[game] Suikoden Tierkreis
So, after 50-odd hours and one real-time week, I finally finished Suikoden Tierkreis (and Lux-Pain is staring at me, which is...well, excellent timing, I suppose). This is a spoiler-lite review, spoilers have been blacked out.
I initially heard a lot of complaints about Suikoden Tierkreis, mostly that Konami shouldn't have billed it under the Suikoden franchise, because the protagonist is not silent and SPEAKSLIKETHIS, your strategist is fifteen and inexperienced, you bear Marks of Stars and not True Runes, SoDs are allies and so on and so forth, and honestly, I didn't really care. Suikoden Tierkreis kind of piqued my attention ever since it was first announced in Japan, and I was really pleased that Konami decided to localise it fairly quickly after the Japan release (less than half a year, if I remember correctly).
To be honest, though, I'm not a Suikoden expert. I've only played Suikoden V and III, and while I vastly preferred V over III due to story issues as well as the gameplay, I liked both of them for their own pros and cons. Similarly, Tierkreis has its strong points and its weak points, but overall I loved the cast of characters (with the exception of two minor characters whom I couldn't care less about and whose story is incredibly weak, but yet obvious enough in end-game that you can't forget it) and I think that's what really makes the game.
Cast: Most of them are stellar characters, with interesting backgrounds and side-stories, and it really helps that Konami chose to invest in voice actors that actually suit the characters. I know that a lot of people complained about the rapidity of some of the speeches, but honestly, it's really nothing one can't get used to, and about five hours in I no longer noticed that the characters were sometimes speaking at breakneck speed, and instead really appreciated how each voice actor tried to be the person they were voicing. Notable favourites of mine were Chrodechild, Atrie and Liu, but I was really amused with Diulf and I grew to love the MC's voice a lot as well.
What I found interesting in Tierkreis was how the producers coped with the small space afford by the DS cart. Instead of having the side-stories take place in features such as stageplays or the onsen (as in other Suikodens), you find out the side-stories for the characters through quests, and some of these quests are really fun to undertake. I do miss the mailbox feature that is in other Suikodens (I could have actually missed it, but I doubt so) but undergoing these side-quests and learning more about my castle inhabitants made the characters come alive for me.
Two of my favourite characters in the game were the MC and Liu, mostly because they stayed with me throughout the entire adventure and the game really endeared me to how they dealt with the events in Tierkreis. I really felt that Liu was kind of the secondary main character, he's just as involved in saving the world as the MC is, and his backstory was really something I enjoyed learning about and his growth as a character was a joy to watch. I was a little disappointed with Jale as a character, because he's really just so cool, but the game never really developed him beyond being MC's silent best friend (he may as well be the non-speaking protagonist everyone wanted to be!) and I adored his mother for helping to flesh out some of his personality which we never really saw in-game. Marica fared slightly better in that she's more fiesty, but as your friends they really took a backseat to the entire cast.
With regards to the other nations, I loved most of the Magedom cast (Asad, Shams, Manaril) and thought that their side-stories were developed pretty well, even if, well, Shams and Manaril's VAs get a bit shrill for my liking. The Porpos-kin is something of a give and take, they are your requisite cute things but they didn't really interest me much, even though I loved their home (giant conch-shell ftw). I love the Furious Roar tribe even if their designs were kind of cut-off for some absurd reason, and the Auster Folk...well, I loved Vaslof.
There were also some characters which I wished had been introduced earlier or developed more, such as Ramin, who is a hilarious musician and deserves a side-plot of his own (unfortunately, the game doesn't really give you one for him aside from chasing him all over the place while trying to recruit him). Additionally, given that Tierkreis is probably a standalone, it'sa shame that we probably won't be able to see any of these other nations mentioned in Tierkries, such as the Lomonakua Islands or the Ritterschild country. I felt, constantly, throughout the game that I wished that Tierkreis had been made for a bigger platform instead of the DS, because it really had quite an interesting world with an interesting history and it seemed almost too big for the platform it was made for. Still, I really loved what was presented to us, for what it's worth, the nations that we were in contact with also had their own quirky bits.
Graphics: The environment is really gorgeous because the DS can handle 3-D environments, but the characters are...really quite a shame in 3-D (everybody's head is bigger, for some reason, and it makes it look really weird and I try not to look so closely). Still the character protrait stills make up for most of their expressions, and I really like following their conversations and seeing how they match up with the tones of the voices. The animation FMVs are rather well-done, if kind of gritty looking because of the poor quality (one of the reasons why I really wish this was on a different platform).
