After the debacle that was Suikoden IV and its spin-off, Suikoden Tactics I had lost my respect for the once excellent Suikoden series. When I caught wind that Suikoden V was being released, a scant one year later, I was highly hesitant to even give it a glance at the store. If IV was a truly bad title, V couldn't possibly be any good given the short time between the two. Still, I ignored such logics and decided to give Konami a chance at retribution.
Suikoden V is set in the Queendom of Falena, which is ruled by the wise and popular Queen Arshtat. The player takes the role of the Prince of Falena, name supplied by gamer. Since Falena is a Queendom, the Prince has absolutely no real purpose since the rulership line is determined by the female heir. As such, he ends up spending his time doing pointless tasks and merely acting as a figurehead for the Queendom until he gets shuffled off to some foreign power as a diplomatic offering. But fate has a different plan for the Prince as a chain of events that began with the unleashing of the awesome power of the Sun Rune sets this once useless royal on the path to greatness.
The gameplay of Suikoden V takes us, thankfully, back to the days of the first two games. The battle system has returned to the six member party with individually controlled members. This is quite refreshing as the for member system in IV took away the party concept built up in the previous games and, while I personally liked it, did not go back to the column controlled battle system in III that many thought cheapened the game and made it feel like only three characters were actually there. Combat is played out in a turn based fashion. You select your actions for the next round and then they are played in order out based on the character's speed. Wash, rinse, and repeat. A new feature included in the battle system is a formation system. Basically, all it does is give you various bonuses and hindrances based on your formation type and provides a different visual formation on the screen, but it does provide an additional degree of strategy and variety in your playing experience. The combo attacks aren't lame either, like they were in IV, and are a bit easier to discover as they are better based around character's relationships or preferred combat type.
The combat sequence does screech to a halt mid-way through the game, opening up a long session of grinding. The Suikoden series has this tendency to create situations where you will need to create multiple parties to use. They will inevitably go up against some tough enemies and will need to be in top condition to do so. Due to the nature of the upgrade process you will spend a lot of time leveling up characters and finding enough cash to upgrade them. I spent 5 hours before a particularly ugly segment doing this because finding a place where the cash rolls in is tough and sharpening weapons up to higher levels takes a lot of funds, not to mention the obscenely expensive attire needed to succeed. Suikoden V could have easily done without this part of the game, by either leaving it out or, in the case as it was imperative to the story, toning down the challenge given that most players don't normally use 18 different characters enough to build them up to be monsters like the main 6.
The next major facet of the Suikoden series is the military combat. This time around, Suikoden V went with a real time strategy route. The combat is still very much built around the rock-paper-scissors approach; certain units need to be positioned to attack a weaker type to properly win. The combat is also both land and sea based, so you have to make sure to keep an eye on both your navy and land units during the course of a battle, and can even use navy to support land troops in many battles. This approach has its strengths and a huge, glaring flaw. With the inclusion of this system, the player now has to constantly keep watch over the battlefield and make unit changes. Since the game is on the PS2, the player has little more than the control stick to play this RTS with. This means that moving around the map is slow and doesn't allow for a quick jump to a particular area like a PC based RTS would allow. Couple this with the fact that every time a unit gets into a fight, the view jumps to that location and sticks. This makes it difficult to maneuver other units at critical times across the map because another one decided to get into a battle.
Even the duel system received a few changes. The duel system, which was previously untouched in I-IV, was given a timed aspect. Each round involves the same idea. The opponent says something and you have to determine what kind of attack that means, and then you need to counter it with the proper maneuver. Defend beats special, attack beats defend, special beats attack. This time, though, you only have three seconds to decide, lest you are caught hesitating and the enemy gets a free hit on you. This adds a little bit of urgency to the duels, but the three seconds is not so short as to make it obscenely difficult. It usually only takes one second to make your decision as each maneuver is mapped to a face button instead of having to scroll through menu options.
Another thankful return is the world map. Missing since II, the world map is like an old friend. No longer are we stuck sailing over empty, boring ocean or stuck going along paths toward the destination. The world map also brought back the idea of putting optional characters in strange places to discover, something the previous two games didn't allow given their limited travel scope.
All other aspects of Suikoden V are untouched from the previous games. You still have the castle (which is by far the most interesting of any of the series by the way) to build up with characters, you still have to track down the 108 stars, the weapon sharpening system is still there with the familiar cost schedule, and the 1,000 experience based leveling system is also still there. Basically, the stuff that worked from the previous games made their return without a hitch.
Graphically, well, Suikoden V is pretty bad. The game is grainy, blurry, and brought back an old-school aspect that really has no place in a 3D environment – the overhead isometric view. I would have preferred V to be styled along the lines of III: Bright, clear graphics with an up-close in the world feel. The camera does have an option of moving in closer, but all that really does is make navigation a pain and showcases just how poorly detailed the graphics really are. The few times the visuals do break through the ugly barrier is in the in-engine cut scenes. Characters actually look half-decent up close and even show a range of emotions (except maybe Sialeeds, but that is how she is). One big detractor, however, is the Prince. The Prince is far and away the creepiest character ever to grace a video game. This is not because he has flowing black robes, wears skulls, or has raunchy tattoos. No, he looks to be a lot like a bishounen cross dresser. The Prince is a blue haired youth that runs around wearing either skin-tight or gown-like regal attire. To make things worse, when up-close and smiling, your skin will literally crawl. I think Konami even understood this as the game frequently pokes fun at the Prince's appearance ranging from characters insulting his attire, others saying his look is "unique", to one sequence where a character asks the Prince to don a wig because she thinks he will look like his sister.
On the other end of the spectrum falls the sound. The music is very well done in just about every location and the voice acting is fairly solid. Still, there are some voice acting annoyances, particularly Princess Lymsleia, who is nothing more than irritating and grating. That doesn't do too much to detract from the solid effort everywhere else in the game.
The game is also huge. Suikoden V is by far the longest in the series, taking a whopping 16 hours just to get through the foundation story development before the military combat and castle forming aspects even start. All told, I put in a good 50 hours into this sucker, which is a top-notch value in my book. There are even the signature multiple endings based on how your character behaves and whether or not you found all 108 stars. The story itself is also well told and has the best character development yet.
Konami has redeemed itself with flying colors with Suikoden V. While the gameplay does stutter now and again, it remains solid and is backed up by a quality story and great sound. The disappointment comes in the absolutely terrible graphics engine which makes long gameplay sessions difficult and created the scariest character to ever grace a video game. Still, at $40 and 50 hours, Suikoden V is an incredible value that should not be passed up.
