Platform	PlayStation 2
Available	Now (Japan)
Genre	RPG
Developer	Konami
Publisher	Konami

Disclaimer: Warning, I'm a rabid fan of Suikoden: these impressions aren't even trying to be reasonable about it, so read at your own risk. Adjust your grains of salt to how lowly you think of me. The Chinese legend is my favorite story ever, and this game is excellent so I really feel like writing a lot to convey how wonderful it is especially since the series is such an underdog. There are no spoilers anywhere, all information is standard things you could get from the average preview.

Part I: China and Konami's Past (legend it came from and links to the past games for fans)

It is often said that the Japanese are characterized and have an unhealthy obsession with assimilating things from other cultures into their own. This is especially the case with China and Korea, longtime historical links have birthed many ties, bad and good between the countries. One of these ties has been literature. The four great classics of Chinese literature (Romance of the Three Kingdoms, The Dream of the Rose, The Monkey King, and The Water Margin) all find a home in Japan's literary heart, influencing much of the culture, and even today you can play games based on them, such as Dynasty Warriors (Romance of the Three Kingdoms, or Sangokushi) and Saiyuki (Journey West or Monkey King). One of the many games based on The Water Margin (or Suikoden) is Konami's Gensou Suikoden series (or roughly Illusions and Fantasies of the Water Margin). Suikoden, like other classics of literature, lives on in many forms, such as BBC broadcast series, novels and manga, and Koei even has a strategy RPG, many different tabletop role playing games even exist--all based on the famous tale.

Written in China after the fall of the Northern Tsung Dynasty (the second of a long period of political weakness and decadence, but continued the tradition of the previous Tang Dynasty's cultural growth and flourishing) by Shi Nai An (and called Shui Hu Zhuan in Chinese), the incredibly long epic combines historical flourishes with a fictional tale like other ancient epics, The Iliad and The Tale of Genji (several characters actually exist, some of the mythology takes its source from Chinese philosophy at the time and there are many acute historical references). In the book, a group of people known as the 108 Stars of Destiny rise up against the decadent empire, collecting together around a marsh. These people are the successors to previous souls who each embody a concept or ideal, like integrity, compassion, intelligence, patience, strangeness, murder or closing, with 36 heavenly spirits and 72 worldly fiends recorded. These are the souls of long-ago demons that had repented after being sealed away by an ancient spiritist. All of their personalities are supposed to represent all the different ways of life and a complete rebellion against the corrupt and immoral lifestyle of the government, a well-written tale that chronicles both the oft-repeated dynastic rebellions of old China and the political ideas that fuel such a cycle. *

Like the past two games, Suikoden III uses such a plot concept to create an RPG like no other. Make no mistake about it: there will be uprisings, betrayals and a rebellion against corrupt government forces, and if this makes you puke just thinking about playing another RPG with this plot, you might want to think again. After all, classics written thousands of years ago one after another weren't thrown away based on how original their stories were, but kept and treasured on how well-told, smart, entertaining, timeless and wise they were. This is the exactly the feel of Suikoden III: an extremely well-told story based on a classic type of rebellion spin. Though the first Suikoden has several of the plot threads directly incorporated into fetch quests and story scenes, and the story of the character of Joey in Suikoden II is derived from a famous character in the original, Suikoden III uses the three different viewpoints of three different major characters from the epic tale. Konami created a huge lake with which to place a fantasy continent around so that there could be a lake castle in each game corresponding to the Chinese classic, and Suikoden III takes place far to the north of Suikoden II's world, which itself is north of Toran, the original game's world and to the west of the Harmonian Empire. This means various characters from both Suikoden II and I appear, and the number is better than what was previously thought, though perhaps not quite as many as return in Suikoden II. Since its 15 years after the events of Suikoden II, many characters that were extremely young in Suikoden II are now all nice and grown up, and yes there are some wonderful characters that stretch all the way back to Suikoden. However, its hard to tell how many, (I have about 60 stars so far) because it could be that using Suikoden I, II or Suikogaiden Vol. 1 or 2 data would open up more characters or change which Stars of Destiny you can recruit. I don't have perfect data, so I decided to start the game without loading any, which requires transfering PS1 saves onto the PS2 memory card in advance so that Suikoden III can read it. I do know that the names of the armies, protagonists and castles of the previous Suikodens as well as the levels of returning characters are adjusted based on your Suikoden II save. If your Suikoden II save contains a perfect Suikoden save then you get even more. So far two characters from Suikogaiden have appeared in the game, relatively important, but not incredibly major, so it appears the saves from those will only influence those two characters, thus it doesn't look like US players will miss much in not having Suikogaiden games translated or perhaps Konami will simply put in the extras that would have been there.

Part 2: From Drawn Animation to Written Animation (Story and Intro details)

Whew. With all that out of the way, upon starting up Suikoden III an immaculately produced anime collage of scenes plays that must be somewhere from 2 to 3 minutes long and rivals the best what Miyazaki and Disney can do. You can tell it was a long time in the making, beautifully shot and choreographed with music that is stolen from the halls of musical heaven, the Suikoden III intro, for its power and mystery, its ability to pull you in and make you want to play, its charm and attention to detail...Truly, it stands with games like Final Fantasy VIII and Soul Edge, as one of the best introduction movies ever. And as you play the game, gradually the enigmatic scenes shown in the intro begin to make sense, and there's even several well-hidden hints to some gameplay secrets in the game. After this, the screen lowers to a beautiful painting of 2D art, of a road extending from the players point of view into a windy, lonely plane with clouds its only companions. Past the title screen you're given options for loading past game's data, naming a "Flame Hero" and then taken to the Trinity Sight System, wherein you decide which character's story you would like to follow.

