Playing this for the billionth time because of the recent "The Last Hope" fan hack and I've finally realized what puts this game/series above the sum of its parts... the character interactions. Murayama just knew how to write engaging characters and dialogue. RIP.

Edit: Can't actually recommend the hack as the added scenes/dialogue make very little to no sense, in broken English, and once first arriving at Toran Castle, the game freezes. If anything it drives home how easy Murayama made it seem, but it's not. Luckily this isn't a long game and I'm glad I could revisit this world again, however so briefly this time before the remasters come out.

This is a series I’ve heard praise for for almost as long as I’ve been actively looking into retro gaming stuff online. The steep price of the English copies combined with so many other RPGs to play had always kept me away from actually starting them, but the creator’s recent passing got me thinking it was about time I finally get around to seeing just what all the fuss is with this Suikoden stuff. It took me about 30-ish hours to get the best ending (collecting all 108 Stars of Destiny) in the Japanese version of the game on real hardware.

Suikoden is the story of Tir, the son of one of the five great generals of the imperial army. After joining up with the military and just starting out on doing missions for them, his childhood friend’s great secret is revealed. As it turns out, he controls a powerful and ancient magic that the empire’s high sorceress is hell bent on getting her hands on, and he gives it to you for safe keeping before he’s carried off by troops. Fleeing the capital, you eventually end up joining and leading the resistance army against the empire! Such is Tir’s quest to stop the empire and keep the Soul Eater rune out of the sorceress’s hands.

Suikoden’s writing is a very mixed bag. On one hand, their opting to focus on side characters rather than a main character means that we get a remarkable amount of great vignettes along our journey to topple the empire. The game is loaded with great dialogue writing and memorable side characters, even if not all 108 of the Stars of Destiny (the guys you’re recruiting) have terribly big roles unto themselves. On the other hand, the story is very badly focused, and not for the obvious reasons you might think a game with 108 recruit-able party members would be.

The biggest issue comes down to the whole “topple the empire, stop the sorceress” conceit of the thing. This isn’t so much a story of getting rid of a corrupt, evil government so much as it is a story about stopping the big bad wizard behind it all. The resistance army is really just a means to an end to keep her from getting the Soul Eater rune, and the game spends precious little time actually focusing on any sort of political or systemic bent as to why people would want to get rid of the empire. People offhandedly mention how the empire has “changed” in the past few years and that it is cruel now, but the whole empire thing seemingly worked out just fine until the sorceress started using it as a means to chase down ultimate power.

However, the game still has TONS of moments that are like “so what IS your justice, main character!? Are you even sure you’re on the right side of this war!?”, and they hit really weak when you know for a fact that you’re fighting on the good side, because you’re not the side with the world-destroying sorceress on it. It makes for some very confused larger themes, as it almost seems like the game is going out of its way to exonerate virtually anyone but the sorceress and her most comically evil henchmen as ultimately just good people caught (i.e. mind controlled) in an actually good system that happens to be corrupted by one big bad actor.

There are some other pretty significant problems around Tir himself not really being a real character (him being a silent protagonist makes the larger moments of pathos surrounding him pretty weak), but the big thing is just how bad the narrative’s indecision is about how bad the empire is vs. how bad the sorceress is. The moment to moment writing is still fun and I enjoyed it, but the ending was decidedly weak compared to how good that earlier stuff was. I can very easily believe that the games after this are much better (as I’ve always heard that Suikoden 2 is the realization of everything Suikoden 1 was trying to do), but that doesn’t really change how the original Suikoden is an impressive but still decidedly rough first try.

The mechanics and combat are overall pretty darn good, or at least satisfying in a way I really enjoy games like this being. It’s a turn-based RPG with a party of six, and a back row and a front row for both you and your enemies. Dungeon design tends to be short and sweet, and it’s really good at not letting the narrative pace get dragged down by overly long dungeons with billions of random encounters. Though all 108 Stars of Destiny aren’t actually usable party members (some of them just provide services for you back at base like adding a weapon shop, for example), there are still a LOT of potential party members for you to use if you so wish. While on that topic, finding the Stars of Destiny is actually a lot more reasonable than I would’ve thought it’d be. Almost (but crucially, not actually) all of them are signposted very well, and it’s actually not that difficult to get nearly all of them without the use of a guide. Three or four of them ARE unreasonable enough to stumble across that I’d still recommend a guide to find them if you’re keen to (it changes the ending a little, though not super meaningfully, imo), but I was very happily surprised at just how easy to stumble across most of the optional characters were.

