The Suikoden series has several positive, stand-out signatures. They can be larger, broad-reaching narrative qualities, such as its ability, for example, to effectively walk the line between a very personal adventure of the individual, and a grand story of the conflict and community of entire cultural groups. And they can also be smaller, endearing quirks, such as the feature and dynamics of the Castle HQ and its community. It’s 1 of the latter traits that I want to laud today: Suikoden’s signature night before the final battle.
Basically, it goes like this. Eventually there comes a time in each Suikoden title, at which the final major conflict of the game is clearly set to take place the next day. This means the final boss battle, of course, but that battle is also inevitably preceded by the last major military battle between the protagonist’s army and that of the enemy’s. This essentially means that everyone in the heroes’ castle (or mansion, or stupid crappy slow ugly ship) is preparing for the next day’s warfare, and their own role in it, not just the main party combatants. And at this point, during this evening before the final conflict, wherein every character and NPC is engaged in preparation both practical and mental, the game allows the player to make rounds about the castle (or manor or dumb clunky unwieldy awkward boat) to speak to each and every 1 of those characters, and several non-named NPCs representing the whole of the army.
I love this moment in the game. I love it each and every time. Yes, even for Suikoden 4. This is such a good narrative device, and Suikoden just does it so well! In this moment, every character in the game gets a chance to weigh in 1 last time upon this grand venture that they’ve been a part of, assert their personality and character development arc 1 last time, and remind you through their preparatory work of their value and contribution to the army and story. It’s an opportunity to have the characters you love best in the cast say their final farewells to the player, and an opportunity for the player to feel that he or she has paid the same respect back. It’s a great illustration of the scope and community of the war effort, an additional characterization of the nation as a unified entity of individuals, which is a major part of Suikoden’s storytelling approach. And it’s a great example of a poignant, heavy moment in the narrative that reiterates the weight of the events that have transpired, and those about to come, drawing the player in with its gravity while (thanks to the late hour and the great staple musical piece that always plays over it) instilling a calm, hopeful tranquility.
Don’t get me wrong: this is not fully unique to Suikoden. A lot of RPGs contain a similar moment of significance before the final battle is engaged, in which the protagonist has a chance to speak to her/his companions who have been along all the way for this adventure, and are ready to stand with her/him to the very end of this last fight. Sometimes it’s in a similar night-before scenario, as with Marine’s final conversation with Jeanne on the night before the tournament in Millennium 5, while at other times, it’s a last-minute heart-to-heart that occurs directly before heading into the fated combat, such as Shepard’s final rallying speech within the Collectors’ base in Mass Effect 2, or your conversation with your teammates in Dragon Age 1 as you launch your counterattack on the Darkspawn who have invaded Denerim. Either way, it’s almost always a good moment in the game, so long as your audience has any emotional investment in your cast and/or the adventure as a whole.
Hell, even when a game is completely inept at providing this final party pow-wow, it still usually winds up being a pretty decent moment. Dragon Age 2, always a shining beacon of clumsy writing, pulls 1 of these final parting words things that doesn’t actually make any logical sense, in-game. Because, yeah, from the player’s perspective, the story is about to conclude as Hawke and her/his friends prepare to face the final battle, but the nature of DA2’s story is such that, from the characters’ own perspectives, this isn’t the conclusion of some long conflict or grand quest. It’s a major battle they’re facing, and to some degree a culmination of many past events, but by and large DA2’s last battle isn’t, to the game’s heroes, some pivotal and long-awaited moment of destiny and resolution. So I dunno why everyone’s suddenly caught up in a shared urge to spill their emotional guts to Hawke as if it is. And yet, in spite of this--and in spite of how awful a pile of dogshit Dragon Age 2’s finale is as a whole--it still manages to be a positive moment of touching closure. So yeah, this is just a generally effective narrative tool to employ as a whole.
But Suikoden’s night before the final battle is a real cut above. First of all, the atmosphere in general is just perfectly suited for this kind of moment. As much as I like these last-moment character heart-to-hearts in general, the fact that they usually take place right outside the final dungeon, or just minutes before the final battle is engaged, etc., is a slight detriment. The impact of a scene of loyal, heartfelt comrades saluting one another and finalizing their place in the story and your heart is one of sentimental, unhurried connection, and so it meshes better with a scenario like Suikoden’s, where these exchanges occur during the dead of night, when the final conflict is still many hours away, than they do just moments before the last fight, which is usually an instance in which time is running out, or at least quite precious. There’s no rush, just the natural expression of the characters’ hearts and thoughts. So Suikoden’s at the top of the game because it’s framing these final conversations correctly--and the mood is only set all the better by the quiet, emotive signature music for this moment.
Also, I think it’s cool with Suikoden’s night before that the protagonist generally isn’t the focus of the attention. In most other titles, these final conversation moments are very clearly, directly protagonist-focused--the rest of the cast are deliberately, transparently making the effort to speak their final piece to the game’s main character (and no one else, regardless of how close they may also be to their other companions). Hell, in Dragon Age 1, it felt like these folks were just lining up at Senpai’s Grey Warden Con table for free glomps. And don’t get me wrong, again, there’s nothing wrong with this approach--but even if it doesn’t hurt the moment, it feels put on just enough not to really help it, either.
Suikoden, on the other hand, doesn’t make the protagonist’s presence the central factor of the night before’s cast interactions and preparations. When Riou, Chris, Freyjadour, or whatever other protagonist you’re controlling wanders around the headquarters and meets with allies, he or she is, sensibly enough, the outsider approaching a character who’s occupied. Some individuals are getting in a little last-minute training, others are finalizing the gear and supplies the army will be taking with it, still others are found mentally preparing themselves for the life-and-death combat they will engage in the next day. Doctors prepare their clinics, tavern owners serve soldiers what may be the last spirits they ever imbibe, strategists and generals review battle plans 1 final time, cooks work through the night to prepare the provisions whose energy might be the difference between life and death for some of tomorrow’s warriors. And of course, a myriad number of these allies and comrades are engaged in these preparations with each other, or simply spending time in friendship together through the night, reflecting appropriately their personal lives and relationships. The protagonist is always met and received as an important presence, but it’s clear that the characters of the cast all have their own duties, interests, and preoccupations on this fateful night, as an army and a force of friends, and there’s a refreshing realism to that. Speaking their final, lasting thoughts to the game’s protagonist is important to them, but it’s not the end-all be-all of their night.* And that feels authentic, helps to further individualize the men and women of the army as their own personalities, and deepens the realism of the whole night before scenario.
