The year is 1996, and PlayStation is just beginning to take the gaming world by storm. It covers a wide variety of genres: racing, fighting, action, sports, puzzles, train control, deep sea diving, firefighting, and more. But what about RPGs?

Well, Sony’s new system has some great games for RPG fans. No, it’s not Final Fantasy VII, which wasn’t scheduled to be released until the following year, although it played a big role in the hype. The first notable RPG on the PlayStation was Suikoden. It was Konami’s ambitious experiment and the start of something big.

Suikoden in many ways began before the PlayStation. Writer/director Yoshitaka Murayama and artist/designer Junko Kono started working on a role-playing game project for home consoles developed in-house by Konami around 1993, but both the console and the role-playing game were soon abandoned. When the PlayStation was released, Konami gave the RPG another chance, which became Suikoden (abbreviated as Suikoden in the West). But its origins go back even further, with Suikoden being inspired by a classic of Chinese literature, The Robbery of the Reef, which historians date back to the 13th or 16th century. It tells the story of 108 heroes, outlaws, dissidents and outsiders who resist oppressive governments.

Robbery from the Ruhr was unknown even in the West. English-speaking audiences are probably most familiar with All Men Are Brothers, and Pearl S. Buck’s 1933 translation of Suikoden was not the first video game to adapt an older tale either. KOEI’s strategy game Bandit Kings of Ancient China and Data East’s Dark Legend fighting game, to name just two examples, predated Konami’s RPG, but examining a centuries-old novel was only the beginning of Suikoden’s innovations.

SUIKODEN’S REVOLUTION

Suikoden’s protagonist, like many young RPG heroes, is silent, named at the player’s discretion, and unaware of the destiny that lies before him. But he is also the son of a respected general of the Scarlet Moon Empire, and struggles to live up to his father’s legacy. Accompanied by a bodyguard, a neurotic nanny Gremio, and a slightly mysterious childhood friend Ted (yes, just Ted), our hero (“Tyr” in official materials) sets off on a simple mission in the Imperial Army. And it soon becomes clear: the Empire will fall into tyranny and oppression. The general’s son gradually falls into rebellion. He is declared an apostate, given an ancient rune, and forced to fight against his former comrades and father, which results in him having to take on the honorable duty of defending increasingly corrupt leaders.

Such an act could easily be toned down, but Suikoden rarely chooses the easy path. The revolution is a tough, losing battle that tears apart the empire and the protagonist’s family, and the plot doesn’t shy away from delivering tragedy with a sure hand. Suikoden has an uncanny talent for creating memorable characters in a short time, whether they’re minor recruits or important leaders. This was surprising in a field where most games, role-playing or not, relied on cliché and simplicity. Casey “Takuhi” Loe of GameFan magazine wrote in his February 1996 preview of Suikoden: “Characters grow, mature, change, even die…and in a rare twist, you, the player, actually care about them.”

What makes it all the more impressive is that Suikoden has 108 characters to recruit for rebellion and prophecy. Of course, you can’t control all of them in combat, but the protagonist’s castle is constantly expanding with new members: soldiers, mercenaries, sailors, gamblers, robbers, merchants, blacksmiths, elevator operators, laundry workers, artists, various villains, mysterious people, murderers, dog-men, dragon riders, a former Imperial soldier you saved, a blatant homage to Don Quixote and a child who stands at the entrance to greet visitors. He’s just happy to be part of the team.

From the free spirits you just threw into your army to at least one general who’s always hated you, they all have their reasons to be there. Finding them all is much harder than the game’s central challenge, with many side quests to complete, some of which require timing like a strategy guide. It’s still an RPG, after all.

Collecting all the characters is optional, but leads to the best ending of the game. Suikoden seems to enjoy making the player feel that they have less freedom than they actually do. At first, the protagonist’s options seem limited, as the plot progresses regardless of how the protagonist reacts. Honestly, you wouldn’t get very far in the game if you were instantly imprisoned for disrespecting the Emperor.

However, the protagonist can choose to pardon or execute defeated enemies, and it’s up to the player to decide how many Stars of Destiny they end up collecting. Suikoden’s fantasy decisions make at least one important decision ambiguous: if you level up a certain character enough, you’ll win a duel that you should lose according to the story.

