Aaaand it’s done. I’m not too good at wording things, so hopefully it’s understandable enough :P
LIST OF THINGS I STILL WANT TO TALK ABOUT BUT DIDN’T MAKE SLIDES FOR:
Headquarters! In each game you have a headquarters for your army. Usually it’s a castle on some body of water, but Suikoden 4 ups the ante by just giving you a very large boat. In your headquarters, your Stars of Destiny live and mingle around, and some run shops where you can buy runes, items, armor, have your weapons sharpened, things like that. There are also minigames! Certain characters run gambling games, cooking games, you can go fishing… Your headquarters expands with the more Stars of Destiny you recruit for your army.
Suikoden II is considered the high point of the series while IV is the lowest, but all of them are genuinely worth playing and you’re missing out on a big party of the overall story if you skip one, honestly. The games all tie together which means there are a lot of recurring characters, people in more than one game, and it definitely gives you a feel of good storytelling to see how some characters age and develop in between games.
Suikogaiden is, like I said, a visual novel that revolves around Nash Laktje, a young man on a quest for revenge for his family. It gives a more in-depth look at certain characters and events in Suikoden II, and sets down concepts used in Suikoden III.
Suikoden III has a manga! That has been published in America/in English! Of course the story is told slightly differently but if you’re not into playing games you could at the very least read the Suikoden III manga.
I really really wanted to make a slide for each game and briefly describe the plot but I also didn’t want too many slides, so I’m just gonna make a bullet list and add the TV Tropes synopses:
The young son of Imperial General Teo McDohl lives a comfortable, happy life in the Scarlet Moon Empire with his famous father, house full of personal bodyguards, and best friend Ted. However, everything gets turned upside down when he winds up with the Soul Eater, one of the 27 True Runes, stuck on his right hand. Turns out the empire’s really interested in said True Rune, and young McDohl finds himself roped into the Liberation Army and forced to face off against his father and his country.
Three years after the events of the original game, the nation of Jowston has just signed a ceasefire with the Highland Kingdom. The protagonist, an orphan adopted by the late hero Genkaku, has just joined the army alongside his best friend Jowy. However, they fall afoul of one of the most twisted examples of a False Flag Operation ever attempted, courtesy of Luca Blight. Barely escaping this fate, they soon find themselves saddling with the two halves of the Rune of the Beginning, the Black Sword Rune and the Bright Shield Rune. From there, their paths split, as the protagonist takes the traditional hero’s route and Jowy sets out to break the system from within, setting the stage for a war where both sides fight for the exact same goal.
The first Suikoden game on the PS2, Suikoden III revolves around several smaller groups of heroes long before the Stars of Destiny come into play. Set fifteen years after the events of Suikoden II, it begins with an uneasy cease-fire between the Grassland tribes and the mercantile nation of the Zexen Confederacy. Meanwhile, the Holy Kingdom of Harmonia is waiting for a secret truce with the Grasslanders to hurry up and expire so they can launch their own offensive. This simmering pot of tensions boils over with a single horrific act, and the chain of events is filtered through the eyes — and guided by the actions of — several protagonists. In this way, the game introduces many of the Stars of Destiny in smaller groups, resulting in more Character Development and allowing the player a much more extensive view into the motivations of every faction involved in the conflict, up to the point where the storylines merge and the heroes unite against a common enemy.
Set over 150 years before the events of the first Suikoden, Suikoden IV takes place in the ocean far south of the Scarlet Moon Empire, revolving around the islands that would come to be known as the Island Nations following the events of this game. It tells the tale of Lazlo, a recent graduate of the Gaien Marine Knights Academy on the nation’s island colony of Razril. He gets snared in a deadly chain of events involving the Rune of Punishment, one of the most dangerous of the 27 True Runes, and winds up wrongfully accused of murder and exiled. From there, he is drawn into the resistance movement as the islands are attacked by the aggressive Kooluk Empire.
Suikoden Tactics: Suikoden Tactics tells the story of Kyril, the son of a Scarlet Moon officer, as he investigates and uncovers a massive conspiracy revolving around Rune Cannons. A complex web of political intrigue, rebellion, insurrection and a dying empire is further complicated by other agents of the Scarlet Moon with their own priorities regarding Kooluk and the Rune Cannons.Tactics/Rhapsodia ties up many of the loose ends left over from IV, providing key information that helped the plot of the prior game make sense.
Suikoden V is set five years before the events of Suikoden I, and chronicles a period of great internal strife in the Queendom of Falena. Though technically a monarchy, the aristocracy holds so much power within Falena that their squabbles and power-plays threaten to de-stablise the whole country. Complicating matters is the presence of the Sun Rune, an royal artifact of apocalyptic power and one of the 27 True Runes in the world of Suikoden. Years ago, Queen Arshtat bound the Sun Rune to herself to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands, but now she is slowly succumbing to its malevolent influence and threatening to unleash a great disaster upon the world. The Player Character is the Prince of Falena, an unimportant figurehead who is not in line to the throne. That is, until a coup d’état forces him out of Falena and into hiding. With his little sister forced to act as the head of a puppet government, it’s up to the scrappy royal-in-exile to step out of the shadow of those who would manipulate him for their own ends and gather an army to take back his homeland.
A Suikoden Gaiden Game for the DS, Suikoden Tierkreis is set in a parallel world unconnected to the main series, though it contains many of the familiar themes mixed with the exploration of fate, destiny and free will. Sieg, an optimistic young warrior from Citro Village whose motto is “You never know until you try!”, is out fighting monsters with several of his childhood friends when they witness a strange occurence… that nobody else seems to remember afterwards. However, they also come across the Shining Legacy, a book which seems to help awaken the Starbearers and the magical abilities known as the Mark of the Stars. Their investigation soon leads them into conflict with The Order of the One True Way, a group that preaches that all is decided by fate and everyone’s destiny is predetermined.
Those are all the games that are translated to English. TV Tropes does a much better job of summarizing them than I ever could.
Right now on Facebook an annual event going on called “Suikoden Day” is taking place here. There are cosplay contests, fan art contests, fanfiction contests, you name it. It’s a good way for fans to get together and rave about the series we’re all pretty devoted to, and if you haven’t played the series I’m sure you could shoot some questions on to the page and people would be more than happy to talk to you about them!
There’s also the Suikoden Revival Movement, which has a Facebook page as well as a tumblr here at suikodenrevival. As their name suggests, they’re dedicated to getting attention from Konami in the hopes that they’ll take more interest in the Suikoden series.
There are also quite a few people here on tumblr who are big fans and we’re always hoping to get more people interested in the series!
