It was no coincidence that I started my article with a quote from a Western review. If you pay attention to the ratings of all the games in the Suikoden series, you will notice that the story of the Champion of the Flame received the highest ratings. However, fans consider the second one to be the best. They treat the third differently. Some people love it very much. Others praise, but without much enthusiasm. Some even hate. Why did this happen??

Well, in any game series there is one game in which its creators decided to experiment. No one is interested in doing the same thing, especially talented people, you understand. Such experiments, as a rule, at worst end with the appearance of games like Silent Hill 4 The Room or, at best, Resident Evil 4. It’s always a risk. But it’s better than doing the same thing over and over and over again, turning the game series into a soulless conveyor belt.

Suikoden 3 is an experiment by series creator Yoshitaka Murayama (in Japanese). 村山吉隆), his last game. After that he left Konami. According to the developer himself, he did it of his own free will, did not quarrel with anyone and still communicates with his old team.

But here’s what’s suspicious. Konami removed the name of the series creator from the credits of the third game. Instead there is the name of another director, screenwriter and leading game designer. There are rumors that Yoshitaka Murayama did not leave Konami himself. The game was completed without his participation. Murayama was escorted out by company bosses because his vision for the game didn’t match theirs. And you say Kojima! It seems to me that something wrong began to happen to Konami even before the conflicts with Team Silent and Kojima. There is no confirmation of these rumors or fan fictions, so whether it really happened we will never know.

Suikoden? Is this a game??

Suikoden is a Japanese role-playing game from Konami, based on the ancient Chinese novel The Creeks. I don’t read books. Oh! That is, I wanted to say, I haven’t read this book specifically, but I’ve heard that there are a lot of references and similar things in the games, such as character names and some events in the plots. But other than that, the Suikoden games have almost nothing to do with the book. They took the concept of a war novel with 108 characters from there. Or as they are called in the game itself, 108 stars. If you are interested, you can read my articles about the first two games, where I wrote about this in detail. I don’t want to repeat myself.

Is it true what they say that Suikoden is a cult game?? See for yourself. Please.

The Returners perform at various gaming events. The lead singer and leader of the group “Lauren the Flute” decided to perform a melody from the game at their debut performance for the sake of experiment. To her surprise, many people in the room knew where the music came from. Those present were incredibly delighted!

Twisted story

The first thing that catches your eye is the somewhat “unsightly” 3D graphics. For a team that had previously only worked in 2D, moving into a new space was new. They had a hard time. Of course, Suikoden III, even at the time of release, looked faded compared to the colorful Final Fantasy X that was released before it. But graphics have never been the strong point of these games. Suikoden has always been primarily loved for its special approach to the plot and revealing the characters’ personalities.

The plot in Suikoden III is connected by several characters. The story centers on three main characters. Girl knight Chris Lightfellow, a mercenary with a dark past Gedo and a boy from the Hugo tribe. Their storylines are interconnected and intersect at some points. Which of them will become the leader and lead the army in the final battle, only you decide. Your choices, like in the last two games, will matter. Each of the three main characters has their own point of view. You assemble the overall picture of the plot like a mosaic. Who is bad in this story and who is good will become clear only after you put all the particles. The three main characters are helped by another game character, the owner of the castle. He is not a fighter by nature, but he will also have to take part in battles. If you beat the game to the true ending, you will receive a scenario for the villain. And then for the dog. She will help children find treasures.

The scenario for the dog will become available in the game only if you shelter it in the castle so that it can then play with the children. She is very lonely and scared and lost in the forest. Since Suikoden 3 is one of the few JRPGs where choices make a difference, you might want to do something different. You can drive her away.

There’s only one problem. The story, especially towards the end, becomes quite predictable, unlike the two previous games. It keeps you interested due to well-developed characters and lore, while many of the plot twists are generally not that difficult to predict.

But I don’t want to talk too much about the plot. It is generally accepted that JRPGs are primarily about this, but this is not entirely true. Instead, I’d like to focus on the gameplay.

