Suikoden III

"Suikoden III or Suikoden Gaiden Vol III?"

I am the yet another flame to the Suikoden trinity sight system. My point of view is from what I see….

Before I grade this RPG, I’ll answer the simple questions first. Is this RPG worth buying? Yes. I recommend this RPG to any gamer wants to buy an RPG. Games that usually score high should be enjoyable by all gamers. Since Suikoden III emphasizes on storyline, causal gamers or RPGers for this matter, may easily get lost in the storyline. Having past knowledge of previous Suikoden and Suikoden Gaiden game storylines, adds another layer of understanding and wealth to make Suikoden III as a whole, a lot better. The storyline in Suikoden III, do refer back to Suikoden II and even Suikoden Gaiden. This game in my opinion is more like Suikoden Gaiden Vol III. It’s sad though that Suikoden Gaiden was never released here in the United States where I live. But thanks to the Internet I was able to keep up with the Suikoden Gaiden Storyline, which does explain what happen to some of the Suikoden II characters and even touches a little bit on Suikoden III. So knowing past the Suikoden storylines makes Suikoden III a better experience. Thus I don’t know why any casual gamers would want to spend time playing Suikoden III, unless they’re into RPGs.

RPGs are all about Storyline and Suikoden III doesn’t disappoint. It expands the Suikoden Storyline even further and answers many questions that Suikoden fans, like myself, have wondering about for the last 2 years. Suikoden III proves that there is at least one good RPG series that stays true to its name, unlike many other RPGs where none of the past storylines are involve with the current one… ahem…Final Fantasy Series.

Graphics: 10 / 10

I love 2D RPGs graphics (I’m an old-schooler). I hate 3D graphics, but Suikoden III changed all of that. I would still prefer 2D over 3D any day though. It is just that this game proved to me how beautiful the world of RPG might look like through 3D. I’ve seen FFX, Wild Arms 3, BOF 4, and other 3D RPGs, but none of them details the RPG world like Suikoden III does. Other 3D RPGs had PRETTY graphics, but Suikoden III have Defining graphics, meaning villages should have plain poor looking villagers, corn fields should look like hills of corn fields, the grass lands look like grassy plains that looks like it stretches beyond the horizon. The characters may look a bit weird, but that’s because the 3D character models seem to be bump mapped. I think the decision here is the developer’s choice. Rather than adding extra polygons to the 3D character models to animate their characters, they decided to directly ‘map’ in details onto the 3D models. In other words the developers probably decided to go with detailed characters over realistic looking characters. Which makes sense, cause the Suikoden Series feels more anime-ish than realistic anyway. Besides, I rather stare at a complex painting than at a beautiful picture of Yosemite all day. So overall the developers did an excellent job choosing and using their graphic style for Suikoden III. All in all, I don’t play RPGs for graphics anyway, but I was glad that Suikoden III made me a believer in 3D for once. If all RPGs are going to be 3D from now on, let it take the same step Suikoden III is took.

Gameplay: 7 / 10

What happened? Overall the battles were quick, random battles less frequent, user-friendly, etc. But what happened? Battle and control got more… I’ll just say… simple? I mean lower random battles and easy control setup is great, but being the 3rd installment of the series, it should mean a more complicated battle system, not an easier one. In a way though Suikoden III battle system does get more complicated. To begin, the first thing that Suikoden veterans will notice is the change from controlling 6 characters to now issuing commands for pairs. So if there is 6 characters in the party, the gamer can issue one command for each pair, so a total of 3 commands can be issued for this party. It’s quite strange at first, because it seems like all is at lost. It feels like you can’t control the battle anymore. The funny thing is that it is true. The gamer can’t control all the characters anymore. Nevertheless this brings up a different strategy. The gamer has to pair up compatible characters together; otherwise battle can be dreadful and confusing. For example, teaming up a Healer and Magic Caster doesn’t make any sense for big boss battles, since only one command can be issued for the pair, the gamer is stuck with choosing to either heal the party or cast a deadly magic on the Boss. Of course the gamer would love to do both, but if the healer and magic caster were paired with regular attackers, the gamer would be able to both heal the party and cast deadly magic at the boss. Therefore party arrangement and management is essential in this battlesystem. Again this battle decision seems to be in the hands of the developer. They choose fast user-friendly game play over the long tedious controllable command issuing in the past 2 Suikoden games. So the developers chose strategy over Control. Both battlesystem have its pros and cons, so either battlesystem is fine.

Besides the battlesystem, all the other gameplay aspect remained pretty similar to the previous Suikoden games. Gone are the rune pieces that can be embedded to the swords, but new runes called magic sword runes were create to replace them. Weaponry and variety of mini games stay similar to the past Suikodens. There are a few new additions, such as the lottery, fortune telling, and drama plays to name a few. One thing that did annoy me was my castle building. Not building up my castle with recruits, but the castle itself. In previous Suikodens, the castle will grow with new rooms and dusty old rooms will come alive, when new recruits inhabit the rooms. The whole castle will bloom as the game goes along, but in Suikoden III the castle stays the same. The castle doesn’t really change at all. I don’t want ruin the story, so I won’t get into any further details, but the castle building and recruiting came up on the short end of the stick. The Suikoden series was mainly built on recruiting characters, I mean that is what made it different from other RPGs when Suikoden 1 first came out, but in Suikoden III it seems like the castle building got in the way of the story and didn’t follow as part of the story. I don’t know. It just seems like developers had to create a castle to stay true to the Suikoden series and that’s probably why the castle ended up in the game.

