Suikoden III
This game was released in 2002 for the PlayStation 2 in Japan and the USA. Europe didn't get it until 2015 when it became available for digital download on the PlayStation 3 shop. This is the version I played.
When you first boot up Suikoden III, it asks you if you want to load completed Suikoden II data from the same memory card. However, it is unfortunately completely impossible for the digital PS3 version to make use of this feature due to the way the PS3's method of creating internal PS2 memory cards doesn't allow transfer of other data to them. So despite having completed Suikoden II earlier this year, I couldn't unlock the bonuses here. ...I looked it up, and it turns out I'm not really missing much anyway. The only things of note that I can't get are two very minor collectible items.
But anyway...
Suikoden III has a unique approach to its storytelling structure - it uses something called the "Trinity Sight System", which is a fancy way of saying that the game has three different protagonists.
The three protagonists in this game are:
Hugo, the son of the chief of the Karaya tribe of the Grasslands.
Lady Chris, the championed captain of the Zexen Knights.
Geddoe, a mysterious mercenary working for the Harmonian Southern Frontier Defense Force.
Each protagonist has three chapters to play through. After completing all 9 of these chapters, then the last two chapters, Chapter 4 and Chapter 5 come next.
Additionally, the first time one of the protagonists reaches Budehuc Castle (Hugo can access it in his chapter 3, Chris in her chapter 2, and Geddoe as early as his chapter 1), then we unlock a bonus story of Thomas, the young master of the castle, who has two of his own optional chapters to play through.
After clearing a chapter, the game goes back to the story selection menu, however you are not able to access this menu at any time - you must complete a chapter before being allowed to start a different one. (and you can never replay old chapters either)
At the beginning of Chapter 4, you need to choose which of the main three is going to become the hero of the story, and thus the main playable character for the rest of the game. I decided to pick Hugo.
The order in which you play the majority of the chapters in this game is completely up to the player.
I decided to do the game in this order:
Hugo 1, Chris 1, Geddoe 1, Thomas 1, Hugo 2, Chris 2, Geddoe 2, Thomas 2, Hugo 3, Chris 3, Geddoe 3, Hugo 4, Hugo 5, THE END.
I feel like the Trinity Sight System can make the game feel a bit lopsided, and the pacing can get awkward if you make the story jump around as much as I did. The swapping of perspectives forces the story to "start over" quite frequently. I decided to play four "Chapter 1"s in a row, and because of this, even after 10+ hours of gameplay, it had barely felt like anything had actually happened in the story yet. Maybe my experience would have been different had I decided to play all the way to Hugo's chapter 3 before switching to someone else... who knows?
I do like the order I played it though, as it allowed the storytelling to keep to a relatively linear timeline.
So, Suikoden III takes place around 15 years after Suikoden II, however the story for the most part is entirely separate from the previous game. A couple of characters from the previous game make a return, (in fact, Hugo's mother Lucia was a minor antagonist from Suikoden II) but the continuity is not necessary to understand the story.
The story involves three different perspectives of the same events. A war between Zexen and Grassland, which has more going on behind the scenes than it first appears. Chris's knights invade Hugo's domain, while Geddoe snoops behind the scenes gathering knowledge about the situation. It's an interesting way to present the story, quite unique from other RPGs.
Overall, though, I felt the story was actually a bit weak. The conflict between Zexen and Grasslands takes the majority of the screentime, but in the end, it doesn't end up mattering all that much after the two sides find a common enemy. And it feels like a lot of the game consists of a whole lot of buildup to various mysteries, the majority of which never really end up getting answered all that definitively. The story is engaging enough for me to want to see it through to the end, but it never became truly intense like the story of Suikoden II, and it never hit me with any real big surprises either.
The gameplay is largely similar to the previous games, however there are some key differences.
The combat system of this game has been changed since the previous two games.
You still use a team of six, but now everyone is grouped into pairs. So you must organise your team of six into three pairs of two.
This pairing system is kind of strange, because it doesn't seem to benefit the player in any way, and instead only serves to force a bunch of extra restrictions that didn't exist before.