There have been many, many tries at doing something like Trinity Sight before, giving you a chance to play with different characters or do the plot different ways, but most of them have fallen on their face, or not been terribly successful. Suikoden III bucks this trend. First of all, there is more to the system than simply choosing which characters story you'd like to see. Alternative viewpoints will gradually open up, and I'm not actually sure whether there are optional viewpoints or you have to see them all, but I know you have to play at least 3 chapters the three main characters, Hugo, Geddoe and Chris each. After that, its anyone's guess, I've been playing everything I could get my hands on. The system works extremely well, characters will face different enemies, go to different places at different times, have completely different parties and thus battle strategies for a while, their emphasis is on very different parts of the story and their feel is quite removed from each other. Each viewpoint is unique, nothing is wasted or feels underused. In fact, so much more comes from the tale by being able to choose which chapter of which character's viewpoint you'd like to see freely that I truly think all other RPGs from now on should adopt this system and make it standard. That's how good it is. At the same time, though many of the enemies, weapons, items and locations are shared between the three characters as well, its a pretty good balance. Since to a certain point, you must play the game as all three characters I can imagine it might get tedious for some players to see the same places and events over and over again, as much of the length of the game has been comprised of this thus far. But for the most part, the plot develops so quickly and at a galloping pace that I don't think this will be the case for most. If you should decide to go on a huge variety of non-linear sidequests than it could get bad, but since you don't have to do them, the game is paced so that it always stays very absorbing and interesting, even fighting the same enemies with different characters can be quite a different experience because of the remodeled battle system. Think of it as reusing the same level to get the six different stars in Super Mario 64, except that the area changes and morphs with different events happening based on which character is there at what time, instead of collecting stars, you're collecting bits and pieces of a complex story that cannot be fully understood from any one viewpoint.

Furthermore, there are many instances in which a character will not hear dialogue clearly or interpret it different from another character, or see a scene from a different standing point, and thus not be able to see some other action going on, this is used to its utmost as the three characters cross paths with each other, and encounter other unrelated events and characters differently depending on which viewpoint you choose. On top of this, treasure and items can be shared between the three characters in an extremely unique and realistic way, so you can, to an extent "cooperate" for the benefit of all three without actually meeting each other at all. Put an item in a storage chamber of a castle as Hugo and maybe when Chris visits, she can take it from the storage chamber and use it with her party. Chapters are a couple of hours long at most and an hour at least, making short snippets and pieces of game for you to digest, it also makes a good solution to the nausea that sets in after playing an RPG for a good 20 hours or so and getting bored of it or not having time to play such a long game. Because its split into many small pieces that can be individually appreciated without playing the other pieces in succession and those other pieces, once finished are all summarized in tidy chapter summary screens, Suikoden III provides constant impetus and renewal and can be much, much less tedious than the progress quests found in other games. You can tell the delays were meant to strengthen and make the most of this system.

The story itself concerns the uprising of passions from long-smoldering flames of the past: there's much more concerned to it than the previews said about Zexen and the Grasslands, its not that simple at all. Many different cultures and countries will clash and a legion of references and characters from other Suikoden games will join together to create what is truly one epic game even if you're not travelling the world over, the kingdoms of the game provide a sense of vastness, though I must say the scope of the world is somewhat (but not drastically) reduced from Suikoden II, which has been the most vast. The really cool thing is how everything gels together, there is far more history and depth to the backstory of Suikoden III then there ever was in the past games, partly because the plots of the past two games are minorly concerned with the third. The script is elegantly written, with maybe too much emphasis in certain places (you couldn't really say its melodramatic, just a tad bit of trimming the egdes would be good) and a little too "genki" or "energetic" at times, but those are the only flaws. Otherwise, like Wild Arms Advanced 3rd's writing, Suikoden III represents a genuine advance in game's storytelling, with more subtletly, scope, insight into the way of the world and even references to Japanese, Korean, Chinese, European and American history (there's a neat little allusion to Thomas Jefferson). It is, however, highly critical and damning of a certain economic thinking, obviously current events have influenced the story somewhat, but absolutely not to the point where it becomes whiny, preachy or overly concerned with real-world issues. Though its not as well-written as Wild Arms Advanced 3rd or as quite as natural as Xenosaga Hollywood-movie-like dialogue, Suikoden III is its own unique beast, and that beast stands as one of the best examples of storytellling in the medium, be it PC or console, Eastern or Western style. Overall the story is better than either Xenosaga or Wild Arms (and definitely better than FFX).

