Suikoden
Konami’s surprise
Suikoden (Titled Genso Suikoden in Japan) was one of the first RPGs on PlayStation. It is published by Konami, the company which created the marvelous Castlevania series, but Konami isn’t known for their RPGs. When Suikoden was released, many people thought that it was a stupid move from Konami to use 2D graphics instead of 3D.
I think Konami was right; RPGs don’t need beautifully rendered 3D graphics to deliver a great gaming experience, what RPGs do need is a great, long storyline, good music and playability. While Suikoden’s graphics aren’t that great and the game looks a little bit like 16-bit RPGs, the graphics are definitely good enough and there’s lots of small details.
What Suikoden lacks in graphics, it fixes in the storyline and characters. There’s an incredible amount of characters, 108 overall! While about 100 of them are playable, the rest are NPCs which add something to the story. Graphics aren’t the most important thing when it comes to RPGs. Music is one of the most important ones. If the game has bad music, you can bet it’s not fun to play (at least with volume on). Suikoden doesn’t disappoint in this area either. It has one of the best RPG soundtracks I’ve heard. The songs are well done, not repetitive and fit the game really well.
The story is set on the Scarlet Moon Empire, and the main character (referred as the hero or McDohl from now on, as no default name is given) is the son of a great imperial general Teo McDohl. The story starts as the hero and his father visit Emperor Barbarosa who assigns Teo to set off the rebellion on north and the hero joins the imperial guard at the same time. After Teo has left, young McDohl starts working at the guard with his father’s servants Gremio, Pahn and Cleo and hero’s childhood friend, Ted.
The assignments they first receive are lowly, but while working at them, they realize how corrupt the empire really is. During one mission they are attacked by a powerful monster, but Ted saves the day by using mysterious magic. One imperial commander sees this and believes his superiors might be interested in Ted’s power, asking Ted to accompany him to the imperial palace once they get back home.
Not suspecting anything, Ted agrees, and once the party reaches capital city Gregminster he leaves for the palace. Ted comes back in middle of the night, badly wounded. He tells McDohl about the source of his power. As it turns out, Ted has one of the true runes, the Soul Eater, and therefore the empire is so interested in him. Ted refused to give up the rune, knowing that it’s power should never be allowed to evil hands. He barely managed to escape from the palace and is in no condition to flee Gregminster.
He asks McDohl to take the rune and protect it from the Empire. Young McDohl reluctantly agrees and escapes Gregminster with Pahn, Cleo and Gremio, while Ted stays to distract the enemy. They get out of the city with the help of stranger named Viktor. Viktor later introduces the hero to the leader of resistance movement, Lady Odessa Silverberg. As Odessa is mortally wounded in an imperial assault at the rebel headquarters, McDohl is eventually chosen to be her successor. After a while the news of his son joining the rebels also reach imperial general Teo McDohl…
A call to arms
Suikoden isn’t a really difficult game, in fact, it’s a bit on the short side, but there’s lots to explore and search. It’s great fun to play: easy to learn, no places where you can get stuck (Well except the dice game which annoyed me for a little while.), funny dialogue (Though a bit odd sometimes, still funny….) and the story moves pretty fast. The biggest downside in the game is shortness of it. Fortunately there’s lots of replay value, and the game lasts even when completed many times.
Besides the large amount of characters, one thing that makes Suikoden different from another RPGs are the army battles. In these battles you lead the whole Liberation Army (Rebels) against the forces of Scarlet Moon Empire. They offer a bit of a change and are not too difficult. Basically the large battles are just a variation of ‘paper, scissors and rock’, i.e. magic is strong versus melee attacks, but weak against arrows. Bow attack is strong against magic, but weak against melee, etc. The strategist-feature available boosts the power of infantry attacks for few turns. The use of thieves and other special attacks offer a bit more strategy to the mix, nothing overcomplicated though.