When you command your team members, you can only command a pair, and not any of them individually.
If you select "attack", then both of them will attack the target.
If you want to use magic, then you only get to select a single spell from the both of them, and the other member will just automatically do a regular attack. This means that if you pair two mages together, you can only tell one of them to cast per turn, and the other will just uselessly bonk the enemy with their staff.
Casting a spell now takes time, and it can even take multiple turns. If a spellcaster is attacked during their casting, they may get interrupted and lose their turn. And the spellcaster's partner can only do regular attacks until the spell has been cast.
If you want to use an item, a character can only use the item on themselves or their partner, and not on anyone else in the party. Though there is the added option to "share" a healing item, letting both in the pair have half of the restored HP, which is fun I guess. And just like with casting, the other member who isn't using the item will just automatically do a regular attack.
Combo attacks return from the previous Suikoden games, but now there is the added restriction that the party members involved with the combo must be paired with each other, otherwise the option to do the combo attack isn't available. To make up for this, the game now lets you know straight away if a paired team has a combo available, rather than you having to figure it out through trial and error like before.
The concept of positioning has also been changed. In the previous two games, you had three front-row members, and three back-row members, and that was that. But in Suikoden III, the party members like to walk all over the place, and they automatically reposition themselves based on which enemy they're attacking. This is annoying when the weaker party members expose themselves...you really don't have much control over where they decide to stand.
Annoyingly, Fire magic in this game has the added caveat of also damaging any party members that are standing too close to the target enemy. You can't actually tell your guys to get out of the way, so this means that using Fire magic is just not worth the hassle most of the time, unless you can perfectly time it so that the caster's turn goes before the other party members decide to move in the way... Lightning magic does not have this problem, so if you're using mages, you should pretty much just use lightning magic and ignore fire, I guess?
So yeah... combat is similar to the previous game, except they just added a whoole bunch of restrictions to it, and didn't change anything else to compensate. The player just has strictly fewer options now compared to the previous game's system.
It's not actually a bad thing though... in fact, the added restrictions do make this game more strategically interesting. It's just that... I feel like it's not very intuitive. It kinda feels "wrong" that a pair of two mages is a bad idea, purely due to the arbitrary restriction that only one of them can cast at a time... and a full team of six mages is entirely unfeasible as you can only cast a maximum of three spells per turn.
I don't dislike the combat, but I don't think it's the ideal form of JRPG combat by any means. I feel like Suikoden I and II, while much simpler, were a lot more elegant in their simplicity, and they didn't give me the feeling of "incompleteness" that Suikoden III's combat does.
Suikoden III did however add a great new feature to the series with the Skill Points system.
Previously, the only way to intrinsically improve your characters (aside from regular leveling-up) was to upgrade their weapon by spending money at the smithy. Suikoden III still has the smithy which works the same way, but we also now have skills. In addition to EXP, characters now also earn skill points from every encounter, and these can be spent at the training center to upgrade specific aspects of each character. Aspects such as accuracy, crit chance, adding additional hits per attack, reducing damage taken - all sorts of things. Each character has a different set of skills that they are better at than others, each character has their own number of available skill slots, and some characters gain access to unique skills that others don't get. (for example, Ace, one of Geddoe's crew, has a skill that gives him a chance to steal gold with every regular attack)
I think this skill system is great - it allows you to customise your guys in finer detail, and it further differentiates all of the playable characters, giving more space for them to have unique traits. I also really enjoy how it uses a different currency than money, so the resource management for skills is self-contained and doesn't conflict with the smithy or armour shops.
Of all the things Suikoden III added to the series, I think the skill point system is the best one.
Suikoden III uses a different world map system. The previous two games used a very classic "classic JRPG" style of traversable world map with encounters as you walk, but Suikoden III instead uses a map menu screen with a point-and-click interface. The towns, routes and dungeon areas are all points on the map screen that you select with a cursor. You can only select points that are adjacent to your current position, so this doesn't serve as a fast-travel option by any means. The route areas consist of plains and forests and mountains - they are positioned in-between towns, and these are where the general random encounters are fought. Every time you want to travel between towns, you must go through the routes in-between, fighting whatever monsters appear along the way.