I've heard past Suikoden games got shafted in the translation department, so it may be surprising to hear they are well-written, but well, they are. Playing it in Japanese is probably very similar to playing Planescape Torment in English, with reams of wit and charm, local dialects and clever devices. There is also a lot of subtle imagery mixed in with the dialogue and cultures of the people in the game, as well as some really unique visual symbols accomplished solely with the meld of graphics and dialogue and not forced on the player at all. This part in particular gives us a great glimpse on how videogames can be a unique storytelling medium and is extremely well done. The dialogue is so priceless that it hardly ever falls for anime or videogame cliched dialogue and the characters are a whole other topic of extreme charm and versalility and range. In fact, I found myself getting attached and completely riveted to more characters, minor and major in Suikoden III than in any other game I've ever played. While there are predictable events, plot twists and character reactions to plot twists, for the most part, a lovely sense of motive and purpose are given to the characters, with some great cultural subtleties going on. And then there are entirely unpredictable plot twists that will throw you for a loop and stun you, especially some of the things you'll realize when you see the same event from another character's point of view. There are black and white characters, of course, but there's a whole lot more grey area in Suikoden III than there ever was before due to the Trinity Sight System. It forges far deeper detail and understanding of the character's motives and actions and much more context to them.

The 108 Stars of Destiny in this game really work on the name of the game, or the illusions and fantasies from the Chinese legend. Though the atmosphere in S3 can somtimes be more Western and European than past games, there is a definite feel of a Japanese take on a Chinese classic and though less characters return, the overall quality of the 108 stars is awesome. Usually, there are 2/3 of characters I just kind of appreciate from a distance, but S3, almost every character has peaked my interest. Because of the Trinity Sight System, they are all given time to develop much better than they were before and well, damnit, developers copy the Trinity Sight System, as its the best-developed idea in a looooooooong time for RPGs. Half the problems with console RPGs, such as their clichedness and simplicity, occasional tedium and long-running time accented with less-than-quality areas would be solved if everyone did as Konami did here. Anyway, there is so much more charm and laughter and witty banter and wonderful characterization in the stars (and much more of it, too!) that its hard to not be stunned at how Konami thought up all their personalities. Fabulous world-building stuff here that make the world feel like a breathing, living goddess who blesses the land with her enchanting children. Cut scenes do take up more time than in past Suikoden's and as always, the emphasis is on story, but at no time do you feel pushed on a track like what can happen with Final Fantasy, as the game is pretty non-linear with Trinity Sight letting you decide which parts you want to see first and when, and with lots of optional quests and elements to try out, at no time are you locked into a story tunnel from which you cannot escape. There is definitely a good balance of gameplay and story here. This is not a Xenogears/Xenosaga/Final Fantasy type of RPG.

Part 3: Wars Require Battles, Right? (The battle systems details)

As Suikoden II's story was a huge leap over Suikoden's, and the same can be said of Suikoden III, the gameplay is a similarly large improvement. Gone are the quick, pretty much strategy-less battles of the past games. In its place are quick, strategy-full battles. While the battle engine does not run as fast as past Suikodens, its definitely the fastest 3D battle system out there right now. The reasons are mostly because with 3D, the attack animations are now much more dramatic--but they aren't much more long than those of the past games, and can never be said to get tedious from being overly ornate, the game is sparing and simple-minded on its goal in this regard. There is no load time or camera panning, and the after battle screen/return to the field takes a practical millisecond if you push your button once (otherwise its just like the past games and will sit there and leisurely add up experience until you push your button). Furthermore, once you get to a point in which dungeon or overworld enemies are no longer present any significant challenge, the "run" command changes to the "let enemies go" command and you have a 100% chance of escaping. Since it takes only 1 or 2 seconds to go in and out of battle with "let enemies go," when battles become tediously easy, its also an extremely fast way of making sure you don't have to fight them. Why are battles still random then? Well, there are two reasons, one is that based on what chapter you play, your current level and where you are at, easy small fry might be replaced by harder enemies to challenge you. I haven't figured out how this works yet, since sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn't. :/ The second reason is that in each area of the game you have a chance to meet an "area boss" based on your level, that are far stronger and more dangerous than the regular enemies, but also give you great experience awards should you win. You'll know you face them when the music changes to something decidely more fierce: this is not a minor element, I've run across quite a few area bosses so far and its fun to "hunt" them. Should you think its too dangerous, or not want to fight them, you can always escape. Sometimes I must say the enemy and character animations are a bit superfluous, i.e. we don't have to wait for wolves to retreat their steps a bit or little bits of holly to jump merrily around the battlefield, but this is the exception and not the rule, as moving around on the 3D battle plain is very fast and runs at a clipped pace. Despite it being completely 3D now, Suikoden III inherits the legacy of the series supersonic battles. Often times you might even lose track of what's going on, its so fast, as characters will often attack at the same time and things will be going on at the same time outside the camera's view. At these times, messages will appear telling you what happened, so it doesn't interfere with anything, but its still a little annoying to not see it at times. The camera has been improved from the demos with less funky and weird angles, and more dramatic, beautiful and exciting angles, even if it does lose track sometimes.

As much as has been changed from past games, it still inherits the same flow and control with runes, special attacks, items, attack and defense. But this is about all that remains from the old interface, besides the somewhat isometric stance of six characters against enemies. A lot of games, when they went 3D had to decrease the complexity of characters and enemies, with at most 3 or 4 enemies at a time, and most of the time only 1 or 2, with only 3 party members, as is increasingly the case with FF and friends. On the other hand I've seen Suikoden 3 handle 8 monsters and six characters at a time, all moving simultaneously. Its insane and quite hectic at times, though the average is around five characters against five enemies. New to Suikoden III is the Buddy System, which along with Trinity Sight, I'm pleading with RPG developers to rip off. It influences everything. S3, like the previous games put you in the role of the commander of an army of characters, not the micromanagement, control everything method of most RPGs and the Buddy System complements this extremely well. Basically, in battle you choose from three commands of three different units of two each, called a buddy unit. And then the character's AI and personality, as well as composition kick with the commands to determine what happens. You control this much more than you think you can. While inputting only 3 commands takes much less time, it also increases the amount of thinking you have to do since you can't manipulate every character's actions directly every turn. Every character in the game has a class which can be changed by learning skills, and a personality than cannot be changed, as well as unique traits based on their stats, equippabble items and relations to other characters. There is a front position and a back position, which also influences how the characters act.

