RPG Rewind

So I’m now finished with Dragon Quest VIII in just a little over 62 hours. It was a great, great game. One of the best I’ve played and I hope to have my review up in the next couple of days.

Two things I want to say now that I’m done. First, the strategy guide is absolutely fucking useless. It’s amazing that they had the audacity to release a strategy guide that is almost completely devoid of strategies or guidance. They say in the introduction that they didn’t want to spoil anything. Great. Thanks. If I don’t want to spoil anything I’m probably not going to be using a strategy guide. But even if they don’t put plot spoilers in the guide, there are still ways to include strategies, a walkthrough, hints on defeating the freaking bosses, something. Instead, we get a picture book with lots of lists and a couple of sentences here and there. What a lazy, useless money-grab. For my occasional walkthrough needs I ended up using Adagio’s well-done walkthrough. The official guide sat on my shelf and collected dust.

Second, I have a funny story about the final boss. I’d tried to defeat him once and got wiped out. I then tried again and got wiped out. I decided I’d give him a third try and if I couldn’t get him then I’d level a bit and work on improving my characters. So on the third try I was doing well. I’d managed to give him a good chunk of damage with my monster team and when my characters got to him we kept our healing up pretty well and were able to quickly resurrect characters that were killed. But the battle went on for a long time and I started to think that I wasn’t going to make it. I had several characters that were on low health and I needed to heal, especially Jessica who was near-death. When choosing my commands, I meant to select her Caduceus ability to heal her but for some reason I selected Attack instead. There was nothing to do at that point, the actions were committed. My other characters started healing themselves and when Jessica’s turn came up, she hit the boss with her staff, did something like 25 points of damage and killed him! My sons who were watching me all started whooping and laughing and I just was dumbfounded that I not only didn’t die but that my weakest melee fighter delivered the killing blow. Good stuff.

Anyway, great game and I’m glad I’m done with it. I know there’s the extra trials and I may give them a shot sometime but for now I’m going to move on to something else. I’ve been wanting to play Dreamfall: the Longest Journey for awhile so I may do that to break things up. It’s not exactly a RPG but I’ll bend the rules a bit as I want to play it and it seems like it’d be a fun game to write about. Plus I may be able to figure out how to take screenshots which would be nice.

I can now turn into a bird and fly anywhere. Pretty sweet, huh? It’s fun exploring places I couldn’t reach before. It also got me thinking about how many RPG’s start you out on foot, then give you a boat and eventually give you some way to fly. Boats and airships are fine but what I really want is to drive a Porsche.

I also think I’m getting near the end of the game as I’m hitting boss fights left and right. I just defeated Marcello and now the sky is a funky shade of red.

I never even got to play Iron Lore’s Titan Quest and the Immortal Throne expansion before they shut down. Reading something like this by Michael Fitch at THQ is both fascinating and also makes me very sad for the sake of PC gaming:

So, ILE shut down. This is tangentially related to that, not why they shut down, but part of why it was such a difficult freaking slog trying not to. It’s a rough, rough world out there for independent studios who want to make big games, even worse if you’re single-team and don’t have a successful franchise to ride or a wealthy benefactor. Trying to make it on PC product is even tougher, and here’s why.

Piracy. Yeah, that’s right, I said it…

Titan Quest did okay. We didn’t lose money on it. But if even a tiny fraction of the people who pirated the game had actually spent some god-damn money for their 40+ hours of entertainment, things could have been very different today. You can bitch all you want about how piracy is your god-given right, and none of it matters anyway because you can’t change how people behave… whatever. Some really good people made a seriously good game, and they might still be in business if piracy weren’t so rampant on the PC. That’s a fact.

I did buy legitimate copies through Steam so I tried to do my part. There’s plenty of people who play the game and don’t pay for it. I paid for it and haven’t played it yet but I don’t think that balances things out very much.

For some reason, DQ8 makes me want to explore. I spent an hour last night just wandering around the countryside. I activated the spell that makes weaker monsters avoid you so it was an hour without fighting. Just Ratch (that’s what I call him - Ratch) walking around, looking at stuff. I found a couple of chests laying around and I opened them. I found a structure of some kind on a steep hill. I can’t figure out how to get to it but I’m certain that I’ll wind up there. I sailed a bit. Mostly I just wanted to see stuff.

