108 Gold Stars of Approval
I picked up Suikoden V recently and have been playing through it with my brother, and it has made me so happy (even if we did break the game, sorta. I don't think a boss fight has lasted more than one round since we got Cathari). All the sins of Suikoden IV are hereby forgiven. I can forgive the slow introductory segment1, too, since once the game picks up, it stays up. And there are fun characters again! In fact, the characters are so much fun that I can only conclude the developers really are apologizing for the fourth installment.
Man, I love the Suikoden series. It's all about political machinations, resurrected nannies, and ragtag rebels who snark at each other indirectly via their commander's suggestion box. Suikoden taught me that elves are flammable. Suikoden took the basic Rock, Paper, Scissors setup and added Fire Spears and Beavers. Suikoden lets me collect all sorts of unlikely characters and then abuse the rune system to turn them into death-dealing combat monkeys. And the really neat bit is that Suikoden has managed to keep its world consistent despite juggling over a hundred characters per game and skipping merrily through time and space with its various installments.
In conclusion, I would rather be playing Suikoden V right now than working. Sigh.
1I like to call this sort of thing "Star Ocean Syndrome" (SOS) after the PSX game Star Ocean: The Second Story, which turned out to be rock-your-pants-off awesome once you got past the pointless, meandering, two-hour-long introduction. Suikoden V's introduction is longer and much less pointless, but it's still sluggish and depends rather too heavily on random plot triggers. Thanks, game, I'd just love to run around the city for twenty minutes until I happen to stumble upon the alley where the next event is scripted.
Man, I love the Suikoden series. It's all about political machinations, resurrected nannies, and ragtag rebels who snark at each other indirectly via their commander's suggestion box. Suikoden taught me that elves are flammable. Suikoden took the basic Rock, Paper, Scissors setup and added Fire Spears and Beavers. Suikoden lets me collect all sorts of unlikely characters and then abuse the rune system to turn them into death-dealing combat monkeys. And the really neat bit is that Suikoden has managed to keep its world consistent despite juggling over a hundred characters per game and skipping merrily through time and space with its various installments.
In conclusion, I would rather be playing Suikoden V right now than working. Sigh.
1I like to call this sort of thing "Star Ocean Syndrome" (SOS) after the PSX game Star Ocean: The Second Story, which turned out to be rock-your-pants-off awesome once you got past the pointless, meandering, two-hour-long introduction. Suikoden V's introduction is longer and much less pointless, but it's still sluggish and depends rather too heavily on random plot triggers. Thanks, game, I'd just love to run around the city for twenty minutes until I happen to stumble upon the alley where the next event is scripted.