All I’ll say is, I’m so glad to be over this. Suikoden 4 was boring, but Suikoden Tactics was godawful AND boring.
Almost immediately after beginning the game, Suikoden Tactics seems to be trying really hard to tie up loose ends of Suikoden 4. I guess I can understand that; Suikoden 4’s story was far from being a well-written, or even well-developed. However, this just begs the question: why tie up the loose ends when they have no relevance to the main exposition? Why try so hard to bring Suiko 4 back in a positive light? Why not just focus on the present? Here, we have a tactics RPG with such a neat premise, and we’re stuck watching the game clean up its prequel’s mess. Unfortunately, Suikoden Tactics, in turn, leaves an even bigger mess, and never cleans it up.
You are Walter, a man searching for Rune Cannons - ship cannons that shoot magic - for some unknown purpose, with your son Kyril and your cohorts, Andarc, Seneca, and Yohn. After an abominably short time into the game, you find out why he’s looking for rune cannons; they turn people into these disgusting fishmen, a revelation that is more comical than it is horrifying. The way you find out is that it happens, of all people, to Walter. Fast forward several years ahead, Kyril is all grown up and continues the search for the rune cannons with Walter’s old cohorts, who have sworn to follow Kyril anywhere, for some reason.
Where it goes from here is a HUGE mess. The game first attempts to take just about every undeveloped plot point from Suikoden 4 and give it some sort of explanation, whether or not it has any relevance to the game’s story. Only one such thing has any relevance in fact - the rune cannons, which were mentioned to be bad as an afterthought in Suikoden 4’s ending with no explanation.
With that in mind, the game goes bonkers trying to make some sort of story out of it. Kyril wants to investigate the rune cannons, so then he decides to fight the Kooluk - our evil empire du jour - because they seem to have all of the remaining rune cannons, somehow. Some random guy you run into in the beginning of the game winds up being your main antagonist; he usurps the throne of Kooluk somehow, but we figure out exactly how. He has some mysterious plan that involves the Kooluk emperor’s grandaughter, but exactly what that plan was is never revealed either.
The whole game feels like this, and it reminds me a lot of Suikoden 4, probably because the script was written by the same person. That person - Junko Kawano - seems to have very little focus, and throws in just about any idea she comes up with, whether or not it’s healthy for the story. For example, the game is about getting rid of the rune cannons, right? So what’s the deal with wasting time on political nonsense within the Kooluk Empire? Why make a big fuss about the ineptitude of the royal family and the tensions within, when it’s all half-hearted and irrelevant (not to mention that Kooluk was run by a GOVERNOR in Suikoden 4)? Instead of fleshing out the important parts, Suikoden Tactics instead bombards the player with several minor plot points, none of which are developed into anything substantial.
The only other thing I care to mention is that the entire game leads up to this absurd plot twist at the very end. Since it’s the very last thing revealed in the story exposition, I won’t spoil it. However, it merits saying that this twist is perhaps the most mind-numbingly stupid twist I’ve ever seen anywhere. Part of this is just due it how flat out absurd it is, but more importantly, the circumstances make it virtually impossible for the main characters to have not known about it before. At the very least, there was absolutely no reason for Kyril not to have known. I literally voiced shocked obscenities when this twist was revealed.
Enough of that, though, let’s talk gameplay. Suikoen Tactics is - surprise - a tactics RPG. Kyril and his buddies move around on an isometric grid and attack nearby enemies. When any character loses all their HP, they’re removed from battle. What innovations lie in Suikoden Tactics are the skill system, in which players use acquired skill points in battle to level up specific feats of their characters, letting them move faster, dodge better, counterattack more frequently, et cetera.
There’s also the elemental grid system: each character has an innate elemental type (there’s five in total). There are spells and items that allow you to change the terrain to a specific element. When this happens, people who step on the elemental terrain may be affected positively or adversely depending on their innate. For example, if Kyril, who is innate fire, steps on a fire terrain, all his stats will be raised, and he will recover HP at the end of any of his turns. On the other hand, if Kyril steps on a water terrain, he will be weaker in every way and lose HP.
The crux of the strategy lies within the elemental terrain system, and the game is really boring because of it. There are no character classes (well, I guess there’s short range, long range, magic, and people who don’t fight, but that’s negligible), so tactical advantage relies entirely on your ability to maneuver in the elemental terrain and change it to your liking. So, for this reason, most maps are just flat, open pieces of land, with very little in the way of key spots on the map to control like most TRPGs.
So, instead of vying for the more important points on the map, you’ll just be spamming items or spells that change the elemental terrain, or taking advantage of how the enemies spam said items/spells nonstop to swoop in and kill them. Instead of any conventional strategies or controlling of space, the best strategy in every map is to simply clump your group together and slowly inch forward, killing off every enemy that’s foolish enough to approach. It gets boring doing the same thing every map, but hey! At least, in some crazy way, it’s original! Right?
What else? The graphics are nice enough, with neat 3D backgrounds and cel-shaded characters. You also have the option to play the game in Progressive Scan mode, but honestly, the 3D characters strangely look worse that way. The music was written by Norikzau Miura, expanding on themes from the Suiko 1 and Suiko 4 that were written by Miki Higashino and Masahiko Kimura respectively. Miura does a great job with his own music, but the arrangements of older Suikoden themes are not so good. What comes to mind is his treatment of the Main Theme of Suikoden. I’ve been waiting for this theme to come back, cos it’s one of my favorites. I was surprised to see Miura treat it so kitschy; he applies it much like a rich housewife would hang up an expensive, gaudy decoration. Lastly, the game is thankfully short - twenty hours sans sidequesting, of which there is a surprising amount.
Suikoden Tactics made me realize one thing, and helped reaffirm another. I had the epiphany when playing Suikoden Tactics that TRPGs without classes or characters with drastically large distinctions tend to be mind-numbingly boring. My reaffirmation is a simple one: if a game sucks, don’t try to make your fans like it by releasing a sequel. Everyone messes up sometimes. Put the past behind you and move on.