Suikoden (Playstation, 1996)

So here's what I have to say about Suikoden: it has some of the worst box-art to ever grace a game. How bad is it? It deterred me from ever wanting to play it for months, until finally, it was the only title left at the video store that I hadn't rented yet. I grudgingly picked up, not even knowing what the game was about, and guess what: I was pleasantly surprised.

None of these people depicted actually show up in the game.

Suikoden is a traditional RPG in which you assume the role of the "Hero" (who you name), the son of a celebrated war general. The quest begins with you trying to follow in your father's footsteps, but while on a mission for the empire, you realize the government isn't as nice as your father makes it out to be. You wind up being declared as a criminal and while on the run, you fall in with a group of resistance fighters. The game follows you as you build a Liberation Army to eventually take down the evil empire.

Suikoden's disgraced general Valeria bares minor resemblance to
Final Fantasy VI's disgraced general Celes.
The plot may not be the most original, but it's still pretty entertaining. 

Okay, so it's not the most original story, but there are enough twists to keep you interested. Though the main character is a silent protagonist (probably my least favorite type of character) the supporting cast is personable enough to make some of the game's more poignant moments carry an impact.

Misty water-colored memories....

The graphics are nothing to write home about. Being released early in the life of the Playstation, Suikoden boasts graphics that are on par with a high-end SNES game. Everything in the game is flat and two-dimensional, but the towns and maps are colorful and vibrant. Unfortunately, many of the towns you travel to are aesthetically similar-looking, with towns usually differing in design only when you travel continent to continent.

Your hometown is one of the prettier ones in the game.
Too bad you're a rebel and can never go back there again!

The battle system is straight-forward. You can have up to six characters in your party at once, and combat is turned based. Any ability or magic your character may possess comes from equipping various rune crystals that you find throughout the game. To some, the battle system may seem boring, but I personally appreciate the simplicity.

Good old fashioned turn-based goodness.

The real meat and potatoes of the game involves the actual building of the army. This is where Suikoden brilliantly employs the "gotta catch them all" mentality of the later-launched Pokemon games. There are exactly 108 recruitable characters in the game, most of whom are playable. When you recruit a certain amount of members, your army base grows accordingly, adding shops, armories, and even a sauna.

Just one of the 108 characters to recruit.

The characters themselves are all uniquely designed in terms of visuals, and there are no simple "palette swaps" to create "new" characters. Stats change accordingly, from magic-users to power-houses. Your army will engage the Empire's army in skirmishes, in large-scale battles that utilize the mechanics of "rock-paper-scissors". This is where spending the time recruiting the 108 Stars of Destiny pays off, as your attack power is linked to how many members you have recruited. 

Preparing for the next battle.

All in all, Suikoden is one of those games where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Despite being a relatively basic game, it is still quite entertaining, and probably one of the best "starter" RPGs I could recommend to someone. A boxed copy of game is relatively difficult to find, so it's pretty awesome that you can now download this classic RPG on PSN for a mere $5.99. Now if only we could get Suikoden II up in here. 

Suikoden is currently available on the Playstation Network for $5.99. It is also available used and new on Amazon.com for a variable price. And it's pronounced "Soo-ee-KOH-den". Psycho Mantis told me so.