Suikoden 3
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Review of Suikoden 3
As a follow up to the first two Suikodens, Suikoden III has much to live up to. Does it?
Taking place fifteen years after the events of Suikoden II, players will once again find themselves in the throes of a land overcome with confusion and treachery. By seeing and playing the story through 3 main characters (Hugo, Chris, and Geddoe) one will eventually bring their destinies together and form a kingdom of sorts of their own.
Are you ready to take on this epic quest and search out the 108 stars of destiny to aide you? Enter the enchanting world of Suikoden III and lets find out.
Suikoden III is a well thought out successor to the first two in the series. The world is set up through a world map that unfortunately is pretty static. You would move the icon of your party over to the spot on the map and enter into that area. Also in the beginning the player chooses whom to start playing as, wither Hugo, Chris, or Geddoe. It doesn’t make too much difference as the player can switch off between the others to see the same piece of story through different eyes. I liked this system at first, but after some time it felt like I was playing “Groundhogs Day” with Bill Murray.
The controls, menus, and set up of functions are fairly well done. The amount of items and sheer numbers of NPC’s to talk too can be overwhelming at first, although the more one plays the more familiar this becomes. Suikoden III offers oodles of info, stats, items, and customization of characters. Also depending on characters in your party and the formation of said characters, different combo-attacks can be carried out, or even varied magic attacks (through Rune use) can be wielded as well.
Fighting, while a bit lacking in the effects department, is very strategic. Three types of battles take place in Suikoden III. The standard turn-based group attacks, Strategic Turn-based attacks that involve many groups, and clear objectives for victory, and finally one-on-one duels.
All of these different types of battles coupled with the epic story and massive amounts of items and NPC’s make for a very interesting adventure.
Throw in the whole “Build it and they will come” routine of recruiting 108 “Stars of Destiny” to populate your castle and this game is choked full Rpg goodness. To me it did seem to be slow in the beginning, but as with a good novel, once the characters are defined and the story set up, then the good stuff will flow. After say ten hours of so of game time, the thrill of Suikoden III really started to shine.
The environments, with the exception of the aforementioned static world map, are in lush 3D, bummer about the camera though. Suikoden III has wonderful character models, and uses a well-versed palette of colors to display the world and those in it. The camera however is not user friendly, the player has no control and at times while checking out a town it can be disorientating or down right frustrating.
The effects are done nice, even if they seem scarce. Textures on characters did seem somewhat bland or blurry, but as I said before the modeling and color usage makes Suikoden on the whole a work of art in the visual department.
The soundtrack in Suikoden III is awesome. From town to town or even in battle, you will find yourself wanting to hear more. Surround sound is in full use and the ear candy flows regularly. If I had a complaint it would be this. Let’s get some balance here people! I can’t remember a game where I was grabbing for my remote so much. Too loud here, too soft here…. If Suikoden could have kept the audio at a more balanced level the marks here could have been higher.
As it is though, the feel of the hugeness of this story is conveyed well with the implementation of this well versed soundtrack.
OUR PLEDGE: We promise that we have fully played 'Suikoden 3' before writing this review. The scores given above are our honest opinion and were not influenced in any way by the manufacturer or distributor of the game.
This review was written by Robert Gibson © Absolute PlayStation
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