if the fic is good, it doesn't matter if you know the series! and i mean listen, i once wrote a fire emblem/homestuck crossover. all the comments were "i don't know (half of crossover) but i had fun!" i can never judge "did not pause to explain lore" i really like the summoning rune weapons tho. is neat. also i'm interested in the "grassroots rebellion abandoned vampire castle"
Talk about Suikoden ok One of the worldbuilding foundations of the series is 'runes,' which are either stones or tattoos, and can be switched back and forth between those forms if they're being attached to a human host or a weapon. Lesser runes, which are common, give you regular vg attack magic, stat boosts, healing, so on.I assume, lore-wise, that common runes are lower-level magic, usable by most talented people. Not everyone in-game can use them WELL, some never get many spellslots or the strongest spells, but everyone can use them a little. "True" Runes however, there are only 27 of, and not all are accounted for. All minor runes were adapted from these 27 true runes, who are... essentially immortal beings. They are powerful enough to have consciousness, and many of them chose their own host instead of waiting to be passively handed over. A few Suikoden games are about 'cursed' True Runes, so called because their personality is malicious and they actively work to harm their host and/or people around them. In Suikoden II, the protagonist, Riou, and my poor fucking punching bag, Jowy, bear a single true rune which chose to split itself into two complimentary parts. Riou's half is called 'Bright Shield,' and Jowy's , 'Black Sword.' In battle the Bright Shield rune casts a combination of healing and attack spells and randomly drops a few status boosts, and Black Sword is a heavy attack rune. Though it's called Sword the attacks manifest as dark magic that strikes the enemy from afar. A true rune isn't just removed if you don't want it so that's stuck on Jowy's hand (where it put itself) unless he dies or Sword chooses otherwise. (So if he had a crazy powerful run on his hand 24/7 why even carry a knife huh?? a. paranoia b. you can only cast runes so many times in a day c. true runes are tricky and have their own minds d. Jowy makes it a point to be criminally underestimated and he does not want people to full realize how powerful it is.) Luca Blight also has access to a true rune, though TBH I'm not clear at this point whether it's on his body or somewhere else? It's called the Beast Rune and I know it was previously attached to the castle itself, guarding it. That's what the personification of L'Renoiulle was about. The game makes it clear that Luca has detached the True Beast Rune and is carrying it around with him to do some seriously fuck awful shows of dramatic violence, though it's not clear where he keeps it. (It's also not clear if maybe the Beast Rune, which is alive and malicious, hasn't contributed to warping his brain a little. He brings up the heavy trauma of watching his mother be assaulted when he was a child and it's implied he was potentially assaulted himself, but for the most part, his character reads as a natural sociopath to me. It's ambiguous how much these various things have effected him however). I wrote Luca using the Beast to counter Jowy's Black Sword, which made sense to me, seeing as Sword is half of a true rune and Beast is a whole one, and Luca clearly has a lot of practice using it to its full potential. Jowy is kind of? The deuteragonist? Of this game? Riou is the protagonist and he's the one whos tumbles ass-backwards into recruiting and running an army initially designed to protect the squabbling citystates of the area from the advance of Prince Luca, who has lost his shit, and his army form the Highland State. Riou and Jowy are both originally from something of a border state, which has been traded between Highland and its neighbor, but they're considered Highlanders. Though initially both friends, and Nanami, Riou's sister, rebel against Highland, Jowy is captured and strikes a secret deal to join back with the Highland, assassinate a rival city leader for then, and then resume his role in the army. Through staggering chutzpah and really dirty tactics he climbs the ranks in a matter of months and offers to capture the city of Greenhill when no one else dared. To do that, he released the thousands of prisoners from an already conquered city to Greenhill, put it under siege, and waited until the prisoners and the citizens were so starved they stared tearing each other apart. Then he walked on in. Luca promised him anything he wanted if he could take Greenhill for him, and Jowy asks to marry the princess. Luca is enraged but Jowy takes him somewhere private, says something the player is not privy too, and the engagement is made. I took up narrative pretty much immediately after that; in short cutscenes throughout the game it's made clear that Jowy is plotting the overthrow of the Blight Dynasty the entire time, and marrying Princess Jillia is just a way to get close enough to do it. He actually is a very conniving little bastard, after his double agent defection to Highland, half of his lines are just strings of dots. It really is hard to tell what he's thinking, which is one thing that turned me on to him. Did I mention you can emulate this game? just putting that out there. While Jowy is reaching heaven through violence Riou allies himself to a mercenary group and then to the heads of various city-states as he tries to convince everyone that Luca Blight is A Real Fucking Problem. One city leader agrees to help them if they rid one of her towns of a monster, who is a fuckold vampire from the previous game that isn't dead yet, annoyingly. You chase him out (for now) and get the news just as everyone's recovering from the vampire battle that Luca Blight is about to attack the area. Cornered, panicked, needing to make a stand now, Riou and the mercs choose to appropriate the vampire's castle as their own, since it stands advantageously on a cliff overlooking the sea. As you gain more allies, they all move into the castle, since it becomes known as the resistance's headquarters until Riou wakes up one day to realize that this is kind of his castle, full of his army, and when the fuck did that happen??? No time to think about it because war keeps fucking happening because of my terrible ex-best friend, Jowy, who betrayed us to the Highland, assassinated the leader of Muse, married a fucking princess and I guess is too GOOD for my grassroots rebellion now, asshole. Emotionally I think the tension is done quite well and I mean I've only spoiled half of the game here so ANYWAY all of this is why I chose to not tag that fic for underage because look me in the eye and tell me that Jowy is not written as a young adult, fuck the fact that he's 17, not 18, that's so fucking arbitrary
all of that is genuinely really cool sounding. i like it????? if i can figure out how to emulate it i will certainly try.
