Suikoden 1

[Dracos]

Well, this game was a refreshing blast into the earlier years of Play Station RPGs.  One of the first major RPG's produced for the Playstation by Konami, Suikoden was a whole new style of rpg and frankly, a good one.  The main premise behind the series is you are some special lad who leads armies while gathering the 108 stars of destiny in a worldset that is medival with runes being the form of magic and 27 true runes being the 'ultimate' powers.

first off, my recommendation.  Play the game.  If you enjoy a challenge, trying to get the best ending without a faq is definitely one.  If you like storyline, particularly heartfelt emotional interactions this game does it well.  The game is a solid game, fairly linear but a darn good console rpg.

The sound is fairly good in this game.  While certain tunes are incredibly annoying, the mini-game one comes to mind as a HORRID tune.  But that is all forgiven by the simply beautiful guitar piece that plays as the dramatically tragic background music.  It is simply a beautiful piece of music.  Overall most of the music is okay, but with the exception of the above piece it isn't that notable.  The attempt to do a sfx version of the organ piece was utter trash which really destroyed the dramatic tone of the scene that they were going for.

Graphics...the general engine is very good.  But the usage of certain sphere effects in place of FMVs was bad.  They used a limited palette for faces as well as appearently too large pixel size, which resulted in close up face shots looking like they came from an mid-era SNES game instead of a playstation game.  Still, overall the graphics are pleasent to the eye and rarely detract from the enjoyment of the game.

The story...this is the reason to play the game.  It is a superbly done job.  Particularly the character interactions.  Sure, some stuff is contrived...particularly near the end of the game, but still overall it's a first class job.  They really thought the worldset out to the point where it reaches out and grabs you.

Battle system...   it's a fine one, though they didn't use it nearly to it's full potential.  I await the day where the dream that is foreshadowed in this game comes to full blast in a future Suikoden.  The battles are Six of you on up to six enemies.  You can do attacks, rune techniques, or united attacks.  Combine this with 108 characters and you are given quite a broad range of playing styles.   I personally usually go for speed, strength, multi attack characters over mages but the mages can be nifty too, especially with their staying power for dealing out massive amounts of damage to big enemies every round.

Notable flaws in the game include the gambling system.  One of the two major gambling possibilities isn't randomized but uses set patterns, allowing for far too easy build up of cash if you study the patterns.  The Rock-Paper-Scissors form of the major battles and duels.  It isn't as bad in the duels really, but the major battles it totally rends the image of difficulty apart with you being able to see your opponents choice before he acts.   Additionally, the odds of using all of your major battle options ever over the course of the entire game is nilch.  A  good swarm of the battle options you never find a good time or chance to use.   Additionally the merchants, who can cause troops to defect allegedly, never worked once in the entire game for me.  It might just be lack of luck, but I find it odd that in the entire course of the game it failed every time.

EDIT: Something I forgot to mention, but the Suikoden 1 utilizes it's own little castle system.  Somewhere during the rpg you pick up a castle which grows based on recruiting nifty characters.  It is very similar to the Breath of Fire system of town building (Prominent in BoF 2) and a cute little gimmick.

Either way...if you love a good epic style rpg, you'll like suikoden.

Dracos the Reviewer

[Calorn]

I couldn't agree more.  I played this game a long long long long long....well not that long but a awhile ago, back when I was in high school...(wow...)but anyways.  YES!!!! This game is the shit!!!(Dave Chapelle voice)  One of the best stories ever, loads of characters, each with their own background and reason to fight, simple to use leveling up system, just a really good RPG.  Just listen to Draco he knows what he is talking about.  Draco thank you for doing such great unbiased reviewing, but I notice a pattern...you only rewview good games, what about bashing the cheesy ones like Dragon Ball GT:Final Bout.  I remember that a gamers mag(can't remember which one) gave it a 1 out of 5 and called it a deplorable waste of disk space.  That was funny because compared to the Nippon released games, it was...

Oh by the way everyone did you know you also get a castle on a rock(big rock) in the middle of huge lake in Suikoden???

Edit: I forgot to mention one other thing.  This is a Konami game, save it on the same memory card with Metal Gear Solid for PS and when Psycho Mantis reads your(Snakes) mind he will say any Konami games that are saved on the memory card with the Metal Gear save.  Works with any Konami game...for me it always said Suikoden and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.  Really weird, especially the first time I played the game, freaked me out kinda...then I thought about it after staring at my PS for a while.