If a character is an archer and placed in the back row, but has a beserker personality, then no matter what you do, you may not be able to protect them with your front row buddy. Some characters have minds of their own and will ignore your orders and attack a different enemy if it intercepts the enemy you commanded them to attack, and others will single-mindedly not attack until they reach the enemy you selected, even if that means giving up their turn. Some characters run around or even teleport around the battlefield, being everywhere at once, others maintain their position, allowing you to figure out how to create a defensive wall around them. Furthermore, in the case of mages when they cast spells, it requires an aria charge time like FFIV wherein glowing spheres of light appear around the character until they cast the spell, in this state some will not move and some will, either way requiring them to move delays the spell even more, as they can't concentrate as much. Some spells can cost as much as three turns to activate, but are well worth it if you can protect the spell caster, as in true Grandia-style, both enemy and ally spells can be canceled if the that person receives strong physical attacks. And you better believe the enemy AI will take advantage of this. Also, if you have an EXTREMELY smart ally, if they see a mage begin to charge a spell, they will change and try to cancel the attack. Also in Grandia-style, there is a gauge at the bottom of the screen that shows you what action the buddy will take if you give a command to their partner and how long it will take them to move in range to do an action (in blue) as well as how long it will take to actually execute the attack (in red). With attacks and magic that take more than one turn, you must decide whether you want to cancel the attack or continue charging at the new turn. At this time, you can respectively modify your target if conditions have changed and the enemies have moved, easily avoiding the frustation that might come from having such a system. Indeed, sometimes you may want to keep a character's charge times or movement ranges weak, so you can position them in one turn, and prepare for the next, while defending in the current.

FURTHERMORE (yes, there's more) item use is completely innovated with this system. Now items can only be used on buddies, and buddies alone (unless of course if its a party effect item or a enemy effect item, but these are rarer). That means, no healing another character if they are out of your unit, unless you have the proper magic, which itself is limited by charge time and range. You can equip three items to use in battle, but these are also spaces for additional armor that can help drastically. Often, its a case of balancing functionality with flexibility and you will seldom if ever have all the items you want. Each item has a number of times it can be used, and when its up, the character can pull another item out of the party's bag, but doing this takes a penalty of one turn, and the party's bag can only hold 30 items (with of course, various storage institutions to store the rest). This means heavy consideration and pre-planning and a battle system which relies on using the small resources available and cutting down the threat significantly before it can hurt you. Enemies are not stupid, they almost always target the characters they can hurt the most and the illusion of them seeing right through your plans is complete, thus you often have to balance knowing that characters strength, weakness and personality with how they operate with their buddy and how this affects the team as a whole. Do they separate or do they follow each other? Do they cooperate or do they hate each other? Characters that are especially given to tempers or are fond of other team members will fly into a rage called "anger condition," when that character gets hurt badly or dies, or particularly annoying things happen to themself. In "anger condition" as a balance to being harder to command, their attack damage goes up by 1.5 times. If, in an extreme event that is very, very rare, they go into berserk mode, then that's it, they've gone completely gone off their rocker and you won't be able to control them at all. And to add onto this, characters can also ride or unit into special attacks with other characters depending on how they are placed. The series tradition of unite attacks continues, but now you have to have them in a certain group to trigger the dual attacks. If they ride on, they combine their strength, defense and evasion abilities into one massive attacker, but only have one attack as a team. And to add onto this, often buddy unit strategy (buddy is such a stupid name for it, that's what you call going on fieldtrips so you don't get lost, Konami!) can change drastically depending on who is in the front and who in the back.

Despite all this detail, because you only have three commands to consider, the battle system remains quick and speedy, despite all the thinking. The game's difficulty fluctuates, it can be pretty easy sometimes, reasonably normal, as in sweating, but not shaking from fear and incredibly, god-forsaking, stream of cuss words hard. At this point, I'd guess I'm a little more than halfway through the game and well, yeah, I've seen the game over screen about six times and had countless close shaves with complete annihilation. Characters die in battle often, and for the vast majority of the game there is no way to revive them. Once the battle ends, they gain 1 HP like most RPGs, but for the most part, lose a character in a battle, and there is no chance of resurrecting them. You can equip quite expensive and rare dolls on them that automatically revive them if they die, but that takes up an armor/item space and isn't failsafe. Battle rate is extremely low and below normal, at least when the enemies are kicking your ass--and they will kick your ass quite frequently. As you get better, the random battle rate increases to compensate for it. About 40% of battles I've had at least one character die in and a good 90% make me worry about my stock of items running low. This is a huge improvement over Suikoden's extremely easy "I am the tank that cannot even lose more than 1 HP and if I do it really doesn't matter" battles.

