You have something in your eye...let me get it for you!
The floating house that Noah built
Precisely. This is the right time for a haircut.
Hmm, I have seen prettier villages in the Sims!
Al and Bud Bundy after 10 years of vacationing at Lake Chicamicamico
The Suikoden Motel
Is that his face or did his neck throw up...
.
108 stars of destiny served. The Suikoden series has always been one of the more niche RPG series on the market, what with its rather unconventional six-person parties, rune-based magic system, periodic strategic battles, and the need to form an army of at least 108 different characters to get the "good" ending (i.e. the one where everyone doesn't die horribly). For me, it's been one of my all-time favorites since the days when you could walk into an Electronic Boutique and buy a copy of Suikoden II for $40, instead of having to pay sausagelad65 $200 for one on eBay. Since most Japanese RPGs had begun to embrace the three-character party and the uber-religious-themed story, I enjoyed playing a game where the basic plot was a war between two countries and where I could handpick my merry band of adventurers from a massive pool of prospectives and then customize them to my heart's content. However, the last couple of installments have been, how you say, really crappy [yep, there is that famed official GameLemon terminology again, folks! - ed.], and I had begun to fear that perhaps my beloved little Suikoden would slink back to Japan, a land where people enjoy boy-bands clad in only strategically placed leaves, eating extremely poisonous fish, and therefore, presumably, ugly graphics and ungodly slow travel peppered with ridiculous amounts of random encounters [which, for fans of extreme living, can be experienced IRL simply by taking a trip to Ukraine - ed.]. The fact that no U.S re-release was planned for Suikoden I & II for the PSP served only to validate this fear. But, with the advent of Suikoden V, I heard murmurs of a return to past Suikoden form. Thankfully the medication took care of that quickly and I was soon allowed to rejoin normal society. Which was good, because Suikoden V was coming out, and I kind of wanted to play it.
Beats getting slapped by a transvestite. The curtain rises with our intrepid hero, the Prince of Falena, returning home to the capital with his entourage after visiting what was left of the town of Lordlake, a place essentially destroyed in a recent uprising. Visiting Lordlake was difficult for the young Prince, considering that it was his mother, the Queen, who destroyed it. You see, it seems Queen Arshtat has come down with a particularly bad case of "crazy," [also known as menopause in some countries - ed.] periodically fluctuating between benevolent monarch and brutal tyrant. The timing of the Queen's malady couldn't be worse, either, as the destruction of Lordlake seems to have stirred up unrest in the kingdom rather than squelched it. Currently two political factions, each organized around a particular family, vie for power; the sneaky, underhanded Barrows family, and the harsh, warmongering Republ- I mean, Godwin family. To top things off, there has been speculation that the country of Armes, which lost a war [and, apparently, its Legs - ed.] against Falena in the last decade, has begun to consolidate its strength for another expansionist push. The Prince certainly has his plate full.
While all this may seem complicated at first (probably because it is), like all Suikoden games, V takes its time introducing you to all the major players and explaining their various motivations. If you thought the four-hour intro to Kingdom Hearts II was long, you're in for a treat, as it's nearly twice that long before any major events take place in this game. So trust me, you'll be intimately familiar with all the tiles of Falena's political mosaic before you're thrown into the thick of things. Unfortunately, even when things do finally get moving, it's an even longer time before you can get into the meat and potatoes of the Suikoden series: the sodomy! I mean, recruiting all 108 Stars of Destiny......that's what I meant to say.
The gang's all here... eventually.
Every Suikoden game focuses on a war of some kind or another, with the hero and his posse on one side and a host of no-goodnicks on the other. That being the case, troops are needed, unless you're one of those sickos who gets off by having thousands upon thousands of enemy soldiers beat the tar out of you. [Or unless you are Raiden and can shoot lightning out of your ass. But we both know you can't. So there. - ed.] For all of you who aren't psychotic perverts (yes, both of you) the 108 Stars of Destiny, in all their motley glory, fit the bill nicely. Unlike many RPGs, which limit the hero's full team to something like a paltry six members (most of whom are losers), Suikoden V allows you to gather together 108 different characters to flesh out your forces. From the meekest farmer who soils himself when rushed by a rabbit with a stick, to the most grizzled warrior who enjoys biting the heads off demons, the 108 Stars of Destiny are an eclectic bunch, if nothing else. One thing that the Suikoden series has always succeeded brilliantly at (and V is no exception) is giving each of its characters unique, distinctive personalities despite many having little dialogue or screen time. Whether it's the young woman who can perfectly mimic any voice during her brilliant puppet shows but stammers uncontrollably during face-to-face discussions, or the pair of overly-dramatic knights on a quest to destroy all the world's evil, the cast of Suikoden sparkles with a degree of polish that makes all those games who can't even come up with a dozen interesting characters look like big ol' steamin' piles.
