Suikoden Tactics

"An ok game to kill time"

Suikoden Tactics is the newest game in the too often underestimated series. Lately, with the advent of Suikoden 4, the series has fallen on some hard times. Tactics occurs in the same world as the horrendous S4, but luckily is a better game than its predecessor. Unfortunately, this isn't saying much.

Story: 5/10
The story in this game is pretty ho-hum. Main character goes with father in adventure. Cue horrible incident. Main character promises to finish father's work. Cue grand adventure. Yawn. It doesn't help that the majority of the characters aren't even remotely interesting, especially the main character, who can be a wuss at times, but more on that later. Also, many of the game's twists are given away alot earlier than when they actually occur, making this a very predictable story.

Graphics: 2/10
Easily the game's weakest point. I don't think I've seen such an ugly game in a long time. Mind you this is just my opinion, but man are they ugly and reek of laziness labeled as "art style". During conversations, many of the NPC's lack eyes. It's pretty creepy. I know I wouldn't feel comfortable talking to someone with no eyes. The in-game graphics are even worse. Sometimes it can be hard to tell the difference between characters. They just look like peachy lumps without hands. The only reason this didn't get a 1 is that the spell effects are decent.

Sound: 7/10
I don't know what the big deal is about the VA's. Personally I think they're all right, except for the main character. He sounds like a little kid. I was willing to forgive this in the beginning of the game when he IS a little kid, but a couple years later and he doesn't sound much better. Thankfully, most of the supporting cast have much better VA's, although some are quite annoying. The music in the game, however, is great.

Gameplay: 6/10
Gameplay wise, this game isn't half-bad. My biggest complaint is that there isn't too much strategy involved. Sure you could try and maneuver for team attacks, but after the first 1/4 of the game I found them to be rather pointless and time consuming, as well as a way to limit your choices of who to deploy on the battlefield. Basically, you can win virtually battle by using the appropriate elements to modify the ground, and then playing chase-the-other-guy's-rear-end with the computer. Later on in the game some of the characters hit so hard that this isn't even necessary. Just walk up to an enemy and next thing you know poof they're dead. The quest system is also quite boring...a vast majority of them require simply sending someone off and hoping their stats are high enough, or annoying fetch quests. On the upside, upgrading and leveling characters can be alot of fun, at least for me, because I'm one of those gamers who likes to see how much difference a couple levels can make, and unlike alot of other games, in tactics you can generally see quite an improvement.

Replay Value:4/10
While there is a new game plus for this game, I really don't see any reason to go back and play this again, unless you missed a character. However, it does get 2 extra points (hence the 4 instead of the 2 I originally planned to give) for the ability to skip those horrid cutscenes. Whoever put that in deserves a raise.

Overall: 24/50
Overall, I can't recommend anyone to fork out $40 dollars for this game unless you are a really big fan of SRPG's or Suikoden. While it has somethings going for it, it also has far too many things going against it. However, if you need to kill some time until better games come out, rent this game for a weekend or two.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 11/16/05