Let's Blog Suikoden - Part 2

Welcome back folks, today's update will be rather brief in terms of progression but long on impression, I wanted to talk a little about the characters I've met so far and how I'm finding the game in general, but first let's continue the story. Oh and I've taken the time to nab a few screenshots to decorate these articles and hopefully give you a better impression of the game. Enjoy!

That explains the crystal ball and blue fire

So we left off having beaten that rock elemental 'boss' outside at the end of the forest. We were then invited into the castle to meet Leknaat, the astrological magician we had been sent to talk to for our first little quest. She had some interesting prophecies for the hero, perhaps a subtle warning of things to come. She handed over the 'Astral Conclusions' we had been sent to collect, along with a Fire Crystal that granted us our first bit of magic, and her little minion buddy Luc used his own magical powers to teleport us back to the beginning of the forest, where we jumped on the dragon once more and returned to the castle.

We reported to Commander Kraze who responded in typical jerk fashion that he'd been "sick of waiting" for us, but commended our heroes for being "not totally useless". He was accompanied by the amusing and portly Kanaan, a man whose exaggerated features wouldn't look out of place in the latest Professor Layton village. Kanaan then joined our party (although not in playable fashion) for our second quest; to head to the nearby town of Rockland and inquire about their overdue taxes. Here we get our first taste of the world map, which is... well it's a JRPG world map. It's exactly what you expect. A rather oversized avatar moving across a mass of fields and forests. It's worth noting though that random encounters, at least from what I experienced so far, appear very limited when exploring the world. I even ran around a little while just to test it out and could easily run around in circles for at least twenty seconds before a battle. 

What? Don't you grow as tall as a sequoia whenever you leave a city or landmark?

So, turns out the unfortunate Rockfallians (alright, I made that up) are living in pretty awful conditions. I arrived at the city and talked to the townsfolk, hearing nothing but misery. The centrepiece of the town is a graveyard, which more or less smothers subtlety in its crib. The town is obviously going through a rough time, and a brief conversation with the fellow in charge leads us to discover that a villainous troupe of bandits, hiding out in a mountain nearby, are the source of the trouble and consequently the overdue taxes. The smooth-talking town governor Grady suggests that since we, a band of imperial warriors, have showed-up, we can easily pop over to the mountain and take these bandits out. We agree and head right off to settle the matter.

Our little team of fighters reach the mountain and head into its labyrinth of caverns. We open some chests, we fight some enemies, we indulge in a traditional JRPG dungeon until eventually we reach the traditional large boss room. In the centre of the room is, well, this:

Sorry, we must have taken a wrong turn somewhere!

That's where I stopped for the day. I'm sure that thing isn't as tough as it looks, at least I hope not because I haven't particularly been grinding yet. We'll find out in the next instalment that will hopefully consist of more than "Oh God that boss was actually really difficult, I've done nothing but die repeatedly!"

With the storytelling out of the way, I'd like to talk about how I'm finding the game so far. Put simply I'm enjoying it a lot, the ride has barely begun but I feel like Suikoden hasn't fallen into the classic trap of having an immensely slow, dialogue-heavy opening. They've set the scene, and continue to do so, but the narrative exposition is balanced very nicely with proper gameplay. There are plenty of games in this genre that would've barely granted you the autonomy to tilt the analog stick and walk across a room after this length of play, that doesn't make them any worse and indeed some of my favourite role-playing games begin at a snail's pace, but it's refreshing to see one that breaks the mould a little. To be able to say after such a short amount of playtime that I've already had the freedom to battle, shop, explore the world map, and encounter a couple of bosses is a pleasure.

The characters have already been nicely established too, they're all a little cliché - there's the tough guy who uses his fists in battle and always seems pissed off, the level-headed respectful girl, the demonstrably naive adoring fan of our hero - yet their personalities have already begun to come across through a minimal amount of dialogue. Now and then the party share a bit of banter and personalities clash, and so far it's made for some humorous little moments. This is the very early stages of course, but you can see where the game is heading and I look forward to seeing a little behind the visage of each of my party members. For now we're all excited, starting our new work and heading out on quests, but maybe when things get a little more serious (which I have a hunch they might) it'll be interesting to see how these people react. Will Ted, the boyish bow-user who seems over-the-moon just to be in the same room as the hero, suffer under the pressure of what's to come or will his loyalty hold firm? Will Gremio, our timid and prudent guardian maintain his promise to Teo that he'll protect us, or will his sensibilities get the better of him? I'm already excited to find out.

I had to include an image of Kanaan's face, for obvious reasons

Combat has already begun to evolve as well, I've learnt a little more about how things work through talking to villagers. I've vowed to avoid all online tutorials and faqs and help of any kind during my playthrough, I'm going to figure out the way this game works by myself so it might take a little time before I understand everything. So far I'm of the understanding that runes and crystals allow us to use magic or advanced abilities, once equipped to a party member. I'm not entirely sure how this works and what the limitations are however. I equipped Cleo, one of my long-range fighters, with the fire crystal I obtained. This allowed her to use the spell 'Flaming Arrows', but only twice. She still has the crystal equipped but can no longer use the spell in battle, which makes me wonder if perhaps there's some sort of recharge system, since there appears to be no mana or MP in the game (at least so far). My characters have hit points and hit points only. 

Pahn, my other character who has a rune, is able to use a completely badass super attack where he jumps up to an enemy and unleashes the sort of punch-kick combo that you might have seen Chris Redfield employ on a boulder or Ryu on a car. However, after he's unleashed his fisticuff fury, he becomes "Unbalanced" and unable to attack. The conclusion I logically draw is that, since the game chooses not to employ an MP system, they need to limit the use of special abilities and magic in some other way and so each of these super moves comes with a price to pay. As I continue to point out however, I really have barely begun the game and have a very small pool of knowledge from which to surmise such theories. I'll learn more as I go and I'm confident that Suikoden has a lot more to show me.

Seems a little bit of a mismatch, no?

The lack of an active time battle system is also a comfort to my remarkably methodical (read: slow) mind. It's nice to simply plan out a round of actions and watch it unfold, I think this sort of system acts as the ideal complement to the way JRPGs play, and while the ATB of FFVII was certainly a fine innovation it's nice to go back to a time when turn-based combat was even slower than that. I liken it to the way in which we appreciate games like XCOM and Shadowrun Returns these days, we're not at all looking at the same sort of depth and tactical nuance of course, a battle in XCOM is miles ahead in terms of strategic-planning than what I'm experiencing so far in Suikoden, but the idea of having your little group of guys and taking the time to plan out each of their moves has always been appealing in a very different way to real-time combat.

I've not spent much time on it yet but I'm having a good time with Suikoden, it's keeping my attention and I'm eager to push on. Indeed I want to get back to it so much that I'll have to end this here and go fight that big bug thing. Wish me luck and I'll see you in the next post!