In army battles all your playable characters form units which they then lead into battle. Each unit has one commander and two vice-commanders. If you’ve recruited all characters in one team it’s more powerful than having just one or two of them. The units are sorted by their leaders name, for example Commander’s Team for the main character and Viktor’s team for Viktor. Something that needs to be kept in mind is that if you make a really bad decision – like using your weakest infantry team against enemy’s strongest magic users, not only will they get completely wiped out, there’s also a chance that a commanding officer from that team dies in that attack.
And yes, once he/she is dead, there’s no chance of any resurrection besides the mighty load-rune on your memory card. Some characters are more vulnerable to this than others, and major characters never perish in the battle. Nevertheless, if someone does die, he’s out of your 108 characters. If that happens, it sucks and there’s no chance getting the best ending anymore, better to be careful.
The normal battle system is quite traditional turn-based RPG-battle, besides the usual ‘attack’ ‘defend’ ‘rune’(magic) ‘item’ and ‘run’ there’s also ‘Free Will’, which lets the character choose the enemy and the attack by him/herself. There’s also an option to bribe enemies to let the party escape, but it costs too much money to be useful. Certain characters have powerful combo attacks called ‘Unite’ with others. Most unite attacks involve two characters, but some have even more, up to five.
Magic system is rune based. You can attach a rune to character’s hand and that gives him/her the ability to use magic. Each character can wield only one rune, and the only spells characters can cast are those granted by the rune. Wind Rune gives wind magic, Fire Rune fire magic, etc. Runes can also be detached, but after the rune is removed, the character loses the ability to use the magic of that rune until it’s reattached.
There are also special runes which can’t be removed from a character, the most notable example is the main character who wears Soul Eater rune. It can’t be removed, and therefore the main character is stuck with it for the rest of the game.
There are no magic points, but spells have limited number of uses. The more skilled character is with magic, the more times he can use the spell. Magic is restored after a nights rest at an inn. Some special runes and unite attacks make the character to lose balance, which makes him/her unable to attack next turn and vulnerable to enemy attacks. This needs to be kept in mind in battles.
Besides the battles mentioned above, there’s also a duel system. At some points in the game, you’re challenged to a duel, which leads to it’s one-on-one battle between your character and the enemy. In the duel you’re given a couple of choices: ‘attack’, ‘desperate attack’ and ‘defend’. Like in the army battles, one of these attacks is strong against one and weak against another. (e.g. desperate attack deals lots of damage, but when opponent chooses to defend, it’s not that effective anymore.)
You make choices either by choosing randomly, or by listening what the opponent says, since the opponents always use same sentences before certain attacks (when the opponent says things like “Go ahead and attack!”, something tells me he uses defend next turn…).
One of the best aspects of Suikoden is the Headquarters system. At one point in the game, you’ll acquire your own castle which serves as the Liberation army base of operations. All characters you recruit hang out at the castle, often bringing changes with them.
For example, one character builds an elevator, another brings an item store and one guy even builds a bath to your castle. The HQ expands as the number of recruits increases. If you have managed to recruit all 108 characters, you’ll see the castle in it’s finest and also get to see the best ending.
I think Suikoden is definitely one of the best RPGs for the PSX. Unfortunately it wasn’t very popular, and there are lots of RPG players who’ve never played it and that’s a shame. In my books, it’s even better than Final Fantasy VII. (Don’t know why, maybe I’m just a loony…) It is my favorite RPG and if you like traditional role-playing and don’t mind the bit aged graphics, then it’s really something worth checking for. Suikoden was also released for Sega Saturn with added features, but it was never published outside Japan.
Suikoden spinoffs Genso Suikoden Gaiden I & II: Swordsman of Harmonia & Duel at the Crystal Valley never made it outside Japan either. GBA game Suikoden Card Stories may still have a small, but unlikely chance to be translated.
For those who already have played the first game, don’t forget the sequel, Suikoden II. Remember to keep Suikoden I save games on your memory card because they’ll change the sequel a bit, i.e. there will be cameo appearances by some of the original one’s cast. The third game in the mains series, Suikoden III is going to be released in Japan in fall 2002 for the PS2 and takes the series to complete 3D. Then well see how Konami has managed to handle the changes, hopefully the magic of the prequels is still there.