A couple final merits to Suikoden’s handling of this narrative tool? Point 1: it’s laudable that the writers and developers are dedicated enough to do this at all in the first place. They’re not just plotting out the placement and dialogue of a standard 5 - 8 member RPG party. Suikoden’s night before the final battle allows you to do a final check-in with the entire cast of 108-or-more individuals! And there’s usually a few NPCs thrown in there, too. While this is a level of commitment that the games demonstrate throughout their course, that doesn’t make it less of a feat of effort and persistence on their part. And second, the night before scene is beneficial to the game in that it encourages the player to explore the entirety of the army’s HQ 1 final time if he/she wants to engage with every possible character. This final stroll through the castle isn’t just a great way to capture the feeling of belonging and affection for the cast--it also creates and utilizes these same feelings for the setting itself. The Suikoden castle (even when it’s a mansion or a sluggish horrible lousy boring canoe) is a major, sentimental feature of the series, and itself represents and embodies the culture of cooperation and unity that the Suikoden army inevitably is built upon. As much like saying a fond farewell to your family as Suikoden’s night before the final battle is, it’s also like saying a fond farewell to your home, too.
A relic of the days when Konami knew how and cared to make a video game,**** the Suikoden series has a narrative sack full of notable virtues and beloved signature elements, and its night before the final battle tradition is definitely 1 of the shinier ones. The final dialogue exchange with allies is a great trope, and RPGs rightly make regular use of it--but the golden standard to which they should all aspire is definitely Suikoden.
* In fairness, I think I should mention that Suikoden isn’t the ONLY RPG with this deft touch. Mass Effect 3, for example, strikes an adequate and realistic balance during the battle for Earth when Shepard and company are making preparations for the final push through Reaper territory. Shepard’s allies are each engaged in their own last-minute activities (Wrex, for example, can be found rallying the krogan troops, while Liara is occupied with caring for some wounded, and EDI takes part in Anderson’s strategizing), which makes sense given the situation.** They’re still extra eager to give Shepard more than a moment of their time for some conversation, but given that this IS Mass Effect, to some degree that’s just a given.
** Although admittedly a bunch of Shepard’s past allies, like Zaeed and Grunt, can just be magically contacted immediately on the holo-phone, even though they’re also fighting on and beyond the front lines. I’ve let my own family wait longer for me to pick up than Shepard’s buddies take to answer,*** and I’m pretty sure that the biggest crisis I’ve faced in those situations is “really didn’t want to be hurried through my enjoyment of a burrito,” which I strongly suspect ranks a few tiers lower in urgency than fighting in the midst of an apocalyptic future-war.
Not complaining, though. The last chats with Samara, Jacob, and the rest were great, and it wouldn’t have felt right not to involve them.
*** This is 1 of the rare parts of my rants that will NOT be given to my sister to proofread.
**** Besides Suikoden 4. And Suikoden 5. And Suikoden Tactics was only kinda okay, if we’re being honest. Look, Suikoden games are like Star Wars movies: it's 1 of those series where it’s just kind of a given that when a positive discussion about it breaks out, you’re really only talking about the first 3 installments. And maybe Tierkreis and Rogue 1.
Showing posts with label Suikoden. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Suikoden. Show all posts
Monday, August 8, 2022
The Suikoden Series's Night Before the Final Battle
Saturday, December 8, 2012
The Suikoden Series's Casts
Suikoden’s known for a fair number of things, but I’m fairly sure that its biggest claim to fame has got to be the enormous cast of every game (besides the side-story Suikoden Tactics). In addition to whatever significant NPCs and villains are necessary to tell the story, each Suikoden game has 108 recruitable characters. In fact, it’s often more than that, since some minor recruitments (the dogs in Suikoden 3, for example) don’t actually count toward the 108 standard, and there are a few instances in the games where you have to choose between 2 different characters to fill a single roster slot (such as in Suikoden 2, when you have to decide whether you want Kasumi or Valeria, or Suikoden 5, where you have a choice between Eresh or Euram), meaning that there’s often MORE than 108 separate entities who can join the protagonist’s team in some capacity. That’s a damned big cast; the closest any other RPG (that I’ve yet seen) gets to it is Infinite Space, which as an impressive cast of a little over 80 possible party members, and then Chrono Cross, which has a little over 40 party members.
Here’s the amazing thing, though. These ridiculously huge casts? They’re generally well-characterized.* I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying we’ve got a hundred+ individuals each game who’d give Virginia of Wild Arms 3 or Kreia of Knights of the Old Republic 2 a run for their money, or anything like that, but they’re all generally pretty solidly explored personalities. Hell, the minor characters of a Suikoden title can have stronger characterization than plenty of other games’ main characters. I’d have a hard time finding any of the Suikoden games’ 108 Stars who couldn’t beat out every major party member of Final Fantasy 5 for character depth, that’s for sure.
So how does Suikoden do it? Because it’s not an easy thing to achieve. Infinite Space does a pretty good job of it with its 80+ characters by having minor characters occasionally have scenes during tavern conversations, but ultimately there are a lot of characters who just fall to the wayside after a bit and get ignored (poor, poor Katida, her character had so much more to offer!). And Chrono Cross, working with less than half of a Suikoden game’s cast, couldn’t work significant character depth and development into a full dozen of its characters, nor did it even try to.** No plot could reasonably expect to include over a hundred individual characters within it in a significant enough way that you strongly connect to and have a great understanding of each one.*** But with Suikoden, somehow, you always seem to have at least a small insight into all or nearly all of its cast, despite the size. So, again, how does Suikoden do it?
Well, for the major characters in the Suikoden games, the answer’s the same as any other RPG--character development, plot interaction with them, and sometimes just simply a lot of screentime. Characters like Flik, Viktor, Chris, Hugo, Lyon, Georg, Chrodechild, and Liu, well, they each have huge roles in the stories of their respective games and lots of time to interact with the other major players in those stories, so in those cases, what’s conventional is what works.
But for all the minor characters, the ones who are recruited with little to-do and have no real significance to the party and the plot? Well, the answer is that sweating the details really does matter. Each Suikoden game offers countless optional little scenes and involvements of the various dozens of denizens of the game’s HQ in a number of different ways, all of which help to show and explain their personalities to the player. There are a TON of ways this occurs, more than I really want to get into (more than I even clearly recall, for that matter), but I’ll go into a few of the best ones.
