A sort-of review and almost rant on Suikoden Tiekreis
Contains spoilers, don't read if you haven't played and care for what plot of the game is.
Overall the game was solid, it's a pretty good game. It takes a while to pick up but it keeps you interested (kept me interested anyway). That being said though, there's a lot of things that prevent it from being a really great game.
• The game plot suffers from what I call the epic syndrome
• Moving around is slow until you get late into the game but you're still slow even with the boost
• TOO MANY RANDOM ENCOUNTERS ARGHHH
• I can't help but notice plotholes *will explain further down
• The characters are fun though, even though a lot of them are just there for the sake of having 108 characters but they are pretty diverse
• Don't need to really grind thanks to the EXP system, you can level people up to a certain point pretty easily. Downside(?) is that you can never be over leveled and powerful, unless you take a secret route to a dungeon that you don't have formal access to until late in the game.
• Some things seem way too convenient
• やってみなきゃわかん(ry
• ...PLOTHOLES
About those holes
I'll explain best to my ability the gist of the plot and setting. And since I played the Japanese version I have no idea what the official English translation of terms are.
This Suikoden world is made up of hundreds of other parallel worlds in which the game is set in one of those worlds. Each world contains a book which holds the record of everything that has been done and will happen in the world and is called the One True Book. The book has a record of everything that is to happen OTHER THAN events pertaining to human will and thought. So it can predict when an earthquake will happen but it won't have the results of a war. A being in the universe, called the One King, has went around and corrupted the books to predict 5 unifications of worlds, his descent upon on the world and its destruction. The One King's goal is to reduce the universe into 1 world where everything is orderly and has only 1 outcome.
Backing up a bit, when a world is destroyed, a piece of it gets unified with an existing world (hence contributing to the 5 unifications that precede the descent of the One King). When that happens, people's memories get rewritten to believe that the piece that was unified was there all along. It also brings the One True Book from that world, now just a carrier of memories of the destroyed world.
People who come in contact of the book and see its memories are called Starbearers and they can use special powers that others can't and they can also remember world fusions where other people don't, so they will remember that a mountain used to be there where the plains of another world fused but other people will just think that the plains have always been there. As per tradition, there are 108 stars.
Now that is explained, the major villain in this game other than the One King is trying to use a ritual to fuse 12 worlds, instead of 5, to bring the One King. By doing this, the world isn't destroyed but is united with The One King's world and everyone lives out their happiest 24 hours over and over and over again. To cause more fusions to happen, the villain uses the One True Book of their world and the books from other worlds to force on more fusions.
The villain does succeed to bring the One King to their world and in order to break the world from the One King, they have to defeat him. There are two options the game give you: 1) Sacrifice the lives of 107 stars and the Tenkai (leader of the Stars) uses that power to defeat the One King or 2) Gather the books of the 12 worlds that were fused and use it to break the pillars around the One King and defeat him that way.
The correct way is to gather the 12 books and during the ending, it is revealed that the One King used to be the Tenkai of another world who sacrificed the lives of the other 107 to defeat the One King and by defeating him they finally break him from the cycle and free the world. You can probably guess what the result of the 1st method would be if you picked to sacrifice. How this is is explained in the game by a character, who says that stars are guiding paths for the world and a lot of stars mean a lot of possibilities but when there is only one star left, there's only one path.
Now for the most obvious plothole: Where did the first One King come from? The One King the hero fought told him that he's the Tenkai from another world trying to fight the One King and the bad ending tells you that the hero becomes the One King if he sacrifices 107 stars, so where's the original? This is such an obvious hole that I feel like I must have missed something that explained it but I don't think I have and I'm too lazy to beat the game again to re-read the ending.
The ending also tells you that you've broken the One King free from his cycle, but in the final battle you learn that the two Tenkais you met in the game are also fighting the One King at the same time. Now you only know that you've defeated the One King, so does that mean he still exist somewhere out there, since other worlds are still fighting him too? I don't know, they never say, unless it's in a game guide somewhere.
All in all though, this entire setting and the atmosphere of the game makes it sound so incredibly epic and I think it got out of hand at some points. I do appreciate the country-country relationships in the game, which I've always thought was a strength of Suikoden (from what I've heard from Mary about the series anyway). However all in all, the epicness of everything kinda threw it all out of the loop.
