Suikoden V Review

Suikoden V
Playstation 2
Release Date: March 21, 2006
RPG
Review by Sirus

If you have been paying attention in the past few years on any game forums dedicated to rpgs, chances are that you have heard someone, somewhere, in a discussion about what they consider to be the great rpgs, mention Suikoden 2. Many of the fans of the series have long considered Suikoden 2 to be the best in the series and a masterpiece.

Now that Suikoden 5 is out, many hardcore Suikoden fans who I know are in agreement that Suikoden 5 is as good if not better then Suikoden 2. Having not played Suikoden 2, I can not compare the two games although after recently completing my lengthy playthrough of Suikoden 5, I CAN say that Suikoden 5 is one of the longest rpgs to date, manages to weave one of the most interesting stories to grace a home console, and somehow create all 108 stars of destiny as characters you care about and want to know more about.

Breath of Fresh Air (9) Suikoden 5 doesn’t really try to do much in terms of innovation. The battles are the same we have seen since Suikoden 2. The skill system is a bit different from other games but doesn’t really add that much to the experience. Each character gets skill points after each fight as well as the pool of party skill points rising. These points can be used at trainers to train a character in certain attributes to give them a specialization of sorts.

Some characters come with one skill that is unique to them and thus only let you choose one of their equipped skills. While interesting, the skills don’t really change the characters that much as most mages have a set skill they have to use and they need the magic boost from the magic skill.

Another thing Suikoden does that most other rpgs don’t do is the war battles. If you have played a Suikoden game in the past, you know that the other games also had war battles so its not anything new to the series but it certainly keeps the game feeling fresh. At certain key points in the story, you will have battles over certain towns and forts that only really work as war fights.

The war fights have a rock, paper, scissors approach to them similar to fire emblem games and take place in real time. On the land you have archers, cavalry, and infantry. The archers are strong against cavalry, cavalry against infantry, and infantry against archers. There are other units that come into play as well including naval units but they all use a similar system.

While not as frequent as the war battles, Suikoden 5 does throw in a few duels throughout the game although there are only maybe 4 or 5 in the entire game. Duels pretty much are scripted battles where instead of just attacking in regular combat, you have three commands, attack, special, and guard. Similar to the way the weaknesses work in the war battles, in the duels, you have attack, special, and guard.

The difference here though is that you have to try to tell what the enemy is doing based on what they say each round rather then just knowing. In this case, attack beats guard, guard beats special, and special beats attack. If you both attack at the same time you lock weapons and you have to mash x, square, and circle to try to overpower the enemy. While most of the duels are relatively easy, they serve as a nice diversion from the other gameplay.

As far as the battles go, its typical turn based random encounters, with a twist. Rather then just having three or four slots for characters in battle where each character is equally useful, the game gives each character a range value either short, medium, or long. The first two rows are the "Front", the center two are the "Middle", and the Back two are "Rear". So it's set up like this...

Front
Front-Middle
Back-Middle
Back

If a character has an "S" reach, they have good aim in the Front and Front-Middle ranges. If they are placed outside of these rows, they will miss a lot more than usual. "M" reach characters need to stay in the Front-Middle and Back-Middle ranges, and will miss a lot if in the Front or Back ranges. "L" range characters can stand anywhere and have good aim, but you're stupid if you put them anywhere in the front, because they all have crappy HP and Def. There are a multitude of different formations each with their own bonuses and penalties. All formations have their own formation skill that lets you either do a united attack or some support for the entire party that you can use before a turn in a fight.

The battles aren’t very consistent in difficulty though but the game doesn’t have as large a percentage of time spent in dungeons as other games so its not as noticeable. You will sometimes go into a new dungeon only to find yourself fighting some enemies that are a bit harder then before but that usually means you just have to upgrade your armor.

Characterization (9) In a game like Suikoden 5, with so many characters, its easy to leave most of them underdeveloped. Thankfully the characters all have enough development to keep them interesting and a few of them have good plot after you have already recruited them. Going through my list of characters I can easily remember where I got most of them. The games main characters are exceptionally well developed and that leads to some very emotional scenes.

Plot (9) Suikoden 5 tells the story of the kingdom of falena, a land filled with scheming nobles and all sorts of eccentric towns. While a lot of it boils down to a lust for power, the plot is largely interesting and keeps going strong through the end of the game. The beginning 4 hours can be a little slow, as they are almost pure story but the story really got to me so I was hooked from the beginning. I could really feel the pain of the people of lordlake when I was walking through the town and saw the destruction and desolation the people were going through. The story is strong through till the end and it really feels like you are fighting a war to win back your land as you hunt for allies amongst the neutral villages.

Immersion (9) Suikoden 5 definitely does a great job of pulling you into the plot and making you feel for the characters you meet. In the prologue, during the sacred games you learn about the plight of the gladiators and how they are abused by the nobles. During this section you hear both sides pleading you for change. On the one hand you have the nobles who wish the queen would lift her ban on cruelty to the gladiators, while on the other hand you have the gladiators who want to break free from their oppression before they lose their life in the ring. All the nobles really seem like modern day politicians, always scheming and hard to believe.

Handling (8) The game uses a menu system that does take a bit of getting used to but all the options keep things from getting mixed up. For example, if a piece of armor drops, if you go into the item list to see what it is, you then have to go into the equip list which gives you a long list of all the equip able items and then pick the item to equip it on whatever character you want. It helps though, how they have the stats all shown there when you are looking at the items to see how the stats will change when equipped to each of your party members.

One thing that really seems to get to me, is how the game decides to return you to your basic team of the prince and one or two other party members after each dungeon, or story sequence so after each sequence, you have to go talk to the person in charge of your party members to switch in all your favorite characters and then go rearrange them so that you have the right characters in the front, back, etc. While it can become somewhat of a pain, it is understandable because you have certain characters you are required to bring with you on each mission.

As far as the characters you are forced to bring along, one thing the game does nicely is the option for four support slots for party members. It’s always nice to have the game force three party members on you and then to be able to just stick them in the support slots and use the characters you have been using, although I suggest you have at least 18 characters who are of decent strength for some late game area where you have to split up into three groups and each has to fight their own boss.

Ambience (9) If you have been playing Japanese rpgs for a while, especially their English translations, you probably have gotten used to all sorts of mediocre voice acting. Thankfully, Suikoden 5 keeps the voice acting solid throughout. While there are only a select few scenes that are voiced, the voice acting we do see in the major scenes is very well done. There are a few mediocre voice clips during the war battles but they are so short its hardly noticeable.

The graphics are solid, and while they may not look flashy, they don’t have the jaggies we see so often in games like kingdom hearts 2. The best part of the graphics in Suikoden 5 comes in the character models. The characters all have great models in game and even better looking portraits. While the areas aren’t all that exciting, they get the job done and its obvious that the developers wanted to focus more on the characters then the environments.

The music is well done and always seems to set the theme. There is just one track in the game that really annoys the hell out of me (haud village song, you’ll see what I mean when you get there) but thankfully you don’t have to go to that town very long and all the other music is quite good.

Tilt (10) To help knock the average up, I thought id add a tilt section. While some of the aspects of the game were a little mediocre or lacking, I really didn’t focus on those aspects as much as I focused on what I loved, the story. I fell in love with the story and the characters and while the story was a bit slow at times, every time I got to come to the aid of one of my allies, I could really feel the story and it gave it that special feeling that puts it a bit above other games. The game lasts about 60 hours and has a new game + feature where you keep all your money, formations, party sp, shared items, items in storage, heroes name, and epics.

Final Score 9.0/10 (an average of the scores above)