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.
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.