The star-studded cast expands Suikoden as a role-playing game as well. Your party always consists of six members, but there are always new faces you can try out in battle, whose abilities vary depending on magic runes and team attacks. Encounters with enemies are random, but they are very quick by the standards of 1990s RPGs, and rarely have a negative impact on exploring more characters. Regular role-playing battles are not the only important element of this game. There are also strategic clashes with armies (characters can die randomly) and one-on-one duels following the strict rules of rock-paper-scissors.

Suikoden does all this in half the time of a typical RPG. Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, and other great RPGs of the time treated audiences to at least 30 hours of quests. If you ignore the numerous side characters and just follow the story, Suikoden might be finished in 15 hours, short enough to be finished during the Christmas holidays in the winter of 1996. But these are unforgettable hours, and Suikoden will encourage players to return to find all 108 Stars of Destiny, preferably with a guide.

Of course, Suikoden isn’t as flashy as the PlayStation, Saturn, or Nintendo 64 games, which were made with polygons and 3D environments. Suikoden is so heavily in the 2D tradition that the casual observer could easily mistake it for a Super NES title. The characters have more realistic proportions than the giant heads of many RPGs of yesteryear, but the game is full of detail; an inconsequential shot of someone drinking tea is smoothly animated, while a character simply jumps in surprise during a crucial scene. But while the soundtrack is a fine piece of work by Konami composers (including Higashino Miki and Iwase Tappy), Kawano’s character drawings are surprisingly rough.

Cynics will note that Suikoden had few rivals for the limelight at the end of 1996. The game arrived at the end of a brief RPG dry spell for genre fans outside of Japan: in the West, the 16-bit era of RPGs had come to an end in mid-1996 with Super Mario RPG and Lufia 2, and options for the Sega Saturn were limited. Role-playing games, while similarly rare on the PlayStation, were a rarity: Sony skipped localizing G-Craft’s visually stunning but short strategy RPG Arc the Lad, and wasted time translating Camelot’s laborious Beyond the Beyond. PlayStation action RPGs like Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain and King’s Field didn’t evoke the same menu-driven impulses as Chrono Trigger, Earthbound, and Lunar 2: Eternal Blue, which had been released on the 16-bit system just a year earlier.

Suikoden was what it had to be to be a decent RPG at the time, but it went far beyond that. Despite its dodgy American-style cover (which would become infamous in its own right), Suikoden sold well. It stuck with players. It gained a following. It was only ported to Saturn and Windows in Japan. And even when Final Fantasy VII came out in 1997, with its cinematic push and inevitable marketing, fans debated whether Suikoden was the better RPG.

A SEQUEL PICKS UP

Thus, Suikoden was a deserved success, at least enough for Konami to agree to a sequel. Suikoden II was first released in Japan for the PlayStation in 1998 and stayed close to the original in terms of both gameplay and pacing. The story begins in the nearby country of Highland, where the protagonist (canonically “Riou”) and his childhood friend Jowie find their division wiped out by a conspiracy hatched by their leaders. Pursued by their country, they receive a mysterious Rune of Beginning and soon begin to follow different paths. Jowie returns to the Highland army and rises through the ranks, while the protagonist resists and adopts his own 108 Stars of Destiny. The cast retains many of the original’s faces, including rebel-turned-mercenary Victor and Flick, but artist Fumi Ishikawa takes over the designs and the game is packed with new characters.

If the original Suikoden is about open rebellion, the sequel expresses this in a more subtle way. Like Final Fantasy Tactics, this is the story of two friends who disagree on how to change a corrupt society. The hero attacks society directly, while Jowie reforms it from within. The game is full of ambiguous morals, and even the game’s main antagonist, the totally psychopathic Highland prince Luca Blight, has an explanation for his monstrous nature.

Suikoden II expands on everything that made the original memorable, between well-crafted story highlights. Combat still flows smoothly with six members and many new influences, duels are still speedy and dramatic, and open-field warfare takes a more strategic, grid-based approach. There’s a castle to build and a wide range of characters to recruit, with even more variety, including cooking contests, the scruffy Kindaichi/Columbo detective digging up dirt on other characters, and even the chance to recruit the main characters from the original Suikoden. Some characters are harder to find this time around, and the game’s best ending hides its demands well by boiling it down to the player’s lightning-fast dialogue choices.

