Suikoden

PSX

Konami - 1996

So here you are thinking, "Suikoden? What the heck is Suikoden? And how the heck do you pronounce it anyways?" Well. Let's start there. Sue-Ko-Den. Now, everyone say it with me... "Sue-Ko-Den." Good job. Basically, Suikoden is a prequel to Suikoden II, sort of like how you should play Arc the Lad I before II to get pumped up characters. For if you collect all 108 characters, and no one dies, yes they can die, then you can transfer your characters over to Suikoden II and they will be pumped up, and some will even bring items over to the new game. Also, if you have all 108, you can play with the hero from the first game. This means two heros, and since the heros are always the strongest, two really pumped characters, who also have a teamup attack! SWEET!

Luckily for you, Suikoden is a really short game. I managed to finish it in 20 hours the first time. With everyone and everything. So go get it, get cracking, and play Suikoden II, and infinitely better game. But that's not to say Suikoden is a bad game, it's still rather fun to play, and very innovative in it's own right, as you will see below.

But before that, I just want to mention that the plot of Suikoden I isn't the most amazing thing you have seen in your life. Sure it's got some great scenes, but it isn't FFX. Still, the Victor and Star Dragon Sword story is cool, as a few others. But that's not the innovative part.

In Suikoden, you collect, just like pokemon, 108 people. Sure they call it recruiting, but basically you go up to some guy who looks different from the townsfolk, and say, "Hey, join my party." And just like Simon-Peter, they drop everything and follow you. The perfect game for anyone with a Jesus complex. Also, the game keeps a "Gotta catch 'em all" feel that made pokemon great with the kids. But, luckily, there are no trading cards or cute monsters. Wait, darnit, there are trading cards in Japan, and even a trading card game. And in Suikoden II, there are a bunch of cute squirrels you collect. Crap on this.

My favorite part of rpg's are the characters. Usually there are one or two at the most really cool characters. Since in Suikoden, there are 108 characters to recruit, you get many, many cool characters. For example, Valeria, Victor, Flik, Cleo, Humphrey, Tai Ho (aka Jesus), Kasumi, Pesmerga, and LoreiLai, just to name a few. So now you are thinking, 108 characters. How they heck do I level them all up with 3 people in a party? Well, for starters, you have 6 people in a party. That speeds it up a bunch. Plus, the game is set up so that you never need to use most of the characters, and if you did, you can catch up on levels real fast. I usually save the crappy characters, and uncool looking ones 'til the end, then take them in about 10 fights to get them to level 50. It's amazing just to watch a character at level 2 sit around watching your 5 good characters whoop an enemy, then gain 15 levels at the end of the fight. Which is what happens.

Another great thing about the battles is that they are most always rather easy. If they ever get hard, upgrade your weapons. Then they are easy again. The dungeons are always straight forward, and the first time you can actually go the wrong way is in the last dungeon. This leads to a really easy game. But yet it is fun non the less, and great to throw in after playing a hard rpg like Lunar 2. The characters also preform great team-up attacks, where two or more characters will do some cool attack against an enemy. To find these, bring people who know each other, have something in common, or are rivals into the fight. The best teamup, in terms of usefulness, is the hero and Kai, the old bald guy who also has a staff. He was the hero's teacher, and thus they have a team-up that hits all enemies for more than a normal attack. This will kill off all the weaker enemies and make the hard ones die in one round due to the other characters in the party attacking. Very handy to speed up the game. Remember this!

The game also features 3 different types of battles. Besides the 6 against enemies, there are war battles, that play out like a game of rock-paper-scissors. You have groups of men, gathered by 3 generals, or 3 of the 108, with a bunch of people under each. Their attack and defense is shown. There are 3 groups of them, the fighters, archers, and mages. Fighters are good against archers, and weak against mages. Archers are good against magic, but weak against attackers. So if you are paying attention and can do basic thought problems, mages are strong against fighters, and weak against archers. The problem is that you don't know what the enemy will do. Oh dear! But don't fret your head off yet, little missy, for if you are collecting all the people you can, you will have a few thieves and ninjas. Thieves have a 50% chance of finding out what the enemy will do the next turn, or stealing some money. Ninjas will always find out what the enemy will do the next turn. So go collect those characters.

Another sweet thing in the game is the one on one battle mode. Your main character, McDohl, goes up against generals, one at a time. Instead of the normal battle setup, you only have 3 options, and no ways of healing. You have attack, defend, and desperate attack. Attack will still hurt the enemy defending, defend will hurt the enemy desperate attacking, and desperate attack will hurt the enemy attacking for more than a regular attack. Sounds complicated, but the enemy taunts you before each choice. You have to make sense of their taunt, and predict what they will do by what they said. (For example, if they say, "Better watch out, little man!" they are probably gonna do a desperate attack, and if they say, "Wow, you're better than I thought." they will probably defend.)

One last thing I should mention. So you are collecting 108 characters, eh? Well, you probably want a place to put all your characters. And you can, with this handy-dandy Castle you build. Sure, you don't get to decide where people stay, but it gets bigger with more people, and is really really fun to run around in, watching your characters doing different stuffs.

What liked:108 Characters? Swell! Icing on a cake for a short and easy game, what a great thing to put in after days of tactical battles with FFTactics or Arc the Lad 2. Lots of different types of battles (as seen above) also lead to enough changes in pace that you never get too tired to play, and thus the 20 hours go by even faster.

What disliked: It takes up 2 memory card slots. Suikoden 1 and 2 (which also takes up 2 slots) along with Vagrant Story's 3 practially take up a memory card themselves.

What to expect: For one of the first PSX RPG's, greatness. Much better than any SNES RPG.

What not to expect: Final Fantasy.

What's so different from this and other games of it's genre: 108 Characters, a mix of tactical prowess and turn-based fun, and umm... well... that's about it.

Ratings on:

Control: 7 - It's sprite movement. It's terribly hard to go wrong with any rpg.

Graphics: 7 - Woulda gotten a higher score, but Suikoden II whoops it graphic wise, with some of my favorite sprites ever.

Sound: 6 - I actually like this soundtrack.

Style: 4 - Sure it doesn't bring much to the genre, except loads of characters and the different battle systems.

1st hour: 8 - Heard about the loads of characters. Waiting for them.

5th hour: 7 - Man, lots of characters die in the first few hours of the game.

1st week: 9 - Got my castle around the 6th hour, and now collecting them all.

5th week: n/a - Dood, I finished the game a few weeks ago. Now I'm playing Suikoden II.

#1 reason why I hate this game: When you get Pahn back, and forget to level him up, then he has to fight Teo, one on one, and you never knew that if you had just leveled him up, he woulda won, and lived. Sob. Now I gotta play it again, 'cause I saved over the memory.

by Hawke