And, wait a minute, he's going to say "furthermore" again, since the same rune system is in effect as in Suikoden II, but the areas between places where you can replenish them tend to be packed with less battles with more consequence. There isn't a fight, fight and only fight feel to the system, its spread evenly between magic, specials, defense, items and attacking, believe it or not, you'll have to make good use of these in order to succeed, attack recklessly and you'll find yourself in a predicament.

Of course, the main battle system is just that, the main battle. There are two more, the duel system and the army battle system. The duel system hasn't changed much at all, you still interpret the words of your opponent in order to make a decision from defend, attack and strong attack in a rock, paper, scissors type of strategy. Except now there is a duel guage that swings back and forth to give character's certain advantages. Basically, the more you do well, the more it will swing in your opponent's advantage, giving them higher defense, and the more they dominate, the more it swings to your area. This is quite tense, since you now can't win a battle in one quick swing, and these battles are longer and fraught with nervousness, and harder. Also, as a last resort opponents could fly into "anger condition" which means you can never let your guard down. There are also far more of these fights in Suikoden III than in I and II combined, so its utilized a lot more.

If I explained everything they've done to the army battle system, these impressions would run so long you'd be an old man by the time you were done. In other words, it has once again, been massively overhauled. I can only explain the gist. They take place now on static beautifully painted 2D background and you move your characters on circles, that can move to other circles as long as there is a path of squares there. The picture represents the areas you will attack should one occur. You can choose to defend your area against an enemy attack or invade an enemy area's or attack them, but attacks are made by moving a unit onto an opposing unit. If two or more characters can get to the same circle and surround that circle, than they can lend support to the main attacker of the circle. Those defending the circle choose which party of characters they have among (I think up to five can be in one circle) to receive the opponents attack. The screen then moves to the 3D battle system and you can choose to attack, defend or run away. In theory it resembles Saga Frontier II's army system, but in practice it isn't at all the same. There are an incredible amount of variables. Which characters do you choose to make up a unit? (Up to four in the main attacking party and one support character.) Do you attack with preliminary attacks on the main screen and wait for the battle, or go straight into attacking? How do your characters act depending on their personalities and buddy units? Will you use a support skill or compose the party so that it has various automatic supports, like attack + 5%, or controllable battle strategy (wherein the interface changes so you can manipulate each character rather than attack, defend or run) or HP recovery or what? There are skills that will make it so that if you charge out of forest onto plains, you'll get a 25% attack boost and another will allow you to open up a new route to a circle. And territory has a lot to do with it, as holing up in the walls of your castle will bring the enemy dangerously close to invading, but will give you 40% higher defense and 15% automatic recovery each turn, or will you hide in the forests or mountains? Each battle has its unique win and lose condition, and I'm glad to report that they are at much more thoughtful and clever than just "kill all enemy units/avoid being killed yourself." Each turn, enemy or ally, you can see dialogue of both sides of the battle to guage how the story is going with the gameplay and like past games, the battles are full of unexpected surprises and developments, and changing victory conditions. One of the battles I've run across in particular had a very unique way of winning it that took a while to think up. They are more like complex chess puzzles and require a lot of deliberation (well that is, not the ones that are easy for plot reasons). Once again, there are more army battles in the game than in past Suikodens as well.
Part 4: RPGs Are Not Just About the Flame and the Sword (castle, linearity issues, other gameplay details)

One of the reasons I've been attracted to the Suikoden games is the great emphasis on other things to do beside fighting battles and Suikoden III inherits that to a tee. But one warning. At the beginning of the game all fighting areas are pretty straight forward. That is, they consist of linear one-way, one-direction tunnels or planes that are basically areas where you fight. Despite this, you often have the option of going other places early to balance it. It creates a kind of "psuedo" overworld, where you fight in the passes, but they aren't really dungeons. As the game continues the real dungeons start to come out, so its not to worry, its only in the beginning. The ability to start building up a castle by recruiting characters, spreading the good word against the evil of the land and scouting for items is inherited well here, with more stuff to do and see and try than perhaps is sane of Konami. Recruiting the Stars of Destiny requires many, many different means and they are more varied in Suikoden III than they have been in the past. Whether its fighting them, composing a team in order to impress them, playing a minigame to get them to join, giving them an item, helping solve a murder mystery, guiding them on a journey or whatever, the tasks are varied and serve to compliment their personalities and offer light on their character with more detail and depth than in past games. You can even go on sidequests with the Stars before you recruit them!

And two of them have absolutely humongously large sidequests. And this is all without seeing what secrets the save data opens up, if its anything like Suikoden II, then quite neat secrets open up and I'm guessing that when I try it out, if it is what I'm guessing what it is...I think I'm going to kiss Konami. Cutscenes for recruiting characters or for minor Stars are now more concentrated on, so that their character is developed better and once again there is a star who can investigate into their details and past for you, dramatically improving your knowledge and understanding of them, and the system works better in S3 than it did in Suikoden II, where it often took too long for the character to get back from searching to even think about getting all the character's information. As the game progresses, you'll be able to find out more and more about each character. In all, I would say heavily developed stars are quite a bit more than 1/3 of the cast thanks to the Trinity Sight System and moderately developed characters making up the rest. There are really only about 10 characters who pretty much don't have much to them. Even then, Konami has really created a stellar cast this time around as their personalities are both more subtle, more obviously expressed and better carried off in much more unique characters in battle or usefulness. Furthermore, every character you recruit this time is useful in some way. Nobody is a waist any more. From providing special services to being good battle companions to the all new support character system. There are more special attacks, unique characteristics, personalities, classes and combinations of singularly held abilities than you'll think can be packed into one RPG.

