Suikoden Tierkreis Review
Suikoden Tierkreis is the latest addition to the popular Suikoden series. As with the old games this game will have you trying to collect 108 characters scattered, some hidden, throughout the land. As is the drill with the other games you will discover a base that will grow and change as you collect characters. The new twist in this game is that there are portals to other worlds, and you will meet other versions of characters from parellel universes.
The graphics of course had to be simplified for the move to the DS, but it didn't lose too much. The characters seem to have the general modeling of all the MySims games. For those who don't know what those are, basically your character is going to be squat and a bit cutesy. The environments look great, and the use of a menu select to quickly jump between areas in a town looks polished.
The music is basically what you'd expect from this series. There are some songs that sound like remixes from the old game, but that might just be me. The voices are a bit of an issue. Its wierd but there are some characters, when they speak, that sound like someone accidentally have them talking at 1.5 speed. This isn't the case for every character, but it does happen.
The controls kind of disappoint me. Here the game is on the DS, but trying to incorporate the stylus into gameplay distracts more than it helps, and as a result this game becomes a game that is just played on two screens that you're not going to need to touch.
The gameplay is this. You are an orphan that was raised in a small village. You and your friends are growing up as protectors of the town. One day you are given a mission to prove that you're ready for duty and are sent out to kill some rodent like creatures. That is when you run into a strange book. That strange book changes not only your life but 108 different characters throughout the game. Hidden in the books is some kind of story, or vision that you don't quite understand. All of a sudden the world looks much different, and so you and your friends go off to discover what all has changed. This sounds like a good story, and in parts it is. There are some characters and sequences that might grate on the nerves, but overall you're looking at a pretty solid game.
If you liked any of the games in the past, you're going to find that this game will fill that void left by the absence of the true series since the PlayStation 2's last game. This game, if you're willing to put in the time can be a gem, and it can also satisfy the hunger of just playing a good RPG. This game gets a 9.1 out of 10.