First off, let me just say that I find negative reviews for this game completely laughable. The complaints I hear all seem to revolve around reading and waiting. Dear god say it aint so. I thought they made games for people who liked leveling up but hate reading and have no patience. Aren't they called God of War? Readers do not be put off by the negative things you have heard about this game but rather judge its merits on your own. Or better yet, my standards! Wink!

The storyline in this game runs deeper than almost any other I have ever seen in a game. At worst this game should warrant no less than a three, and this I say despite any personal taste, because you are expected to enjoy the genre you are reviewing otherwise you provide nothing useful, just as I would provide nothing useful if I reviewed a sports title. Some things are just good. Empire Strikes Back is just good. However, there is always someone who wants to be a contrarian, and then there are those with just plain awful taste. To those who can't handle this game's long build up, or as I like to call it "Pacing" (A concept few seem able to understand in our flash bang world today.)Perhaps you should master your adult onset ADD and give it another shot. Normally I would never criticize someone for their taste, but in this case it had to be said.

This game is one that comes across every few years when the stars align (The real stars not the stars of destiny). It's not just a good RPG, it's not just a good game, it is just good! A quality piece of interactive media that creates an impression on those who can appreciate it! The tragedy of this game, and really the series in general is its puzzling lack of support and popularity despite its hardcore but small fan base. These games are very well made and fun to play, and yet they seem to be somewhat obscure in spite of this. If you are looking for a story that will give you that "Oh my god Aeris noooooooo!" feeling all over again, then this is the one.

Plot and Characters

The plot of this game is truly epic; so epic in fact, that there is nearly two hours of exposition involved before you begin to control your character, and can freely roam about. Is this a bit much? Yes, perhaps to some but I would argue that this set up is completely necessary. Suikoden games have always taken their time to get under way, but the pay off is a lushly fleshed out title, which makes you care about the characters, and what they are doing. The game sets its plot up not in a long winded way, but in a methodical careful way so that when the proverbial finally hits the fan, you are left drooling for more. You can expect all the same themes of intrigue, honor, betrayal, sacrifice, duty, and friendship that were present in the other games. I personally say this game is superior to the second title which is still considered the golden child of the series to many. I suspect a combination of nostalgia and rarity are all that places II above V, but that is not at all to say it is a bad game. They are both utterly fantastic in my eyes.

You take on the role of a young prince in this game, who is caught up in the court intrigue and political maneuvering of his once prosperous kingdom. The game goes through great pains to introduce you to all the key players, rather than have them materialize in a big cape and say "Ha ha ha I'm going to blow up the world!" The characters, even the villains are complex, and you will really feel immersed in the court drama, and plotting that takes place in the game. I don't wish to give any more specifics for fear of spoiling the story, but after about 4 hours of ticking, this bomb explodes, and when it does you will not want to stop playing until you beat it.

As for characters you are certain to find a few you like out of the 108 possible to recruit. This game has a long standing tradition of having the largest party both in battle and out of, for any RPG, and the large number is based around the story line itself. The 108 characters, including the main one correspond to the mystical 108 stars of destiny. Each person you bring on board has a special role to play, and recruiting them all makes up not only much of the content of the game but much of the fun as well. As in other games most characters won't throw their lot in with you until you perform a certain task. This aspect of the game requires much searching and backtracking to previously visited towns. You never know when a new face might show up. There are even a few reoccurring characters from other Suikoden games. If you have played through the others, and you should, you will be delighted to see these characters become playable once again.

The main characters themselves are well designed, interesting and interact well with each other. So much of the story is conveyed through conversations between the main characters, and they are truly well crafted. This game is more reminiscent of a novel that was converted into a game in some ways. The characters personalities are replete with flaws, strengths and everything in between and even the "bad guys" of the game are extremely relatable.

Game-play:

Suikoden V does exactly what I want with a sequel to a beloved series of games. It preserves all the major elements of play, and adds in or combines a few extra bits as well. Unlike some series which feel the need to reinvent the wheel with each new title, (recent Final Fantasy offerings spring to mind) Suikoden has done a relatively good job of keeping its game mechanics integral. This game combines elements from previous games in a very effective way.

There are three elements to the combat of the game. There is your basic 6 person party which constitutes most battles in the game. This is a fairly traditional turn based style of combat, but obviously having six characters instead of the typical three or four adds a new element to the flow. Then there is a one on one duel type battle, wherein you must preempt the actions of your opponent based on his or her words in order to effectively fight. Finally there are all out war segments, where members of your party lead units of soldiers, and act as generals. Each one requires a different type of strategy, and all are fun.

