dungeons are rather small and forgettable, but I like the character models and the character avatars during dialog scenes. The enemies look good as well, and the special attacks are decent too. I have mixed feelings about the graphics, but overall they're ok. Nothing groundbreaking but nothing totally offensively bad either, this was a good effort for an early 32-bit RPG. I just wish it was as colorful as say Legend of Oasis.

----------Sound----------
The music is very catchy and rememberable, from the opening music, world map and battle music, it's all good stuff. The sound effects are good as well. No obvious complaints towards sound.

----------World Map----------
The world map is a classic NES Final Fantasy / Dragon Warrior styled overhead world map. Your avatar is surprisingly small on the map, on the verge of ridiculously funny. You'll find plenty of random encounters, towns and a couple of dungeons on the map. The world is separated into sections, but you can't reach them all on foot, you'll either need a boat or a dragon, or you need to raid a bridge with your army. The world is actually small compared to similar RPGs for the time.

----------Time to Complete Game----------
26:35

Suikoden is not a very long game, I probably spent 4 hours of unnessecary level/money grinding as well. I didn't try to find all the 108 Stars but that's completely optional.