Game 8 - Suikoden (PS1) - 19 HoursThis game has a lot of things going for it, and I did enjoy it a fair amount. It actually lessens my view of Suikoden II since SII is pretty much a copy-paste of a lot of the major themes and ideas from this game. At the same time, there are some major flaws with Suikoden, so it is far from my favorite. Funnily enough though I have a lot to say about it regardless.
+ As mentioned above, this game does a lot of great things. Music themes, vast and interesting characters, dark and interesting story elements; it’s all done really well. If you’ve played both games you might agree with me that it’s essentially the same basic structure in both. However, the major battles are done better in this game in my opinion, and the game has a certain charm to it, even though on the face of it, it is a little primitive.
(Warning: I don’t outright spoil anything, but you might get a tiny hint of how Suikoden’s story pans out if you already have played II, so just a fair warning for the negatives section.)- There are two major flaws that stand out to me. It was so annoying to be forced to take characters along during story elements. Even though you can have a party of 6, the game forces to take you 2 or sometimes 3 that you don’t get a choice over. It’s really sad that out of 108 characters, you can really only pick 3, 2 or sometimes none at all to take along. In addition, the game really drops the ball on some story elements that I wish were expended on further. If you’ve played both, maybe you see where I’m coming from: the similar "main theme" in both games just dies out and is never revisited in the middle of Suikdoen. It’s handled so much better in the second game. There’s also some nitpicky stuff like really unrefined menu and controls, really repetitive boss fights with the same attack patterns each time. Stuff like that.
And for those who are curious, I found 89/108 characters. Even though I didn’t use a guide like SII, it was much easier to find characters in this game.
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