Apart from this there are tons of mini games, and a nice customization element taken from Suikoden 3 and refined. The rune magic system offers a refreshing change from typical MP based magic in other games. The result is that you are able to cast magic less often, but it is far more powerful. I like this concept much more than the magic in other games which seems to have bright flashy graphics, but does barely more (or even less) damage than a melee attack from some spiky haired hotshot with a sword larger than his body.

The game play overall is nice and solid. Nothing too difficult or too easy, and most of it revolves around strategy rather than button mashing or reflex. Moreover it is good because it offers that nostalgic experience to fans of the original two games. I am from the more traditional camp of RPG players, and it should be noted that I enjoy turn based strategy driven role playing games, much more than the more active type seen increasingly today. So if you started playing Role playing games recently you may find the slowness of this game off putting. I think it's minor and if you are invested for the right reasons you will hardly care about the combat system anyway. It may sound uppity but if you pass right over the wealth of great story and character interaction in this game and complain about the turn based battles, then you aren't a real RPG fan anyway in my book.

Sound and Graphics

The music in the Suikoden series is great! There is a very distinctly Asian sound to it but also a noticeable European influence. In fact the setting and graphics of the game are much the same. It's like a fusion of Japanese and European cultures, and it creates a subtle yet highly imaginative effect that is equal parts strange and appealing. The game is colorful, but not garish. Each character is rendered in a distinct fashion, and they have character portraits to show more detail. The cut scenes in the game are enjoyable, but perhaps a little awkward. There seems to be a lot of strange idiomatic hand waving that goes on for too long and other similar things. They aren't the best but they move the game along, and they aren't an unwelcome addition in any case.

Graphically the game is not spectacular, but because of this more time could be spent making the game in depth in terms of plot, and it certainly has kept the game from being linear. Some titles have suffered for their primary emphasis on graphics, particularly in the PS2 area. This game looks good. It's not trying to be eyeball exploding. It doesn't want to be, or need to be. It's a classic styled game made specifically and unapologetically for fans of the series, and shows that this team of developers really understands what their fans want. Integrity!

I'll wrap this up as it's already run a bit long. I can't say enough good things about this game. If you have played and enjoyed Suikoden I and or II then you must try this game. At the risk of sound sycophantic, it has it all. I am typically very harsh with games, as I have exacting standards for what I will call a good RPG, but I can scarcely think of a single negative comment about this game. I played once all the way through, and then literally restarted it and played through again before touching a single other game. I don't think there are any other games I can say that about.

V is a good follow up on the game series and seems to finally reach back to the roots of the series in the story line and overall playability.

The previous game in the series (named Suikoden IV, go figure) was in many ways disappointing. Luckily, Suikoden V rectifies many of the flaws, though it is not perfect. The biggest flaw? Missable characters. If you're familiar with the Suikoden games you will recognize the game revolves around 108 characters, or Stars of Destiny. In the previous games it took a lot of effort to permanently miss a character - you'd have to choose to execute a character, or tell them to buzz off several times - something most players aren't going to do without expecting negative consequences. Suikoden V fails in this aspect. There are a number of characters you will permanently miss if you fail to do some minor task at precisely the right time. Consequently I required a walkthrough for most of the game, simply out of fear of missing something that did not appear significant at the time (I call this Final Fantasy X-2 Syndrome!) Another significant problem occurs during the tactical battles. If your unit comes out ahead of a particular skirmish, the enemy unit will flee. Makes sense. Unfortunately they have a way of fleeing in rather silly ways - they will travel a considerably large distance (while everyone else is frozen), through your other units, often stopping next to your own weakened units, who appeared to be safe so far away and behind a wall of defense. Not so much. Other problems include long and frequent load times, random battles (try something new please), unskippable cutscenes, a few management oversights (which really get amplified when you have 108 characters!). Oh yeah, and no more silent protagonists please!

This is a satisfying game, however. The characters are likable and memorable, the story will satisfy any Suikoden fan. The music is a big improvement over the III and IV. The graphics are roughly equal to IV. The voice overs are generally good ( though I found Lym exceptionally annoying - grown women voicing little girls is very grating.) At the end of the day, this game is another high quality addition to what I consider the best RPG series around. Recommended, without question.

