Konami’s Suikoden series has been an RPG mainstay of the Playstation platforms for several years now. However, after the beloved first two entries in the series, the franchise took a noticeable turn for the worst with the bleary third title and pretty much drove right off a cliff in the troubled fourth entry. So how does the fifth and newest incarnation stack up? It’s a mixed bag. On one hand, Suikoden V has an enjoyable story and memorable characters, amongst other virtues, but it drops the ball when it comes to some very important issues such as pacing and level design.
Suikoden V’s story takes place in the Kingdom of Falena, of which the main character that you play is its prince; in contrast to previous series’ entries, you are part of a royal family and start out as a young man of great privilege. While the main character is something of an androgyne mute, his silence is a sly design decision on Konami’s part. Frequently throughout the story, people will ask you questions during dialogues, and you will be given a choice of two answers. The choices aren’t always the standard pick between a "good" response and a "bad" response, but instead they might pit aloof versus humorous or lecherous against polite, for example. It’s a simple and effective tactic to make the player feel more invested in the main character, as it lets you project your own attitude onto this very blank character slate.
The game’s main storyline contains a rather tangled web of political machinations and various twists and turns -- which isn’t terribly original by RPG standards -- but it is fairly well executed. The supporting characters (in stark contrast to Mr. Silent Hero) are colorfully designed and their dialogue is a quality translation with much of the humor kept intact for better or worse. It feels very contemporary, as if it were written originally in English all along.
"this game is one of the most effective in recent memory of conveying a real sense of being part of a family"
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The voice acting is also high quality by videogame standards, as long as the occasional helium-voiced maiden can be overlooked. As the story goes on, many characters become literally loveable, and you gain real concern for them surprisingly rapidly. Indeed, this game is one of the most effective in recent memory of conveying a real sense of being part of a family and all the emotions that are part and parcel of the experience; it’s the game’s most compelling trait.
On the aesthetics front, the look of the game is a hybrid of cel-shading and traditional-looking texturing. The cut-scenes of character dialogue are especially gorgeous, where the 3D characters possess crisp anime-style cel-shading complete with emotive expressions. It is perhaps in sharp contrast to this beauty that pretty much everything else in the game appears rather shoddy, excluding the lively animation. The sprawling towns mostly appear to be poorly textured and blandly modeled with too little variations of appearance within a locale. The outdoor environments are immediately forgettable, and the less that is said about the ho-hum monster designs, the better -- bunnies with axes indeed.
The game’s greatest failing is undoubtedly its crushingly slow pacing from the outset of the story. While hour upon hour of playtime is initially lavished on setting up the main conflicts of the story and developing the characters with a deft touch, many if not most players will be wondering, "So when does the real game actually start?"
"The game’s greatest failing is its slow pacing"
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Hours of play may pass, and the question will still be a valid one; only a handful of inconsequential battles are experienced within the first half dozen hours, in favor of wandering through towns, talking to citizens, and viewing more cut-scenes instead. Unhelpful to the cause is that it is somewhat easy to get lost in the sprawling cities. No mapping system is provided, nor is there a quest log, all of which are now standard-issue kit in modern RPGs. Add to this the fact that the camera angles are not always optimally placed, and many gamers will find themselves walking around in circles trying to find a passage that isn’t clearly visible from the current camera angle for an event trigger whose purpose might not even be remembered. These moments of dead air would be more at home in older RPGs, and it makes the game seem dated.
There are other annoyances as well. While the content of the conversational cut-scenes are well written, the physical choreography of the characters during these scenes are often paced too slow with weird awkward pauses. Speaking of awkward pauses, the load times, while fairly short, are far too frequent.
"it really does take a good chunk of hours invested before you get to the actual game play"
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They are quite endurable on their own, but after playing long enough, the annoyance at their sheer quantity congeals. With all these factors summed, it really does take a good chunk of hours invested before you can actually get to the series’ traditional recruitment phase, fight real battles, and to take advantage of things like the markets and the training centers: the stuff we like to think of as the actual game play.
The combat system in Suikoden V is rapid-paced and to the point, supporting up to six of your characters to battle at once with different formations to arrange them in. The rewards of combat include the accumulation of points that you can spend to upgrade certain character specialties, like magic defense or other special powers. Magic itself is handled through orbs that have to be equipped at a magic shop before the magic can be used in battle. Occasionally, one-on-one duels will occur which have a "rock-paper-scissors with clues" approach which is a fun change of pace even if it’s easy. However, the whole combat system feels a bit pointless at the start of the game. Initially, just repeatedly choosing "Auto" will be more than enough strategy to defeat any enemy for what few battles there actually are, so why would the player bother with all these subsystems?
Given its pacing problems, Suikoden V is best suited for very patient players or those who don’t mind the gameplay taking a distant back seat to the storyline for large chunks of the game. Those who stick through the slow and steady speed of the game will be rewarded with a long-lasting quest with memorable characters, but those who might be discouraged by a game that seems to be more about showing than playing should probably keep their distance.
