Suikoden IV is the Best Suikoden
Widely regarded by fans as the worst in the series, is Suikoden IV secretly underrated?
So I know you’re thinking: “No Fucking Way.” And okay, fair. I was real tempted to just write “It’s Not” and call this one a day, because I’m not a huge fan of it. Especially after waiting as long as I did after Suikoden III, especially after having gone back and played the first two games, Suikoden IV was…a bit of a disappointment. But every Suikoden game is someone’s first or someone’s favorite, and even if it wasn’t I can’t let my expectations get in the way of really looking at this game and trying to make the argument that it’s the best in the series. So, glob help me, I am making that argument!
Suikoden IV is the Best Suikoden!
I mean, not if you ask most fans of the series. The game has a reputation as the worst of the bunch, and there are many reasons for that. It’s the first game without any input from series icon Yoshitaka Murayma, and it makes a lot of decisions that distance it from the preceding games, and especially from Suikoden III. Why? Well, I suspect given the uneven reception that game received, the developers were hoping a new direction was warranted and would be rewarded. And while a lot of what they did might not have always been my cup of tea, it’s hard to argue that they didn’t actually achieve a lot of their goals.
It Made the Series Accessible Again
After three games that built so tightly on one another, where you could load data from one to the next, Suikoden IV decided to throw out what had come before and set the game far in the past and in a completely new location. Yes, there’s a lot of nods to the other games in characters and even explicitly with Ted (more on him later), but really there’s nothing stopping a first time player from sitting down and playing the game and having the full experience. Which you can’t say very easily of the previous two games, where a lot of the characters who appeared had back stories that you kinda needed to know in order to make sense of what was going on. So while it meant that there wasn’t a huge amount of payoff from long term fans, that’s not exactly the be-all or end-all of what makes a good game.
More reminiscent of a Final Fantasy game than the previous Suikodens, it does show just how much the game was invested in bringing in new people to the franchise.
Even more, the game vastly simplified a lot of the gameplay mechanics that might have turned away more casual players. Skills were abandoned, as was the rather complicated combat system where characters moved around the battle map. Instead, the game takes things even further back than the original game, getting rid of even the two rows and giving players a single row of four characters to control. And there’s no denying it’s a system that works. More reminiscent of a Final Fantasy game than the previous Suikodens, it does show just how much the game was invested in bringing in new people to the franchise. Setting the story at sea also gave the game a way to be different, building a whole ship battle system as the strategy element and finding interesting ways to utilize a lot of the army in the process. Add in the ways the game encourages the player to use characters together to get more powerful cooperative attacks and unlock other things, and there’s an attempt to take things from the other games and give them a new dynamic.
It also changed up how the whole castle thing worked, too, allowing you to consolidate space while still building up a moving fortress that gets better the more you do. The result is a game that provides a very new experience, one that honors the series but isn’t bound to it. It managed to add some great elements, too, like the New Game+ feature, which in my opinion is HUGE. After three games, it’s a wonderful stepping on point to the series, a prequel hoping to please new and old fans alike, and like the Star Wars prequels it sometimes takes a decade or two after the fact to be able to see past the flaws and into what could be some greatness hiding there.
The Mini-Games are Pretty Great
There might not be a play house or a robust cooking battle system, but Suikoden IV retains probably the deepest mini-game experience out of any of the games in the series. And not all of them suck! There’s catching mice as Champo. There’s both pole fishing (almost a straight port from Suikoden II) and net fishing. There’s Ritapon (but let’s forget about that one, shall we?). There’s a number of dice games, some coin games, and even a spinning top game that’s pretty fun (if occasionally rather frustrating). The game walks a fine line between entertaining and infuriating, but it manages the balance a lot better than most of the rest of the games in the series.
And there are some real stand outs, as well. While the detective investigations are absent, the confessional mechanic not only plays into the themes of the game (which we’ll get into in a bit) but is a lot of fun, setting the hero as secret judge for almost every companion that joins, and gives some depth to the cast that otherwise can feel a little thin at times. Plus, for those who manage to unlock its secrets, there’s a whole mushroom vs. mint war game that captures the look and feel of the original Suikoden I strategic battles. Given the delightful weirdness of Mao and Nao, this might seem rather random, but it’s a great Easter egg for fans as well as just a solidly enjoyable romp. The stakes are low, and you can play as many times as you are patient enough to unlock. Say what you will about the game as a whole, but in the mini-game department, it shines.
A New Beginning, a Stormy Sea
There’s actually a strong case to be made that this game makes a great first game in the series, rather than a fourth. Because if you’re looking for where the game takes the lion’s share of its inspiration from, it’s Suikoden I. Remember Ted? Well, here we get to find him much earlier in his life, and we get way more of his personality. The Soul Eater is still there, and we get a lot of context about how Ted lives with it for so long, and a bit of how he might eventually come to befriend the main character from the first game. Add to that how the game lays down some possible origins for the Maximilian Knights and other staples of the later series, and the connections really start to pop.