On another very thankful note, the game’s EXP curve is also completely designed around just how massive a potential character pool you’re drawing from. Party members below the current level of an area level up EXTREMELY fast, often getting to rough parity with your other party members in the course of five for ten battles. Additionally, the large party combined with the safety of the back row means you have very safe and efficient way to include weaker guys in your party so they can still level up, which is also a very nice and well thought out gameplay feature.

The bigger issue with keeping your party equipped is money. Up until about the halfway point, getting more money is tough, and that can be an issue with how often you’re forced to have certain party members come along with you. Armor costs a boat load if you want the good stuff, and while each party member doesn’t have interchangeable weapons, their respective forever weapon can be upgrade for (a lot of) cash at a blacksmith, which thankfully cuts down on inventory clutter. Magic is a bit of a weird one, as you equip runes on characters at magic shops, and then that character can use the different levels of magic from that rune via a sort of universal spell charge system tied to their character and level (not unlike how spell charges work in early DND or Final Fantasy 1). Magic is both very limited but incredibly powerful, and it’s a similarly nice blend of “simple but learnable” like the rest of the combat is. It’s an overall quite easy game, but it still manages to feel challenging, which is exactly the kind of combat design I like in one of these games.

There are two other minor gameplay modes, and they’re duels and army battles. At certain parts of the story, your army will need to fight another army, and sometimes two characters will have a one-on-one duel with bespoke mechanics. Both of these systems, however, are just glorified rock-paper-scissors matches, with the duels in particular being extremely easy if you just spam the defend command (as defending also counters their power attacks to deal massive damage). The army battles are pretty and cool, but being RPS doesn’t make it terribly fun if you’re struggling with one. They’re not too hard, but that doesn’t change how it just sucks to lose when the only real reason you’re losing is just being too unlucky. Getting more Stars of Destiny will give you more and more powerful options in those army fights, so you can tilt the odds in your favor at least a bit, but it’s still something that I wish either had a bit more skill involved or were a bit more difficult to lose outside of just getting lucky enough (as there’s no cutscene skip option, and this game has some lengthy cutscenes at times that you’ll need to button-mash through to get another try at a hard fight).

The game’s aesthetics are quite impressive for one of the earliest RPGs on the PS1. Being from December 1995, it’s no great surprised that some of the character models and such don’t have a ton of animation to them, and that the graphics do look a bit muddy in places. Be that as it may, this is still a very pretty 2D game on the PS1. Monster design is fantastic and varied, character portraits are detailed and expressive, and environments are well put together and hard to lose your way in with how both brief and detailed they so often are. The music isn’t quite on the level of a SquareSoft game, imo, but it’s damn close, and this game has no shortage of really good music tracks, even if the actual track list isn’t too terribly long.

Verdict: Recommended. Though it’s certainly not without its flaws, Suikoden 1 is a really quality RPG on the PS1. It’s a bit mechanically bare for those who love really mechanically complex games, and the writing is a bit on the weak side for folks who prefer a better written story, but it does both well enough that I think it’s still a very easy game to have a good time with as long as you’re not demanding perfection from everything you play. If you’re in the mood for a good PS1 RPG, you can certainly do better, but you can do a lot worse too, and I’ve no doubt in my mind that, at the very least, Suikoden 1 will serve as an excellent spring board for its far improved sequel.

Um começo decente pra oque seria uma das mais icônicas séries de RPGS das eras PS1/PS2. O jogo por ter sido lançado ainda na infância do PS1, tem gráficos e animações bem datados (Um claro exemplo disso são as dungeons que são feias pra caramba e cheias de corredores e cavernas idênticas) ; Suikoden 2 que foi lançado poucos anos já tem um upgrade em todos essses aspectos e um dos jogos 2D mais charmosos que eu já vi. O primeiro Suikoden introduziu quase todas as mecânicas icônicas da franquia que seriam respeitadas e polidas nos jogos subsequentes. Sem entrar em muitos detalhes, a historia é boa e tem vários momentos emocionantes, uma das únicas reclamações que eu tenho é demora até você terminar o supostos ´´prologo`` e ter a sua base, que serve com hub para o resto jogo, e começar a sua busca pelos 108 personagem colecionáveis. Mecanicamente o combate do jogo é bem básico e fácil, é bem obvio que muitos personagem jogáveis são redundantes, quase todos os inimigos e chefes podem ser facilmente derrotados sem muita estratégia, eu sei que essa foi uma decisão por parte do diretor, mas mesmo assim, essa não é minha parte favorita do jogo. Se um dia em querer re-jogar Suikoden 1 com certeza será pelos personagens, cenários e pela estória e não pela gameplay.