While this is all well and good, a problem manifests when it starts taking a really, really, I'm talking really [really - ed.] long time before you can start recruiting much of anybody. Now, I'm a very patient man. I've been known to play twenty or more hours of games I hate [Mike is a priceless asset to our reviewing team, I daresay - ed.], all the while maintaining a degree of optimism normally reserved for goggle-eyed, squeaky-voiced anime heroines. As hour after hour of tedium grinds by, I'm continuously certain that soon, ever so soon, the game will start getting totally awesome in a way that makes all the hours I spent being bored worthwhile. And yet, even I was getting frustrated with the fact that I simply could not find any Stars of Desiny (not even Findy McEasytolocate!), and those few that I did manage to hunt down seemed much more interested in picking their noses than in joining my noble cause. Jerks. Sure, a decent amount of characters join up automatically as part of the story, but the cool ones are the ones you find on your own, and their nowhere-to-be-foundedness was a definite letdown.
Punish me, ma, for I've been cheating. I know it says somewhere on the site that none of GameLemon's reviewers use cheat codes or walk-throughs, but I confess, before my readers and God, that I finally just broke down and got a character recruiting guide off the internet. I'm sure it's damned me to the toasty-hot flames of Hell for all eternity, but I'm also pretty sure I was going there anyway for what I did to those puppies with that cement mixer. Anyway, for anyone who has a desire to play this game (and there are certainly reasons to, which I will get into some day) I recommend you do the same. Not flatten a bunch of puppies with a truck full of wet concrete, but get a guide on where and how to get the various Stars to join your cause. The lengths to which the poor Prince of Falena is required to go to earn the respect and loyalty of some of these idiots is truly absurd, especially considering that, in past games, all you usually had to do was just find them and talk to them. In this game, however, you will not be able to figure out how to find these guys on your own. Just trust daddy on that one, ok? And, with the rate of random encounters, you definitely will not want to be hunting all of East Nowhere's Ville looking for them.
The encounters aren't so random if you know you're going to be attacked every three steps. Yes, Suikoden games have always been plagued by an unpleasant amount of random encounters, but they have always been saved by the fact that the encounters themselves were, unlike grampa's bowel movements, relatively quick and painless. However, Suikoden V has, for some reason, decided to make them somewhat more taxing (just like grampa's bowel movements!). Now, I'm not talking about Dragon Quest VIII or Wild ARMs: Alter Code F level of difficulty, but considering how many there are, the encounters are just a little bit too hard and a little bit too long. [Yes, that's a bad thing. This is random encounters, not male pride we are talking about here, m'k? - ed.] As the game progresses and you begin to accumulate more characters, you can assemble some fairly devastating parties capable of ripping through the random encounters like a fat guy at an Old Country Buffet. But in the beginning of the game, when the plot is already dragging and you're as shorthanded on party members as the Evangelical Christians for Pornography club, the high rate of random encounters just makes things even more grueling.
While we're on the topic of things that aren't so great, I might as well talk about the strategic battles. One of Suikoden's other gimmicks is that, interspersed with dungeon crawling and character recruiting, there will periodically be large strategic battles where the opposing armies clash. In every Suikoden, these battles are handled differently, and in V they play out in real-time, with allied and enemy units advancing across essentially flat maps. Battles take place on both land and sea, but they basically boil down to elaborate rock-paper-scissors matches, with each unit having distinct advantages against and weaknesses to specific other units (i.e. infantry clobbers archers, archers wail on cavalry, and cavalry pummels infantry, then pees all over the corpses). This works fine in practice, but the real-time aspect of battles usually ends up causing all units to clump together in the center of the map in a wild free-for-all, with little to no strategy involved. Also, since your characters only offer flat stat boosts to units regardless of what level they're at or what equipment they have, there's never much of an incentive to level up any of your massive horde with the exception of those you regularly use in your party.
