Retro Games

A couple days ago, I really felt like playing a good RPG game. It’s been awhile since I’ve done any gaming. Was it an effect of Maple Story addiction? I played the Wii and DS here and there but hardly over a couple of hours continuously. Recently, I added some Wired blogs to Google Reader, one of which was “Game | Life”, a blog about gaming news. It have sort of awaken my interest in games once again. One of my friend recommended Suikoden.

Suikoden is an RPG by Konami released in late 1995 in Japan (Spring 1996 in North America). It’s loosely based on the classic Chinese novel Shui Hu Zhuan. I have those books but never bother reading them since they are written in an ancient Chinese literature form that I can’t quite make sense of. I would read a sentence and know each character but am absolutely clueless as to what the sentence means. Anyway, knowing the storyline of Shui Hu Zhuan is irrelevant to the game because, as far as I know, the only major similarity between the two is the 108 ’stars’ the main character is able to recruit. I started this game about two days ago and have spent 11hours on it, including the time I used to search for walkthroughs when I got stuck.

I’m no expert on RPGs and have only played Taiwanese produced ones based on famous Chinese martial arts novels. Considering that this game was made at least 5 years before I played my first RPG, I say it is a pretty decent game. The learning curve is rather short although there are some confusing parts to the system that took me longer to figure out. I, the main character, is suppose to be the son of an Imperial Army General. However, as various events happened, I became a fugitive and eventually the leader of the Liberation Army, a force fighting against the corruptive ways of the Imperial Emperor. As with most RPG, each character has basic attack and magic skills, called runes in Suikoden. Runes were what confused me in the beginning. They are the source of magic power. In order to gain these power, the character needs to have a crystal piece attached to them. However, not all runes allow you to use magical power during a battle. Some are passive , supportive types which can increase chance of critical attack, heal HP, increase speed etc. Apart from crystal pieces which give you rune power, there are rune fragments which enhances the power of your weapon or your strength. Elemental like rune fragments can be attached to weapons. Stats rune fragments are used on the characters to improve their dex, magic, speed, strength etc, whose values are automatically determined as you level. It might not sound all that confusing as you read about them but I had tried to attach stats runes and crystals to weapons, use crystals on characters (and fail) before figuring them out.

The overall character system in Suikoden is fairly simple once you figure out the rune stuff. There are a limited amount of things that can be chosen by you:

• Your party members: The maximum number of characters in a party is 6. In most cases at least 3-4 of those characters are objectively set so you only really get to choose 2-3 to join your party. Typically, as the storyline unfolds, you are expected to kick your chosen characters out of your party to accommodate for random characters you pick up along the way.
• Runes: You can attach crystals to your characters at a rune store but there can only be one attached at a time. Luckily, you can also remove them and re-attach a new one. Once attached, the character will learn (or not learn) new magic trick as he or she sees fit (when his or her magic stats reaches a certain point). So, my main character is still stuck with only the Deadly fingertip and nothing else since receiving the special Soul Eater rune. The skill is good for casual battle but really can’t be use during boss fights. That leaves me with attacking with my staff only.
• Armour: There are five armour slots: head, body, shield, and 2 miscellaneous. I still haven’t quite figure out who can wear what. Each armour piece only has a defense stats but can only be worn by certain characters. I don’t know what determines it. Good thing, when you buy an armour piece, the character names are coloured coded to indicate whether that armour piece increases (green) defense or decrease (red) or can’t be worn (gray).
• Weapon: Your character’s weapon is actually non-changeable but you can choose to sharpen it which increases its level. Also as mentioned above, you can attach rune fragments to them to add ‘elemental-ness’, which I assume boosts attack.
• Battle Attacks: This is a given. You can choose how your characters fight. There’s also a free will, run, bribe option. Free will is to let the AI choose your attacks. This approach typically generates less desirable result. Run is obviously to run from the battle. You lose that attacking turn if fleeing doesn’t work out. I accidentally selected bribe once because the analog stick went a bit haywire on me. Paid 1800 bits (in game currency) for some boars to leave. -.-

Parts I like about the game so far:

• It has an interesting storyline which incorporates the recruitment of 108 stars. It’s quite a task. I think I’m not even half way. Viewing the tablet which lists the stars I’ve recruited so far crashes the game. So I can’t check how many stars I’ve recruited so far.
• The battle system includes three types of battle: individual, party and army. Most of the time, you enter into party battles. Army battles are between the Liberation Army and Imperial Army. You get to choose a type of attach (charge, bow, magic, others) which the Imperial Army responds to. Individual battle is between the main character (you) and another boss enemy. I’ve only fought a commander once so I’m not sure if there’s anymore of these individual battles.
• The music and sound effects of the game are quite perfect. The animation of skills are decent after considering the time it was produced.

Parts I don’t like about the game so far:

• Item bags are pretty limited. Each character has a item bag which can carry 9 items including the armour pieces you are wearing. So it’s really just 4-5 slots for extra things. Consider you need one slot for medicine (HP pot), you aren’t left with many slots. Also, there’s a party bag but it can’t be used directly. Only game items (storyline items) are put there. I once switch party member but forgot to take out an item from one of the member that was switched out. It was an item that teleports the party back to base. I end up having to walk back.
• The lack of freedom to choose your skills. They just gets ‘enable’ when you attach a crystal or when you attain a certain magic stats value. I like to have the power to pick which skill to level up. Also, there’s no mana point to be use for magic. Some skill has a ‘use number’ which is basically how many times you can use the skill. The number has a maximum value but as you use the skill, the number regenerates over time. Other skills can be use like an attack – unlimited use.

Wow, I didn’t expect myself to write such a long post on the game. I think I’m about half way through the game. I’ll play Suikoden 2 after. Two of my friends said 2 improved a lot from 1. I will see how that is soon.

Posted in Entertainment
Tagged as playstation, suikoden