And that’s the beautiful thing about this game - there’s lots of stuff to see if you want to. Or you can just follow the main plot and stay focused. Insert Credit’s review sums it up quite well:

Dragon Quest VIII’s world map is a hero. It is large, and wide, and persistent. It does not let you go. There are paths to take from each town to the next, and there are countless things that catch your eye and pull you off the path and into a little grove where you’re then killed by gorillas with clubs. Sometimes you find a river emptying into the ocean from a continent you can’t access; you sail up the river between a few fjords, and there, carved into the side of the rock, are the letters “C-A-S-I-N-O.” Inside is, well, a casino. Sometimes you might be an hour into a foot-voyage from one town to its neighboring castle, only to encounter a special monster that can be killed for bounty-hunting purposes. You fight him, are significantly weakened in the process, and then continue on, only to find that you can get up the mountainside the way you’d though you could. Eventually, you find an alternate route up, only to be told at the gates that you look suspicious and aren’t welcome. Nearly out of magic points with which to heal yourself, you’re stuck in the middle of nowhere. It’s at these helpless moments that the game feels like a brilliant piece of work.

 

The instruction manual warns you, on page one, “Try not to get lost.” It is not chiding you about your poor sense of direction. It is sincerely warning you that this game is staggering in its scope.

I couldn’t agree more. It’s quite clear that the developers lovingly crafted this place to play. One of my favorite things to do the last couple of days is to roam around looking for Infamous Monsters to fight. You never quite know where you’ll find one so you have to go looking for them. When I do see one off in the distance, I’m happy to see him but I’m also happy just exploring and seeing what’s out there.

I bought Dragon Quest VIII within a week or two of its release. I had never really played a Dragon Quest game before, with the exception of the first one which I did finish. I was excited for DQ8 and tore into it as soon as I got it and played compulsively for about 20 hours. That seemed like a long time to me until I realized that I was not even halfway through the game. Maybe not even a quarter of the way through. Other games came along and I let DQ8 sit on the shelf for two years.

But the thing is, I wanted to play it. I found myself thinking about it from time to time. I wondered where the story was going to go. I’d remember a dungeon or some of the enemies and I’d really want to get back to it. So when I rearranged my gaming area so I could have easy access to my Sony Wega CRT, I hooked my PS2 up right away and began playing once again. That was roughly two weeks ago and I’m now over 40 hours into DQ8. We just made it to Orkutsk if that tells you where I am in the game.

And I’m completely hooked at this point. The game is so polished, so beautiful, so streamlined and fun that I can’t see stopping until I finish the game.

This blog was wandering aimlessly out there, hampered by my lack of knowledge and fear that I would inadvertently do something to mess up the htaccess cron sql admin type-thingy and set fire to my website. I’d made the decision originally to do a Fantastico install of Wordpress instead of just taking the time to figure out how to do it manually and I was chafing under my slavery to the Fantastico gods. I also (and shamefully) didn’t know how to properly back up my website. Because of all this, I moved my content over to RPG Replay and had thoughts of just continuing it there. RPG Replay is fine but it never really seemed like my own place so this weekend I decided to take control of the situation.

I completely reset everything on my website and figured out how to do a fresh Wordpress install all by myself. You might be surprised to know that it really wasn’t that difficult. I found a theme I (mostly) like and I can keep the cool candle graphic that I like so much. The current theme does seem prone to give me errors so I may switch it if I can’t figure out what’s going on. I’ve decided to leave my original blog content over at RPG Replay except for my reviews, which I liked so I moved them over here.

It remains to be seen what I end up doing with this site. I still want to play through the major Playstation 1 RPG’s but I’m also working my way through some more recent RPG’s and I’ll probably write about them too. My current addiction? I’m over 40 hours into Dragon Quest VIII. I’ll write more about that later.

Edit: I settled on a theme I really like. It took awhile but I found that Mandigo does just about everything I want and gives me lots of options to work with. And it seems to be very stable and looks amazing.

When I was reading about classic RPG’s I kept hearing people refer warmly to the Lunar games as a landmark series. Now that I’ve finished both of them I can see why. Here are my final thoughts on Lunar 2.