First of all and probably best of all, the Detective Agency. Starting with Suikoden 2, Suikoden games will often have a private detective character in the HQ whom you can hire to investigate any of the 100+ individuals you’ve recruited a few times, with each report giving you any and all kinds of miscellaneous information--what the character likes or hates, their relationship to certain other characters, their history, their aspirations, their personality quirks, rumors about them, etc. This is a very neat idea, and a wonderful way to flesh out the game’s cast without having it distract from the plot’s events, since this, like all the things I’ll be mentioning here, is entirely optional. It’s concise, but effective.
Then there’s the Suggestion Box. Again an invention of Suikoden 2 (I think), the Suggestion Box is just what it sounds like--a box in the game’s HQ into which any and every recruited character can place suggestions for and small communications to the game’s protagonist. These are usually mildly amusing, and don’t really tell you all that much about the character making the suggestion as compared to the detective reports, but at the same time, they keep the many incidental characters fresh in your mind and help to cement their personality quirks.
Then, of course, there’s the famous staple of the Suikoden series, the bath house. This one I’d usually be a little iffy on. See, in theory, it’s a great idea--when you take certain character combinations into the bath house at the game’s HQ, you can activate hidden scenes where the characters interact with each other in various ways. That’s a good little way to not only once again explore the personalities of various minor characters, but also to explore how the many, many party members in the game interact with one another, seeing how their personalities connect with or bounce off of one another. The reason I normally would be hesitant about this idea is...well...it’s a communal bath. In an RPG. An RPG that follows many anime-standard forms of storytelling. Thus, it’s an invitation for the stupid, tasteless “humor” that abounds in ALL such communal bath scenes in games and animes and manga and whatnot. BUT, the Suikoden series actually has enough dignity to generally avoid the obscenely stupid, overused anime cliches of communal baths--I believe there’s only 1 bath scene in the whole series where breast sizes are compared (what a shocking thought, women able to converse together for a full 3 minutes without loudly proclaiming their cup sizes to one another!), and I can’t recall ever seeing the “hilarity” of some guy making a worthless, scummy asshole of himself by trying to invade the privacy of the women’s bath for a peek. So kudos twice over to the Suikoden creators for this one, because they not only have another way of cementing their characters through minor interactions and further exploration, but they do it without lowering themselves as human beings.
And there are, of course, the various little minigames and quirky bits and pieces that each game has on its own that continue to further emphasize their minor characters and help us familiarize ourselves with them. For example, the cooking minigame in Suikoden 2. Besides being perhaps the only cooking minigame in the history of RPGs to be enjoyable in any way, the cooking minigame uses, for each round, a randomized (I think) panel of judges taken from the current residents of the game’s HQ. Okay, yeah, being told what the characters’ taste preferences are isn’t exactly Shakespearean character depth, but it does, all the same, keep its minor characters in the player’s mind and give us new information about them, no matter how small that knowledge may be. And then there’s the plays in Suikoden 3. You can choose almost any of the characters in the castle-mansion thing to play roles in a half dozen or so plays, and watch them as they act it out. Some do well, some do poorly, and some, like Viki, are just hilarious. It’s another little way of including the minor characters in something, and helping to remind you of their personality quirks while you’re at it.
And these are really only a handful of the various little, optional sidequests, minigames, and quirky features Suikoden games have that involve and flesh out minor characters who would otherwise be left behind by the game’s main events. And that’s how Suikoden does it, how the series manages to have over a hundred cast members in each game but almost never**** feel like its characters weren’t properly developed or like it had too many of them. It’s another example of the little details of character development really pulling everything together, like the skits in the Tales of series, or the campfire scenes in Legaia 2, or the wonderful dinner conversations in Grandia 1 and 2. The major plot can take care of establishing a character and the major aspects of their psyche, but little stuff on the side, that’s what really tells the player who they are, and the identity of the characters as a group. Any RPGs in the future that try to pull off an excessively large cast would do well to follow Suikoden’s example of optional, small side content for their cast, lest we get another Chrono Cross.
* As well-characterized as you could reasonably expect given the overall quality of the game, that is. I wouldn’t say Suikoden 4’s cast is particularly interesting, for example, but then, playing Suikoden 4 is about as stimulating as being in a coma (less so, in fact, given that in some comas one can supposedly have dreams), so if we grade to scale, Suikoden 4’s cast is adequately developed.
** Not that the ones who did receive any character development got anything worthwhile.
*** Well...probably. Hang on...lemme go count how many characters and NPCs there were in Planescape: Torment. There are people you meet wandering on the street in that game who have more depth and human insight than the entire cumulative cast of characters made for some game companies.
**** Again, Suikoden 4 is just crap no matter how you slice it.
Here’s the amazing thing, though. These ridiculously huge casts? They’re generally well-characterized.* I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying we’ve got a hundred+ individuals each game who’d give Virginia of Wild Arms 3 or Kreia of Knights of the Old Republic 2 a run for their money, or anything like that, but they’re all generally pretty solidly explored personalities. Hell, the minor characters of a Suikoden title can have stronger characterization than plenty of other games’ main characters. I’d have a hard time finding any of the Suikoden games’ 108 Stars who couldn’t beat out every major party member of Final Fantasy 5 for character depth, that’s for sure.
So how does Suikoden do it? Because it’s not an easy thing to achieve. Infinite Space does a pretty good job of it with its 80+ characters by having minor characters occasionally have scenes during tavern conversations, but ultimately there are a lot of characters who just fall to the wayside after a bit and get ignored (poor, poor Katida, her character had so much more to offer!). And Chrono Cross, working with less than half of a Suikoden game’s cast, couldn’t work significant character depth and development into a full dozen of its characters, nor did it even try to.** No plot could reasonably expect to include over a hundred individual characters within it in a significant enough way that you strongly connect to and have a great understanding of each one.*** But with Suikoden, somehow, you always seem to have at least a small insight into all or nearly all of its cast, despite the size. So, again, how does Suikoden do it?
Well, for the major characters in the Suikoden games, the answer’s the same as any other RPG--character development, plot interaction with them, and sometimes just simply a lot of screentime. Characters like Flik, Viktor, Chris, Hugo, Lyon, Georg, Chrodechild, and Liu, well, they each have huge roles in the stories of their respective games and lots of time to interact with the other major players in those stories, so in those cases, what’s conventional is what works.
But for all the minor characters, the ones who are recruited with little to-do and have no real significance to the party and the plot? Well, the answer is that sweating the details really does matter. Each Suikoden game offers countless optional little scenes and involvements of the various dozens of denizens of the game’s HQ in a number of different ways, all of which help to show and explain their personalities to the player. There are a TON of ways this occurs, more than I really want to get into (more than I even clearly recall, for that matter), but I’ll go into a few of the best ones.
