Join Tir McDohl and his Army and get ready for a long, thrilling adventure against Barbarossa's Empire.
In this game, you're in the role of the youngster Tir McDohl, son of one of the 5 powerful generals of Dunan. After executing a few works for the Empire, he founds out that his best friend is being persecuted by the evil sorceress Windy, who happens to be the Emperor's wife. Tir is considered traitor of the empire and is compelled to run from the city where he lives. Now he has to form a Rebel Army and take the current emperor down.
As you travel the world, you'll find find lots of allies and enemies, besides the 108 Stars of Destiny.
That is the essence of the entire series: escape, form a Rebel Army and fight for the sake of your country.
Found that boring? It isn't. There are a lot of aspects that keep the game interesting since the beggining 'til the end of the game. Not only the battles, duels or the interesting plot, but also the minigames may keep you playing for more than two hours.
The battle system is based on turns. You can choose six characters to follow you (some of them are mandatory in determined parts of the game). The characters may have short, medium or long reach and can be but in the front row or in the back row.
In the menu, you can choose to attack, defend, use items or the Runes, which work like magic attacks in the regular RPGs. Instead of having the MP bars, you'll have a limited amount of times you can use that magic, which can increase according to the character who's using the rune.
There are also strategic battles and duels, which work pretty much in the same way. They're not exactly battles, they'e more like limited mini-games spread in the game. In those, you'll have to guess what will be the enemies' move according to what they say, then make your move.
For a game made in 95, the graphics are very nice and detailed, even though the dungeons are a little repetitive and some of them might be very boring. Each character has it's own personal characteristic, what makes each one of them very charismatic.
The soundtrack is not the best of the series, but some songs are quite addictive.
The controls' responses are nice and smooth, but you'll find a few lags here and there, specially when accessing the table to admit characters to your party.
To make this short: Suikoden is an excellent game, has an excellent plot and even though it's a little bit old, fans of the series shouldn't miss this game for nothing!