The PlayStation 2 was probably my most used console, owing to it being the one gaming focus I had as a teenager. I bought and read competing magazines based on what was on the cover, or, as time went on, what playable demo was on the disc. Despite growing as a gamer with the platform, I don't ever recall seeing anything to do with Suikoden III.
I am vaguely aware of Suikoden as a weird sounding name of a video game series, and that's about it. I can guess it's Japanese, probably an RPG, so I can guess it's got hundreds of hours of stuff to get into, but that's all I can imagine.
I hope I won't need to read up on the first two games.
Fun Times
The intro animation doesn't end, more like, but you've got me interested, Suikoden. I don't know why there's a duck in a helmet, but you've got my attention.
I'm not a massive fan of this sort of stuff, but it doesn't look ridiculous or over the top, and I see some character designs that I want to know more about.
Good Lord, it goes on a bit though. Tells me next to nothing, too. It's all for show and generating hype, and for me, it has worked. Bring on the game. What game is it, anyway?
Suikoden III is indeed an RPG, taking place in a late medieval-ish setting. It stars a whole cast of characters, three of whom you can choose to play as from the start, each with their own story, or more accurately perhaps, their own point of view on the same story. After each chapter, you can switch to another character and view events from their perspective, for example, and see how everybody ties into this plot.
Whatever the plot is. I don't know yet, and I don't know any of this interacting storyline stuff, either. I'm just reading about it all, nodding along. Of the three, I pick Chris, a Knight with some reputation.
While these models don't exactly come close to their animated counterparts, they're not terrible to look at. They're a bit on the chunky side, but it's a style, and it's not too offputting. Thankfully, the writing portrays these folks to be serious, even if it's a little flowery here and there. There are no voices here, though I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing at the moment.
Our first bit of gameplay comes in the form of choosing a dialogue option. The options look a bit vague, as though they could mean anything, so I play it safe and get straight to the point with the council. I get the impression that I can't really disagree with them, so why would I try to?
Ok, that was a bit sinister. I've got my eyes on you, Council Member...
It was time to ride off into the wider world to get these peace treaties signed, and that meant navigating an overworld map that seems to be more effort than its worth, and struggling with the movement controls until I worked out that they were all in relation to the camera, not the map or the character.
There was nowhere to go wrong at this stage, of course, but that doesn't mean this forest is devoid of obstacles.
Fighting against some leaves might not be everyone's first idea for an introduction to the combat, but it's the one that Suikoden III is giving me. Your party is grouped up in a buddy-system, and if you declare that you're attacking something, you'll watch them randomly run around the arena into a position only the AI knows, before swinging a weapon towards an enemy.
The camera tries to keep up, but most of the time, you just see bodies, blade slashes and fireworks. Leaves are no match for level twenty Knights, and we can proceed.
"Cor, it's just like The Witcher 3," I thought. It's much less open world, though. Closed, in fact. The yellow lines on the minimap show an exit to the corridor/room you're currently in, and this bridge, grand though it may be, needs to be split up into two chunks to get everything in - me, the bridge, a few people. I saw nothing else, really.
It's a bit cutscene heavy, this game. I don't mind because I'm on board with what's going on, but I'd still like to know just what kind of game this is at some point. I have at least put some names to faces. The duck in the helmet is Sergent Joe. Obviously. Not sure what he is in charge of, but he seems to know what's going on and, importantly, when not to push anything.
Once we were inside the castle, awaiting the signing of the peace agreement, you have the opportunity of running around and talking with seemingly everyone. Some of them just spout the generic and are there for some flavour text, but others are shop keepers or, more likely, educators that can teach you new skills.
I've not got a clue what skills are in Suikoden III, and it appears to be making no effort to tell me through a tutorial or anything. We're learning as we go, or we hope to at least. From this stats screen, it sure looks like we've got ourself a deep RPG system to dive into. Stats to be increased, equipment to buff stats, skills to make use of stats... I'm sure the more significant the number, the more useful it is.
I was running all over this castle wondering where to go to progress the story when I literally ran into a cutscene that furthers the plot.