Story

Lunar 1 was characterized by a strong story and Lunar 2 follows suit. A good RPG needs engaging characters and the creators of Lunar have again done a great job bringing these animated sprites to life and making them seem like people. The main story centers around Hiro (okay it’s a stupid name - no question) and Lucia, a mysterious girl he finds one day. She initially is detached and weird and hard to like but as the game progresses we see her become more “human” and begin to develop feelings for Hiro. Other characters go through similar transformations: Jean comes to terms with her past as a secret assassin and looks forward to her future as a dancer (!), Ronfar deals with his guilt and becomes less of a randy goat and Leo changes from an adversary to a friend. Even Ghaleon is redeemed at the end of the game.

The plot wasn’t as strong as the characters however. It basically boiled down to “save the world from the evil being” and often involved a lot of annoying side quests and filler. I think the long initial journey to Pentagulia and the later quest for the four dragons could have been shortened without losing much and it would have resulted in a more focused story.

But the fun of a game like Lunar 2 isn’t in the grand, sweeping plot but more in the small, individual moments. And Lunar 2 was filled with a lot of these. Yes some of the dialog is cheesy and that does detract from the story. While Working Designs did a great overall job bringing the game to us, I really could have done without some of the jarring humor and references to 1990’s current events.

The other exceptional thing about Lunar 2 is the way it follows its prequel and maintains some of the same settings and characters. This really is a game that is good by itself but becomes great when you are aware of the many connections between the two games. I especially enjoyed seeing what happened to Luna, meeting Ramus’ descendants and finding Nall again. It was also fun to travel to many of the same locations and see how they’d changed over the years. I wish more RPGs found a way to continue the story from earlier games in the series.

Overall, Lunar 2’s story was great. I give it an 8 out of 10.

Presentation

One of the first things I noticed about Lunar 2 are the animated cutscenes that are sprinkled throughout the game. They really are well done and serve to flesh out the characters and important story points. As I moved through the game and would approach an important plot point, I knew there was going to be an anime cutscene and I found myself looking forward to them. I actually wouldn’t mind watching an anime series with expanded animation from Lunar 2. It’s really top-notch and adds a lot to the game.

The other thing that I noticed about the game are the 2D graphics and sprites. The visuals are warm and bright with lots of vibrant color. The character sprites are well-modeled and animated. I always knew which character I was looking at from a quick glance at the screen. Other aspects of the graphics were equally well-done. Towns were busy and filled with people who all had something to say. Dungeons were intricate and appropriately creepy and the overworld was filled with lots of interesting things that made me want to investigate more. I do wish the game gave you an option of a large overview map with town names as it could be difficult to find a particular place you needed to visit.

Music, as always, was exceptional. Noriyuki Iwadare has again created a soundtrack that I wanted to listen to and the fact that it was available on CD as part of the game was outstanding. At no point did any of the music become irritating, though I never mind a change of battle music halfway through the game. Any song become irritating after you’ve heard it a hundred or more times. Many of the songs were catchy and I’d find myself humming them at times during the day. Lunar 1 did include a “music video” during the game with Luna singing on the ship about her life and her future. I found myself waiting for something similar in the sequel but its absence is far from a deal-breaker.

Voice acting remains questionable. While many of the actors did a fine job during important scenes, the constant “I’ll take care of this” or “You need a spanking” during battles got old really quickly. I wish there was a way to turn them off or at least make them happen only occasionally as they did become quite irritating after awhile.

Game Arts and Working Designs have again created a game that is beautiful to look at and listen to. I give Lunar 2’s presentation 9 out of 10.

Gameplay

Gameplay in Lunar 2 is a mixed bag. There are some elements that are a lot of fun and others that could be improved. In general, I liked the combat in Lunar 2. The ability to see enemies before you battle them is always welcome and means that there are no random battles. This is one area where Lunar was ahead of its time as the developers could balance the game, knowing you’d be at or near a certain level for some of the major fights. Well most of the time anyway. The combat system is good and I liked the ability to position your characters and how they and the enemies moved around the battlefield. This is the precursor to the combat system in Grandia which was refined to near-perfection.

Lunar 2 is not an easy game. Many of the dungeons are quite difficult and some of the bosses are brutal. I did find I had to spend a play session or two just grinding to make sure I could handle some of the tough fights. I do think the difficulty was more consistent than in the first game which would often surprise me with an out-of-the-blue nasty fight I was completely unprepared for. I would have liked the ability to customize my characters more. I did like equipping rings and crests which gave them new abilities but some way to directly influence the characters’ growth would have also been nice.