Suikoden 5 is one of the better games in the series. The story starts classic jrpg high fantasy with you as the prince of the royal family and intrigues within the royal family soon follow. The combat has three different forms, the first being classic up to 6 characters vs monsters in turned based combat akin of other games like early ff or dragon warrior. There is also a 1v1 batter which functions similar to rock paper scissors with the enemy talking to you each round and you guessing what he will do based on what he says. And then there is the strategy battles where you have several squads that you send against the opponents. Overall I would rate the game worth playing (second or third best in the series imo) as long as you like jrpg fare. It should last you over 20h if you rush through it and can easily take over 60 if your a completionist (There are over 108 members in your party that you can recruit although the max at one time is still 6).

Suikoden 5 is a reasonably accomplished RPG which tells the tale of a kingdom (or in this game, a queendom) under threat from evil forces wishing to control the world (as usual). You play as the prince, who finds himself initially just doing various chores and generally drifting through the country waiting for something to kick-start his true sense of purpose.

Now let me say right now that never before have I played a game that took quite as long as this to get interesting, in fact I seriously considered abandoning it during the early stages. We're talking 10 solid hours plus before the game starts to deliver anything more then mildly diverting ambling about. This is a huge flaw, and something the game creators really should have addressed. Ten hours of wandering around with little more to do than press prompt buttons to initiate text-only conversations is really too much to ask. There are a couple of starter dungeons but enemies were way too easy and after about 3 encounters the paths were pretty much finished. However, I persevered because of what I had read on other review sites, and EVENTUALLY, after what must have been about 15 hours of extremely mundane play, the game finally started to get going. And yes, the reviews are right. Once you get past this initial hurdle, things do get good.

So, what does it play like? Well the controls are easy...there isn't much you need to learn to get around the game. The towns and locations in general are quite large and sometimes it seems like the game is making you are run down very long corridors or around large towns just to bump up the running time. There isn't really any need for this, and in that miserable opening section it just contributes to the boredom. And graphics-wise, I think it could be better. Everything looks kind of...childish. Characters are rather bland looking and their facial expressions are very simple. The scenery of the game is also pretty dull...and both dungeons and towns share a very bad "top-down" camera angle that cannot be manually altered. All locations are viewed from the same overhead and vaguely south-east vantage point. You can't rotate the camera at all, and as a result there are sometimes doorways in walls that you can't see! All you can do is zoom in and zoom out. There is no in game map of towns or dungeons, so I think the zoomed-out vantage point is designed to be your map substitute, but it looks awful - character models become minute and the interiors (which exist as floating 2-3 sided rooms within a black empty space) look very out-dated.

Right now, let's get onto the fighting. As I mentioned, in the introductory hours dungeons are a breeze, and there is an "Auto" option that just makes everyone attack, which I used almost 100% of the time to begin with. Not a good start. I mean, the fact that you can play without having to even think. But the battle system actually has quite a lot of depth to it. Good fighting depends on many things: Character equipment, battle formation (the positions your team members stand in during battle), magic orbs (equip to enable spell casting for the spells that orb contains), skills (raise by spending points on them, and equip the ones you like), and of course levelling up. I must say that the fights always tended to stay on the easy side. I used that "Auto" function mercilessly when I was just roaming round dungeons to make sure I didn't miss any treasure...it was just the quickest way. Oh yeah, on the subject of speed, this game needs to go to a load screen excruciatingly often. After every battle, after every change from town to world map, in and out of every building, between every cut scene and in game screen...a few seconds on the load screen is needed for all of these, and put together, that's a LOT of dead time. It really grates after a while, and as the encounter rate is pretty high there's no escape.

OK it sounds like I have a lot of moans, but let me point out the good points. Surprisingly, top of the list in Suikoden V has to be the actual story. Believe it or not, when the loading screens and ugly graphics get you down, it is the story that will bring you back. And this is partly down to that very long preamble, during which time you get to know quite a lot about a lot of characters. Boring as that is, when the game suddenly (and finally) plays an ace with a quite exciting plot twist, you'll be pretty much hooked for the rest of the game. So a big plus point there.

Next, there is quite a lot of variety in the gameplay to keep you amused along the way. First of all there literally dozens of support characters to fight with. The game has what could be described as a side quest, in which you try and recruit people from all over the country to help your cause. Most of these can be used in your battle team, while others offer passive "support" skills, so the permutation of party members is huge. Next, apart from normal RPG battles, the game also has wars. War sees you controlling combat from a strategic point of view, with several battalions to control and direct. I was a bit unsure about this at first, but after a couple of them I got hooked.

So by the end of the game I was having a good time. The story kept me hooked until the end and the gameplay was fun enough to make the time spent enjoyable. If only they had made that long prologue more interesting....