The support character system appears in the army battles and regular gameplay. You can take seven characters at a time regularly and the seventh slot is for a character who doesn't participate in battle, but offers non-battle strengths. For instance, they will make enemies drop certain types of items at much greater rates depending on their skill or make it so you can use a shop at any time, any where or heal somewhat after battle or offer to buy items when your bag is full. In army battles, often correct placement of support characters can be a big help in victory as their abilities they add to your force add a lot of strategy to placement of them and the use of those abilities.

These are known as support skills, and some regular characters usuable in battle might even have them. There are also personal skills which will develop out of that character's leveling up and their everyday skills and cannot be removed from that character once learned. Everyday skills can be learned by anyone at their appropriate Scholar House or Fighter's Guild. Scholar House for magic skills and Fighter's Guild for attack and defense skills. These are usually found in towns or the castle, each town specializing in different types of shops. The scholar or fighting master can evaluate his students (your characters) based on their ability, and there are about six or seven different levels of mastery that a character can have in learning a skill separate from its rank. These range from "it'll take time" to "wow, you're a mastermind at this." Characters with better proficiency at that skill will learn it faster and be able to hone it to a higher rank. The higher the rank of the skill, the better its effectiveness. As time goes on, from the skills you choose, that character's class might change, changing their proficiency levels a bit, but you cannot change what that character fundamentally is, only the influence of the nature of who they are and try to shore up weaknesses a bit or strengthen strengths. Every battle has skill points won at the end and you use this to learn new skills and increase the rank of skills. Everyday skills--not support or individual skills--you can abandon the study of, depending on your rank this will allow you to recover a certain amount of spent skill points. You can attach a certain number of skills into 8 possible skill slots on each character, a certain number because it differs for each character depending on how many support or individual skills they have. It may sound very similar to FFX's Sphere System or Grandia's Skill Books, or any number of similar systems, but the effect is quite different, you can't change skills in the menu, only at Scholar Houses or Fighting Guilds, which tends to make skill points more of an "ability currency" rather than EXP-like augmentations and its only when you get your hands on the system when you realize the difference. The former system was conducive to micro-managing characters in extensive menus, this system is more like "buying" upgrades when you can get them and affecting general trends and tendencies rather than minute, bit by bit growth.

The rune system has been improved as well. Like usual, there are four levels of magic and with leveling up more magic becomes usuable, also depending on the strength of magic the character has. In addition to the previously mentioned charge time, magic spells also have Grandia-like range. Un-Grandia-like however is that some of these attacks will damage your own characters as well. Sometimes you have no choice but to charge a spell, wait for its release and then defend with your characters or try to get them out of the way so the spell doesn't hit them. Other times you'll just have to bite the bullet and kill off characters in its range, because you need to get rid a lot of enemies quickly. This means also, that you have to think in advance whether you plan to fight the enemy up close or stay back with long range attacks. Short, medium and long range weapons also make a return, but its not now noted anymore. You'll just notice that some characters won't be able to attack from some certain positions or it will take a lot of time, while others can attack from longer distances and need not get so close to the enemy. Archer characters have a skill that determines how far they can attack and may need to change position in order to hit the enemy, if they are still only medium range archers. But back to runes. You can no longer attach runes to weapons, instead it has been changed to be what are called weapon runes with their own support skill, that can enchant weapons and armor with various properties and work like magic, or a skill that characters can only learn as a progression from an everyday skill into an automatically at a certain level developed individual skill. Once again, you can attach a rune to the head, right hand or left hand, and the number of runes you can attach depends on the character, with gradually being able to attach in all three places for some characters and again there are runes attachable for only that character and freely exchangable runes. The amount and variety of runes has been vastly expanded as well, I'm sure there's more than Suikoden II, which itself expanded on Suikoden. The conditions for use of special attacks and the statuses and benefits they produce are now much more useful and creative as well.

Once again, there is a smith who will forge your weapon to a new level for a price and certain smiths can only forge to certain levels. And again names of weapons change as they are forged with all sorts of amusing, funny, mysterious and bizarre varieties of weapons from a talking puppet, to darts, to a bowgun, to a creature's snout, to martial arts and any number of sharpy metal pointy things. Armor and item shops have rare finds once again, and their normal menus change as time progresses, some of the rare finds also change with time, appear randomly or only for a short time and no time else.

There is also a trader in each city who offers a set amount of items for trade. Sometimes the only way to get items you need for the castle is by trading. Buy them and you can sell them for a profit at trade areas and towns. The last six prices of an item and where you saw it at are listed at each place as long as you've gone to that place to update the list as prices and demands fluctuate on the market. This makes keeping track of trading much easier and improves the system greatly over Suikoden II's hard to remember prices and places and conditions. It is also, along with a lottery and something called a dungeon boss, the main way you make money. Enemies simply don't drop enough of it to get everything you need. So trading, trying your luck on the lottery and the dungeon bosses are absolutely necessary to try out if you want to be able to buy useful things and not just get along in the game barely. You can also listen to the trader's rumors in order to get help on the demands of trade at the time. A lottery also appears. Basically there are buying periods and announcement periods. You can choose to buy tickets in numeric succession or randomly. Rewards are based on seven levels, with increasing monetary awards based on how many numbers you got right and special items sometimes given based on two special slots. It seems that the luck you have with a character influences how much you hit in the lottery. Once bought, you need to wait for the announcements, which can take a few days or just one depending on the period. Lottery tickets take up on space EACH in your inventory, making how many to buy a grave consideration. Once announced, you can check the board to see what you won and prizes, boards and tickets are usable only to the town you bought them in. To the last three periods, you can redeem, but any more than that and the tickets are useless so you have to watch your time if you decide to go on quests.