Music: As I mentioned, most of the VAs are very appropriate and do a wonderful job, but the Suikoden Tierkreis music is also excellent as well. Most of the overworld and in-town music is soothing to the ears, and I loved how the battle themes fit the situation. This is one OST that I am looking forward to to collecting, because the music is just so great.
Gameplay: Surprisingly enough, I wasn't too annoyed with the four-man team, although I found it a huge pain to figure out how to upgrade my weaponry because Tierkreis doesn't give you an easy way to compare stat gains (or at least, it's a really abstract way) and some of the weapons are limited to certain characters (I really would have loved to use fans as a weapon *sigh*). Levelslutting is really easy and most of the time the game can be played on auto-fight, but that doesn't mean that enemies still can't hit hard. Trading, as a Suiko staple, would have been more addictive if I could do a on-site comparison on my cost and benefits, but the DS obviously can't handle that so I ended up with a paper list version that I abandoned 30 hours in-game because I was rich as heck. I ended up trading enough to buy lots of really expensive weaponry for end-game and still having a lot left over (I think I traded up to 4 million potch).
I can't really comment on the wifi quests other than it will probably help some characters have some growth, but given that no one ever picked up my wifi quests I can't really comment on it. It's still...kind of bizarre to see your doppelgangers though.
Plot: The ending is...well, confusing. I am actually a bit disappointed with the ending, to be honest. The build-up and the plotting was so good, but then it just fell apart in the last boss battle and it was so anti-climatic that I felt like I was cheated out of a proper explanation. Was The One King made out of each proceeding Tenkai Star that defeated him before (ala FFX)? It seems like it, but it also felt to me that the entire One King storyline was basically a tale that repeated itself since everyone thought that the way to saving the world was to absorb all the other 107 stars into himself, and the only reason why MC won was because he refused to take what is purportedly the easy way out. Also, there was a lack of resolution over MC's true past, even if there were hints made throughout the game that the MC is probably not a true citizen of his current world. In the end though, it's not like the MC cared about it, but still! I would have liked to find out who he really is.
Overall, I really do love Tierkreis, and I think that it's really kind of an achievement to sqeeze in so many things into the DS and have a really good, in-depth RPG. Obviously, it pales in comparision to the console Suikodens, but it's a really good game in its own right. I mean, fifty+ hours, wow. I think even Etrian Odyssey didn't make me play that long.
I initially heard a lot of complaints about Suikoden Tierkreis, mostly that Konami shouldn't have billed it under the Suikoden franchise, because the protagonist is not silent and SPEAKSLIKETHIS, your strategist is fifteen and inexperienced, you bear Marks of Stars and not True Runes, SoDs are allies and so on and so forth, and honestly, I didn't really care. Suikoden Tierkreis kind of piqued my attention ever since it was first announced in Japan, and I was really pleased that Konami decided to localise it fairly quickly after the Japan release (less than half a year, if I remember correctly).
To be honest, though, I'm not a Suikoden expert. I've only played Suikoden V and III, and while I vastly preferred V over III due to story issues as well as the gameplay, I liked both of them for their own pros and cons. Similarly, Tierkreis has its strong points and its weak points, but overall I loved the cast of characters (with the exception of two minor characters whom I couldn't care less about and whose story is incredibly weak, but yet obvious enough in end-game that you can't forget it) and I think that's what really makes the game.
Cast: Most of them are stellar characters, with interesting backgrounds and side-stories, and it really helps that Konami chose to invest in voice actors that actually suit the characters. I know that a lot of people complained about the rapidity of some of the speeches, but honestly, it's really nothing one can't get used to, and about five hours in I no longer noticed that the characters were sometimes speaking at breakneck speed, and instead really appreciated how each voice actor tried to be the person they were voicing. Notable favourites of mine were Chrodechild, Atrie and Liu, but I was really amused with Diulf and I grew to love the MC's voice a lot as well.
What I found interesting in Tierkreis was how the producers coped with the small space afford by the DS cart. Instead of having the side-stories take place in features such as stageplays or the onsen (as in other Suikodens), you find out the side-stories for the characters through quests, and some of these quests are really fun to undertake. I do miss the mailbox feature that is in other Suikodens (I could have actually missed it, but I doubt so) but undergoing these side-quests and learning more about my castle inhabitants made the characters come alive for me.