First of all and probably best of all, the Detective Agency. Starting with Suikoden 2, Suikoden games will often have a private detective character in the HQ whom you can hire to investigate any of the 100+ individuals you’ve recruited a few times, with each report giving you any and all kinds of miscellaneous information--what the character likes or hates, their relationship to certain other characters, their history, their aspirations, their personality quirks, rumors about them, etc. This is a very neat idea, and a wonderful way to flesh out the game’s cast without having it distract from the plot’s events, since this, like all the things I’ll be mentioning here, is entirely optional. It’s concise, but effective.
Then there’s the Suggestion Box. Again an invention of Suikoden 2 (I think), the Suggestion Box is just what it sounds like--a box in the game’s HQ into which any and every recruited character can place suggestions for and small communications to the game’s protagonist. These are usually mildly amusing, and don’t really tell you all that much about the character making the suggestion as compared to the detective reports, but at the same time, they keep the many incidental characters fresh in your mind and help to cement their personality quirks.
Then, of course, there’s the famous staple of the Suikoden series, the bath house. This one I’d usually be a little iffy on. See, in theory, it’s a great idea--when you take certain character combinations into the bath house at the game’s HQ, you can activate hidden scenes where the characters interact with each other in various ways. That’s a good little way to not only once again explore the personalities of various minor characters, but also to explore how the many, many party members in the game interact with one another, seeing how their personalities connect with or bounce off of one another. The reason I normally would be hesitant about this idea is...well...it’s a communal bath. In an RPG. An RPG that follows many anime-standard forms of storytelling. Thus, it’s an invitation for the stupid, tasteless “humor” that abounds in ALL such communal bath scenes in games and animes and manga and whatnot. BUT, the Suikoden series actually has enough dignity to generally avoid the obscenely stupid, overused anime cliches of communal baths--I believe there’s only 1 bath scene in the whole series where breast sizes are compared (what a shocking thought, women able to converse together for a full 3 minutes without loudly proclaiming their cup sizes to one another!), and I can’t recall ever seeing the “hilarity” of some guy making a worthless, scummy asshole of himself by trying to invade the privacy of the women’s bath for a peek. So kudos twice over to the Suikoden creators for this one, because they not only have another way of cementing their characters through minor interactions and further exploration, but they do it without lowering themselves as human beings.
And there are, of course, the various little minigames and quirky bits and pieces that each game has on its own that continue to further emphasize their minor characters and help us familiarize ourselves with them. For example, the cooking minigame in Suikoden 2. Besides being perhaps the only cooking minigame in the history of RPGs to be enjoyable in any way, the cooking minigame uses, for each round, a randomized (I think) panel of judges taken from the current residents of the game’s HQ. Okay, yeah, being told what the characters’ taste preferences are isn’t exactly Shakespearean character depth, but it does, all the same, keep its minor characters in the player’s mind and give us new information about them, no matter how small that knowledge may be. And then there’s the plays in Suikoden 3. You can choose almost any of the characters in the castle-mansion thing to play roles in a half dozen or so plays, and watch them as they act it out. Some do well, some do poorly, and some, like Viki, are just hilarious. It’s another little way of including the minor characters in something, and helping to remind you of their personality quirks while you’re at it.
And these are really only a handful of the various little, optional sidequests, minigames, and quirky features Suikoden games have that involve and flesh out minor characters who would otherwise be left behind by the game’s main events. And that’s how Suikoden does it, how the series manages to have over a hundred cast members in each game but almost never**** feel like its characters weren’t properly developed or like it had too many of them. It’s another example of the little details of character development really pulling everything together, like the skits in the Tales of series, or the campfire scenes in Legaia 2, or the wonderful dinner conversations in Grandia 1 and 2. The major plot can take care of establishing a character and the major aspects of their psyche, but little stuff on the side, that’s what really tells the player who they are, and the identity of the characters as a group. Any RPGs in the future that try to pull off an excessively large cast would do well to follow Suikoden’s example of optional, small side content for their cast, lest we get another Chrono Cross.
* As well-characterized as you could reasonably expect given the overall quality of the game, that is. I wouldn’t say Suikoden 4’s cast is particularly interesting, for example, but then, playing Suikoden 4 is about as stimulating as being in a coma (less so, in fact, given that in some comas one can supposedly have dreams), so if we grade to scale, Suikoden 4’s cast is adequately developed.
** Not that the ones who did receive any character development got anything worthwhile.
*** Well...probably. Hang on...lemme go count how many characters and NPCs there were in Planescape: Torment. There are people you meet wandering on the street in that game who have more depth and human insight than the entire cumulative cast of characters made for some game companies.
**** Again, Suikoden 4 is just crap no matter how you slice it.
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Suikoden Tierkreis's Bad Reputation
So, for reasons I can't quite understand, I have not completely given up on the Suikoden series, even after the bland pretense that Suikoden 5 was, and the abominably boring yawn-fest that Suikoden 4 was. Then again, I keep giving Wild Arms chances in the hopes that they'll have a series with more than 1 good game in it, so maybe I'm just a hopeful glutton for punishment. Or an idiot.
Anyway, I recently played Suikoden Tierkreis. Now, if you speak this game's name in front of a Suikoden community, you're more likely than not to attract sneers, hisses, retching sounds, and sometimes threats on your life. People call this game the black sheep of the series, an embarrassment to it, a stain on its good name. I didn't actually KNOW this, mind, when I got and started playing the game, but I didn't have high hopes for it myself. First reason was that, as I mentioned, the Suikoden series has not been particularly impressive in the past...8 years. Suikoden Tactics wasn't bad, but it wasn't notably good, either, and the other 2 games we've seen since Suikoden 3 have been lackluster and outright boring, respectively. I'll give Suikoden 5 that it followed the series formula and mimicked a Suikoden game convincingly, but it just lacked the emotional impact and heart that characterized the older games. Suikoden 4 was so abysmally bland that it wasn't just unenjoyable, but playing it actually, I think, lessened the joy you could feel in life from that moment on. And Tierkreis's opening is not exactly awe-inspiring, as I mentioned in my Opening Sequences rant. Even the first parts of the game are kind of off-putting, with main character Sieg, AKA Motormouth, jamming words together so rapidly that you'd swear they put him on fast-forward, except his voice isn't all squeaky. It's like listening to a low-voiced Chip and Dale, only faster.
