Publisher: Konami
Developer: KCET
Release Date: 12/14/1996
Date Played: 4/22/2020-5/8/2020
Region: USA
Time Played: 10 hours
What’d you think?: Damnit. I got a game over in a mid-dungeon boss in what I’m pretty sure was the last or second-to-last dungeon because I was careless and talked to a giant clam without having a bunch of healing stuff ready. I really enjoyed Suikoden II, which I had played a month or so before starting this, and this was welcomingly similar — so much so that I now understand some of the complaints around Suikoden II not doing enough to move forward. There’s tons of people to recruit and side stuff to do, and though there’s less to do than in 2 (where I did a lot) I found myself not bothering. I had a core party that I didn’t even bother to gear that much. Combat was pretty easy most of the time, leading to my carelessness and Game Over. The story was very similar to Suikoden II — war is bad and full of tragedies on scales both small and large, but you gotta fight for [insert reason]. There’s also a couple dozen really special Runes out there (way to establish a nigh-indefinite franchise, Konami!) that powerful people (like you!) really like fighting over.
YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8OIYTfquVffG6kCHekhmQmc3Vmr79m2y
