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 😘