Nonetheless, by the end of the game, I found the game was decent. Maybe even good. There are some decent characters (Chrodechild's pretty neat, Dirk's alright, and Fredegund is okay, though she had WAY more potential as a deep, involved character than they ever tried to realize), the semi-main villain was decent enough, the plot had a lot of creative aspects and neat ideas, and there were a few moments that were pretty touching. So I wound up pleased with it in the end. Then I hopped onto the internet forums, and found out that this was NOT the typical reaction from Suikoden fans. My curiosity was piqued at this wide-spread hatred, so I investigated a little further to find out why, exactly, the game earns such scorn.
There are a lot of reasons I've been given as to why people don't like it. There's the voice acting, which I mentioned, although I honestly can't say I'd ever dislike a whole game significantly for its voice acting. That's just ridiculous, honestly. Sometimes people don't like the final boss, and feel like he was lame and sloppy. I can't say I thought much of The One King, either, honestly, although I felt that his gimmick of passing himself on was actually somewhat neat, but...this is SUIKODEN. Sloppy, lame, silly, out-of-nowhere over-blown final bosses is one of the most consistent aspects of the series. I mean, it's something to dislike, sure, but how can you hold The One King against Suikoden Tierkreis and not hold Barbarossa randomly becoming a dragon against 1, or villains magically being able to invoke corporeal forms of the True Runes to fight at the end of the game even when there are people with True Runes on your side with better knowledge of them that can't do the same against 3 and 5? And let's not forget that stupid fucking magic tree in Suikoden 4.
Smaller complaints aside, though, it seems to me that most of the hatred for Suikoden Tierkreis is that it's different from other Suikodens. Ultimately, that's what every major complaint seems to boil down to. People complain about the system of magic, not because it doesn't work just fine (it mostly does), but because it's different from the previous Suikoden rune-based magic system. People complain about the setting and characters, not because they aren't just fine (they are), but because it's not the regular world Suikoden takes place on and none of the characters have a connection to previous titles. They complain about the focus points of the plot, not because the themes of multiple worlds and fate-containing books don't make for a decent basis, but because the focal point isn't the 27 True Runes. There are complaints about the country-versus-country conflicts, not because they aren't there and aren't fairly okay, but because they don't have the same tactics and political machinations of the previous Suikodens. And so on.*
Basically, the consensus I'm getting is that Suikoden Tierkreis is actually a completely fine game, but that Suikoden fans won't allow themselves to enjoy it because they expect everything to be exactly the same.
This isn't rational, nor is it fair. The fact that Suikoden Tierkreis is a decent game and has notable merits in its storytelling is what should count, not whether or not those elements of plot and characters happen to be like previous games'. You can go ahead and compare it to previous Suikodens and say it's not as good as them, but you can't say that the game is a bad game just because it doesn't compare to a predecessor. If it's a decent game, it's, y'know, a decent game.
I also think that some of the comparisons are silly. I mean, people complain about the lack of the True Runes in Suikoden Tierkreis, but what about Suikoden Tactics? They served no purpose in that game and had nothing to do with its plot that I can remember. Didn't hear much complaint then. And why are people expecting a setting, plot, and overall game that continues the overall story of the main Suikoden world and its people and mysticism from a game whose title clearly denotes it as a side-story off-shoot? I mean, it's not like Konami named the game Suikoden 6 and then had it have very few significant ties to the previous games. It seems obvious to ME that it's going to be some kind of offshoot from the regular series when the regular series is numbered and this one is given a word title. Suikoden Tactics might have been set in the same Suikoden world and have plot and character ties to previous games, but its focus and plot were set on things completely irrelevant to the focus of the main series, so why the big deal with this one?
Suikoden Tierkreis is just fine. It does not deserve its reputation. And rabid Suikoden fans need to get off their groundless high horse, get real, and calm the hell down.
* I mean, I'm not saying that Suikoden Tierkreis is perfect, or even really good, on any of these points, but I am going to have to stand by the idea that it's still at least decent on each.
Anyway, I recently played Suikoden Tierkreis. Now, if you speak this game's name in front of a Suikoden community, you're more likely than not to attract sneers, hisses, retching sounds, and sometimes threats on your life. People call this game the black sheep of the series, an embarrassment to it, a stain on its good name. I didn't actually KNOW this, mind, when I got and started playing the game, but I didn't have high hopes for it myself. First reason was that, as I mentioned, the Suikoden series has not been particularly impressive in the past...8 years. Suikoden Tactics wasn't bad, but it wasn't notably good, either, and the other 2 games we've seen since Suikoden 3 have been lackluster and outright boring, respectively. I'll give Suikoden 5 that it followed the series formula and mimicked a Suikoden game convincingly, but it just lacked the emotional impact and heart that characterized the older games. Suikoden 4 was so abysmally bland that it wasn't just unenjoyable, but playing it actually, I think, lessened the joy you could feel in life from that moment on. And Tierkreis's opening is not exactly awe-inspiring, as I mentioned in my Opening Sequences rant. Even the first parts of the game are kind of off-putting, with main character Sieg, AKA Motormouth, jamming words together so rapidly that you'd swear they put him on fast-forward, except his voice isn't all squeaky. It's like listening to a low-voiced Chip and Dale, only faster.
Nonetheless, by the end of the game, I found the game was decent. Maybe even good. There are some decent characters (Chrodechild's pretty neat, Dirk's alright, and Fredegund is okay, though she had WAY more potential as a deep, involved character than they ever tried to realize), the semi-main villain was decent enough, the plot had a lot of creative aspects and neat ideas, and there were a few moments that were pretty touching. So I wound up pleased with it in the end. Then I hopped onto the internet forums, and found out that this was NOT the typical reaction from Suikoden fans. My curiosity was piqued at this wide-spread hatred, so I investigated a little further to find out why, exactly, the game earns such scorn.
There are a lot of reasons I've been given as to why people don't like it. There's the voice acting, which I mentioned, although I honestly can't say I'd ever dislike a whole game significantly for its voice acting. That's just ridiculous, honestly. Sometimes people don't like the final boss, and feel like he was lame and sloppy. I can't say I thought much of The One King, either, honestly, although I felt that his gimmick of passing himself on was actually somewhat neat, but...this is SUIKODEN. Sloppy, lame, silly, out-of-nowhere over-blown final bosses is one of the most consistent aspects of the series. I mean, it's something to dislike, sure, but how can you hold The One King against Suikoden Tierkreis and not hold Barbarossa randomly becoming a dragon against 1, or villains magically being able to invoke corporeal forms of the True Runes to fight at the end of the game even when there are people with True Runes on your side with better knowledge of them that can't do the same against 3 and 5? And let's not forget that stupid fucking magic tree in Suikoden 4.