FTR, Suikoden 1 and 2 were on Playstation 1, and 3, 4, and 5 are on PS2. There's also two spinoff visual novels set during 2 for PS1 that were never released in English but I think have fan translations (Genso Suikogaiden), a PS2 spinoff called Suikoden Tactics that from what I hear contains half of 4's actual plot, and the weird little AU odd-duck of the franchise, Suikoden Tierkreis (DS, maintains none of the series' established worldbuilding and has a much kiddier tone). IIRC the first three were on the Playstation Classics store, but I don't remember if any of the others were. The first one has a moderately bad English translation but is the best place to start, not least because you can import your save file from it into 2 and have it remember some of what you did.
Spoiler: ILLEGAL Coolrom.com is back online and has working roms of 1 & 2. ePSXe can emulate those. In my mind, this is a series not being updated, and there was such an embarrassingly limited English language release anyway; I don't feel too bad about it. My wife & I own every game that I've played except 2 which I just couldn't get. I fully and wholeheartedly recommend purchasing where you can and letting purchasing be your first option! It can just be very hard for the older 2 games. These are like my favorite games in the world, so addictive, collecting 108 allies, most of which can be put into your active party, meaning you have like eighty rotating party members, is such a trap for neurodivergent hyperfocusers its not even funny AND you can trade goods AND there are three different battle systems in each game AND fully customizable fighters and and and and
We might want to take this to a "Please play Suikoden" derail thread, lol There's some variability in the exact mechanics between the games, but generally there's the RPG party battle system for most of the game, plus a system for large-scale military battles (in the first game it's a rock-paper-scissors thing, later games have tactical minigames) and another system for one-on-one Plot Duels. Notably, Luca Blight is such an absolute monster that you have to fight him with three full parties of six, followed by a duel, and he still doesn't die Spoiler until Jowy has his own army fire on him.
-please play suikoden handshake- but I don't know, no one had used this thread in half a year before I crash landed back in 2 weeks ago, maybe, my thread now?? Yessssss the duels are my favorite, you chose between defending, attacking, and all-out attacking, trying to counter what your opponent is going to do based on what they say. Some are easier to read than others; usually the first duel is meant to teach the player how to do it, so, for example, Flik testing Riou in the beginning of s2 is so easy it takes like three turns, but, for example, the final duel with Spoiler: S3 spoiler Sasarai in Luc's chapter in S3 just mauled me, it took 15 minutes of thinking and re-thinking about the duplicitous possible meanings in this shady weirdo's lines and I was wrong as often as not, I won that one by a hair and the wife & I had that fucking awesome out loud victory screech video game experience Likewise the army battles vary in difficulty, they usually start out scripted and simple to follow but your last handful will have few clear instructions and you have to maneuver your units across a large board against sometimes unpredictable enemies. Interestingly in each game the army battle mechanics are different, in sI it's very simple, only a few possible moves, in s2 it's much like chess, moving many individual groups on a board, in s3 it's even more complicated, it will switch to party battles as you meet enemy units on the screen and I got my ass thrashed by s3's honestly difficult army battle system multiple times. In s4 you're in a pirate ship shooting rune canons. On the high seas. Party battles mostly resemble most jrpgs, your group vs enemies, turn-based, but again, in each game more features get added until in s3 you have a mind-melting physics-involved system that calculates how fast an individual spellcaster is, how fast individual attackers are with their strikes, how long it will take for each of your party members to run to the enemy you indicated, if they can reach them, and jesus christ I was in love but they did tone it down after that one
ha ha yeah y'all are right now I'm going to be headed to work in... less time than I want to admit but I'll make a thread after if it doesn't exist by then >u<
@leitstern you write an excellent Luca Blight -- I haven't played the game in a very long time but that brought back what an absolutely blood-chilling monster he is. I really need to play it again sometime. *waves a "Please play the Suikoden games" flag*
