A look back at: Suikoden III

This sure was a long one, but only because of the many characters you play as. What am I saying? This is a Suikoden game for crying out loud!

The idea of controlling two pairs is pretty odd and takes away some of the strategy that the previous games employed. It's not that bad of an idea though. Charging up spells make things much harder for mages, and the battles in this game tend to actually be challenging for once. The war battles at least are done better, but since AI controls everything here, you'll often see characters not doing what you want them to do. Still it manages to fair much better than Suikoden II's war battle system. And the ability to put in support characters is also genuine, giving that slight edge. What else? Mounts. Hugo on Fubar is a wrecking machine of damage, and the other two mount pairs do well as well. Training skills makes characters really good, especially for those who can manage multiple hits like Emily and Juan. The true elemental runes in this game are done right, and the Trinity Sight system allowing for multiple main characters and multiple vantage points is a very good way of telling a story.

Unlike in Odin Sphere, this one doesn't exactly jump around everything. This game shows the points of view of Chris, Geddoe, and Hugo on their quests for the Flame Champion, and the many hardships they face. It's good to know that the remorse Hugo feels about Lulu is shared by Chris, who is the one reluctantly killing Lulu in self-defense. It's good to know even tag-along characters like Aila manage well for the parties they go into. The idea of war between the Grassland tribes and the Zexen knights is a prevailing theme for the separate factions, with Hugo and Chris being on opposing ends and Geddoe's group being spectators to the whole thing. Then when the common threat of Harmonia and Luc's group come into play, the newly crowned Flame Champion brings both together.

Suikoden III shows the most amazing character interactions the series has to date. We see characters like Hugo and Thomas with their own problems in their journeys, Geddoe trying to piece things together, and the whole Zexen council being jerkbags in general. Luc naturally eclipses everyone in his extremism, getting into conflicts with just about everyone, Harmonia and non-Harmonia. I guess if there's one thing I don't like, it's that his idea of conjuring up monsters isn't really the best possible method, naturally everyone other than Luc's party completely agrees. You know what else is agreeable? That this is a good game, although it's certainly nowhere near as good as its predecessors, it pulls itself as a decent sequel that unfortunately has not been continued since.