Well, that went well. Haven't actually signed anything yet, but at least I know where to head. Is it marked on the map, or do I just have t-
No, sure, just straight into a relevant cutscene. Ok. Let's sign some agreements.
Now those are some bold words to choose in a situation like this, or at least it comes across like that. The writing isn't remarkable, but it's pulling me along from one scene to the next, and I want to know more and more.
Luckily, this entire game seems to be writing. Could this have been a book instead?
Oh, no, right. What's this, then?
This is unexpected. This is some sort of overview of a larger battle, I suppose you'd say. Suikoden's version of Total War. You can order groups to move or hold their ground, and when the fighting starts, you're taken down to the battlefield to play it out.
I'm under the impression that this is a sort of scripted fight, but one that I'm sure I could lose if I were stupid. Aiming not to be, I sacrificed those units that weren't myself and headed east.
What on Earth is going on in Suikoden III? What does it want to be? It's an RPG of some sort, that's for sure, but it wants to tell everything through cutscenes rather than gameplay. I should flag that up as a no-no, but I kept playing and playing, seeing where the story would take me. If there were any moments of gameplay, great - they seemed pretty straightforward based on what little I'd seen so far.
After a random encounter with a spellcasting Dark Hare, we headed to a village with the intent on setting it on fire to attract the attention of the fighters, giving any of our troops left in that battle a chance to escape before it was too late.
In the smoke and the flames, I spot a suit of armour that causes me to stop in my tracks...
... a perfect time for an ambush!
If memory serves, Hugo was another of the choices I had to play as, so you can see how the characters weave in and out of each others' side of the story. A grim start to Hugo's, though, watching his mate get killed. Accidentally, I might add.
To cut a long story short, we find some dead villagers, get annoyed that that wasn't part of the plan, have some internal bickering, get called back to the council, trudge through the forest where we stumble into a wannabe Knight and finally return to a city we don't particularly like to be in to see what the council will have us do now.
The gameplay moments during all of that were the odd random battle and the picking of two medical herbs.
This is actually a pretty nice looking environment. All of the spaces you find yourself in do the job, but this church stands out above all the rest, but we're in here for some flashbacks and then it's back into the council room, where we learn that the peace offering was only to buy some time before an attack of our own.
Again, seemingly without choice, bound as I am to do the councils' bidding, I agree to their orders and get ready to head back out and command an army. Thus ends chapter one of Chris' Suikoden story.
Final Word
That was nearly an hour and a half of nonstop "Ok, where is this going? Mhmm, and what does that mean? Right, so where will this take me?", sprinkled with hints of gameplay.
It was all peculiar. It was like a super-extended introduction, as though you're just here to get a taste of this side of the story, and the next chapter is where all the juicy gameplay is. I now have the option of continuing with this line, or going off and finding out what some other characters are getting up to at the same time, and seeing how their viewpoint interacts with Chris'.
It's an idea that I can get behind because this hour and a half was so easy. Even the battles have an automatic mode, where characters will do whatever the AI thinks they need to do there and then. Attack, defend... what else?
Is there magic in this game? I've seen stuff that looks magical. Can I cast spells? Can I even dish out potions in the middle of a fight? Surely I can, but I didn't see a way to do so (or a need to do so). What do all these skills do?
Suikoden III has told me nothing of its systems, and yet after all this time I still want to see what else it has to offer. And hopefully, to actually play something.
If there's a frustration, it'd have to be that - where's the game? Did I happen to pick the one character with the least amount of gameplay, or is Suikoden III so chill that it doesn't care for all the nitty-gritty of the RPG genre? I have to assume that's nonsense, right?
This game had my full attention for an hour and a half, eager as I was to see what was next and to get to the gameplay, or the end of the chapter, whichever happened first. If what you've seen has interested you, excellent, get going with Suikoden III. If you need a little more persuasion, like, some gameplay for example, then you might want to wait for an update. There's got to be something to find in here, I just don't know where to look...
Fun Facts
Why didn't I ever see Suikoden III as a teenager? Because it wasn't released in PAL regions until 2015, owing to the requirement that it be translated into all the languages, or published to none of them. That would certainly explain it.
Suikoden III, developed by Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo, first released in 2002.