This next one deals with the hero's ancestry and isn't really a hole but a conflict of information: the hero doesn't know where he comes from, but he was picked up by his village when he was young and was raised there. Throughout the game you get hints of where he actually is from. Atrie, the Tenkai from another world that visit the hero at times, gives important hints. It first starts out that Atrie visits the hero's castle looking for someone else only finding the hero there. Atrie becomes puzzled about why he can't seem to find who is he looking for and the hero eventually figures out that whoever is he trying to look for has died because that guy's world has fused with the hero's world. We also find out that the hero can't use gates to go to other worlds and is given the explanation that a person has to enter and exit through the same gate in order to return to where they came from, which gives the assumption that the hero is actually someone from another world. BUT, he can't defeat Renegades, which are monsters from other worlds and can only be defeated by someone from another world, so if he was really from another world, he would have been able to defeat them. This brings in Atrie's story down the road: he tells the hero that the guy he has been looking for had a child but he went missing when he was still a baby and is suspected to have traveled through a gate to another world. Combine this with Atrie's reaction when he saw the hero in new clothing (clothing that they found in the castle when it got upgraded): the hero looked very similar to who Atrie was looking for and we can pretty much piece together who the hero is. It is also enforced by what the village elder tells the hero about how they found him: they found him as a baby in the hills near the village (who has become a forest due to a fusion).
Distilling it down: the hero is actually from another world, but that world got destroyed and fused with the world the hero landed in. This explains why the hero can't use gates: the gate the hero came from doesn't exist anymore and why he can't beat Renegades: right when he encounters one is when his home world got destroyed and fused. There's nothing wrong with the information in game. What does confuse me is the information I find on the internets: who the father is. What I have seen so far puts the guy in the vision in the first book the hero finds as his father. The guy wears the same armor the hero finds later in the game, looks exactly like the hero but acts older and is fighting the One King. Okay, makes sense until you look at the information in game carefully: the hero's castle doesn't appear until the 2nd fusion, which shows a much older looking guy dressed almost the same way. From my logic, it should be the 2nd guy that is the hero's father, not the first, but I keep seeing people refer to the first guy as the hero's father and I have no idea why. In the end though the hero's ancestry's so convoluted it's almost like they were trying too hard.
Minor annoyances are conveniences or minor holes that happen in the game:
• Practically everyone they meet that is different but isn't a villain (and dies) is a star. Just how convenient is that. I can only think of one exception right now but she dies within 5 minutes of meeting her.
• The castle got fused on once which made it bigger (the upgrade of the castle) and conveniently gives you the armor that looks REALLY FAMILIAR to the hero's father's armor. I know the story stresses on parallels and you can find similar things in other worlds but come on. That would be 3 times the armor shows up.
• They never really explain how Nova and Sophia, who got their powers through the major villain but ends up deflecting to the hero's side, end up being actual stars. They don't even talk about it themselves.
• The character you recruit that can detect where books are conveniently joins you right when you need to find missing books.
• Saving the world only happens in your continent, lolol.
Yeah I'm a bit tired of writing now but I've said the major things I want to say anyway.
This is Suikoden Tiekreis in the eyes of an orange.
Overall the game was solid, it's a pretty good game. It takes a while to pick up but it keeps you interested (kept me interested anyway). That being said though, there's a lot of things that prevent it from being a really great game.
• The game plot suffers from what I call the epic syndrome
• Moving around is slow until you get late into the game but you're still slow even with the boost
• TOO MANY RANDOM ENCOUNTERS ARGHHH
• I can't help but notice plotholes *will explain further down
• The characters are fun though, even though a lot of them are just there for the sake of having 108 characters but they are pretty diverse
• Don't need to really grind thanks to the EXP system, you can level people up to a certain point pretty easily. Downside(?) is that you can never be over leveled and powerful, unless you take a secret route to a dungeon that you don't have formal access to until late in the game.
• Some things seem way too convenient
• やってみなきゃわかん(ry
• ...PLOTHOLES
About those holes
I'll explain best to my ability the gist of the plot and setting. And since I played the Japanese version I have no idea what the official English translation of terms are.
This Suikoden world is made up of hundreds of other parallel worlds in which the game is set in one of those worlds. Each world contains a book which holds the record of everything that has been done and will happen in the world and is called the One True Book. The book has a record of everything that is to happen OTHER THAN events pertaining to human will and thought. So it can predict when an earthquake will happen but it won't have the results of a war. A being in the universe, called the One King, has went around and corrupted the books to predict 5 unifications of worlds, his descent upon on the world and its destruction. The One King's goal is to reduce the universe into 1 world where everything is orderly and has only 1 outcome.
Backing up a bit, when a world is destroyed, a piece of it gets unified with an existing world (hence contributing to the 5 unifications that precede the descent of the One King). When that happens, people's memories get rewritten to believe that the piece that was unified was there all along. It also brings the One True Book from that world, now just a carrier of memories of the destroyed world.
People who come in contact of the book and see its memories are called Starbearers and they can use special powers that others can't and they can also remember world fusions where other people don't, so they will remember that a mountain used to be there where the plains of another world fused but other people will just think that the plains have always been there. As per tradition, there are 108 stars.
Now that is explained, the major villain in this game other than the One King is trying to use a ritual to fuse 12 worlds, instead of 5, to bring the One King. By doing this, the world isn't destroyed but is united with The One King's world and everyone lives out their happiest 24 hours over and over and over again. To cause more fusions to happen, the villain uses the One True Book of their world and the books from other worlds to force on more fusions.