The game had some problems with pacing. My total playtime was around 33 hours which isn’t bad but there were some parts that seemed to drag, particularly the initial journey to Pentagulia and the quest to find the four dragons. I would have appreciated a shorter, better-paced game. Minigames were almost entirely absent which was fine with me and would have felt like padding. I think Lunar 1 was better-paced though I suppose some complained that it was too short.

I like the fact that there is an Epilogue to play after the game is finished and I looked forward to resolving the story but I really had my fill of Lunar 2’s gameplay by that point. I might return to it sometime but I didn’t feel compelled to spend more time grinding.

Overall I give Lunar 2’s gameplay a slightly above-average 6 out of 10.

Conclusion

I’m happy that I played the Lunar games. While I liked the first Lunar better than the second in some ways, Lunar 2 seemed to refine and improve many of the first game’s weaknesses. They are both extremely well-done games that are lovely to look at, listen to and a lot of fun to play. They also create very memorable characters that you want to spend time with.

Final score: 7.7 out of 10

I’m finally finished with Final Fantasy VII, just in time for the 10th anniversary of its North American release. It’s an important and well-loved game and this was my second time through the entire game. In my review below I’ve tried to be as objective and fair as possible about this classic game. So how does it hold up for its 10th birthday?

Story

FFVII has a huge and sometimes confusing story. It sprawls across three discs and is filled with love, sadness, revenge and betrayal. What immediately stands out about the game are its characters. With the transition to the Playstation, Square kept the emphasis on a large cast of interesting characters that had worked so well for them in Final Fantasy VI. Cloud, Aeris and Sephiroth are almost iconic in RPG history. Every character had hints of greater depth and an interesting backstory. Some of this was force-fed to you but other character secrets, and even entire characters, were hidden and left for you to find by exploring.

I generally liked the characters and found them intriguing. I wanted to know more about them and the game was set up to reveal information about them bit by bit as it progressed. Cloud was mysterious but clearly grew during the game as did Barret, Tifa and the others. I thought killing Aeris early in the game was a masterstroke. They had set her up as such an innocent and likable person and to take her out of the game so unexpectedly served to crystallize the remainder of the game. I really think the game was at it’s best after Aeris’ death. And I remember the first time through thinking that if she’d died then I really couldn’t be sure other characters would make it through to the end. It added to the tension and focused my hate for Sephiroth.

And what a great set of villains FF7 had. At the start of the game you thought you were just going to be fighting Shinra and its minions the entire time. As you followed the trail of blood in the Shinra headquarters, you began to realize that they weren’t nearly as important as Sephiroth. He served as the perfect foil for the game: certainly evil and ruthless but almost sympathetic as you learned about his history and how he came to be. He’s a popular villain and for good reason.

I also loved the setting. While it was a shift away from a pure fantasy setting, I thought the combination of the industrial and magical worked great and continued the same trend that was present in Final Fantasy VI.

My only complaint about the story in FF7 is that it can be almost too complex. There’s a line between mysterious and intriguing on the one side and muddled and confusing on the other. FF7 crossed the line a couple of times. The whole Zack subplot was weird and seemed unnecessary. The relationship of Jenova and Sephiroth was revealed bit by bit but still was confusing to me. There were times I felt I needed to take notes so I could remember who everyone was and how they were related. Dr. Gast was related to Aeris how? Vincent’s lover was Sephiroth’s father? Hojo experimented on Cloud and Zack? Relatively minor characters who were often mentioned for just a couple of lines apparently had major roles to play and little of this was made clear. It was easier to see the big picture during a replay but the first time through I was pretty confused.

Though unnecessarily confusing, Final Fantasy VII had a great cast and a deep, involving plot. I give FF7’s story an 8 out of 10.

Presentation

Final Fantasy VII was a great showcase for the power of disc-based consoles in general, and the Playstation in particular. The game looked so good at the time that it’s hard to fully appreciate now in our era of high-definition graphics. Transitioning to polygonal characters on rendered backgrounds gave the game a distinctive and modern look that was stunning compared to its 2D contemporaries. Square had mastered the ability to animate and make believable characters from its sprite-based games and there was some concern that polygons would be a step backward. I think that was unfounded. The simple but distinctive look of each of the characters, their animations and expressions worked well and set a standard for future Final Fantasy games.