It`s a good more potent recreation typical than the primary Suikoden. The translation has a few tough patches (because of Konami offering the localizers difficult script assets), however there is no diluting the pressure of the recreation’s first-class moments, whether or not it is a surprising betrayal or a intentionally drawn-out war that slyly places the recreation’s largest boss combat hours earlier than the storyline ends.

Suikoden II confronted more difficult opposition than the unique had, as a minimum in North America. Final Fantasy VIII, Grandia, Thousand Arms, or even the release of the Dreamcast all took interest from Konami’s RPG withinside the fall of 1999. Positive critiques and on line enthusiasts regularly became it right into a sleeper hit and an oft-praised classic, one which commanded excessive secondhand costs nicely earlier than retro-recreation gathering itself changed into absurdly expensive.

Yet Suikoden II changed into worthwhile in Japan, and Konami deemed it worth of spin-offs. The first changed into the two-extent Suikogaiden visible novel line, launched for the PlayStation in 2000 and 2001—in Japan most effective, that is. The video games bridge the distance among Suikoden II and III, following the undercover agent Nash as he travels Harmonia and the adjacent Grasslands region. There changed into no reliable launch withinside the West, aleven though a fan translation emerged in 2013. Suikoden Card Stories for the Game Boy Advance additionally caught to the Japanese marketplace most effective because it recreated the battles of Suikoden II thru a card-primarily based totally fight system.

A SENDOFF OF SORTS

These have been preludes to Suikoden III, launched in 2002 in Japan and North America. It yet again actions to a brand new phase of the world, the Grasslands, and opens a few 15 years after Suikoden II—lengthy sufficient after and a ways sufficient away that maximum of the characters are new. This time, gamers get 3 leads: Hugo is a younger warrior of the neighborhood clans, Chris Lightfellow is the distinguished knight captain of the mercantile country of Zexen, and Geddoe is the laconic chief of a mercenary band. The 3 of them accumulate allies amid a covertly orchestrated war, with the enigmatic Flame Champion providing feasible salvation withinside the conflict. Eventually, they`ll come collectively whilst constructing a base and collecting 108 specific followers.

It’s as bold as its predecessors, however Suikoden III did not land as surely. The 3-d photographs are common for early PlayStation 2 video games, and its storytelling is extra stilted than in advance video games’ breezy 2D, sprite-primarily based totally presentation. The warfare system, wherein gamers now command pairs of characters as opposed to character celebration members, feels limited, and the huge-scale area clashes lack drama. The in advance video games prominent themselves thru exquisite pacing, however Suikoden III takes time backtracking and repeating plot points, all of which pass slower in 3-d environments. Some fanatics even observed the leads uninteresting, aleven though no one stated an unkind phrase for the veteran duck soldier named Sergeant Joe.

Even so, Suikoden III had its predecessors’ strengths in mind: the huge and likable assisting forged buoys the protagonists, and the sport bends and subverts cliches at key points, even revealing its villain to be a reputedly benevolent person from the preceding video games.

Oddly, Suikoden III serves its maximum memorable tales at the side. The player’s base of operations is constructed via way of means of a disgraced younger noble named Thomas and his ragtag partners in a trimmed-down subplot, and the villain’s actual intentions are found out in flashback if all 108 Stars of Destiny assemble.

Suikoden III does not sense just like a finale for the series, however it changed into nonetheless a sendoff in a single way. While Yoshitaka Murayama directed and scripted a great deal of the sport, he departed Konami earlier than it completed development, and, in step with company policy, the business enterprise eliminated his call from the credits. Murayama might pass directly to write, produce, and direct the rather difficult to understand 10,000 Bullets for Taito (who might launch it in Japan and Europe however now no longer North America), but he would not go back to the series—at the least now no longer beneathneath the Suikoden call.