Hello!! This is a derail thread that originated in the Sin Bin, which I derailed to talk at great length about a particularily sin binny ship of mine. Gensou Suikoden is a JRPG franchise that was mostly developed for PS1 and PS2. Some spinoff games came out on other systems. Its name comes from the classic Chinese novel Water Margin, which is about a group of 108 bandits on the run from the law. The typically plot of the games runs such: the protagonist has, for reasons that vary, come into possession of a powerful magical 'rune'--a thing/being that grants its wielder great power, but at varying price. These powerful True Runes are old and powerful enough to have sentience, and their relationships with their wielders can be anything from beneficial to deadly. This protagonist will be forced to face corruption and disregard for human life from the counties, governments, and peoples around them, their own people and others. In response, they choose to begin a rebellion, build a stronghold, recruit an army from the surrounding cities and countries, and defy the maniacs who run their lives from withing their rebel palace.Slowly, the goal of the humble arisen army commander shifts from survival to revolution. In these games you collect 108 allies, usually up to eighty of them can be rotated into your party. They all involve rich and varied cultures, countries, communities of different peoples with different religions, traditions, and philosophies. Shifting alliances, hard choices--like who fucking lives and dies--and a rich, millennia-long world history unfold over the course of an awesome series of daring and creative games. Most of these games can be emulated, as I discuss in a post below! Please, please ask us questions about Suikoden. We want to talk.
@LadyNighteyes @emythos @Mercury working on getting the posts moved over mind the dust! don't mind the dust? I'm not sure which it is.
Hey thank you so much?? That's such an awesome compliment. I felt like I was taking a lot of liberty with my characterization so I'm glad it came through as realistic anyway! It's a good play, isn't it? Sucks you right in. The plot is maybe more involved in 2 than any of the others,, and I'm willing to say that when I'm not even done playing it yet! I had to to a break to.... live my life.... can't play jrpgs all the time...... sadly....... There are so many questions because there are so many moving parts, which, it's not a series that hands you the answers on a silver platter in the first place.
Ha ha yes!! It is born!! Now I have my own little place to just talk about my complicated 'which of these games has the best x or y element' thoughts and no man alive can stop me, why didn't I do this sooner 2 is absolutely most involving plotline and might be best soundtrack 3 is best battle systems worst storytelling 4 is hottest protagonist (his butt)
Played a few more hours of S2 last night; I have a grasp already on the plot from having played the games around it and being spoiled so much when I was looking up context to understand S3, so I'm not really afraid of spoilers. Anyway; Spoiler I'm working through the Tinto Mines dungeon that you slog through to get to Neclord, and holy effing shit, what a fucking dungeon. You can really see that the crew were delighted to make bigger, more confusing maps than they were able to when making their first game, because these things are exponentially bigger and weirder. I see I have to go back to recruit a castle level 4 star so I'm not busting my ass to open every chest and walk every path, because I'm already overlevel as hell (from getting lost so often) and why would I. But I'm just happy these guys got to make the complicated sloggy puzzle dungeons they clearly wanted to the first time -u- Darling actually told me that S1 was supposed to be made for a different system, but was frankensteined to run on the PS1 because the PS1 came out while they were working on S1. S1 was also supposed to be the last hurrah of a dying studio, but it came out on the playstation, sold a ton, and saved their studio. Anyway, that meant that S1 wasn't able to take full advantage of the abilities and memories of the PS1, because they made half the game thinking it would be released on a different, older system. S2 however was made with playstation in mind and you can really see it? It's just so much larger. The areas, the breadth, the play options. And I love it because it feels like the dev team from the first game being given a drastically larger sandbox to play in and just going ape inside it. The fraking HQ castle has gotten me lost so many times, even. Took me so long to learn. Right now I'm just appreciating dungeons you can get lost in instead of dungeons that feel a little 'pretty tunnel' like. In many ways S2 feels like the Suikoden they wanted to make in the first place, which makes me comfortable saying a new player can start with S1 or S2, depending on their feeling. If you want to play exactly one game from the series, S2 is probably your guy. They explain the content of the first game as it pertains to the second, naturally the emotional impact is lessened, but you can still get a grips on your setting pretty easily. That said, I'm sitting here trying to puzzle out why it seems I still prefer S1 personally. In every single way I can think of S2 is superior, but honestly, I think of Tir and my heart just swells. He's one silent ass protagonist, but I guess I was just swept off my feet by the story, bare bones as it is. I'm also someone who always stubbornly prefers the first thing I consume in a series, so that's a factor. But objectively S2 is better in just about every way, for the record. I guess it's like how old school Trek fans would be expected to say, Original Trek is the series but Picard is the captain. TBH S2 is the game but Tir is my Tenkai >u<
