Suikoden III

"All Your Stars Are Belong To Us"

The latest installment based on the Water Margin tale is truly a masterpiece. While it has more innovation than most RPGs and even its predecessors, Suikoden III\'s epic story with a moral is where it truly shines. It tells us about judgement, beliefs, partiality, and trust- and how different views of them will affect our future. And like what RPGs set out to do, Suikoden III will play and mess with your every thought and emotion, captivating you in its 3D polygonal world.

To tell the truth, I was a bit nervous about the release of this game, and understandably so. The director of this game hadn\'t directed the previous two installments, and I figured the changes Konami planned for this series would permanently tarnish its reputation. I\'m happy to report, though, that Suikoden III is indeed a worthy sequel to the series. Like the other two installments of this series, Suikoden III features an incredible story, a massive cast of characters, a castle to build from the ground-up, three different battle systems, and of course, the trademark of the series, compatibility with your older save files. So yeah, your inappropriately named Butt Castle and Butt Army now form the nation of Butts. A cool gimmick if nothing else, using previous save files creates an indescribable proud, albeit, creepy feeling. Often you\'ll run into characters or find books talking about events in the previous games. It\'s almost like reading a biography of yourself.

At the start, you have a choice of three characters to play, each with their own supporting cast. Geddoe is a mercenary for hire, your typical, quiet, bad-ass veteran. Even though his past is shrouded in mystery, his search for the Flame Champion is undoubtedly the most interesting storyline. Hugo is a messenger of peace, being the son of the chief of the Karaya Clan, who actively seeks out to end hostilities with the Zexens. He\'s still a kid though, and acts immaturely and foolishly, and is still grasping to understand the world. Chris, Captain of the Zexen Knights, challenges the authority of her superiors, as they seem to \'\'seek peace\'\' for only their selfish purposes, and through the most malicious ways. Even though these characters are completely different and come from different backgrounds, their storylines will converge at some point and will form one society of 108 Stars of Destiny, when together, are believed to have the power to change Fate (as shown in alternate endings throughout the series). The Trinity System is incorporated well, showing events you\'ve already seen but in a different perspective. The trustworthy prove to be the opposite, and vice-versa, and unexplainable events suddenly make sense. Interestingly enough, all the scenes in the breathtaking animé introduction are from various parts of the game.

Obviously, with 108 characters, some characters\' backgrounds are better told than others, and some characters you can care less about. But each character is unique, if nothing else. They all consist of different personalities and all vary in appearance and design. Geddoe and the Flame Champion himself are drawn well and extremely detailed. Some of the more bizarre characters, like the Lizard Clan, are grotesque, but still appealing to the eyes. And while the script may not be as well written as, say, Final Fantasy, it\'s still easy to interpret and relate to each character.

Characters of Suikoden past make appearances in this installment and are beefed up, thanks to previous save files. It\'s not unusual to find that these characters are stronger than your current party, depending when and where you meet them. The hardcorest of fans will be pleasantly surprised to find characters from the Japanese-only Suikogaiden series.

As you accumulate more characters, your castle builds up and gets more interesting. You can even recruit characters to open shop in your castle, so you can have the latest and greatest items/armor/skills/goat porn right then and there. Notice that I didn\'t mention weapons- simply because you can\'t buy weapons. Each character has his/her own favorite weapon and merely upgrades it with a visit to the blacksmith. The blacksmith, though, might not be at a high enough \'\'level\'\' to temper your weapons, and will need better tools, of course, which you find. Likewise, a runemaster won\'t be able to affix your rune if you don\'t have an open slot for it, and even then, each rune has a different learning and casting rate to each character. The more adept at water magic, for example, will cast the spells faster and spend less points in improving their magic.

The gameplay strays far from the path of the other two installments, and doesn\'t take the stereotypical one-for-one approach. The roaming around is monotonous and troublesome, and the map screen is overly simplistic, as seen in Final Fantasy Tactics but combat has three, very different aspects. The first is your average battle system. This battle system instantly reminded me of Grandia II. The battle takes place on a 3D plane, so the characters can move around freely. But if you assigned too many characters to a specific enemy, some of your characters simply can\'t reach the enemy and will attack the nearest enemy instead, or none at all. Likewise, if a character strays too far from the rest of the party, he/she won\'t be in the radius of a certain spell. It\'s easy to understand the concept, but hard to master. Also, instead of assigning one character to one target, the six-member party is broken down into pairs. So if you assign a character to attack an enemy, both members of that pair will attack the enemy. This gets harder when you have to take gambles in the harder battles- if you assign a character to use a Rune or item, the other character of the pair will go attack the enemy on his/her own. As with previous Suikodens, if two characters have some sort of background together, they\'ll have an exclusive team attack, which can completely devastate the enemy party- or your own. Usually, these team attacks have a side effect, i.e. dizziness of one character, who may be crucial to the team\'s survival.