Very good sense of humor

A joke that appeared in the first https://casinomfortune.uk/withdrawal/ Suikoden and became a joke from game to game. At one point in the first Suikoden, the main character is forced to hide his true identity. One of the villains approaches him and asks, “Who are you?”?». I then chose the third option and somehow forgot about it. Then, closer to the end of the game, the main character encounters this villain and he tells him: “Well, here we are, Stolteheim Reinbach the Third!»

The Japanese are nowhere without humor. Take Kojima with his Metal Gear Solid or Silent Hill with its secret endings. Suikoden III is no exception to the rule. Moreover, this is a game from the same company. Suikoden, unlike Final Fantasy and its imitators, was never about grinding. That’s why I liked her. In one interview, Yoshitaka Murayama even shared a notable and interesting game mechanic. Its essence is that if a player often marks time and walks in circles, he will have many clashes with enemies, random encounters. If the player moves forward in the right direction, encounters with enemies will be minimal or non-existent. What is the game about then, if not about grinding?? – you ask me in surprise. Suikoden is a game about finding and recruiting 108 stars of destiny.

108 stars of fate include not only fighters and soldiers. These are doctors, wizards, cooks, musicians, and even young adventurers.

There are a lot of characters in the game, if not a lot. Each of them has their own abilities, scenes unique to them, weaknesses and strengths. And many of them are very funny!

Suikoden III has a lot of activities. For example, there is horse racing here. It seems like a pretty stupid task at first, to be honest, but if you set a record of 53 seconds in three tests, you will be given a unique trophy – a statue of a goddess. Meeting the allotted time is a difficult task. It’s almost like a rare achievement for platinum. There’s a card minigame called Goppu, the rules of which you’ll have to understand to recruit a castle decorator. To quickly progress your characters, to level them up, you can go to the optional bosses – monsters, of which there are an indecent number here. And for defeating them they give not only a lot of currency and experience, but also a chest with loot.

As in the previous two games, you can recruit Vicki into your army. And not one, but two! Vicky is a teleportess sorceress, an iconic character in the series, who can teleport you to any point on the world map. But be careful, sometimes she can be absent-minded and can accidentally send you to hell.

But I mostly hung out at the theater. In the game you can find a theater director and recruit him into your army. The trick of the mini-game is that you can choose your own actors for roles in productions. You can stage a scene from Romeo and Juliet, where Juliet is a musketeer girl, and Romeo is a fire-breathing dragon. Characters, depending on how good of an artist they are, may pronounce the text and behave differently on stage. Some of them play so badly that they confuse the words, break the scenery and start talking nonsense! As one very smart person said: What is our life? – Theater! You will never see a theater like in Suikoden III.

As in the previous two games, you can take a maximum of six characters into your party, but now the game strictly divides them into pairs. During combat, you can still use spells that have a buffing or healing effect on the entire team, but characters can only transfer medicine to those they are paired with. (Details below)

New combat system

All players describe her as "clumsy". I wish I could find another word, but I can’t say it better than “awkward.”. How does the new combat system differ from the one in the first two games??

Firstly, characters are limitedly divided into pairs in a party. They were divided into pairs before, but this division was conditional. Here you cannot give healing to a character on the battlefield if he is not paired with a character who could give him healing. Even if they are standing one step away from each other. Khilki can only be transferred to your partners.
Secondly, in one turn a player can choose only one action for one pair. If, say, one is casting a spell, the other will either just stand there and do nothing, or run up to the nearest enemy and perform a standard attack. In other words, you don’t control every character in battle, only one of two in one pair.
Thirdly, the game now has a timeline and time is allotted for each action. And if your character does not have time to reach the enemy, then he will miss his turn.

I sincerely hope you don’t get confused reading all of this. Because that’s not all. The strangest game design decision is yet to come.

If your character conjured a fiery comet that is about to fall on the enemy, and as luck would have it, he ran point-blank towards your party, then now everyone is within the affected radius. He will kill both the enemy and his friends with a comet at once. It’s good that at least he himself will remain alive after this. A character who casts such a deadly spell takes no damage.