This system does make sense for a storyline involving multiple viewpoints. The areas only appear on the map screen when they become relevant to the current story, so this system is a good way of keeping the other stories away from places where they have no current relevance. However, this system does have the effect of making the game world feel a lot "smaller" than previous games.
My biggest complaint with this game comes from the sheer number of times the game expects you to travel through these routes to go between towns. It gets extremely repetitive, as the three different stories tend to end up visiting the same locations as each other quite often. And since the towns can contain unique shops and other things of interest, there are plenty of other reasons a player would want to make a trip to a far-away town, even when it's not the next story destination... causing more trips back and forth through these routes.
The "dungeon" areas aren't exactly what I would call 'proper' RPG dungeons. In fact, they are designed very similarly to the "route" areas, in that they take the form of a linear path with encounters throughout. However, instead of an exit on the other side, they have a dead-end room with a mini-boss monster, and a treasure chest containing the reward for defeating it. The chest actually gives you a LOT of loot, like around 15 items or so at a time, so it is definitely worth it to seek these mini-bosses out. The mini-bosses seem to respawn every once in a while - I don't know if it's purely timer-based, or if they just reappear with every new chapter or what, but the fact that they reappear means that it's definitely worth making repeat trips through the dungeons every so often to get a new stash of loot. ..... as cool as this is, it really doesn't help with the problem of constant backtracking. Not only do you need to go through the routes so often to visit towns, you now have to go through the routes AND the dungeons many times just to keep checking whether the miniboss has come back yet. ...it's so annoying how frequently I have to travel through these routes.
I know it is optional to keep checking these minibosses, but.... I don't wanna miss potential loot, do I? Especially if the minibosses change with every new chapter - I might miss something important! Sometimes the loot contains unique items that cannot be gotten elsewhere, so I very much feel like I want to check these minibosses often...
This wouldn't be so annoying if we had some kind of fast-travel system....but fast-travel is only unlocked once you reach chapter 4. So if you want to make use of town facilities or check miniboss loot during the first 9 chapters, you have absolutely no choice but to walk through the routes back and forth over and over. It's definitely appreciated that fast-travel does eventually become available, but it really is unlocked way way way too late.
Just like the previous two games, Suikoden III also features a castle and 108 recruitable characters, known as the Stars of Destiny. However, I felt like this system was rather de-emphasised compared to the previous games.
For a large portion of the game, the recruitable characters don't see much use. Hugo doesn't gain access to the castle until his chapter 3, Chris generally has her entourage of knights by her side, and Geddoe has his ragtag mercenary team with him at all times. This means that, before chapter 4, (which is basically approaching the endgame), the most you'll be seeing from the recruitable characters is during Thomas's chapters. Thomas's goal in his chapter 1 is to recruit as many people to Budehuc Castle as possible. However, this becomes a bit of a trap, as characters recruited during Thomas's story can't actually be used by any of the main three protagonists during their individual stories... you only gain access to them once you've reached chapter 4 where the stories converge.
People online seem to recommend recruiting the two ninja characters, Watari and Ayame, with Chris, as her chapter 3 has her venturing without her knights by her side, and the ninjas can really help her out during this time. However, I had already recruited the ninjas in Thomas's chapter 1 earlier, so I was just not allowed to add the ninjas to Chris's team at all.
I don't particularly understand why this restriction is in place to be honest. It just further removes opportunities to actually make use of the recruitable characters.
I don't really mind the lesser emphasis on the recruitable characters so much, since everyone has their own story-relevant group traveling alongside them anyway, and all of them are good characters to use. But it is rather limiting - unlike the previous Suikoden games where I felt like changing out my team quite often, in this one I never really have much opportunity to do so.
That being said, the focus on using the three protagonists' comrades for most of the story does mean that this game has a lot more characterisation than the previous games. Many more of the 108 Stars of Destiny are story-relevant and important compared to the previous games, which is something I very much think is a good thing. This game's cast of characters is very memorable for this reason.
