Suikoden V

"Part V makes an uphill climb... and fails to make it to the top."

I've always been a huge fan of the Suikoden series. Heck, after a long wait for the release of III, I wept for joy (or at least came close to it) seeing the intro on my TV screen and Ai Wo Koete blaring from surround sound speakers instead of my laptop. Then things got painful, the Trinity Sight System was a hell to go through that, in my opinion destroyed any replayability (since you practically played the same scene over two or three times at any given plot point). I don't know if it's because of the pressure from competing and established RPG producing companies like Square Enix, or if this is the inevitable pattern of all great RPGs to eventually attempt to innovate themselves to oblivion. Suikoden IV was a disappointment buffered only by a fairly memorable soundtrack and the returning appearance of certain characters. Bouncing Jeane boobies also helped…

Suikoden V attempts to liberate itself from the IV fiasco, returning to its roots with a fairly solid, if (in my opinion) FF Tactics-esque storyline. It unfortunately falls short, not on its face, but just short.

>>>Storyline: 8/10

The storyline is fairly traditional in terms of the series. Having played all of them, I'd say that after a while you start to sit back and think “Hm, where have I heard that before?” Mind you, I'm grateful for that in a way, but somehow this time it doesn't quite make it. Maybe it's because in an attempt to create a similar but more compelling storyline, they've sort of force mated Suikoden and FF Tactics to create this peculiar lovechild of a plotline. Mute fellow starts off innocently on one side then finds he doesn't agree, defects/gets exiled/goes on the run, finds himself a castle and/or true rune, starts gathering people to it so he can go back and save the country/world/avenge his loved ones. In the mean time however, everyone is inexplicably plotting left and right. In fact, you're not really sure what they're plotting about or why they're plotting. It may sound really intriguing at first, the only thing that goes through your mind is ‘what the hell (is going on)' and not in a good way. And maybe it's just me but almost everyone (or at least most of the NPCs and more than a handful of your PCs) in the game seems to have gotten a +5 in horny in comparison to previous games.

>>>Battle: 6/10

If you thought III's random encounters were bad. This is even worse. They're painfully frequent, and to make it even worse, this is another example of ‘innovating to oblivion'. Following the rules of most RPG tradition, there needs to be a transition between the field and the battle screen. That's normal. Unfortunately in this case, said transition screen, in an attempt to fit with the Sun theme, takes some 6 to 8 seconds to complete. That's provided you're not delayed by momentary loading issues. At least they've gone back to the good ole 6 party battle system. Then again, the new large scale army battle sucks. Can we please go back to the Suikoden 2 system? Without the real-time and automated battles? I don't see why I have to watch every single detail of the battle and see how potentially stupid the AI is when controlling my characters, getting angry in the process. And with the real-time movement going on, I can't even take a bathroom break. The only saving grace for this whole thing is the duels because that's the only time you really get to see some cool battle sequences.

>>>Field: 4/10
The controls are shoddy. Partly because of the graphics as mentioned below, but I found myself having to walk in circles and reposition myself sometimes just to be able to talk to an NPC. Maybe it's my controller and my buttons going dead but having to mash my buttons to talk to people (only to read about their secret fantasies/complaints of pervy party members) isn't very enjoyable. The loading times are even worse. I reckon I haven't seen this many loading screens for a Suikoden game since the Gaidens. Every few screens, and every plot point you wind up seeing a ‘Now Loading' screen. The fact that there are enough loading screens to make me think about things other than the game, is a big nono, because then I have the time to think about all the things I don't like about it. There's something else about this Loading screen that irks me that I will detail in the Graphics section.

>>>Graphics: 3/10

Let's face it; no matter how rendered, how gorgeous you make a game, if you don't provide a proper camera angle, it's going to look like crap. As far as I'm concerned the characters are minute in detail. You get three degrees of zooming and no adjustable camera angle. At the closest the people look like slightly blurry children's drawings. At the furthest, they look like Lego figurines, sometimes they even blend into the background so I actually walk right past people without realizing. Now, I'm very prone to motion sickness, even the slightest shoddy camera work can make me woozy, combine this with the fact that I can't see very clearly where I'm going half the time because the camera angle is fixed and I can't spot important details due to the lousy graphics. So either I walk very slowly and take forever to go from one area to another, or I run and have to run up and down several times and make myself dizzy because I miss a treasure chest or can't find where I'm going. The other thing that gets to me is the main character's expressions. First he starts off in this ridiculous orange outfit that looks like a dress and is hanging off him like a coat on a hanger, then his expressions vary between stoned and somewhat puzzled, any attempt to portray any other emotion looks as wooden as a puppet. Oh and Arshtat's sleeves look like she's walking around with elephant legs for arms, what's the deal with that. Every time I saw her sleeves I just had that overwhelming feeling of wtf. Now on about the Loading screen. That Loading screen is one that you'll become closely acquainted with during your gameplay, therefore, every 5 or 10 minutes (not counting the godawful random encounters), the rendered graphics are interrupted by this little 32 bit version of the Prince running on the spot in Tenkai Star tradition. They might think it was cute to include that, I suppose it would be cuter if said 32 bit figure was done a little better instead of looking like a paint smear.

>>>Sound: 5/10

I have to admit the voice acting was tolerable compared to some of the voice acting from other games. I seldom find games these days with voice acting that don't make me turn the sound off, this is one of the good points. The bad part is the music. Totally. Unmemorable. In fact, before I started playing the game, while I was watching the trailers and intro online, I told myself that I can't expect too much from the music. The reason is in the intro. I've found that you can tell a lot about a game's music just by listening to the intro music. If you can't even get an opening theme that seizes my spirit and throttles it, the rest of the soundtrack can't even be remotely promising. ‘Wind of Phantom' was lackluster and the rest of the music as well. I wish they'd bring Miki Higashino (who worked on I and II's soundtrack) back.

>>>Overall: 5/10

I wish Murayama hadn't left. Everything just seems to have gone downhill since he left mid-III. Suikoden V has struggled to climb back up the hill it's tumbled from but it can't seem to make it back to the top. They've tried so hard to compete with FF that the series has lost its charm. I'd take a 2D game with a compelling storyline, great soundtrack and pre-PS2 combat system any day over something that's attempted to reinvent itself into mediocrity.

Well, at least we still have Jeane boobies.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 01/03/07