I have to mention that this battle system is completely random. When I say random, I mean it quite literally and not just the encounter of the enemy. On my fourth encounter since the beginning of the game, I was met with abrupt circus music. I met a monster which I only saw near the end of the game, and even then, I had more than a little trouble beating it. Of course, it wiped me out quickly on my bad encounter, but theoretically, the benefits would\'ve been endless if I won that battle. I probably would have gained infinite levels right there, therefore freezing the game, locking up my PS2, releasing Satan himself and unleashing all of Hell onto humanity. If you couldn\'t tell, this idea of fighting hard monsters at an early level was a bad one. I might as well just have started from scratch.

After winning these battles, characters are given experience and skill points. These skill points are most important to building up a character. By going to a training or education center, you can cash in these points to learn or improve skills, like Accuracy, Damage, etc. Investing more points into a specific skill will make you more adept at it, and come with greater bonuses. Some of these skills are elemental, and greatly help your Rune- think Materia of Final Fantasy VII. These magic attacks are devastating, but require time to cast, which of course, can be reduced by spending points. So devastating, in fact, that you\'re only limited to a few uses before you have to go to an inn to recharge them.

The second battle system is the duel system, where characters fight mano-a-mano, similar to the duel systems in the previous installments. Basically, it\'s \'\'Rock, Scissors, Papers\'\', but a loss on your part will bring the game to an end. An Attack is just like it says- an attack. Defend will reduce the damage of an attack, or avoid a Deathblow- a wild attack mustering all your strength. Unlike previous installments though, the duel can turn quickly accordingly to the morale gauge at the bottom of the screen. The closer the arrow-pin is to a character portrait, the lower the morale. High morale will result in an immediate counterattack after a successful defend of a deathblow. Also, unlike its predecessors, enemy actions are more unpredictable, partly because the taunts concentrate more on the characters and not the duel itself, and partly because the script isn\'t interesting enough. Not to mention, the visual flair of it all. The suspense loses a notch or two because the duelists simply walk up to each other, slash, and walk back to their original place instead of rabidly pouncing on each other. The aforementioned morale gauge adds a nice touch though.

The last battle system, of course, is the large-scale warfare. Gone is the much beloved strategy RPG system found in Suikoden II. It\'s replaced with a group combat system instead. Each unit is composed of different characters and holds a different point on the field. When a unit advances to a point with an enemy unit on it, the standard battle commences, thought it\'s more simplified and completely random. The computer takes over and makes the worst judgements, even though they\'re random. One of my characters used a skill attack on a soldier with 17 life left, even though there were more soldiers with higher vitality. Oddly enough though, most of your units overpower enemy units. This battle system is innovative, but easy and boring at the same time. You can win by a landslide if you set it on Auto.

Sadly to say, the graphics are ho-hum at best. The environment is blocky and bland, and the character animations are stiff. The character designs themselves, though, look good, and are finely textured, not showing any jagged edges. The facial expressions are simple yet understandable, à la Skies of Arcadia. The cinematography is really stunning. During the cutscenes (which all use in-game graphics by the way; it would have been nice to see some shown like animé), the camera is always placed in the best places, thus, showing the best angles of every event. The stationary camera during the regular battle system limits visibility and could use some work- it zooms up on the character about to do an attack, and follows him/her until the attack is finished. While the attack is going on, enemies who are attacking other characters can\'t be seen.

The sound is really a mixed bag, but to the extremist means. When the music sucks, it really sucks, and when it\'s good, it\'s like your ears are having a 20 minute orgasm. Some examples of the music that sucks-so-much-that-it-blows are the regular battle music, and various town music. The good ones either show immeasurable creativity and zeal, or are catchy enough to bob your head along to. Either way, they fit the mood of whatever\'s going on (a monotonous battle obviously is gonna sound like crap) and is compelling enough to import the soundtrack. The sound effects are entertaining enough and fits well- neither cartoonish nor realistic. A big complaint I have, though, is that there are no voice-overs whatsoever. I mean, c\'mon, we\'re in the 21st century and this is the PS2- it can definitely handle voice-overs. Though no voice acting is better than bad voice acting, I guess.

A few complaints I have is with the monotonousness. Playing as three different characters going through the same events is boring sometimes. And if you happen to die somewhere in the game, you might have to go through several minutes of those events again, whether it be a tough boss battle or boring cutscenes.

I was sincerely inspired by what Suikoden III taught me. I was always eager to continue with the story, play each lengthy quest, and meet more characters. Suikoden III will captivate fans and entertain casual gamers alike. Recently re-released at a measly $30, you owe yourself a king-sized beating if you don\'t get it now.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 08/08/03