And it still is fun to run around towns finding all of the other Stars of Destiny anyway. I also like the new feature where you can take a non-combat Star of Destiny with you as a "support" unit, who conveys passive utilities such as increased gold drops, or the ability to sell items anywhere without having to find a shop. That's another great new addition.
And just like in Suikoden II, one of the Stars is a detective who will tell you the location of any Stars of Destiny you haven't found yet, so it is not difficult to acquire them without a guide. I didn't miss a single Star of Destiny during my playthrough. Hooray! Getting all of the Stars of Destiny in this game actually unlocks a short bonus story, so I'm glad I got the chance to see it.
The castle itself is a lot smaller than the castles from the previous two games. In the previous games, the castle started small, but would gradually expand as you acquired more Stars. But in Suikoden III, the castle starts off small, and.... never changes. The castle is rundown and crumbling and has holes in the walls, and I honestly believed I'd have a magnificent giant palace by the end of the game, but nope... even with all 108 Stars, the castle is still small and crumbling and still has holes in the walls. What a letdown! There's even a cutscene in one of Thomas's chapters where they make an effort to repair the castle, but nothing visually changes about it at all! What's up with that?
The castle is nowhere near as lively as the one from Suikoden II. Characters just have their one spot they always stand in, instead of the more dynamic system from Suikoden II where you could find them in various different places. In Suikoden II the bar and the restaurant always had varying different characters hanging out, and it was fun to see who was there every time you visited. In Suikoden III, though, the bar and restaurant areas are mostly empty chairs, and that's that. It's definitely a downgrade, but I guess it's not a big deal in the grand scheme of things.
The other big system to receive an overhaul is the tactical war scenes. I was not a big fan of the Fire Emblem-style tactics battles from Suikoden II, as I felt like there was little opportunity to actually make meaningful decisions during them.
Suikoden III's version of them, though, I like much better. Instead of a square grid, the battles now take place on a series of spaces connected by dotted lines. You expand your territory by moving units to adjacent unclaimed spaces, and units can move more freely within claimed spaces. Some spaces give defense boosts for units occupying them. When you get attacked, units on adjacent spaces will "cover" the attacked unit, increasing their defense, and if the enemy attacks a space that has multiple units on it, you get to decide which unit takes the attack.
The attack scenes are also a lot better - instead of an inscrutable crowd of miniature fighters vaguely attacking each other like in Suikoden II, the fights in Suikoden III use the same mechanics as the regular battle system, with the same stats and skills and everything. However, the player does not get to command their units during them - they attack randomly, so you have to make sure beforehand that everyone is as battle-ready as can be.
It is honestly such a huge improvement to me. The fact that it uses the main battle system to determine the results of a skirmish means that the player can actually properly prepare and strategise for these war scenes, rather than being completely in the dark. And the change in playfield from a grid of squares to a series of connected spaces means that all of your units have much more opportunity to actually participate during war battles.
These wars are so much better to play through than in the previous game.
Hmmm... So overall, Suikoden III is an interesting case.
The story feels less intense than the previous games, and while the multiple-character perspective system makes for a unique style of storytelling, I think I'd say that overall, the story is definitely less interesting than before. However, I do feel like the characters have a lot more personality and memorability. Gameplaywise, the changes to combat are weird, but they do make the gameplay "better" in a roundabout way by forcing you to have a bit more strategy to overcome the added restrictions. The addition of skill points is a great thing, and the new tactical war battles are much more palatable for me.
But overall... I think I'd still say that Suikoden II is the "better" game. Suikoden II just impressed me more, its story was more interesting and impactful, and I really do feel that Suikoden III is let down by the ridiculous amount of backtracking you have to do in order to stay on top of things.
I still very much enjoy Suikoden III, though! It's a good game for sure.
Alrighty so. ... I suppose next I'll have to play Suikoden IV? I may take a small break from Suikoden for a while, but I'm certainly eager to continue playing through the whole series.