But as long as I've got Sialeeds's massive rack by my side, I'm sure I'll make it through. It says a lot about the game, though, when even with that laundry list of flaws I've mentioned, it's still fairly enjoyable. [Could it be? Have we finally gotten to the good parts?!!! - ed.] The story is paced kind of like a tiny snowball being rolled down a hill: it starts off painfully slow and unimpressive, but gradually, almost without you really noticing, it begins to gather momentum, until suddenly it's the size of a house, flattening kids in snowsuits, dogs, and vans full of middle-school students being driven to the mall. When that happens you'll start to feel really invested in your characters and their battle to restore peace to the beleaguered kingdom of Falena. You'll get really excited every time another warrior, or hell, even just some wino who stands around drinking all day, decides to add their sword (or half-empty bottle of Wild Turkey, as the case may be) to your cause. This is a pretty long game, so even though it takes time for things to get moving, you still have a lot of game left once it does.
And even though the random encounters are far too frequent, and at times agonizingly long, the actual fighting is pretty engaging. Being able to field six fighters at a time (and you can have four more in reserve) gives you an amazing degree of control over how you want to fight your battles. [I recommend a carefully balanced strategy of fish-hooking and eye gouging, topped with a crotch-biting finish - ed.] Plus, you'll periodically learn various formations which allow you to alter the, well, the formation that your characters fight in, giving them various stat boosts and access to special moves, Your gang also gains points they can utilize to upgrade their skills at training centers throughout the game, therefore rewarding you for putting up with all the stupid killer bunnies and monster plants. Nothing is reward enough to tolerate the singing elves, but that's another issue entirely.
In the end, Suikoden V may not be the perfection that series fans have hoped for since they finished playing Suikoden III, and it may not be the flashy treat that fans of Final Fantasy or Xenosaga have hoped for (the reason I haven't really said anything about the graphics or sound is because there isn't much worth mentioning), but for those in the mood for a fairly enjoyable RPG that rewards the (very) patient, it should suffice. Maybe next time we'll get that perfect Suikoden. I have some ideas that I think would be good, but I can never get through to the president of Konami when I call. I say, "Hey, I want to talk to the president about Suikoden!" but they just keep saying, "This is the Komak residence, there's no president here, and if you call this number one more time I'm going to find you and strangle you to death with your own small intestine." Nice try, Konami, but I'm wise to your trickery.
On Sun, Sep 30, 2007, 06:06 PM complainy mcconplainer said:
editor is too intrusive in this review. keep it short, sweet and very rare. like sex with an a-list escort.
.
Summary: A step in the right direction for the ailing Suikoden series, but two steps would have been nice.
Already played it? Trade it for another game at
Systems: Playstation 2
Genre: RPG
Setting: The Queendom of Falena.
Mood: Epic and normally upbeat.
Story: Amidst the backdrop of warring political factions, a threat of invasion, and the Queen's growing madness, the Prince of Falena must grow from a meek, politically pointless individual into the leader of a united nation. Zaniness ensues.
Graphics: Passable. But why they hell does the camera have to be so zoomed out all the time? Characters on the screen normally look like little colored blobs.
Music/Sound: Reminiscent of older Suikoden tunes and relatively unobtrusive. However, and maybe it's just me, one of the default menu sounds consistently made my ears pop. Weird.
Voice Acting: Solid
Script/Dialog: Good.
Similar Games: Suikoden, Suikoden II, Suikoden III... you get the idea.
Gameplay:
Strengths: A complex, intriguing story, a great cast, and an engaging battle system.
Weaknesses: The story takes a really long time to get in gear, random encounters are extremely frequent and lengthy, and the strategy sections aren't really all that strategic.
Depth: With 108 possible characters to find, you've certainly got a lot of things to do.
Length: 50+ hours.
Pace: Painfully slow in the beginning, but it picks up speed towards the middle sections.
Difficulty: Relatively easy for Suiko-veterans, perhaps not as much so for novitiates.
Control: It's a turn-based RPG. What control issues could there really be?
Learning Curve: You should have things pretty firmly in hand by the end of the lengthy introductory segments.
Replayability: Chances are you're probably not going to want to play all the way through it again in the near future.
Will keep you up until (a.k.a Fun
Factor): You recruit the current batch of characters you are able to recruit or you get sick of random encounters.
Fav. Character: Richard, who despite looking incredibly unimpressive, is hands-down the games most brutal fighter, and Chisato, because she's adorable.
Instant Classic: Not compared to Suikoden I-III, but it certainly trumps IV and Tactics.
Publisher: Konami
Developer: Konami
Release Date: 2006-03-21
Players: 1
Multiplayer: Nope
ESRB: Teen
Target Audience: Fans of Suikoden games pining for a return to the style of the earlier iterations.
Recommended For: Patient gamers who aren't expecting Suikoden II or III quality.
Not Recommended for: The impatient, those who demand flashy eye-candy in their games, and those who don't want to play a Suikoden game that's not as good as II or III.
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
| 
| 
| 
