Why the Suikoden series deserves your attention
Previously published on Playboy.com back in 2015 and long lost thanks to Playboy Games closing.
Nearly a year before Final Fantasy VII hit US shores and changed everything, there was another RPG that deserved to do exactly that and somehow didn’t. Suikoden was that game, offering a number of features that few other RPGs have replicated since, and a storyline that wasn’t quite as predictable as you’d expect.
Alongside that though, it also offered SNES-style graphics and hardly a stylish cutscene in sight, baffling Playstation 1 owners keen to show off their fancy modern console, rather than take a step back to the past. With the third instalment of the series finally making its way to PSN as a PS2 classic (and bringing with it, its first release ever in Europe), we take a look at just why the Suikoden series deserves your attention, nearly 20 years after it started.
It’s a familiar story for any JRPG - you’re a nobody who soon finds out that destiny has conspired in a way that means you’re the only person who can save the world, usually alongside an amnesiac mage of some description. While the first Suikoden game might have a certain amount of ‘destiny is calling to it’, it also tosses in a hefty dose of political wrangling. You’re no nobody, you’re the son of a general in the Scarlet Moon Empire, and there’s trouble afoot with dissenting rebels. With a dash of Star Wars style inspiration, you soon find yourself switching sides from the Empire to the Rebel forces, as corruption ravages the land. That’s a tend that continues even more so with the second and third game, with each building upon the intrigue and political backstabbing. You’re not alone throughout all this though. For a game and series that’s relatively small by modern standards, Suikoden offers a huge sense of scale.
That’s down to the many, many characters that you can recruit along the way. While many games are content with 10 main characters at most, Suikoden offers 108 Stars of Destiny, each requiring recruiting through different methods. Gain them all and you can transfer many of those characters to Suikoden 2 before doing the same from 2 to 3. It’s a concept that we’re increasingly familiar with thanks to many of BioWare’s efforts, but at the time, it was special. That adds to the scale too, giving a dynastic style feeling to proceedings.
While some characters are automatically recruited as you play through the story, the vast majority require some thought. One might simply need hiring by completing a task, such as finding a woman’s lost cat. Others, however, require you to recruit an earlier character and friend of their’s, before meeting up and having that person convince them to join up. Then there are the folks who only appear at certain points of the game, for a limited time only, and requiring very specific tasks to have been completed beforehand. Each new village you encounter offers new characters to entice, always giving you a sense of progression and weight. In the days before walkthroughs being so readily accessible, such recruitment methods made breeding a Gold Chocobo look like child’s play. It’s almost a relief that Suikoden III dispenses with those time limits, meaning that recruitment can take place at any time.
While it could have been tedious, that was far from the case. Early on in the original game, you establish your own headquarters, a dilapidated castle, in which your many recruits can reside. At first, it might look like a wreck of a building, but the more people you entice, the better the castle gets. There’s a little sense of pride every time you return from exploring and find that the castle has gained a new floor or is looking that touch shinier and newer than before. Forming your own village, you end up with working shops, a blacksmith for improving your weapons, a library full of informative tomes, and even a place to conduct gardening. Not all of it is essential to the story, but it gives you a great sense of being part of something bigger, and part of something that’s worth protecting. A constant hive of activity, you can wander the halls, interacting with your recruits, and learning a little more. It’s not quite as deep as you’d like it to be, but it’s like little else out there.
Those characters don’t just reside passively either, with the vast majority of them able to join your party and go exploring as part of your team of six. With that, you also learn that characters can team up together and perform special ‘Unite’ attacks, combining their skills. The vast number means that you could end up feeling overwhelmed with choice, but you soon end up with favorites that tie into your preferred way of fighting.
Fighting doesn’t just consist of party-based turn-based combat though. This is a country wise war, right? That means you can end up with full-scale battles between warring armies. They play out a lot like Rock, Paper, Scissors, requiring you to know things such as bow-based attacks beating magic, but it further reinforces that sense of scale. Suikoden II adds a grid-based system, with leaders and support troops each playing a valuable role. Much like Fire Emblem, there’s a constant sense of danger too, with permanent death possible through these sequences. While the likes of Final Fantasy 7 might offer scale through impressive graphics and a world that seems huge but is actually quite barren, Suikoden grabs you through these huge moments that can change everything in a moment’s lack of concentration.
Oftentimes, after successfully winning a battle, you’ll find yourself in a one-one duel with the opposing force’s leader. Again, it’s like Rock, Paper, Scissors, as you learn how they’ll react through their taunts. Sometimes, you can go on to recruit them to your army, but only if you follow specific orders, otherwise it’s off with their head.
It sounds complicated but in reality, the Suikoden series is frequently a simpler (if not necessarily easier) experience than many other JRPGs. Weapons are solely changed through regular upgrades at the Blacksmith, you can ‘let go’ enemies that aren’t worth your time, and magic is a simple matter of resting often to refresh your options. That simplicity doesn’t obscure the satisfaction of watching a genuinely epic storyline unfold however, or seeing how beloved characters develop over the years. All it does is leave you wondering why more games haven’t followed such a trend and why Suikoden isn’t held up in such high esteem as the likes of Final Fantasy.