Absolute amateur hour, a cascade of incomprehensible decisions. Shamelessly begs to be treated as a game of scope and impact while taking the easy way out of every mechanical (eh, just give the hero an all-target instadeath spell with 100% accuracy in case they get tired of pressing Free Will), systemic (the sheer joy of maneuvering this interface to manage items between 70+ characters...), and narrative (it's all the evil witch's fault!!) challenge. Konami, hardly a company known for developing RPGs, was seeing nothing but dollar signs when they demanded an 108-character roster from novice designer Murayama, a hearty stable of show ponies for a grand first step into a brave new console generation. Saddest of all is how little the company learned from the experience and how few substantive improvements were made to Suikoden 2, a game that does barely anything to actually improve its predecessor's play experience but enjoys a rich reputation based solely on a new coat of aesthetic polish. It cannot be overstated how hard Konami Kukeiha Club carries this.

I do grant it some positive tilt because this game is the training ground for the franchise's sense of humor, which is one of its most appealing parts to me. From time to time here they lean too hard into it, almost to the point of being callous, but sometimes you've just gotta learn the hard way not to use the banjo.

Twenty years of cheating at chinchirorin and counting 😘

Playing through this was my first time playing a Suikoden game. I enjoyed it despite some parts feeling like they dragged on, mainly because of the random encounters. The story is good, and the different mechanics offer a variety of ways to play. Not to mention, you're able to choose 108 different characters for your party. I just stuck with the same characters throughout the game, as I didn't like having to constantly level and gear new characters. Overall, Suikoden 1 is a great game, and I'm excited to see what Suikoden 2 has to offer.

Suikoden 1 really sits in an odd place for me, as it put me on to one of my favorite series and favorite games I've ever played. At the same time, the game that directly follows this one really muddles my perception of this one, to the point it feels like a prequel in my mind despite innovating and paving the way for those later games. This game is iconic in its own right, with some great plot beats and characters that really made me feel for them as members of my party and characters in the story. Some of that carries over to the sequel as well, to the point where I really can't reccomend 2 without playing 1 first, even if I personally wouldn't revisit it as soon as I would 2. A great game in its own right, and I have some really good memories attached to it.

A few years ago, Suikoden was the first RPG that taught me how do you actually play an RPG. After a couple failed attempts trying to beat the game and getting bored each time, I eventually figured a full playthrough must be done. After all, I gotta prepare for my inevitable Suikoden 2 playthrough, a game which I carry a lot of nostalgia for thanks to a decade-old let's play I watched way back when.

The only hurdle left was that whole "108 party members to choose from" thing. I'm already stressed out trying to manage SIX party members in Chrono Trigger, now I gotta manage 108?! Well, the real number is closer to 80, seeing as not every character you recruit is playable, but still, that's a lot! How the heck will I know which ones are actually good to use, and if I gotta experiment, how long will it take to find a good party to go with? And if the situation will require me to switch up my strategy, how long will it take to reorganize my party THEN?

"Calm your shit," proclameith Suikoden. "I'm not telling you to use every single one of them. Just pick what interests you." For you see, that sheer amount of party members is one of the game's more brilliant moves. Of course it doesn't want you to manage 80 party members at once, of course it recognizes how tedious would that actually be. That overwhelming quantity is the very thing that encouraged me into the playstyle of only choosing some of them, instead of all of them. As for whatever party members I never used, that's where Suikoden drives its replay value.

The point is, you won't be able to see every strategy and every combination of party member throughout your first run, but that leaves room for further experimentation on succeeding runs. Maybe in today's age, that does not seem like a very appealing idea, but back in 1995 when Suikoden was likely the one new game you would've had for months, that's when the different combinations of possibilities would've driven your desire to continue playing the game and trying new things out.

Does all of that sound painfully obvious? Congratulations, your brain is normal. Mine is riddled with a completionism complex, and the constant anxiety that anything I'm missing is setting up the potential for something to go wrong. But if anybody reading this feels similarly, I think you should make this game your first stepping stone into the genre if you wanna get into older RPG's. The way it naturally leads you into the lesson of "Play the way you want to play" has opened up the floodgates for all sorts of other RPG experiences since then. Not to mention, opened my eyes towards the fact that this genre is, frankly, mentally deranged in the most fascinating ways.

With that said! I'm not gonna sugarcoat it. As much as I recommend it for the lessons it teaches to an RPG newcomer, you'll have to brace yourself for Suikoden's slow, antiquated nature, which has been outshined by many RPG's since its inception. Its battles go on for longer than they should. The run button is locked behind an equippable item, which you have to waste 1 of 6 of your precious slots on. Characters don't have a whole lot of inventory, so you'll have to manage your resources carefully. The art style isn't doing anything particularly unique to stand out from the competition, and the hardware of the PS1 is barely being utilized.