Two of my favourite characters in the game were the MC and Liu, mostly because they stayed with me throughout the entire adventure and the game really endeared me to how they dealt with the events in Tierkreis. I really felt that Liu was kind of the secondary main character, he's just as involved in saving the world as the MC is, and his backstory was really something I enjoyed learning about and his growth as a character was a joy to watch. I was a little disappointed with Jale as a character, because he's really just so cool, but the game never really developed him beyond being MC's silent best friend (he may as well be the non-speaking protagonist everyone wanted to be!) and I adored his mother for helping to flesh out some of his personality which we never really saw in-game. Marica fared slightly better in that she's more fiesty, but as your friends they really took a backseat to the entire cast.
With regards to the other nations, I loved most of the Magedom cast (Asad, Shams, Manaril) and thought that their side-stories were developed pretty well, even if, well, Shams and Manaril's VAs get a bit shrill for my liking. The Porpos-kin is something of a give and take, they are your requisite cute things but they didn't really interest me much, even though I loved their home (giant conch-shell ftw). I love the Furious Roar tribe even if their designs were kind of cut-off for some absurd reason, and the Auster Folk...well, I loved Vaslof.
There were also some characters which I wished had been introduced earlier or developed more, such as Ramin, who is a hilarious musician and deserves a side-plot of his own (unfortunately, the game doesn't really give you one for him aside from chasing him all over the place while trying to recruit him). Additionally, given that Tierkreis is probably a standalone, it'sa shame that we probably won't be able to see any of these other nations mentioned in Tierkries, such as the Lomonakua Islands or the Ritterschild country. I felt, constantly, throughout the game that I wished that Tierkreis had been made for a bigger platform instead of the DS, because it really had quite an interesting world with an interesting history and it seemed almost too big for the platform it was made for. Still, I really loved what was presented to us, for what it's worth, the nations that we were in contact with also had their own quirky bits.
Graphics: The environment is really gorgeous because the DS can handle 3-D environments, but the characters are...really quite a shame in 3-D (everybody's head is bigger, for some reason, and it makes it look really weird and I try not to look so closely). Still the character protrait stills make up for most of their expressions, and I really like following their conversations and seeing how they match up with the tones of the voices. The animation FMVs are rather well-done, if kind of gritty looking because of the poor quality (one of the reasons why I really wish this was on a different platform).
Music: As I mentioned, most of the VAs are very appropriate and do a wonderful job, but the Suikoden Tierkreis music is also excellent as well. Most of the overworld and in-town music is soothing to the ears, and I loved how the battle themes fit the situation. This is one OST that I am looking forward to to collecting, because the music is just so great.
Gameplay: Surprisingly enough, I wasn't too annoyed with the four-man team, although I found it a huge pain to figure out how to upgrade my weaponry because Tierkreis doesn't give you an easy way to compare stat gains (or at least, it's a really abstract way) and some of the weapons are limited to certain characters (I really would have loved to use fans as a weapon *sigh*). Levelslutting is really easy and most of the time the game can be played on auto-fight, but that doesn't mean that enemies still can't hit hard. Trading, as a Suiko staple, would have been more addictive if I could do a on-site comparison on my cost and benefits, but the DS obviously can't handle that so I ended up with a paper list version that I abandoned 30 hours in-game because I was rich as heck. I ended up trading enough to buy lots of really expensive weaponry for end-game and still having a lot left over (I think I traded up to 4 million potch).
I can't really comment on the wifi quests other than it will probably help some characters have some growth, but given that no one ever picked up my wifi quests I can't really comment on it. It's still...kind of bizarre to see your doppelgangers though.
Plot: The ending is...well, confusing. I am actually a bit disappointed with the ending, to be honest. The build-up and the plotting was so good, but then it just fell apart in the last boss battle and it was so anti-climatic that I felt like I was cheated out of a proper explanation. Was The One King made out of each proceeding Tenkai Star that defeated him before (ala FFX)? It seems like it, but it also felt to me that the entire One King storyline was basically a tale that repeated itself since everyone thought that the way to saving the world was to absorb all the other 107 stars into himself, and the only reason why MC won was because he refused to take what is purportedly the easy way out. Also, there was a lack of resolution over MC's true past, even if there were hints made throughout the game that the MC is probably not a true citizen of his current world. In the end though, it's not like the MC cared about it, but still! I would have liked to find out who he really is.
Overall, I really do love Tierkreis, and I think that it's really kind of an achievement to sqeeze in so many things into the DS and have a really good, in-depth RPG. Obviously, it pales in comparision to the console Suikodens, but it's a really good game in its own right. I mean, fifty+ hours, wow. I think even Etrian Odyssey didn't make me play that long.