Suikoden III also has more sidequests than all previous Suikoden games put together. There's more to the minigames, and they are more complicated and well-developed, and offer more for winning them. There are more story-based sidequests and longer ones. There are also three types of dialogue options. One is classic Suikoden dialogue, where you only have one choice but you can pick a number of different ways you want to say it until the game forces you to go its way. If you hated the whole tea debacle in Suikoden, these will likely infuriate more than the fickle lottery will. The second are world-building, information questions that you can ask about complicated plot devices. The third actually change the story and will have you either fighting especially story-based hard battles or deciding not to try them and continue the story another way. You never know what kind of choice it is SO SAVE OFTEN. More so than any previous Suikoden there are tons of items, this game downright exceeds Symphony of the Night or practically any other RPG on that level. Holy fricking mother of all that is precious, there are a lot of items in this game! Especially food, which when fresh have better effects than usual, when normal are normal, and when rotten either have to be sold or thrown away if you don't want bad effects to happen when you use them. It rots over a period of about 10 days. There must be about 80 food items in the game all with varying use limits, prices, HP recovery and special effects. And the amount of things you can put in your castle? Pfft...forget about it, if your mind doesn't go all twirly from just thinking about all the possibilities...I'm getting downright dizzy just thinking...Konami what the hell kind of drug are you on to offer this much.... THIS COULD BE ITS OWN FRICKING SERIES OF GAMES LET ALONE ITS OWN GAME LET ALONE A PART OF A GAME. The amount of decorations and paintings and bathtime hilarious scenes and investigations and food and minigames and exploration is mind-bogglingly insane. Not to mention I love all the armor collections (armor that does something if you collect all the pieces and put them on at the same time).

To add on this is a brand new treasure chest system. There are four types of "treasures" in the game. 1. Characters will ask you if you want them, don't always accept because you can't get rid of them very easily and they take up precious space in your inventory. 2. Plants growing in the various dungeons and overworld. Pick these to get various curative items and trade items, as time passes, they will grow again and the longer you leave them around, the better the items they become. 3. Dead people who dropped to the enemies in the area who you can search for their dropped items. Once again these regenerate in time. There are characters who can't pick them up however. 4. Dungeon bosses. These you can see on the field. If you approach them you will do battle with them. They guard the areas treasure chest, which contains all the non-plant/fallen corpse treasure in the area. Like area bosses they are far more powerful and dangerous than normal enemies, but regenerate in time. If you win, they give you enormous amounts of money, experience and skill points. Open the chest they guarded and a menu will open up with takable items. Choose the items you want to take and you can store or take items from that chest until the boss returns. There are two types of items, items that will regenerate once the boss returns and you beat it again, and items that will not and remain one of a kind.

Part 5: Graphics and Sound

Suikoden III isn't quite the slouch in graphics that previous views had RPG fans believe. All of the slowdown and camera issues in previous editions of the game have been mostly corrected. In towns and dungeons, there is never once any problem with the camera placement, in fact, it really enhances the game most of the time. You can always see where you want to go and movement is never an issue. In battle sometimes the camera is too slow to react to every thing, but this is solved with those off-camera updates that show you what's happening, so its not an issue, just a very tiny annoyance. Quickness is valued over being able to see everything. There is some slowdown in spell effects, but speaking of spell effects, oh my, Konami, good job. They make the game feel more epic and tense and increase the atmosphere greatly. All memorable and get your blood pumping or make you feel powerful. Many of them have the sense of scale that Skies of Arcadia's more lavish attacks do, with the battle background changing for several attacks, some of them are soooooo new and unseen that you'll either be laughing, jaw-dropping or grinning from ear to ear. The spell and special attack effects are easily the most graphics-whore intensive effects in the game.

Otherwise graphics are on par with Skies of Arcadia, almost exactly and in some cases a little less. It is isn't graphical paradise, with some seams and quite a few blurry textures, but it also isn't as bad as people have made it out to be. Unless you can't live without turning on your console and licking the screen when amazing graphics that jump out at you with their realism constantly, Suikoden III is rather average for this day and age and will have several things that will impress you. First of all is the range of character animation, especially the eyes, expressing so many different emotions and reactions and personality traits. Its surprising, other than the upcoming Legend of Zelda game there isn't a game out there currently that has more character animation than Suikoden III. Period. Its beyond both Xenosaga and Final Fantasy X, even if it isn't as realistic as either. Characters will squeeze each other, do special hand shakes, close their eyes and sense their surroundings, grimace, grit their teeth, roll their eyes, blink, flip, shake their heads, shake with anger or sorrow, cover their eyes in sadness, put their hands up in arrest, ready their weapons, express resignment and so on. And the wonders this does for displaying emotions is amazing. You can truly tell the difference between an open character and a character cool and refined, or closed off from others. They will change expressions from shock to wonder to anger to determination in the blink of an eye, their eyes will express doubt or skepticism, they will open their mouths to different degrees, you'll see in them complex emotions like resignment, restrainment, contempt, guilt, pensiveness and so on and so forth.