The villain does succeed to bring the One King to their world and in order to break the world from the One King, they have to defeat him. There are two options the game give you: 1) Sacrifice the lives of 107 stars and the Tenkai (leader of the Stars) uses that power to defeat the One King or 2) Gather the books of the 12 worlds that were fused and use it to break the pillars around the One King and defeat him that way.
The correct way is to gather the 12 books and during the ending, it is revealed that the One King used to be the Tenkai of another world who sacrificed the lives of the other 107 to defeat the One King and by defeating him they finally break him from the cycle and free the world. You can probably guess what the result of the 1st method would be if you picked to sacrifice. How this is is explained in the game by a character, who says that stars are guiding paths for the world and a lot of stars mean a lot of possibilities but when there is only one star left, there's only one path.
Now for the most obvious plothole: Where did the first One King come from? The One King the hero fought told him that he's the Tenkai from another world trying to fight the One King and the bad ending tells you that the hero becomes the One King if he sacrifices 107 stars, so where's the original? This is such an obvious hole that I feel like I must have missed something that explained it but I don't think I have and I'm too lazy to beat the game again to re-read the ending.
The ending also tells you that you've broken the One King free from his cycle, but in the final battle you learn that the two Tenkais you met in the game are also fighting the One King at the same time. Now you only know that you've defeated the One King, so does that mean he still exist somewhere out there, since other worlds are still fighting him too? I don't know, they never say, unless it's in a game guide somewhere.
All in all though, this entire setting and the atmosphere of the game makes it sound so incredibly epic and I think it got out of hand at some points. I do appreciate the country-country relationships in the game, which I've always thought was a strength of Suikoden (from what I've heard from Mary about the series anyway). However all in all, the epicness of everything kinda threw it all out of the loop.
This next one deals with the hero's ancestry and isn't really a hole but a conflict of information: the hero doesn't know where he comes from, but he was picked up by his village when he was young and was raised there. Throughout the game you get hints of where he actually is from. Atrie, the Tenkai from another world that visit the hero at times, gives important hints. It first starts out that Atrie visits the hero's castle looking for someone else only finding the hero there. Atrie becomes puzzled about why he can't seem to find who is he looking for and the hero eventually figures out that whoever is he trying to look for has died because that guy's world has fused with the hero's world. We also find out that the hero can't use gates to go to other worlds and is given the explanation that a person has to enter and exit through the same gate in order to return to where they came from, which gives the assumption that the hero is actually someone from another world. BUT, he can't defeat Renegades, which are monsters from other worlds and can only be defeated by someone from another world, so if he was really from another world, he would have been able to defeat them. This brings in Atrie's story down the road: he tells the hero that the guy he has been looking for had a child but he went missing when he was still a baby and is suspected to have traveled through a gate to another world. Combine this with Atrie's reaction when he saw the hero in new clothing (clothing that they found in the castle when it got upgraded): the hero looked very similar to who Atrie was looking for and we can pretty much piece together who the hero is. It is also enforced by what the village elder tells the hero about how they found him: they found him as a baby in the hills near the village (who has become a forest due to a fusion).
Distilling it down: the hero is actually from another world, but that world got destroyed and fused with the world the hero landed in. This explains why the hero can't use gates: the gate the hero came from doesn't exist anymore and why he can't beat Renegades: right when he encounters one is when his home world got destroyed and fused. There's nothing wrong with the information in game. What does confuse me is the information I find on the internets: who the father is. What I have seen so far puts the guy in the vision in the first book the hero finds as his father. The guy wears the same armor the hero finds later in the game, looks exactly like the hero but acts older and is fighting the One King. Okay, makes sense until you look at the information in game carefully: the hero's castle doesn't appear until the 2nd fusion, which shows a much older looking guy dressed almost the same way. From my logic, it should be the 2nd guy that is the hero's father, not the first, but I keep seeing people refer to the first guy as the hero's father and I have no idea why. In the end though the hero's ancestry's so convoluted it's almost like they were trying too hard.
Minor annoyances are conveniences or minor holes that happen in the game:
• Practically everyone they meet that is different but isn't a villain (and dies) is a star. Just how convenient is that. I can only think of one exception right now but she dies within 5 minutes of meeting her.
• The castle got fused on once which made it bigger (the upgrade of the castle) and conveniently gives you the armor that looks REALLY FAMILIAR to the hero's father's armor. I know the story stresses on parallels and you can find similar things in other worlds but come on. That would be 3 times the armor shows up.
• They never really explain how Nova and Sophia, who got their powers through the major villain but ends up deflecting to the hero's side, end up being actual stars. They don't even talk about it themselves.
• The character you recruit that can detect where books are conveniently joins you right when you need to find missing books.
• Saving the world only happens in your continent, lolol.
Yeah I'm a bit tired of writing now but I've said the major things I want to say anyway.
This is Suikoden Tiekreis in the eyes of an orange.