Suikoden
Name: Genso Suikoden
Platform: PSX
Creators: Konami
Genre: Traditional RPG
Plot - 9
Characters - 9
Music - 10
Graphics - 8
Battle System - 10
Replay - 10
Extra - 7
Overall - 9
Plot -
Suikoden, the first installment in a five(soon to be six) game legacy.
It is the first glimpse into a medieval-type world, divided by kingdoms and
countries, good and evil, different races, and the ever constant presence
of the 26 True Runes. This game takes place within the Scarlet Moon
Empire, which is...really big, making for some fun exploring.
You are (insert name here) McDohl, son of one of the five great generals
of the Empire. When the game starts out, you are waiting for an audience
with the Emperor, who seems to be a great man. He first gives instructions
to your father to go guard the northern border, then calls you up to meet
him. You can either impress him or amuse him with the options given
to you. You are to enter the army soon. After leaving the Emperor,
you go meet your commander, who is...less than nice, then go home.
You currently live with your father and three attendants.
The cheery image of the game soon breaks as you experience the corruption
of the Empire come face-to-face with the Liberation Army, a small group of
rebels, and gain use of the Soul Eater, one of the 26 True Runes. After
some thought, you join the Liberation Army and the game starts in earnest.
You gain command of the army after some unfortunate events, and your army
steadily grows as you start recruiting people. You get to battle the
Empire, set up your own headquarters in an abandoned castle in the middle
of the lake the Empire surrounds, and fight for your freedom and liberty.
You will laugh throughout this game, you will cry(unless
you're completely insensitive, bleh), and you will not
want to put your controller down. This games gives your emotions a
nice ride, especially if you let yourself get extremely involved in a
storyline.
Characters -
Throughout Suikoden, you have the opportunity to recruit over one-hundred
characters into your party, giving you a total of 108 playable characters.
Now, with so many PC, and then the NPC, you'd think that
character development would be pretty slim, right? Well, Suikoden breaks
down those boundaries. You are presented with four races: humans,
elves, dwarves, and kobolds. The elves and dwarves are very much
Tolkien-ish in appearance and personality, so there's some
lack of originality there. You know what drives the characters,
though! They don't just do random actions that leave
you wondering why. You can see their motivation, what they believe
in, why they're there. The characters actually have
(*gasp*) personalities.
Music -
The music in Suikoden is AWESOME. Not only does it have songs appropriate
for the moment, but the sound effects have a huge role too. The music
sets the mood, and you'll probably find yourself humming
along sometimes (especially to the music in your castle, heh). The
music is beautiful in this game, it's not harsh, or overly
wacky, it's just really fitting.
Graphics -
Suikoden uses a 2D method for graphics, unlike most other PSX games.
This is really fitting to the type of game, and I believe that 3D graphics
would have really taken away from it. However, the graphics tend to
be really flat at times. Little effects, though, make it so much better,
like a character handing over a sword, or the spinning of a staff.
The graphics can look really grainy at times, though. Overall, I guess
the did a pretty good job.
Battle System -
There are three different forms of battle systems in Suikoden.
The first is a team battle, which is your average rpg fight. You can
have six characters, and they are in two rows. Characters with short
ranged weapons can only attack if they are in the front row, and long ranged
weapon wielders do best in the back. Medium range can go in either.
You have the choice of either fighting, defending, using an item, teaming
up with another character, or using a rune to do magic. However, you
can only use the spells a set amount of time, and can't
replenish them until you heal at an inn. Before each new round of the
battle, you have the choice between attack (which lets you choose what everyone
in your party does), run or let go (depending on it you're
much stronger than the enemy or if you're weaker), bribe
(give money to escape from a battle), or an option where everyone in your
party just randomly attacks the enemy with their weapons.
The second type of battle is a one-on-one fight, where your main character
is pitted up against an enemy alone. You have three options: attack,
defend, and desperate attack. You choose your action according to what
your enemy says before each new round. If s/he was to say something
like... "See if you can hit me!" then
the enemy is going to defend in the next round, and you should attack.
However, if they yell "FEEL THE POWER OF MY
BLADE!!!" then you defend, because they are going to use
a desperate attack. If you defend against a desperate attack, the attack
misses and you counterattack. Defending while someone is attacking,
however, just decreases the amount of damage down to you.
The last type of battle is an army battle, which is your army versus
another. You're highly outnumbered in the beginning
of the game, but you can more troops as you recruit more people. The
battles are usually a few thousand people versus another few thousand, but
it starts getting really high. All of your members are divided into
groups with up to three people. You can either charge with your fighters,
use spells with your mages, attack them with arrows with your archers, or
use skills or sneaky techniques with your strategists/thieves/ninjas, etc.
Magic triumphs over charge, archers triumph over mages, and charge triumphs
over archers. The people are represented by really little, high-pitched,
adorable sprites who run across the screen at each other, or line up in a
circle when using magic, or just random shoot at you/the enemy. When
one dies, it rises up the screen with little angel wings and a halo, and
your people count goes down. The team that losses all/most of
it's people looses.
Replay -
I have played Suikoden many times, and would play it again if my friend
hadn't lost it. It's a great story,
fun to play, and playing it just once isn't enough, especially
if you didn't get all 108 Stars of Destiny the first time
around.
Extras -
There are several other things you can do while playing Suikoden, including
collecting paint for a mural, the dice game Chinchirorin, finding old books
which you can read in your library, and getting different bath scenarios.
These little extra things add to the game's fun, and are
nice little addition. Try not to lose all of your money playing
Chinchirorin, ok?
Overall, this game deserves a whopping nine out of ten.
Crystal Zeal's Reviews
Suikoden Reviews
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