As did the inclusion of full-motion video. This was apparently one of the deal-breakers between Square and Nintendo and it’s hard to imagine a Final Fantasy game now without stunning full-motion visuals. The FMV’s in FF7, especially the opening movie, announced that Square was doing something different with its role-playing games. It clearly took their games in a more cinematic direction. While the FMV’s look a bit rough today and could probably be replicated in real-time by an Xbox 360 or Playstation 3, at the time they were gorgeous. I remember playing the game partly to see what the next movie would be. Also notable were the many times the game would seamlessly transition from FMV to rendered background, again perfectly demonstrated by the opening as the train pulls up and Cloud gets out and suddenly you realize he is now playable. It served to further blur the line between movie and game.

Final Fantasy VII has one of my favorite video game scores. Uematsu’s soundtrack is varied, frequently amazing and full of hooks that dig his songs into your brain. I can’t count the number of times the last month or two that I’ve found myself humming Aeris’ theme or the overworld theme. They help to set the mood and punctuate the developments in the story. I really can’t think of any complaints about the music other than the annoying scene in Junon where Cloud is in disguise with the Shinra troops and the music just goes on and on endlessly repeating the same irritating theme. That easily fades into the background though and the rest of the music is perfect.

One valid criticism of FF7 is the translation, which was frankly awful. Some lines (and they tended to be Barret’s) were so clumsy they were cringe-inducing. Square could have done a much better job here as it really did distract from the game and often distanced me from the characters. To their credit, they made good translations a priority for their games after FF7.

Final Fantasy VII is often criticized for emphasizing style over substance. It was and still is a gorgeous game and gets a much-deserved 9 out of 10 for presentation.

Gameplay

Final Fantasy VII was a very fun game to play with just a few exceptions. The game really does restrict you in the beginning: you only have limited areas you can visit, your characters don’t have any really interesting abilities and this doesn’t really change until several hours into the game. Once you get out of Midgar and to the overworld map things open up a bit but the game doesn’t really shine until later.

I liked the materia system. The ability to make any character a tank or a healer or a thief was nice and it let me strategize how I wanted to play the game. Levelling-up materia and gaining new abilities was an important hook that propelled me to keep playing. Once I had Cure 2 I just had to have Regen and I’d keep fighting random battles until I did. Along with the limit break system, the materia system kept things moving forward. I always felt that there was going to be something cool and interesting if I kept playing and that gave the game a very addictive quality.

The mini-games were hit-or-miss for me. If I never again have to figure out the correct sequence of button presses to get Tifa out of the gas chamber I’ll die a happy man. Others were similarly irritating and often I just wanted to move on with the game. There were some cool and optional parts of the game such as the chocobo breeding and racing and the battle arena. Knowing each character had ultimate weapons and limit breaks that were out there somewhere made things intriguing.

So much of the game almost requires a strategy guide in hand while you play. I mostly played through the first time with no help and only on a replay did I realize how much I missed. This is a good and bad thing as it definitely lends the game some replay value but can also be frustrating for those that don’t want to replay a game that takes over 40 hours to finish.

Battles were fun. I felt like I had a lot of options in any battle ranging from regular attacks to spells to limit breaks to summons to stealing things to setting up counter-attack materia and elemental attack combinations. I like having choices available and there were a lot of different ways to defeat both regular enemies as well as the bosses. The random battles seemed to happen frequently enough to keep things interesting but not so often that I was frustrated.

Overall I give Final Fantasy VII’s gameplay an excellent 9 out of 10.

Summary

I really liked Final Fantasy VII. While it has its faults, it managed to continue the same gameplay strengths from its 16-bit days and combine them with a set of outstanding visuals, a great soundtrack and a fun story. It justly deserves its status as a landmark game.

Final score: 8.7 out of 10

Roughly two months later and I’m finished with Wild Arms. How does it stack up compared to the rest of the RPG’s I’ve played?

Story

Frankly, Wild Arms’ story was very weak. I did love the wild-west meets fantasy/sci-fi setting and it sorta reminded me of a cross between Trigun and Firefly. But cool as the setting was, it wasn’t enough to carry the game. The overarching plot was a group of extraterrestrial demons who want to take over the world and the three adventurers who stopped them. Not the most original storyline out there.