Smaller complaints aside, though, it seems to me that most of the hatred for Suikoden Tierkreis is that it's different from other Suikodens. Ultimately, that's what every major complaint seems to boil down to. People complain about the system of magic, not because it doesn't work just fine (it mostly does), but because it's different from the previous Suikoden rune-based magic system. People complain about the setting and characters, not because they aren't just fine (they are), but because it's not the regular world Suikoden takes place on and none of the characters have a connection to previous titles. They complain about the focus points of the plot, not because the themes of multiple worlds and fate-containing books don't make for a decent basis, but because the focal point isn't the 27 True Runes. There are complaints about the country-versus-country conflicts, not because they aren't there and aren't fairly okay, but because they don't have the same tactics and political machinations of the previous Suikodens. And so on.*
Basically, the consensus I'm getting is that Suikoden Tierkreis is actually a completely fine game, but that Suikoden fans won't allow themselves to enjoy it because they expect everything to be exactly the same.
This isn't rational, nor is it fair. The fact that Suikoden Tierkreis is a decent game and has notable merits in its storytelling is what should count, not whether or not those elements of plot and characters happen to be like previous games'. You can go ahead and compare it to previous Suikodens and say it's not as good as them, but you can't say that the game is a bad game just because it doesn't compare to a predecessor. If it's a decent game, it's, y'know, a decent game.
I also think that some of the comparisons are silly. I mean, people complain about the lack of the True Runes in Suikoden Tierkreis, but what about Suikoden Tactics? They served no purpose in that game and had nothing to do with its plot that I can remember. Didn't hear much complaint then. And why are people expecting a setting, plot, and overall game that continues the overall story of the main Suikoden world and its people and mysticism from a game whose title clearly denotes it as a side-story off-shoot? I mean, it's not like Konami named the game Suikoden 6 and then had it have very few significant ties to the previous games. It seems obvious to ME that it's going to be some kind of offshoot from the regular series when the regular series is numbered and this one is given a word title. Suikoden Tactics might have been set in the same Suikoden world and have plot and character ties to previous games, but its focus and plot were set on things completely irrelevant to the focus of the main series, so why the big deal with this one?
Suikoden Tierkreis is just fine. It does not deserve its reputation. And rabid Suikoden fans need to get off their groundless high horse, get real, and calm the hell down.
* I mean, I'm not saying that Suikoden Tierkreis is perfect, or even really good, on any of these points, but I am going to have to stand by the idea that it's still at least decent on each.
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Suikoden 4
Wow. You know, I'm not very big on Suikoden 5. As I've mentioned before, it rang kinda hollow to me--had all the dressings of a Suikoden, but none of the heart. You'd play it, you'd be entertained for a while, you'd finish it, and you'd slowly start to realize that something was missing...you hadn't witnessed anything monumental, inspiring, and/or touching, you hadn't experienced anything enriching or really worthy of much note, you'd just...played a game that felt like Suikoden but was written like a very average RPG.
Yet, from what I've seen, the game was received very well by most fans, better even than the far superior Suikoden 3 was, and hailed as finally being a "true" Suikoden to follow the 2nd in the series. I've always kind of wondered at this...what is it that people found in S5 that they loved so much? Was I missing something? Usually I pass off such differences in RPG appreciation as people generally having lower standards than myself and/or that they all just happen to be stupid and wrong.* But the fan base of the Suikoden series tends to be a slight cut above your average rabble of fantards, so such a dismissal didn't seem right.
But I think I get it, now that I have played Suikoden 4. I understand. People loved Suikoden 5 because, after Suikoden 4, they were ecstatic to play a game with the name Suikoden in the title that wasn't completely terrible.
Now, I say Suikoden 4 is completely terrible. But when I say "completely," I don't just mean that in the usual way of emphasizing that it's very, very terrible. I mean "completely" in the sense that the game is wholly terrible. I mean that its terribleness is complete; it permeates every aspect of the title. This is the most boring RPG I've played in years. In fact, it may be THE most boring, period. I mean, with terrible yawn-fests like Shadow Hearts 3, 7th Saga, and Lufia 1, the stuff in them was so horrible, stupid, and badly-envisioned and/or executed, that it was bad enough to offend the audience at times into actively hating the game. But this...with the exception of S4's minigames, there isn't enough life in this title to spark anything more than bored dislike. Allow me to go into detail.
Graphics: There's nothing especially bad about the graphics, but there's certainly absolutely nothing that will catch your eye. The few special effects are little more than bright, colored lights and generic "This Thing Is On Fire" effects. Probably the best-looking part of the game is the water, and your appreciation for its waves and shine will last for approximately 1/80000th of the time that you'll be looking at it.
The cutscenes are very jerk and disjointed. You'll see something for like 10-30 seconds, usually, of what's going on, and hopefully you'll get the idea, because they won't go into very much detail. It'll start suddenly, and stop suddenly, with a tiny sound clip played. It just...I don't know. It's like someone cut up a movie reel and then glued a bunch of pieces together to form a shorter version of the flick.
Sound: The music is forgettable background noise, the sound effects are dead average, and the voice acting is generic at the best of times, and awkward the rest of time. Even Michael McConnohie, who I've enjoyed in a few previous RPGs enough to look up his name, provides a rather flat performance--even when being generous in considering that, enjoyable voice or no, his distinguishing tone and inflections make him a one-trick pony, it sounds like a tired repeat. The one person who stood out at all was the character of Graham Cray, whose voice actor must have been watching Gargoyles when he was recording, because I could have sworn that it was Keith David (Goliath from Gargoyles) doing the voice. But yeah. In general, this is a terrible showing for the series.
Gameplay: Okay. I'm not going to talk about Sailing here. That gets its own rant. Because it's just too terrible not to be its own topic. Let's just say that the gameplay involved in moving from one place to another in Suikoden 4 is the most mind-numbing activity imaginable. If you can actually think of something that you would find less entertaining than navigating Suikoden 4's map, then congratulations, one of the following is true:
A. You have never played Suikoden 4
B. You must be more manically depressed than Marvin the Paranoid Android.
As for the rest of the time...well, RPG battles aren't usually very exciting or interesting, but Suikoden 4's is even more uninteresting than the usual Suikoden fare in that instead of the standard 6 characters to control in battle, you're brought down to 4, eliminating some of the strategy from it, even if said strategy in the series is usually pretty basic and simple. And the strategic battles? It's sort of like a mix of Chess and Battleship, only with all the strategy taken out of the Chess and all the fun taken out of the Battleship. You aren't even given any incentive to do anything more than a minimal job with it--whether you win with one badly damaged ship left, or don't get hit once, the result is the same. In the other Suikodens, you get rewards of cash and sometimes items if you do well in strategic battles, and of course you've got to be careful because doing poorly can mean the permanent deaths of some characters, but in this one? Nothing. No penalties or rewards, barely any strategy, and certainly no fun. And finally, the one-on-one battles are okay, I suppose, but they lack a lot of the oomph of the other games', and the choreography for them is rather bland.
