Suikoden V

"Not perfect, but critisized for all the wrong reasons."

To be brief, I am a life-long RPG fan, and I have been a Suikoden fan for a decent chunk of that. Regretfully, I have just never managed to get myself to shell out the 100+ dollars to get Suiko 2 on ebay, so that's the only one I haven't played. Overall though, I've seen the evolution of Suiko along with the entire genre, and I think part V is a pretty good installment. It has flaws but, inextricably, the criticism always seems to fall on the most irrelevant details or unfair generalizations. I hope to point out these details while focusing on things that, frankly, matter.

(Note: I've decided that trying to rank every piece of a game results in more subjectivity than needed, so I'm not following that course)

Story (characters will be int he next section);
The main part of an RPG has always been the story. And Suiko V does a pretty good job of this. As always, you start out living a good life, this time an extremely good life as Prince of a powerful, large, prosperous, and downright gorgeous country, which is mostly land but cut up by a large, powerful river and lakes. The capital itself is a cement edifice constructed upon one of these lakes. Anyway, you start out with alot of build-up and introduction to the world. You travel, fight some, get used to the game, meet the kay players, etc. The intro is slow, but there's a reason for that; the plot is not like that of most games, even other Suikoden games, where you have a simplistic and nearly idiotic beginning that throws you into the position of savior, and you just move from town to town beating the "bad guys", who are always heavy handed and obvious, with the occasional traitor. No, this game gives us alot of politics and propaganda, alot of secret plots and manipulation. It's fun, frankly, because key players are all trying to see if they can predict their enemy better than their enemy can predict them.

Eventually, as is required of the series, you wind up being a freedom fighter of sorts. Although things do get a little more predictable here, there is still alot of politics and intelligent rationale going on (as opposed to traveling from town to town in an obvious order till the end). As things gradually turn in your favor, you make allies, learn new things, etc, and eventually win. In trying not to ruin anything further, I'll leave it rather bland, but the game's story is more like Vandal Hearts II or a pale version of Xenogears than a run-of-the-mill generic RPG, or Final Fantasy, Dragon Warrior, etc.

Characters;
Frankly, this section is as relevant as the overall story. You can have a grand, complex, and intriguing story, but if the characters all seem to stumble through it, treat the simplest ideas as amazing tactics, or even just look ugly or sound terrible, the whole thing falls apart. Luckily, this game mostly avoids that. The characters are aesthetically pleasing; they were made bright and colorful, but also unique, well-proportioned, etc. Speaking of unique, I need to point out to the reader that, like all Suikoden games, this one has 100+ characters to recruit. Yet, all of them are different. Of course, members of a given farming community all look like farmers of that community, but they are varied both in battle, in looks, and in development. You will spend alot of time with different characters cycling through your party, but you rarely will feel that annoyed at a given one, and if you do, they will be removed before too long anyway. But, since you have a six man party and only 2 characters are permanately set, pretty much, you have freedom in who to choose to go with you. In battle, still, all characters are different. They say different things, act in different ways, fight different (even 1-handed swordsman/mages are not all the same; some will parry better, some are better at dodging, some counter more, they use different magic, etc). Even though characters are customizable in some ways, there are still large varities among them.

Overall, characters are detailed, colored well, and unique. Of course, I am sure there will be ones you don't like; there always are. But that someone dislikes only maybe 6-8 of the characters just goes to show the variety of choices one has.

Battle;
Normal Battle: This is your standard fare. You have up to 6 characters and you fight up to 6 enemies in a death match. Regretfully, I feel the need to start by saying that this game is too easy. Painfully easy, to the point that if you really want some challenge, you have to abstain from using the best characters, and maybe even using the worst characters is in order. The main reason for this is that equipment has been bumped up in priority; even low level characters can, with the best armor and the strongest weapon, pretty much fly though a fight. Furthermore, the experience system in Suikoden, which basically determines a character's experience gained based off of how much weaker/stronger they were than the enemy means that even if you do try and use weak characters, their levels will pump up in a half-dozen battles.

This sad detail aside, battles themselves are set up well. First off, we can set up the formation of our characters in different ways. We have to find an item for each formation, but still, it adds some strategy. See, we have short, mid, and long range attackers (magic is long range as well). Putting a mid range attacker in the back makes it hard for him or her to do much damage (actually, accuracy is more notably affected), and putting a short range attacker in the back is downright pointless. So, one must choose the right formation for their party. If they absolutely insist on having 4 short range fighters accompany the generally required 2 mid range fighters, they will have to have a very aggressive stance. Nor only is attacking affected by formation, but defense is too; in some formations, we can have just one or two powerful fighters take most of the blows, but not so if we have a wide stance with everyone up front. On the flip side, we could have a stance that puts one man out alone and all the rest in the back; excellent for someone who wants two archers and 2 mages. These formations also affect stats to boot.