The overall design of the game is a mix of a kind of 16-bit 3D area with a 2D art style. There are so many patterns and floors and carvings and seals and materials and colors that sometimes it could be overwhelming. You know Konami went all out when you make a distinction between something as small the pots and barrels of different areas! Towns communicate a huge sense of scope, with sprawling mountain vistas, or bustling markets, or myriad little fountains of light, or wheat fields that extend as far as the eye can see. Even if they are supposed to be a small village exploring a town is great fun as they have a type of Skies of Arcadia character design and hugeness and epic quality to them. Its the type of game that really makes you want to explore the next new area just to see everything and gasp at the amazing raw power of it all. Cutscenes usually consist of cameras taking different angles and closing up on all the character animation, the vast majority of them are dialogue scenes and not particularly exciting, but then the action cutscenes are pretty damn cool, with great choreography and a "Oh wow, that sure was sweet!" quality. Again, when its the little people of war against the great forces of empires, Konami thinks up all sorts of clever outwitting scenes one after another. Especially cool is the "trading of the fruit" scene with Geddoe, the "Aira's new clothes" scene and various escape scenes. Characters and enemies can be somewhat polygon deprived, but at other times well-modeled and rounded. Dungeons and natural areas are especially well done in tune with their musical selections, even if they aren't so special in concept, they feel special in execution, like an area you could create your own secret place in. Some textures in mundane things (like caves) aren't particularly inspiring, but this the exception not the rule. The amount of different looking ways of life and cultures is staggering, as is the Grandia-like crowded streets and places of towns. The design is extremely appealing and there is almost always a riot of color. A lot of 2D art can be found in the character portraits and various special art that showcases a character's point of view. In fact, even though it is 3D, a lot of 2D art remains in S3. Remain assured that there has been not one thing lost in the transition to 3D. Everything is very appealing. If anything, the game has far more charm and its ability to inspire with visuals alone has been improved, not downgraded.

The soundtrack is awesome. There have been about 45 tunes so far and you are rewarded with new ones gradually as the game goes on so you never have to hear repeats too much. Each town and dungeon usually has its own special theme, and there are more than a few different battle tracks. What's nice is the music house has returned this time! Yippee. There is a great amount of variety in the tracks, but overall field tracks are very calm and soothing. They have this wonderful quality to them that makes you feel like just sitting there and letting the music play. Sound effects are realistic and suitable. I'm not sure if you can change the menu sound effects yet. Lots of attention to detail in both the graphics and sound effects, with footsteps, hammers ringing, fires roaring, people talking and so on. The intro's music is finer than fine can be and overall this soundtrack is just as good as any other Suikoden's and no better. Which is saying something if you played the past games. Yet another stellar effort that stands out and remains probably the best overall soundtrack I've heard yet this generation. Especially the boss battle music, when you hear it, you feel like warriors are charging on horses outside your window and meteors are flying and storms are raging and the whole world depends on you. Sometimes awe-inspiring, sometimes gloriously simple, sometimes surprising. But always high quality. I can only think of one dud tune I've heard thus far (and that only because its too repetitive, but it doesn't play for too long and is meant for short moments anyway). Certainly makes up for the gunk that was Concerto of Midnight Sun's soundtrack.

Part 6: Conclusion (overall game thoughts)

Best game I've played this year so far, easily. Even over Virtua Fighter 4, which was my previous favorite, a game Wild Arms 3, Zettai Zetsumei Toshi, Rockman Zero, Fire Emblem, Tekken 4, Grandia Xtreme, Concerto of the Midnight Sun, Onimusha 2, Xenosaga or Kingdom Hearts could not overtake. Its been an amazing first part of the year in Japan with many great games released and for the rest of the year it seems like its going to cool down considerably. Still, considering Mario Sunshine is going to be as good as predicted, Suikoden III and it make a fine ending to 8 months of consistently quality games. This is the first game I've played that makes me want to nominate it for game of the year. I might play something better than it, but I personally doubt it. Huge, incredibly fun, epic in a sense, with more things to do than I possibly have time for, well-produced and looking to be of a proper minimum length too. Extremely complex, but very simple to grasp at first with the complexities gradually increasing as you play. I've only measured a bare fraction of the gameplay consideration and strategy you use in this game. It is truly what is meant by role-playing and the best solution to the non-linear/linear problem I've seen thus far as the different points provide fresh gameplay and a chance to experience the game differently, constantly providing inspiration for just a liiiittle bit more. The type of game you play until 4 o clock in the morning and then realize what time it is. Definitely already has a place in not only my favorite RPGs of all time, but my favorite games (what place, of course, depends on how well it holds up to time and memory). At this place, I really don't think the quality will lower, its just been way too consistent so far. If this holds up, it might even turn into my favorite RPG ever, but even if it doesn't and turns into a poo simulation, the part I've played alone is enough to make it one of my favorite RPGs ever.

And that is what I think of Suikoden III.

*Its been a long time since I last read Suikoden, so I might be a bit off on some of these facts, but the gist of it is this way.


- Shou Suzuki
(EMail foxspiritshadow)