Minigames: Suikoden 4 manages, against all odds, to have worse minigames than the rest of the series. The usual dice-in-bowl crap is back, they've got stupid and random top-spinning, and Ritapon...there is no justice in this world until God personally rains fire upon whoever thought up Ritapon.
Little Things That Bug Me: I know this isn't a big deal and all, but dear lord, the way the hero of the game runs. It's like...you know that utterly stupid way that anime girls sometimes run, where their entire bodies sway left and right with every step while they hold their arms against their chest with their forearms folded up and outward, so that the whole process of simply running becomes more clumsy and laughable to see than watching a penguin walk uphill? It's like he's doing THAT. Konami invented a way for an anime GUY to run that way. You have to watch this idiot's ass sway against itself for the entire game as he not so much runs as stumbles quickly.
Characters: The Suikoden series has had some of the most thought-provoking, appealing, deep, and excellent characters in all of RPGs. But in this one...well, it's like the saying "Water, water, everywhere, and not a drop to drink." 108 Stars of Destiny, 0 Good Characters. I mean, for God's sake, they made VIKI boring. If there were laws for how to handle plots and characters when making an RPG, that would be a fucking criminal act. There's not a single character or villain in here that you'll have anything beyond a very mild like or dislike for. They're just...there. Pointless, and there.
Plot: I'm not sure there's enough of one for me to even report on. What's there is meager. Some island country up north wants to expand southward (why, I can't imagine, the combined lands of the islands you visit in this game would barely be enough to make up a county in one of the other games' countries, and none of the islands have very much of note), and it uses a big, unimaginative super cannon and an exceptionally small navy to try to take over the southern island nations. It's up to your hero to lead a coalition of these southern islands, the result of which is a massive fleet of...4 ships all together, against these aggressors at a rather leisurely pace, with the aid of a drunken old hag whose brilliant strategies amount to using very obvious decoys and predictable pincer formations. I mean, I think the only people on the planet who care about this story less than the player does are probably the people who MADE the game. You'd get more satisfaction from a Save The Princess quest.
And while the overview of the plot is very boring, the details of it are either missing or nonsensical. Half the time, you don't know anything about how or why something is happening, and the game sure as hell doesn't seem to feel obligated to let you know. The other half of the time, the plot's moved along by events that just don't make sense. The hero's exile? He's banished for allegedly killing his commander without anyone even stopping to acknowledge his pleas of innocence. I mean, it's not just that they don't believe him (which is odd enough as it is, since the only "witness" is known to be unreliable and the proposed motives for the supposed murder don't make any sense). It's like they don't even HEAR him. It's like, "Hey, we've decided you're guilty. Don't expect a trial, or accusation, or anything like that. Just hit the road. Er, ocean." And then near the end of the game, there's this one character, Ramada? He's fooling around in the enemy base, see. And he gets shot through the chest by a large, pointy, fast-moving projectile which we later find out is also poisoned, see. And after he's been shot, your army begins to sail for the enemy base, and the old booze-swilling bag says it'll take 3 days to get there. So presumably 3 days later, your characters are inside, meet the villain who shot Ramada, and the villain lets loose another projectile. Ramada comes out of nowhere and gets himself shot in the chest AGAIN. While mentioning that it's poisoned. 3. Days. After getting shot the first time. If I were a villain, I'd be using a better poison, as this one apparently can't finish off a mortally wounded man over the course of 3 days.
Now, as much as that doesn't make sense, here's the kicker: after getting shot in the chest and suffering from poison for 3 days, then getting shot in the chest again and given a second dose of poison, Ramada apparently lives. Nice job on the story telling, S4.
At least the plot's short. If it weren't for the endless Sailing and the running around to get the 108 Stars of Destiny, this game would take about a third as long as it does to get done, because so few things happen, and all of them so quickly. Just another example of this thing being boring and terrible.
So yeah, there you go. Do I hate this game? Nah. Hate's reserved for genuinely loathsome games, horrible, excruciating shit like Wild Arms 4 or Final Fantasy 10-2. Would I ever suggest that any man or woman in his or her right mind, or even not in his or her right mind, play it? Fuck NO.
* Yes, I am aware that I'm an egotistical jerk. But the great thing about being an egotistical jerk is that I don't care if you like that or not, so phoo on you!
Yet, from what I've seen, the game was received very well by most fans, better even than the far superior Suikoden 3 was, and hailed as finally being a "true" Suikoden to follow the 2nd in the series. I've always kind of wondered at this...what is it that people found in S5 that they loved so much? Was I missing something? Usually I pass off such differences in RPG appreciation as people generally having lower standards than myself and/or that they all just happen to be stupid and wrong.* But the fan base of the Suikoden series tends to be a slight cut above your average rabble of fantards, so such a dismissal didn't seem right.
But I think I get it, now that I have played Suikoden 4. I understand. People loved Suikoden 5 because, after Suikoden 4, they were ecstatic to play a game with the name Suikoden in the title that wasn't completely terrible.
Now, I say Suikoden 4 is completely terrible. But when I say "completely," I don't just mean that in the usual way of emphasizing that it's very, very terrible. I mean "completely" in the sense that the game is wholly terrible. I mean that its terribleness is complete; it permeates every aspect of the title. This is the most boring RPG I've played in years. In fact, it may be THE most boring, period. I mean, with terrible yawn-fests like Shadow Hearts 3, 7th Saga, and Lufia 1, the stuff in them was so horrible, stupid, and badly-envisioned and/or executed, that it was bad enough to offend the audience at times into actively hating the game. But this...with the exception of S4's minigames, there isn't enough life in this title to spark anything more than bored dislike. Allow me to go into detail.
Graphics: There's nothing especially bad about the graphics, but there's certainly absolutely nothing that will catch your eye. The few special effects are little more than bright, colored lights and generic "This Thing Is On Fire" effects. Probably the best-looking part of the game is the water, and your appreciation for its waves and shine will last for approximately 1/80000th of the time that you'll be looking at it.