It started out strong with lots of unanswered questions and several interesting characters. Gradually, however, the game’s story got lost and there were whole sections in the middle of the game where I really had little idea what was happening and why. It was not unusual to be going into a dungeon to seek the Bright Widget of Importance but not remember why it was Important. Things did come together a bit at the end and the story definitely accelerated but by that point my interest had waned.

The characters weren’t much better. At the beginning I was intrigued by these three people and wanted to know more about them. They all did have interesting stories but again I would have liked to see more more happen with them. There was very little interaction between the trio and there were very few moments where their personalities developed outside of their adventurer role.

It’s sad that the one character I liked the most and wanted to know more about was Jack’s little rodent-friend Hanpan. The one part of the game where you got to play as Hanpan was genuinely fun but too short.

I would have liked to have seen a lot more done with Wild Arms’ characters and story. I give it a mediocre 4 out of 10.

Gameplay

Gameplay is king. If an RPG doesn’t have compelling gameplay then I might as well be watching a movie or reading a book. A game with a mediocre story and presentation can be completely redeemed by great gameplay. Suikoden was a great example of this.

In Wild Arms, gameplay was mostly full of irritations. I did like how each of the characters had different abilities that they could call on to defeat traps, open chests or reveal new areas to explore. Rudy’s bomb and Jack’s grappling hook were always fun to use. It did add some “action” elements to the game but I thought it was a positive addition.

Combat was another matter completely and was definitely the weakest element of Wild Arms for me. My complaints about combat are that it was boring and ultimately pointless, and that there was way too much of it. Combat in Wild Arms serves to give you experience points and money and really nothing more. Compare that to Grandia or one of the Final Fantasy games where you have abilities you can improve the more you use them or skills you can learn during combat. In Wild Arms, combat just served to shovel buckets of XP at your party. And when they levelled up I had no control over what improved or how they developed. It made them stronger but not in any way that I could directly influence. Without that hook there was little reason to seek out battles and lots of reasons to avoid them.

And I really wanted to avoid battles by the end of the game. They always felt sluggish and seemed to take far too long to resolve. I resorted to counting random battles at one point but I gave up doing that because they happened so often. I literally almost stopped playing because I was so frustrated with the battles. I often avoided exploring side areas because I knew I’d be drawn into more random battles. The one spell that let you avoid them also turned your character invisible so it was difficult to navigate and was a drain on your MP reserves to have to keep recasting it.

Wild Arms also suffered from the “What am I supposed to do now?” problem. Many times I’d wander around from town to town talking to people trying to get some clue where I was supposed to go or what to do. I hate that in games and I frequently had to consult a FAQ to get past those points.

It also didn’t help that about halfway through the game you ran out of places to buy improved weapons and armor. I’d occasionally find some in the dungeons but I often didn’t have much to spend my money on other than upgrading Rudy’s ARMs.

Gameplay was the weakest and most frustrating aspect of Wild Arms. I give it a very sad 3 out of 10.

Presentation

Wild Arms is primarily a 2D sprite-based RPG. As such it looked fine compared to most SNES or Genesis-era games with the possible exception of some of the greats like Chrono Trigger. I suppose I should expect more since the Playstation was capable of more than those 16-bit systems but I tend to like 2D games and I thought it held up well. Characters were detailed enough and everything was bright and clear. When you’d walk through a puddle of water in a town you’d leave footprints. Little touches like that were nice.

What didn’t work so well were the 3D battle scenes. It was a different effect but ultimately failed to impress me. I wish they’d kept to a 2D battle field or else put forth the effort to make the 3D system look nicer.

I appreciated that there was no voice acting in Wild Arms as it tends to be poorly done and easy to criticize. There was an opening full-motion video that looked great and I watched it a couple of times but there were no intermediate or ending cinematics.

Music was generally great. Many of the tunes were catchy and all seemed to have a Spaghetti Western flavor to them. I would rate the music as excellent overall but the battle theme spoiled it. From the heavy metal screech that led into the battle to the repetitive nature of the song I came to hate the battle theme. I wish they would have changed it halfway through the game as some games have done.

Wild Arms gets a 5 out of 10 for presentation.

Summary

Overall I’m glad I played Wild Arms. It has an important place in the RPG Hall of Fame but it’s not without its faults. While the game started off strong, by the end I was glad to be done with it as its weak points became clearer and clearer. I really can’t see playing any of the sequels.

