Suikoden V

"The best Suikoden yet."

Story- 10/10
Suikoden V takes place six years before the events of the first Suikoden. You play as the prince of Falena. Suikoden V has the longest introduction of any video game I have ever played, but that's a good thing. The plot slowly unfolds, and the game introduce you to the main characters. Ten hours into the game and you will be shocked, a huge twist of events occur, that when the game picks up pace. The story includes all kind of emotions, love, hate, betrayal and sadness. The prince is silent, but the developers didn't want him to lack personality. Throughout the game you will be asked many question that you can answer, these choices determines the prince's personality and behaviors. The choices you make affect the ending as well.

Graphics- 7/10
The large towns and character models are simply amazing. You can easily recognize your character, but NPCs looks generic. The rune and magic effects are ok, its really disappointing how they were better in Suikoden IV, I expected much better effects from some of the most powerful runes like the Dawn and Twilight runes. The cut scenes are great, but a little blurry. Overall the graphics are decent, but not an improvement from Suikoden IV.

Gameplay-Duels 9/10
Duels are back. Duels are one-on-one fights, based on the rock-paper-scissor structure. You have three options: Attack, Defend and Special. Attack is strong against Defend but weak against Special. You have three seconds to decide what to do. The key is to listen to what your opponent says and react to it. If he plans on using special he will say something like “I will show you what my full power is like!” and when he is about to defend he will say something like “you got me…”. Later on, duels increase in difficulty, and your opponents will give vague comments. So it will be hard to predict their move, Some opponents won't even say anything at all.

Gameplay-Wars 8/10
At a certain point in the story, you will be leading an army. You will be drawn into big wars. There are about ten wars in the game. Wars are probably the hardest part of the game, mostly because they are played in real time. War are played on both land and sea, again in the same rock-paper-scissor formula. Before you start , you will have to assign your characters to units. On the battle field, when one of your units comes in contact with any enemy's unit they start fighting. There are three types of units: Infantry, Cavalry and Archers. Infantry is strong than Archers but weaker than Cavalry. You can also use special attacks like recovery and barrage, but these attacks are limited so its important to know when to use them. If used right they can turn the war to your favor. You should also know, that characters that die in war may be lost permanently!

Gameplay- Normal Battles 10/10
Normal battles are just like in any other RPG, turn based. You are allowed to have six characters in your main party and four in the entourage. Your characters can use runes and normal weapons. Each character can normally equip three runes. There are many runes, some boost your stats (attack, defense etc) while others let you use powerful attack. You can't just equip any rune to any character for example, it is useless to equip a magic rune to a physical character like Zegai since he will not be able to use it. If a certain combination of characters is available in your main party, you will be able to perform a coop attack. Cooperative attacks are good for two reasons: they are usually a lot stronger than normal attacks, and they never miss. Then you have formation and positions. As you progress in the game, you will acquire new formations. Formations boost your stats, like the circle formation increases all of your characters defense by ten. Positioning is crucial, if you place a short range character in the back he will most likely misses his attack.

Outside of battles, you can visit towns or play some mini games. Inside towns you can buy and sell orbs, sharpen your weapons or level up your skills. Some characters have special abilities, Zegai for example has the ability “Tutor” so you can level up your skills anytime and anywhere you want if he is in your party (main or entourage). Other characters have abilities like healing, money finder, etc so its wise to choose characters with useful abilities to place in your entourage. Most importantly, you will be recruiting new characters. There are 108 star of destiny, you must recruit all of them if you wish to get the best ending. However, recruiting every single character is tedious and impossible without a guide.

Difficulty- 6/10
Suikoden V is probably the easiest in the suikoden series. From the start you will have some overpowered characters like Zerase, who can defeat any boss in five turns. Your main character the prince, will obtain a very powerful rune as well. The final boss..was extremely disappointing,. There is absolutely no challenge save for war battles.

Playtime/replay- 8/10
As I said, it is impossible to get all 108 star of destiny in one walkthrough. So I can see myself doing a second run to recruit all characters and get the best ending. The game is pretty long, it took me 60 hours to beat.

Final Score- 8
Suikoden V brings everything we loved about the series. The amazing ,dynamic story, the deep battle system and epic wars. My only complaints are the graphics and difficulty level. Its still my favorite RPG this year, if you never player a Suikoden before then this is the best to star with, since its easy and not related to any suikoden story wise.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 08/22/06, Updated 08/22/06