Retro-view: Suikoden

Five Nameless-Personalityless-Voiceless-RPG-Protagonists out of Five

Think back to 1996, when the little RPG that almost could was released.  Suikoden stood, unfortunately, in the tall shadow of Final Fantasy VII.  While FF7 would bring the traditional Japanese-RPG to the masses through stellar graphics (Though I would now recommend your avert your eyes sirs) and marketing the gave mainstream gamers the incentive to try the traditionally, well, traditional genre.

Unfortunately for Suikoden, it had nothing in the way of fancy graphics (it was SNES style sprites) or television commercials to lure a new audience in.  It was just a tremendously well made game, something that I ignored at the time.  I bought it back in ’96, but quickly quit on it, mostly due to the graphics.

After getting a PSP for Christmas and seeing this cult classic on the PlayStation online store for 5.99 I decided to give this one a re-try.

Level up for me.

Final Fantasy VI is my favorite game of all time, and repeated plays remind me that I’m not just letting my nostalgia-goggles overrate it.  Suikoden, more than a decade later, seems to be the spiritual successor to that game that FF7 never was.  Like FF6, Suikoden has a massive cast (actually far bigger at 108 (!)).  They both have epic stories involving corrupt empires and a grassroots movement to overthrow it.  Both give me hard-ons thinking about them.

Suikoden bucks many vices of the traditional JRPG genre without changing what I love about them.

-Underleveled characters level-up quickly, to catch up to a tough area, or the rest of your party.  I’m talking about gaining 2-4 levels per fight until they are caught up... no more annoying grinding peoeple.

-You can resume after dying, from your last save, with all the levels that you had gained before you died.  So dying in a hard dungeon is not a complete waste.

-It is actually challenging, and makes it difficult to overlevel.  That means you actually have to use strategy, rather than pressing the fight button like your mashing the controller in Track and Field for the NES.

The sprite based graphics that seemed soooo SNES back in the day have held up wonderfully; more than we can say for, well, most PSOne titles.

It’s a tight package, and a nice reminder that the JRPG genre can still be compelling after recent transgressions (umm, Enchanted Arms, Last Remnant, Blue Dragon, etc).  Don’t walk, Run, to your local PlayStation Online store to buy this quality title.