Final score: 4 out of 10

It’s time to review Suikoden, the first entry in a series that has spawned four sequels. Now that I’m finished with it, how does Suikoden’s story, gameplay and presentation hold up under close examination?

Story

Suikoden has a very basic story. That’s not unusual as most console RPG’s fall into certain basic cliches and often tell the same basic story. This time around there’s an evil empire that must be overthrown and so most of the game your main character (I named him Bob) heads the Liberation Army and gradually chips away at the Empire’s territories until there’s a final, climactic confrontation.

That’s fine but Suikoden doesn’t really spend much time developing its story. Part of it is the fact that there are possibly 108 characters you can recruit. I didn’t even attempt to get them all and I ended up with maybe 60 or 70 characters total. Some are mere placeholders (insert Item Appraiser here, insert Weapon Upgrader there) while others are central to the narrative. My issue is that with all the characters available I never really felt like I got to know or enjoy any of them. Even the main character who had to face his Imperial General father in battle never really stood out in any meaningful way. He was betrayed by friends and other friends died and I didn’t even blink.

I don’t require a game to be a whiny emo-fest but I do like to have some motivation to continue playing. The story in Suikoden wasn’t much of a motivation for me and also didn’t lend itself much to blogging on the fine points of it’s ever-twisting narrative.

Overall, I give Suikoden’s story a 4.

Gameplay

Suikoden was a fun game to play. While the story never wow’ed me, I kept playing it because I was almost always having a great time.

One of the nice things about Suikoden was the wide variety of things to do. There were standard dungeons to explore, bosses to fight, one-on-one duels, massive army battles with thousands of soldiers, characters to recruit, opportunities to gamble and a home base to expand and improve. I never felt bored in Suikoden as it seemed there were always new gameplay elements being introduced. And then the game was over in under 22 hours so it never overstayed its welcome.

I really liked the combat in Suikoden. If I wanted to I could choose Free Will during combat and my characters auto-attacked with their physical attacks. I could cast spells as well and these were typically very useful. Combat, including boss battles, was never too difficult. I always felt I was moving forward in Suikoden and not stopped dead in my tracks by a too-hard boss fight.

Character recruitment was a mixed bag. Most of it smelled of busy work for me so I spent little time focusing on it. I can see why some people feel they’ve “gotta catch ‘em all” but I’m not that sort of person. I did find the ever-developing base intriguing at first but ultimately became annoying. There were four floors, a roof, a basement and a sub-basement. On top of that there were numerous side passages with bedrooms and other separate areas. By the end of the game navigating my base to accomplish a particular task became a huge pain.

Also a pain was the inventory system. I hated the fact that the game would occasionally force you to use a particular character. When that happened I would have to go to the vault, unequip my equipment from my frequently-used character, then equip them on the new character and then repeat this process when that new character left or was no longer required. Fortunately the game accelerated the gaining of levels for underdeveloped characters so it was pretty easy to keep the needed people near each other in levels.

There were some occasional irritants but overall I give Suikoden’s gameplay a solid 7.

Presentation

Suikoden was one of the first Playstation RPG’s and it shows. The graphics were 2D sprite-based which I have no particular issue with as long as they are well-done. Unfortunately in Suikoden the visuals were only average. The only time I can remember thinking “Wow. That looks nice.” was the first time the battle shifted to a pseudo-3D field that zoomed in and out. Otherwise the visuals in Suikoden were merely serviceable. Fortunately there were no full-motion movies other than the intro, which was (again) average in quality and only made me want to watch it once.

I generally liked the music in Suikoden but I doubt I’ll be humming any of the tunes next week. They seemed to fade into the background during gameplay with the exception of the song that played while you were walking around in your home base. Given that I spent a lot of time in my base I got so irritated with this song that I actually turned the volume down when I got to my base - something I never do with video games. They did change the tune a bit later in the game but even that variation got annoying after awhile.

Suikoden’s presentation was very average and, as such, it gets an average score of 5.

Summary

Suikoden was a good game and I had fun playing it. There were some weaknesses but it remained engaging for me throughout the entire game. Gameplay definitely carried the day for Suikoden. I think I would have liked it less if it were a longer game but for me it hit that sweet spot of game lengths: between 20-30 hours. From what I understand, Suikoden II is regarded as a much better game in all ways so I definitely look forward to checking it out.

Final score: 5.3 out of 10