The game also has a nasty tendency to force you into taking specific party members on-board, when they may be required to progress the story. In turn, it may also take away party members from you when you least expect it, along with everything they were carrying in their inventory. So, let's say, for example, I gave one of my party members an infinite-use item that enables fast travel across the map. Then they get kidnapped in a story cutscene. That item is now gone until I rescue them several hours later, so no more fast travel until then. Did I say this was an example? Sorry, no, that actually happened, and I still remember the face I made when I realized it. I've learned to carry crucial items in my main character's inventory after that.

And hey, something to consider. When you make your story kill off a party member in an emotional scene, believe you me, you do NOT want the player's reaction to be "Noooo, not my 40 fucking potions!"

The writing in itself is not too bad, but it's also not too great. A war is happening, and it's up to you to gather enough recruits to turn your small ragtag group of resistance members, into an army rivaling the corrupt empire. From there, you keep rising, and expanding your reach, until you start getting shit done. I think it shines when it gives the spotlight to intelligent, calculating strategists who head into each of the major battles with a plan. Odessa was cool, so is Matei, and seeing them make the decisions they made for the sake of minimizing casualties, while maximizing victory, were some of the game's bigger highlights.

Regrettably, much of the writing is sabogated by the blatantly fucked up localization, seemingly rushed and untested for proper consistency. In one of the mandatory cutscenes, there's just straight up a developer note left in the script, with the character speaking outloud what was only meant to be context for the localizer. I've also noted numerous instances of characters inappropriately referring to themselves in third person, and typos galore. Similarly to FF4, it does admittingly make things more entertaining, but it also makes it difficult to treat the story seriously.

This is all topped off with a shockingly disappointing ending. A lot of RPG's in this age utilized the trope of the bigger, badder villain revealed to have been pulling the strings behind everything. Similarly, Suikoden does this too, but presumably due to the game being rushed, you don't ever get to fight the bigger villain. Instead, the game's final boss consists of the villain's servant randomly transforming into a giant fuck-you dragon, with only 1-2 attacks to their name and the regular boss fight theme accompanying it. The final boss doesn't even get their own theme! And it ultimately ends with the big, bad villain themselves dying in a cutscene. Considering how despicable the villain is made throughout the story, the fact you don't even get to so much as nudge them, was a terrible anticlimax to this long journey.

However, that WAS only the regular ending... if you were to recruit all 108 companions across the game, there's an alternate true ending you may access instead. But I'll just let you know right now, don't bother. It does not change anything about the final boss. What it DOES do, is allow you to revive your protagonist's most trusted companion from the brink of death. But despite their death having a significant amount of emotional weight put behind it, their revival is given a laughably minimal amount of fanfare by comparison. A couple lines are said, and then the game unceremoniously moves on, with no further relevance or modification to the story.

Despite all this, something about Suikoden's story... still managed to captivate me. The ending itself is hot trash, but it's the epilogue after the fact that unlocked some feelings in me. Many RPG's have the "Where are they now" ending scene, but Suikoden's really instilled the feeling that the long and arduous war has finally come to an end, and people can now live peacefully, free to decide their own life as they wish. And these efforts aren't owed to just a single hero, or two, or four. It was thanks to everyone, the entire world united together to fight against one powerful dictatorship, thus paving the way for peace.

When I think about it like that, Suikoden has a political and inspirational relevance in today's age, when we ourselves are becoming increasingly more aware of our corrupt governments, and the fascists who will use any means necessary to control us, or slaughter us otherwise. Suikoden presents a similarly bleak world, where you quickly learn that under the banner you were born, your only choice is to serve egotistical power-hungry scumbags, and to accept the greed-motivated genocide they invoke on others, lest you get branded a traitor and meet the same fate. But Suikoden says to not give up. Suikoden asks you to refuse such a world, it asks you to organize, to reach out, to unite everyone under the goal of peace. Suikoden tackles some aspects of xenophobia/racism, and further asks you to mend the differences between races and countries alike.

There are a couple characters that are resigned to their fates, convinced that they'd rather live out the rest of their life as it currently is. Only then, they witness the horrors of the empire themselves, realizing that they cannot sit back and watch the world go to hell. And with every person recruited, your ability to oppose the empire grows larger. Your hideout goes from a dinky little cave, to a formidable fortress. As it becomes filled with people, the mood of the music changes, becomes more hopeful, more lively.