Now, when you put it all together, we have the weirdest, most unusual, the most specific, the most confusing, and yet the most fun combat system ever seen in a JRPG. Due to the fact that the characters are now free to move as they wish across the battlefield, without returning to duty, as was the case before, various funny incidents occur during the battle. Imagine a picture of how five of your fighters are crowded around the enemy in such a way that your main character simply cannot approach him to strike. He begins to desperately turn circles around them; tries to go around first to the left, then to the right; squeeze between them, but everything is in vain. One time my game got bugged like this. It was an extremely hilarious sight.

The “cherry on the cake”, so to speak, was the gaming camera. This is some kind of eternal curse in Japanese games, especially in 3D games. Most of the time she does a great job. But! When the chaos described above begins to happen on the screen, she simply gives up and rests close-up on the back of some character or monster.In fact, this happens very rarely, but sometimes it still slightly spoils the impression of battles with enemies and the game in general.

The most unfortunate innovation, in my opinion, was made in mass battles. Now we are shown in detail the battle of each unit. Because of this, all the episodes with massive battles in the game became very drawn out and slow. Fortunately, they didn’t touch the duel combat system. She stayed the same. At least I didn’t notice any significant changes.

In addition to all the innovations in the game, another new gameplay feature has appeared – the skill system. Now each character can be assigned abilities, and then upgrade them in special training centers. You are given a choice of several skills that you can use in battle. They are divided into three types: basic skills, which all characters have; skills related to physical attacks and skills related to magic. Now I’ll explain how it works. For example, one of your characters is a fighter and you want to teach him the magic of “Water”, but he does not have innate abilities for it. You go to the training center and assign him the skill to use this magic. In the future you can upgrade this skill. But if his talent for teaching this particular skill is limited, then you will not be able to pump him to the maximum, only to a certain extent.

There are also unique skills in the game that are available only to certain specialist characters, such as “thief” or the skill to use the magic of the “Gate” rune. This is the famous rune from the first game. Apparently it is very rare, because I beat the game and never came across it.

If you choose the best of all the innovations, then it is undoubtedly the skill system. It makes the combat system deeper, more interesting and more varied.

Not only all the known magic rune spells were transferred from the previous games to the third, but several new ones also appeared. They are very spectacular and destructive.

Old composer > new composer

The composer of the first two games, the beautiful and charming Miki Higashino
in the third iteration of the series, she was replaced by the very famous and beloved Michiru Yamane.
For reference. Michiru Yamane is known for composing the soundtrack for Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night.

This, of course, is a matter of taste, you can scold me for this, but I don’t really like her style. And what’s there, what’s here. Sorry, but I’m not a big fan of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. To be fair, I will note that Michiru Yamane did an excellent job overall. She wrote a pleasant and exquisite musical accompaniment. Her music fits well with the mood of the game and can evoke emotions in even the most callous player during touching and tense moments in the plot. Some of the music in Suikoden 3 is very catchy. Listen for yourself.

Suikoden III is no worse or better than its predecessors. She’s just different. But it’s still a very good RPG. The new combat system is a little rough, but you quickly get used to it. The game world is rich in history, politics and culture. A thoughtful, dynamic plot and deep, rich characters can captivate you for dozens of hours. The game has a lot of shortcomings and is very easy to criticize. You don’t need a lot of intelligence for this. But for every shortcoming, Suikoden III has ten advantages that neither other Japanese role-playing games nor Western ones have.

P.S. I don’t like JRPGs. They’re too long. I’ve been trying to complete Digital Devil Saga 1&2 for a whole year. I even thought about writing an article about her. There’s so much grind there. Fucking random encounters literally at every turn. The soundtrack is really cool from the composer of Persona. It’s only because of him that I played. I was able to get through the first saga with difficulty. I abandoned the second one. I’m unlikely to return to her.

Played Final Fantasy X a long time ago. I liked her. I really liked it. But I couldn’t finish it to the end. Again too much grind for my taste. Bosses with 100 thousand lives or even more. Are you kidding me?! You’re probably even kidding me, I’d say. But I would still really like to return to her someday.

In short, my relationship with JRPGs is complicated. I don’t have enough patience for them. But I liked Suikoden. Perhaps it’s all in the setting or in the soundtrack of my favorite Miki Higashino. She not only writes very good music, she is also a very attractive girl by the way! But most likely I liked Suikoden first of all because the game didn’t force me to grind a lot and there is enough variety in the gameplay.