Welcome to a world where you join a young hero and his friends on a quest of might and magic, as you fight your way through political schemes, corruption, revolution and mystical orbs.
Story:
Suikoden is a game loosely based on a classical Chinese novel named Shui Hu Zuhan. The novel details the trials and tribulations of 108 outlaws and it from this Konami and Suikoden borrowed the concept of the 108 Stars of Destiny. That is what I know about that.
You start by naming the young hero (his name is Tir McDohl in the novelization by Shinjiro Hori), who is the son of a great Scarlet Moon Empire general named Teo McDohl.
You begin in a castle with your father, Teo. You are beginning your role by following your fathers footsteps in the Scarlet Moon Empire's military. You and your father stands before Emperor Barbarossa where he asks your father to go on a northern campaign. The Emperor has high hopes for you and hopes that one day you might become like your father. And so your adventure begins. You start of by taking a few missions with your friends, Pahn, Cleo, Gremio and Ted, but you soon notice that there is a lot of corruption in the Empire. When the Empire goes after your best friend Ted you decide to fight back and you end up joining, and eventually becoming the leader of a rebellion army. Now you start down the path to fulfill your destiny when you travel around the land making new friends and enemies, fighting large wars, discovering mysterious runes all while fighting for justice and to protect those close to you.
Gameplay: 9,5 / 10
The gameplay is great. You get your own castle that will grow in time as you recruit other Stars of Destiny to fight by your side. And as it grows new features is unlocked like gambling, bath, storage, shops and more.
When playing you can have up to six characters assigned to your team and you are free to choose them from the 108 SoD that you have recruited. Some of the 108 SoD are not playable, but are support characters in the wars, but there are still many to choose from. You get the chance to form a team of your own will. Some characters will unlock special unite attacks when you have them in your party making them even stronger. And if that is not good enough for you, you can attach runes to the characters that can make their attacks stronger or allow you to use powerful magic to defeat your foes. The magic runes will unlock stronger magic as you level in the game.
Every character you can use in the game also has their own unique weapon that you can make stronger by taking to a blacksmith to get it sharpened and/or put rune on it to do magic damage as well, making it even more effective.
In the game there are three battle systems.
The first one is your regular well known party battles that you stumble upon when running in dungeons or the world map.
The second is One Vs One, or Dual Battle if you like, where you have three options.
1. Attack: A regular attack that can be defended against, thus the damage is halved or it can be countered by a desperate attack.
2. Defend: You defend against a regular attack and take only half damage, but if you or your enemy are on a desperate attack it will counter it and do critical damage.
3. Desperate attack: A powerful all out attack that does critical damage. Be careful, if you use it when your enemy is defending it will backfire on you.
These battles is fairly easy if you just pay attention to what your opponent is saying.
The third battle type is large scale war or army battle. Here you get to use all the characters you have recruited so far, but use them wisely. Here you can use Charge, Bow and Magic attacks and you have a forth option that allow you to do special things, from powering up to make the enemy turn to your side. These fights are not that hard as it is like a game of rock and scissors. It goes like this: Charge beats bow, bow beats magic, and magic beats charge.
One important thing to mention is that you can actually lose characters in these battles. What do I mean? They can die or just get injured. If they die they are dead, not coming back so be a bit careful and remember to save before a big battle.
Graphics: 9 / 10
This graphics of this game is good. It is the good old 2D style we all love, or at least we who know to appreciate a good game when we see it. Most doesn't seem to understand that this game is on PS1 and that for that time this was good graphics. The graphics is clean and with no rough edges.
Sound: 9 / 10
The soundtrack in this game is very good. It have it's flaws, I will admit that, but most the time it was a perfect match for the story and the smaller cut scenes.
Some final words:
I recommend this game to all fans of the RPG genre. It is a great game that really makes you want to play it over and over again. I sure did. Only sad thing is that it is very short. You can complete this game in less than 20 hours and get all the 108 SoD. Nonetheless, Suikoden is one of the best games I have played and still is.