This, for me, is the biggest reason to play Suikoden 1. It may not be well written/localized, but its message, its overall execution, had a great impact on me. Even a single person can make a tremendous difference. Add thousands of others who are aspiring to do the same, that difference will spread across the world. It makes me feel warm. It makes me feel that perhaps one day, we can achieve this same kind of peace in real life. If this is the message Suikoden's creator wanted to share to the world, then I thank him for it. He made me feel less alone.

Anyway, here's a summary! Good message. Good music. Some fun and interesting characters here and there. Poor, but funny localization. Slow combat system. Inventory managment is abundant. Graphics are kinda whatever. Anticlimatic ending. Recommended for people who wanna combat their completionism OCD. Don't try to 100%, just go with the flow. Suikoden's definitely not one of the best RPG's you could play out there, but I think it certainly has its pluses if you're of the mood to dissect its themes a little further, are a fan of PS1 games, or are just looking for a simple RPG to get into, even if it may look deceptively complex at first. It is intensely flawed, but also surprisingly heartfelt. A very bizarre case, indeed. Nonetheless, one that I hold dearly. Here's hoping that the upcoming remaster of the first two Suikodens will give people the best way to experience these games.

I liked the unique concept of collecting all the people to join your team and the whole base thing a lot, but everything else could have been executed much better. The battles are slow and basic, yet not to the point where it was unendurable. The story while it had some cool moments the story overall didn't do much for me. I feel like this is just a perfect representation of a mid video game, but even still I like it more than I feel I should. Hope the rest of the series builds off of the foundation that this game laid

Suikoden features young hero Tir McDohl (I called him Rohl so he sounded like a fast food mascot with a speech impediment), as he realizes the corruption of the empire he works for and goes from being the sheltered son of an imperial general to the leader of a resistance movement. It’s from here that the game’s biggest and most unique ‘hook’ comes from, in the form of recruiting 108 ‘Stars of Destiny’ to join your army. Searching the world to recruit people to your cause is a great idea and fits right in with the game’s plot – and its implementation is mixed.

I love that the 108 Stars are not just characters who join you in battle, but also people who move into your headquarters and provide a service (e.g. shopkeeper) or even something functionally meaningless but flavorful (like a painter who completes more and more of a mural as you bring him materials to work with). Being able to recruit people of all sizes, shapes, trades and ages and watch your headquarters gradually grow gives a tangible gameplay expression of the military and ideological momentum shifting towards the Liberation Army. I also loved that the game encouraged you to experiment with your party makeup by having any underlevelled characters shoot up in experience and catch up with the active party very quickly. However, I still did find that the (over 70!) playable characters started to blur together after awhile, and Suikoden had the exasperating habit of continuously throwing characters in and out of your party without warning. This, combined with the fact that each character has their own individual inventory that can't be accessed unless they are in your active party - meant a positively painful amount of backtracking and menu-hopping every single time a story event changed your party makeup.

The rest of the game can mostly be characterized as 'safely decent' - the graphics look like they could have been made on the SNES but feature some nice sprite art and zooming in/out effects, the translation is fully functional (more than can be said for many of its contemporaries), and combat is your standard round-based DQ-style affair, with a little bit of character customization thrown in via magic runes which can be equipped on characters to give them certain abilities and attributes. There are even some nice subtle QoL touches - if you ask a character to heal or revive someone, they will do it even after all enemies are defeated so you won't forget to do it later!

One thing that was much better than I thought is the music. Even in a genre in which every game seems to contain a banging soundtrack, Suikoden stands out. The score's versatility is a particular highlight, nailing a number of different musical styles very well (there's a clear Dragon Quest influence here with castle themes written in a Baroque style) - I appreciate that the more Eastern-influenced tracks didn't sound too on-the-nose either. My personal highlight of the soundtrack was when Neclord, the scenery-chewing Dracula expy who demands bridal sacrifices from the surrounding villages, welcomes you to his boss fight by sitting down at his pipe organ and hammering out Mendelssohn's Wedding March in a minor key.

Overall, Suikoden represents a really strong start to a beloved series that I’m only just starting to get into. I’ve heard the sequel does a lot of things better and I’m really excited for it!

What a game ! It's one of the best RPG system that I've ever played! The XP, leveling and fighting system is just awesome and well balanced! Of course, the game costs a LOT of money if you want to maximize the level of your weapon, but you can bet money and save. It just takes time, but it's not that a problem.

Searching for all characters is a pleasure and even if I had a solution with me to find them all on my first playthrough (I stream the game and I never play on my free time so I won't have the time for another playthrough, so I wanted the 100%), I think if I had the time for 2 or 3 playthroughs, I would have tried to find them all without the solution.

A must play for every fan of RPG.