Further, the rune of the game itself seems rather similar to Soul Eater, being one that’s basically guaranteed tragedy and loss for the bearer. The Rune of Punishment is certainly no joke, powerful and deadly, and it takes a lot from the main character before he can start to bend it away from the violence and death that has defined it and towards its true form. While the previous games in the series focused on Runes that were in conflict with each other, the Rune of Punishment doesn’t need any other True Runes around to be badass, and that provides a keen focus on the narrative. Though all of the games are concerned with nation-building, Suikoden IV does a great job of getting back to the roots of building an army from pirates and criminals as much as from noble soldiers or heroic rogues. This is another army of people who are at the fringes of society finally getting a seat at the table, and the result is rather magical.
Forgiveness is King
On that line, the game really sticks its thematic landing with the resolution of the Rune of Punishment into the Rune of Forgiveness. It emphasizes not just the ways that the main character practices forgiveness in the game (through Snowe most notably but also through all the characters who are less than savory and who can be forgiven and become part of something new and revolutionary), but the power of forgiveness as the only way to break the chain of violence and tragedy, death and retribution, that haunts the rune. The game isn’t exactly subtle about this (the presence of a confessional on the ship, the truly ridiculous lengths you have to go to in order to forgive Snowe), but I don’t think the game gets enough credit for this aspect of its storytelling.
And that, too, feeds into how it was received by fans. For a game all about forgiveness, it was rather severely punished in message boards and in general, and I admit I wasn’t above kind of savaging the game a few times. But part of what I and likely others were doing was punishing it for things that it didn’t do. For not being the game we wanted. And I think now that’s something that I at least am willing to forgive. Because for all its flaws, the game does manage to build a quirky and memorable cast, and it does bring a lot of gameplay elements designed to keep things simple. The mini-games are often a lot of fun, the armor set building is great, and the training function means that reaching high levels is pretty easy to accomplish quickly. It’s not really a game that plays into my strengths as a gamer, but that, too, is something I need to forgive, because under that is a solid effort to move the series in a new direction.
Plus, Suikoden Tactics
I considered breaking Suikoden Tactics out into its own review, but for me the two games are linked, and Tactics has such a redeeming effect on Suikoden IV that I feel I have to talk about it. Because together they make a very good game. And yes, it’s kinda cheating to include an entirely different title in with this, but Tactics is a direct sequel, using a ton of the same characters, the same locations, and a lot of the same systems. Now, it’s a tactics game, so the gameplay is a lot different, but it also brings back a lot (like loading save data from Suikoden IV into it) and offers this deep, interesting take on the setting, and on the larger mythology that the games have developed.
More, the central moral dilemma of the game, the rune cannons and their footprint on the world, provides a wonderful way of continuing the themes from Suikoden IV. Because, remember, that game was all about forgiveness. But forgiveness isn’t the end. Like with Snowe, there has to be some sort of amends. There has to be an attempt to change. You can’t forgive something that’s still ongoing, can’t make amends for an active harm you’re doing. Tactics brings back the cast of Suikoden IV so that they can make things right. Inside the setting of the game, yes, but also I feel to fans. In a meta way, Tactics becomes a much attempt at reconciliation to long term fans of the series, allowing for a lot more strategy, a lot more depth, a lot more new elements that do actually mesh with everything that came before while spinning in a brand new way. It’s different, and significantly and fundamentally so, but the heart of it brings back the kind of storytelling that made the first three games shine.
It’s not an easy game, and while it’s not the longest of games, it makes up for the fact that Suikoden IV is the shortest in the series except maybe the first game, and definitely takes a lot less time to level up and get money (thanks to training and the ability to insta-kill area bosses using the slash rune). As a tactics game it slows things down, offers lots of optional content, and once more offers a New Game+ that opens things up for multiple play-throughs. Alone, both games are much weaker than they are together. Combined, they offer up a truly new Suikoden experience that gives the characters and world a life that more than lives up to the legacy of the series.
And Okay, It’s Not Perfect
It’s so far from perfect. The combat system and skills system were gutted. The silent protagonist thing is…not great, and is made worse by the graphics which did the main character no favors. A lot of the characters feel random and not very flushed out, at least if you take them singly, without Tactics (and getting rid of the investigations kinda hurt the depth of the characters). And the boat might be the most annoying, frustrating, awful (IT TURNS LIKE A DRUNKEN ELEPHANT) means of transportation not just in the series, but in PS2 era JRPGs as a category. And after so long waiting for a new Suikoden, being offered what can be seen as a watered down homage to the first game, after the innovations of the second and third, was viewed as a…disappointment by many (me included).
But It’s Still Awesome
It might not have been what I was expecting from a new Suikoden game at the time of its release, and it’s taken a long time for me to be able to see through that. But the game is about forgiveness, and in its themes and in its execution its heart is undoubtedly in the right place. It’s possible that there was no way to come back after the brilliance of the first three games and deliver on expectations, and so Suikoden IV…didn’t exactly try. It did its own thing, tried something new, and the result is, on reflection, better than I remembered. There are lots of reasons why people might hate it, but that doesn’t mean that for some it can’t be the best in the series.