There are cool little new features to character building like character Skill points that can be used to gain new battle or magic skills. Building up a character is still very important, because when the war battle comes around you bet you will need every character to be strong and well equipped. Speaking of war battles, they’re still in Suikoden III so are the One-on-One battle from the previous Suikodens. Both are a bit different from the past Suikodens, but still similar enough for Suikoden Fans to rejoice.

Overall the gameplay is fair. I still like the controllable long commanding issuing in battles over the new pairing system, even though the pairing system does bring another set of new strategy to the table, having complete control over the battle is more desirable, so that if you do lose in battle, there’s no one to blame but yourself. But the pairing/buddy system is actually better for Suikoden III, because pairing makes battling a lot faster, which appeals to the causal gamers and new rpgers to the Suikoden Series. Other RPGs nowadays have only 3 characters anyway. Few commands mean less work and are ideal for newcomers to the series. Suikoden III doesn’t necessarily have a poor gameplay or battle system for this instance. It just doesn’t appeal to the kind of game I wanted Suikoden III to be.

Sound: 6 / 10

The sound effects are great. But sound effects in RPGs don’t mean much anyway. If this game was a Shooter or fighting game, then maybe it can make or break a game, but I could care less if there was any sound or not. As a matter of fact I don’t recall any sort of sounds from the game except for a few sword clings.

However Music on the other hand can break or make an RPG game! The music in Suikoden III although solid doesn’t feel as define as the previous Suikodens and other RPGs nowadays for that matter. I love the opening intro music and I thought this was going to be their main theme BGM (back ground music) for Suikoden III. Boy was I wrong. The intro music never appeared in the game anywhere. I kept waiting and waiting for it to appear during dramatic scenes, but instead cut-scenes were just silent! It almost seemed like the developers forgot that there were cut-scenes. What happened to the mood of these scenes? A good BGM would have immensely help dry scenes turn into emotional ones. Using silence is nice in some scenes, but there were numerous scenes where any sort BGM would have enhanced the scene. I don’t know if the music was forgotten. It might have been because the developers threw in new scenes before releasing the game and the music was never composed or what? But it’s pretty obvious that the BGM in this Suikoden game is probably the weakest of the 3.

Overall Story: 9 / 10

The Story is probably the strongest suite of this game. Suikoden III does a marvelous job with the story. The story is basically told 3 times. Each time the story is told through the eyes of a different hero/heroine. So the story itself is actually pretty short (about as long as Suikoden 1), but because it’s told about 3 times, the game is about 3 times as long. Personally I believe it is both good and bad. It’s good, because this way the gamers get a chance to play through the entire game with just about all the 108 characters. The problem with past Suikodens was that not all characters were factors in the storyline. Well in Suikoden III, Suikoden fans can be able to rejoice and see their favorite character actually contributing to the overall storyline. On the other hand, the story itself is actually short and you can’t access some of your favorite characters until the game is about to end. Maybe future Suikodens will be able to expand the length of the story, while using about all 108 star characters, instead of breaking down all the 108 stars into little pieces throughout the storyline.

One thing I loved about Suikoden II was returning characters. There are a few returning characters in Suikoden III, but I might as well say none, when compared to how many there were in Suikoden II. One rumor I heard was the fact that the developer was actually going to change the whole storyline in Suikoden III and completely revamp the whole Suikoden storyline! Fortunately that rumor died quickly or the developer decided not to change it and Suikoden III remains loyal to the Suikoden Storyline. Whew!

Overall: 7 / 10

Suikoden III is really nothing more than just an above average game at best. However if you’re like me a member of the flame bringer, this game is more than what a diehard Suikoden Fan can ask for. However, this is the main fault of RPGs in general. The more the diehard fan gets from the game, the more the casual gamer loses. Nonetheless, Suikoden III is still a great game for anyone, causal or a diehard fan. The story maybe a little confusing at times, because of the richness and depth of the Suikoden Storyline, but as a big fan of Suikoden, what more can I ask for?

Even with that said though, Suikoden III doesn’t really play like the previous 2 Suikoden games. That’s largely due to the fact that the ‘trinity sight system’ makes Suikoden III feel a bit more like the Suikoden Gaiden Series. Suikoden Gaiden, for those not familiar with it, is told through the eyes of a non-playable character that surprisingly plays a role Suikoden II. What he sees in the Suikoden Gaiden Series may or may not be the truth, but it is nonetheless a truth seen through his point of view. Suikoden III is similar in this way. So I think Suikoden III really should have been called Suikoden Gaiden Vol. III. The only difference between the Gaiden and the Regular Suikoden is the gameplay. But most gamers play Suikoden, because of the storyline aspect, and not the actual gameplay. Although I don’t know how a title would really affect the overall package of the game itself, it affected me.

Fun Factor: 9 / 10 (My score)

Suikoden III is the BEST RPG this year… no, I take that back. Suikoden III is the BEST RPG for the Playstation 2. Suikoden III is the reason why I bought the PS2 in the first place. I reserved Suikoden III at a local game store over a year ago and when I finally got a copy of it, I played my heart out and I was not disappointed cause of the long wait. It’s NOT the best RPG ever or not even the best one in the Suikoden Series, but it probably is the most entertaining RPG for the PS2. This RPG is a must buy! The only reason why any gamer would NOT to want buy this game is because of the appeal and graphics, but don’t let that fool you. Personally I would give this game a 9.4 / 10 overall score (other scores: Suikoden 1 = 9.1 / 10, Suikoden 2 = 9.7 / 10). Suikoden III maybe the ticket to another world, where magic, love, and happiness awaits. So light another flame in the ‘trinity sight system’ and experience Suikoden III from your point of view.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 11/06/02, Updated 11/06/02