1996 PS game finish!
The oldest game I've played as of late. And it's not a game you can underestimate either!
Story - 4.5/5
K so it's a story that revolves around war and you play the son of a respected Imperial General. Your empire is being corrupted by war (and a crazy lady), so you have to gather 108 stars of destiny to revolt against them. Every character you encounter had a part in the story, which made the story all the more interesting (minus a few random ronins who were actually related to the main/side stories).
Characters - 5/5
I really enjoyed all the characters. You'd imagine with 108 characters, you'd be unable to have any emotional attachments to them. You were only able to use a certain number of them in battle versus war battles. Everyone had their unique personality and were all pretty amusing. Even the silent hero you get to play was interesting. Favourite characters were probably Viktor and Flik. Even now I have trouble thinking Cleo's female.
Gameplay 3/5
Of course, this game's old. So if you thought Tales of Phantasia's transitions were slow, Suikoden is 10x slower with 20x slower fade in/outs. Battles were turn based, so you'd be picking all your actions before the everything was played out. You'd have no idea how fast the enemy is, if they'd be punching you first or vice versa.
Moving your character requires a lot of patience. The only way you can run in this game is to use a specific rune in your rune slot for any character in your party, but the slot is precious so you'd be using it for something else more important.
Strategic war battles are insane fun but there aren't many of them in the game. It's when you actually have a battle against the empire with all your troops, picking actions such as Charge Attack, Bow n Arrows, Magic, sneaking and spying the enemy. The animations were SO CUTE! And when you win, you'd hear your little chibi men cheering in their chibi voices.
Magic is quite different in this game. It wasn't until near the end of the game, I finally figured out how it worked. Before then, I would rely on a lot of heal items and a lot of physical violence. The last boss was amazingly easy for me when I finally got the hang of it.
Sound - 2/5
There's some pretty ridiculous sound effects in this game. Especially the little punjabi jingle (my brother calls it) when someone joins your party. The soundtrack doesn't seem especially wide ranged as it felt like I was listening to the same few tracks throughout.
Graphics - 2/5
Did I always have this category? Two words: pixel world. The whole game was extremely 2D, where your character would only move either up, down, left, right - no diagonals. There was a glimpse of a third dimension when you did critical hits during battle modes. The world map was the simplest of all world maps. At least the characters had little illustrations, in which the pixel version of them were quite well translated.
The little pixel animations were quite cute though. You'd do a little spin when someone joined your party (plus the punjabi jingle).
Overall - 3/5
If you put the visuals aside, the game is great. It becomes rather hard when you're surrounded by HD games nowadays, and I'm sure this game was considered good back in its day.
Some of the abnormal statuses were quite amusing, though unexplained. Like you'd get a bucket over your head (I assume that's blindness?), or a balloon hanging over you (you need a Needle - literally - to pop it), or a little dancing devil over your head (which meant you're poisoned).
There weren't any extra quests or difficult modes to choose from (window/sound collecting is nothing). The collecting of the 108 stars was probably the only "side quest" that was not mandatory, but why wouldn't you do it! Did I mention that drop rates for items are hell?
I'm taking a break from Suikoden before tackling Suikoden II. I'm leaning on trying Persona (Revelations). Old PS game continuation fun - GO!
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