SAILING AROUND

Suikoden III did nicely sufficient for some other round, and Konami appeared to collection veteran Junko Kawano. In her time farfar from Suikoden, she had written and directed the compelling journey sport Shadow of Destiny, and it fell to her to script and convey Suikoden IV. Declining some other semi-direct sequel, Kawano and the relaxation of the group of workers opted for a prequel.

Set a few a hundred and fifty years earlier than the primary Suikoden, the fourth trip follows a silent hero and his pal Snowe thru a conspiracy of pirates, naval warfare, and historic Runes. Amid the divided loyalties and inevitable stabs withinside the back, the sport offers new records to a few characters in preceding titles, such as the Silverberg tactician own circle of relatives and Suikoden`s mysterious Ted. Once again, do not allow the call idiot you.

Reception become divided, however. Suikoden IV’s desire of a maritime putting caused its largest problem: gamers crusing on an agonizingly sluggish deliver to get anywhere. The sport’s first few hours drag as a result, and the storyline itself takes simply as lengthy to choose up. The player’s birthday birthday celebration is decreased to 4 members (albeit with direct manage over every of them), however duels are retained, even as the bigger clashes may be waged through ships at the excessive seas. With confined connections to the authentic games, all of it feels much less vital withinside the ordinary collection.

Suikoden IV continues to be actual to its call, because the now-trendy 108 recruitable characters are appealing, the storyline serves up a few twists, and Snowe’s arc is exciting sufficient to indicate that he must were the protagonist. The sport’s woeful crusing sequences are in large part inappropriate as soon as Viki, the habitual teleport specialist, indicates up, aleven though plenty of gamers did not stick round lengthy sufficient for that.

Despite such combined reaction, Konami deemed Suikoden IV worth of a spin-off. Suikoden Tactics bookends it, protecting occasions earlier than and after Suikoden IV because it tracks a younger guy surviving a conflict of effective Rune guns withinside the Kooluk Empire. Battles now take location on grids and equipping runes to characters offers a good deal of the approach in the back of the scenes. With no tedious crusing sequences, Tactics earned a higher welcome than Suikoden IV, aleven though it nevertheless feels in large part indifferent from the primary 3 games.

A RETURN TO FORM

The Suikoden series, although it had its ups and downs, continued to make respectable numbers, and Konami ordered a fifth major title from a new source. Suikoden V did not involve Murayama (who wrote the screenplay for Asmik Ace’s Tensho Gakuen Gekkoroku), and only Kawano (who would later write and develop the adventure games Time Hollow and Zack & Ombra) was given “special thanks.” Instead, new director Takahiro Sakiyama and several Konami employees worked on this new Suikoden in collaboration with developers from Hudson Soft (later acquired by Konami).

Konami decided to make a prequel again, but it takes place just eight years before the first Suikoden, and again in a different part of the world, in the land of Falena. The player controls the prince of a country threatened by feuding noble houses, an increasingly strict queen’s sense of justice, and an ancient rune behind it all. Of course, war breaks out and once again 108 characters must support the prince in his quest to reclaim the throne.

While Suikoden III and IV ignore the fast-paced focus of the first two games, Suikoden V openly defies this with a story that takes 8-10 hours to play out before the main conflict begins. Still, it features some bold twists and biting anti-aristocratic themes as well as strong characters. Continuing the series tradition of never overwhelming the player, the full six-person party returns in combat. However, the game’s loading times can be a drag on some, and the more complex dungeons can be frustrating.

Even if Suikoden V did please the series’ many fans, it probably didn’t hurt the higher-ups at Konami. In 2006, the PlayStation 2 was teeming with RPGs, and Suikoden V’s numbers were lower than the previous generation.

So Konami exacted its usual punishment for a series that fails to make an impression on consoles: they banned Suikoden from handhelds.

PORTABLE PERSISTENCE

Suikoden: The Nintendo DS is technically a spinoff of the main series. Released in 2008 in Japan and 2009 elsewhere, it is set in a parallel world where a player-designated hero muster an army of 108 characters to battle the secret cult of One King. There are few references to previous games in the series. The player’s party consists of only four characters, but the collecting aspect is enhanced when the player connects to their DS system to trade characters such as Pokémon.