Characters themselves have a variety of variables; they each have an equipment slot for a helmet, torso piece, bracer of sorts, and leg guards, as well as 4 accessory/items slots. Their weapons are never changed; instead, they are sharpened by the blacksmith. They also have anywhere from 0 to 3 slots to place runes, which allow for magic/special attacks/or just ever-present character effects (e.g. negative status immunity). They ALSO have two slots for skills, which are chosen from a large pool of both physical and magical abilities and can be raised by a tutor using SP points gained in battle.

Overall, the game is a little too easy, but the system is excellent for variety and depth.

War battles;
These are not overly important, mostly, but they are fun. If you have played Empire Earth, then you will be an expert; it's a dumbed down version of that. Basically, we have 3 units on land and 3 units on water. Each unit is strong against another and weak against the remaining one. But, maneuvering your units into position, using special skills (and who has what skill is largely controlled by you), healing at the right times etc is still important. It's not too difficult, and you should almost never end up in the apparantly rampant situation of your units getting into multiple battles in a row without rest. Simply set up your units right, spread them out in good locations, and move them according to your enemies moves.

Duels;
Extremely simple, and more for fun than anything. Your main character and a foe face off, one-on-one. They will always start by saying something that is supposed to be a hint to their actions, and you have 4 seconds or so (the counter is three, but ignore that) to push a button for a response. Again, it's mostly like rock-paper-scissors. The fun is that the attacks are rather intricate and detailed, thus making them fun to watch.

Mechanics;
This is my catch-all for things that are somewhat relevant, but don't fairly fit into other categories. First off, the encounter rate in this game is not that bad. Anyone who like "old school" should laugh, and even those who are new to gaming shouldn't be that upset. I admit, 1-hit-kill battles still take half a minute; that's annoying. But, the rate isn't terrible, you can release weaker enemies or completely avoid them with a rune, or try and run from others. The menus in this game are a little frustrating; they just don't follow the normal rules, more or less. Towns are NOT confusing; the assertion I have read that they are so annoying and terrible are, without a doubt, based entirely upon one early town, which is a series of houseboats all connected so you sometimes do have to go through the house parts to get to the bridge on the other side. Other towns are admitedly not a boring and bland straight line, but no doubt that would far less enjoyable (Wild Arms 3 proved this, actually) than having to explore for about 5 minutes or so upon arrival. The camera angle is not that bad either. I admit that I hate chests being hidden behind a wall because of the angle, but it's a basic and COMMON angle that is from about a 45 degree angle from above. It shifts sometimes, but you can see most everything, and in can't, you can zoom in, which is occasionally needed.

So far, I have mentioned a number of small flaws and the rather bad one of over difficulty. However, there is one glaring flaw that costs the game a whole point all on it's own to me. That is the difficulty in recruiting the 108 Stars of Destiny. You don't have to recruit them, but they are largely the point of the whole game. In previous Suikodens, almost all characters were unobtainable until a certain point (different for each character), after which they were completely obtainable when you felt like it. The few exceptions were usually pretty obvious. Very few guys were ever hidden. V, however, ruins that. Most non-automatic characters have point where you they will no longer be available. Not only that, many of them have one, or even several, prerequisites that might be undoable after a certain point (aka, you might have to talk to talk to someone after multiple story events, or see a scene, or get a one-chance-only item before you recruit them, and you can't go back and do it later). It's very frustrating, because you might need to see a scene, then recruit one guy, then go back with a certain item AND a specific character in party and just happen to stumble across the guy in the perhaps 3-5 hour window you have to recruit him. This sucks. Frankly, you need a guide, or even two for cross-referencing, so that you can check for possible recruits after EVERY event, or you will no doubt miss some. I have no objections to using a FAQ for recruiting in games, but it shouldn't be needed constantly for every character.

Overall, the game was good. The music was pleasing, the voice overs were nice, the characters were unique and colorful and fun, the landscapes were a little more bland but still nice, the battle systems are a little to easy but very fun and customizable, and the story itself is a welcome change to run-of-the-mill churnouts without being a hold-your-hand movie or an overly complex and confusing mess. The recruiting mess costs in a whole point, and the other various flaws and such add up to another, but an 8 is a respectable score and certainly a high enough one to recommend playing. Don't expect a revolution, or amazing innovation from this game; but do expect some basic, RPG fun. It even has a New Game + to make successive playthroughs less burdensome for those who don't want to quite do EVERYTHING again. All in all, a great game for any collection and certainly a must-have for any Suikoden fan.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 09/14/06