The cutscenes are very jerk and disjointed. You'll see something for like 10-30 seconds, usually, of what's going on, and hopefully you'll get the idea, because they won't go into very much detail. It'll start suddenly, and stop suddenly, with a tiny sound clip played. It just...I don't know. It's like someone cut up a movie reel and then glued a bunch of pieces together to form a shorter version of the flick.
Sound: The music is forgettable background noise, the sound effects are dead average, and the voice acting is generic at the best of times, and awkward the rest of time. Even Michael McConnohie, who I've enjoyed in a few previous RPGs enough to look up his name, provides a rather flat performance--even when being generous in considering that, enjoyable voice or no, his distinguishing tone and inflections make him a one-trick pony, it sounds like a tired repeat. The one person who stood out at all was the character of Graham Cray, whose voice actor must have been watching Gargoyles when he was recording, because I could have sworn that it was Keith David (Goliath from Gargoyles) doing the voice. But yeah. In general, this is a terrible showing for the series.
Gameplay: Okay. I'm not going to talk about Sailing here. That gets its own rant. Because it's just too terrible not to be its own topic. Let's just say that the gameplay involved in moving from one place to another in Suikoden 4 is the most mind-numbing activity imaginable. If you can actually think of something that you would find less entertaining than navigating Suikoden 4's map, then congratulations, one of the following is true:
A. You have never played Suikoden 4
B. You must be more manically depressed than Marvin the Paranoid Android.
As for the rest of the time...well, RPG battles aren't usually very exciting or interesting, but Suikoden 4's is even more uninteresting than the usual Suikoden fare in that instead of the standard 6 characters to control in battle, you're brought down to 4, eliminating some of the strategy from it, even if said strategy in the series is usually pretty basic and simple. And the strategic battles? It's sort of like a mix of Chess and Battleship, only with all the strategy taken out of the Chess and all the fun taken out of the Battleship. You aren't even given any incentive to do anything more than a minimal job with it--whether you win with one badly damaged ship left, or don't get hit once, the result is the same. In the other Suikodens, you get rewards of cash and sometimes items if you do well in strategic battles, and of course you've got to be careful because doing poorly can mean the permanent deaths of some characters, but in this one? Nothing. No penalties or rewards, barely any strategy, and certainly no fun. And finally, the one-on-one battles are okay, I suppose, but they lack a lot of the oomph of the other games', and the choreography for them is rather bland.
Minigames: Suikoden 4 manages, against all odds, to have worse minigames than the rest of the series. The usual dice-in-bowl crap is back, they've got stupid and random top-spinning, and Ritapon...there is no justice in this world until God personally rains fire upon whoever thought up Ritapon.
Little Things That Bug Me: I know this isn't a big deal and all, but dear lord, the way the hero of the game runs. It's like...you know that utterly stupid way that anime girls sometimes run, where their entire bodies sway left and right with every step while they hold their arms against their chest with their forearms folded up and outward, so that the whole process of simply running becomes more clumsy and laughable to see than watching a penguin walk uphill? It's like he's doing THAT. Konami invented a way for an anime GUY to run that way. You have to watch this idiot's ass sway against itself for the entire game as he not so much runs as stumbles quickly.
Characters: The Suikoden series has had some of the most thought-provoking, appealing, deep, and excellent characters in all of RPGs. But in this one...well, it's like the saying "Water, water, everywhere, and not a drop to drink." 108 Stars of Destiny, 0 Good Characters. I mean, for God's sake, they made VIKI boring. If there were laws for how to handle plots and characters when making an RPG, that would be a fucking criminal act. There's not a single character or villain in here that you'll have anything beyond a very mild like or dislike for. They're just...there. Pointless, and there.
Plot: I'm not sure there's enough of one for me to even report on. What's there is meager. Some island country up north wants to expand southward (why, I can't imagine, the combined lands of the islands you visit in this game would barely be enough to make up a county in one of the other games' countries, and none of the islands have very much of note), and it uses a big, unimaginative super cannon and an exceptionally small navy to try to take over the southern island nations. It's up to your hero to lead a coalition of these southern islands, the result of which is a massive fleet of...4 ships all together, against these aggressors at a rather leisurely pace, with the aid of a drunken old hag whose brilliant strategies amount to using very obvious decoys and predictable pincer formations. I mean, I think the only people on the planet who care about this story less than the player does are probably the people who MADE the game. You'd get more satisfaction from a Save The Princess quest.
And while the overview of the plot is very boring, the details of it are either missing or nonsensical. Half the time, you don't know anything about how or why something is happening, and the game sure as hell doesn't seem to feel obligated to let you know. The other half of the time, the plot's moved along by events that just don't make sense. The hero's exile? He's banished for allegedly killing his commander without anyone even stopping to acknowledge his pleas of innocence. I mean, it's not just that they don't believe him (which is odd enough as it is, since the only "witness" is known to be unreliable and the proposed motives for the supposed murder don't make any sense). It's like they don't even HEAR him. It's like, "Hey, we've decided you're guilty. Don't expect a trial, or accusation, or anything like that. Just hit the road. Er, ocean." And then near the end of the game, there's this one character, Ramada? He's fooling around in the enemy base, see. And he gets shot through the chest by a large, pointy, fast-moving projectile which we later find out is also poisoned, see. And after he's been shot, your army begins to sail for the enemy base, and the old booze-swilling bag says it'll take 3 days to get there. So presumably 3 days later, your characters are inside, meet the villain who shot Ramada, and the villain lets loose another projectile. Ramada comes out of nowhere and gets himself shot in the chest AGAIN. While mentioning that it's poisoned. 3. Days. After getting shot the first time. If I were a villain, I'd be using a better poison, as this one apparently can't finish off a mortally wounded man over the course of 3 days.
Now, as much as that doesn't make sense, here's the kicker: after getting shot in the chest and suffering from poison for 3 days, then getting shot in the chest again and given a second dose of poison, Ramada apparently lives. Nice job on the story telling, S4.
At least the plot's short. If it weren't for the endless Sailing and the running around to get the 108 Stars of Destiny, this game would take about a third as long as it does to get done, because so few things happen, and all of them so quickly. Just another example of this thing being boring and terrible.
So yeah, there you go. Do I hate this game? Nah. Hate's reserved for genuinely loathsome games, horrible, excruciating shit like Wild Arms 4 or Final Fantasy 10-2. Would I ever suggest that any man or woman in his or her right mind, or even not in his or her right mind, play it? Fuck NO.
* Yes, I am aware that I'm an egotistical jerk. But the great thing about being an egotistical jerk is that I don't care if you like that or not, so phoo on you!
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