Arguably, Zodiac isn’t a terrible RPG by most standards. Still, it was destined to be a disappointment for longtime Suikoden fans. The revelation of the conspiracy has had little political impact, and there is little impression of community building. In addition, the DS has many role-playing games from popular series such as Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and Tales, as well as many original works, and several series such as Valkyrie Profile and Blue Dragon. It remained limited to handheld gaming. Even a full-fledged Suikoden game had a hard time standing out from the crowd, and Zodiac simply wasn’t the comprehensive package that fans were hoping for.

But the DS wasn’t the only handheld gaming machine, and Konami didn’t neglect the PSP either. In 2006, they re-released Suikoden and Suikoden II with slightly improved packaging, but sales were disappointing. After Zodiac failed to top the DS best-seller charts, Konami returned to Sony’s handheld with Suikoden: The Hundred Years of Spin.

Suikoden’s Great PSP Excursion is another trick in another dimension, seeing a young warrior and his friends transported to a different time. It represents the biggest change to the game’s formula, and you’ll end up collecting 108 Stars of Destiny at key points across three centuries. This comes with a less than welcome twist: there are only about 18 characters to fight with in your party of six, the rest are just a supporting cast to expand the player base.

While Suikoden: The Hundred Years of Spin is reminiscent of the PS2 Suikoden in terms of visuals and content, this will likely be the end of the series. Konami only released it in Japan (an English fan translation appeared in 2021), and it didn’t sell well enough to merit a sequel. The PSP was replaced by Sony’s short-lived Vita, and the Nintendo 3DS outlasted it, but Konami never licensed Suikoden for either system, and the series went into a disappointing hibernation that often saw it overtake promising middleweight RPG series.

THE COMEBACK

If Konami doesn’t step in, the makers of Suikoden will. In 2020, Yoshitaka Murayama, Junko Kono and the Rabbit & Bear Studios team embraced the trend of continuing popular series through spiritual sequels funded on Kickstarter. This resulted in the poorly received Mighty No. 9. After the well-received Bloodstained series, it was now Suikoden’s turn.

Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is unmistakably Suikoden. It’s a sprite-based RPG where the bonds of friends and nations are tested by war, and much of the inspiration comes from the first two games. Here, Thane, an officer of the Gardea Empire, and villager Nowa find themselves on opposing sides, caught between the Guardians’ Forest Clan and the warrior Marisa. The combat system revolves around a party of six using combination attacks and magical rune lenses while building a headquarters and recruiting 108 characters. Previews for Eiyuden Chronicle showcase a range of characters that could appear in Suikoden, including schoolchildren and elderly politicians in addition to warriors and magicians.

Over three years in development, Eiyuden Chronicle has filled in the void with a prequel. Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising is a small-scale story set in a frontier town, where adventurer CJ ruins everything and gradually draws kangaroo mercenary Garu and local magician and mayor Isha into a treasure hunt. It’s more of an action game than an RPG, with frequent backtracking and only three playable main characters. Still, Suikoden Rising embraces the community-building model, as CJ and friends are constantly on mini-missions helping merchants expand their stores and townsfolk solve their problems.

Eiyuden Chronicle: One Hundred Heroes will be released this April amid tragic news. Murayama passed away on February 6th after a long illness. He left an impressive legacy and inspiration for all creators who venture beyond the boundaries of the genre. Suikoden games regularly receive praise. This can be a casual mention on social media, or from a luminary in the games industry like Warren Spector, who credits the original Suikoden as a partial inspiration for the branching plot of the cyberpunk first-person shooter Deus Ex. It’s also worth noting that Konami hasn’t completely forgotten about the series, even as they’ve distanced themselves from much of its heritage in recent years. During the development of Chronicle of Heroes: The Hundred Heroes, they announced a remastered collection (but have yet to ship) of the first two Suikoden games.

What is the importance of Suikoden? It’s not just the tradition of offering players more than other games with over 100 actors and a variety of combat systems. It’s what the series does well. The best Suikoden games, then and now, go stronger and deeper than countless other titles in their pursuit of compelling drama and fascinating world-building. Everything about them, from their growing base to their vast character rosters, builds connections that are hard to break. If Eiyuden Chronicle can recapture that, it could be the birth of another big name in the RPG world, just like Suikoden did nearly 30 years ago.