I’m not in the habit of giving numbered ratings, but if I did for Hyakunen no Toki
I must apologize for the long delay between posts. I was almost finished with this game a week ago when I foolishly, foolishly decided to get a FAQ and collect all 108 Stars of Destiny. If you ever play this game (and I do moderately recommend it if you understand Japanese and like a good story), don’t bother getting all 108. It does make a difference to the ending, but not enough to make it worth wasting 5-10 hours collecting everyone.
On to the review proper… is what I’d like to say, but I’m tired of this game. The story did improve tremendously after 15 hours or so, and although the ending was rather weak, the final boss’s motivation was a letdown and the writers did get a little twist-happy and reveal-happy in the latter half, it’s still one of the better JRPG stories I’ve read. There are one or two things I wish they would have changed, though. The main one is the time travel gimmick. It is tedious, cheap, largely unnecessary and leads to confusion near the end. And as I mentioned in an earlier post, it makes my party look like chumps for always relying on their ancestors.
I would like to explain my problems with Hyakunen‘s story in detail (the Teraspharma you get to fight should have been far more threatening, for example), but once I spoil the story there will be no reason for anyone to ever play this game. Of course, even now there’s still no real reason for anyone to play this game, but I will say it’s average gameplay-wise, the soundtrack is pretty good, there are one or two interesting things about the battle system and if you can stick out the slow, boring first half, the pace picks up greatly and doesn’t let up till the end of the game. Unless you take time off to go collect Stars of Destiny. Don’t do that, seriously.
However Suikoden fans looking for a traditionally Suikoden-like experience will be disappointed. It’s a normal RPG with the Suikoden name and a few trappings weakly added on. Sure there are 108 Stars, but you can only have 18 of them in your party. The rest are either NPCs like cooks (4 of them) and craftsmen, or they are located in other time periods and you “recruit” them by learning an ability from them. There are at least 10 such people that you never actually get to meet, instead learning their skills from documents and items they left lying around.
Other differences from the usual Suikodens include the fact that there are no runes at all and the fact that you can’t walk around your base or improve it in any way. I’m not sure whether there are combo attacks or not, but you do get bonuses by pairing certain compatible party members together. Myura and Zephon together will get bonuses to speed, for example. Also weapons are bought and sharpening is just for fun (and wears off), there’s very little political intrigue, no army-vs-army strategic battles (I hated those anyway), and only a few, meaningless one-on-one battles. In short, if you were waiting and hoping for Suikoden VI, this isn’t it. Not even close.
Before I leave, a word about the battle system. It was pretty good all around, and there are three things unique about it. The first is the ability to pair or group party members so that they act out their turn together. Apart from the stat boosts I mentioned above, this is also a good way to ensure that slow party members get a turn faster, or that your medic always gets a turn to heal you up right before the boss does another nasty attack.
The second thing is the use of craftsmen to make items used by certain classes of fighters. There’s no MP in this game. Instead a medic will use medicines, magicians will use magic stones, bowmen will use manufactured arrows, etc. There’s an AP-like system to ensure that you can’t spam your toughest attacks endlessly, but there are ways to work around this and make sure you’re always in fighting shape.
Third thing is the apprentice system. Ever had a party member you didn’t really like, but he had a skill so useful you didn’t want to bench him? Well worry no more! With the handy-dandy new apprentice system, you can teach that skill to another party member in the same class and then bench his sorry ass for the rest of the game! The only slight catch is that you have to pair the characters up and use the “Hand Down” command a couple of times, but it’s a small price to pay for the rewards. And of course you don’t have to bench the original character. You can keep both of them in the party for double the firepower, as I did with Myura and Zephon.
I should note , however, that all this effort is completely unnecessary because no enemy will ever be able to stand up to you. Everyone up to and including the final boss is a complete pushover. The only place you *might* get a bit of challenge is with the optional map and hunting bosses, but even then by the time you face them Myura and Zephon will already have ultra-powerful magic that will make short work of them. I don’t think any boss in the game has more than 10,000 HP total. This is all the more reason to avoid recruiting all 108 Stars, because all the effort will make you even more stupidly powerful than you already are.
In closing, I’d classify this game as a slightly above-average JRPG. The part that makes it above-average is the superlative story, and I recognize that I could save us all a lot of trouble by just spilling said story right here and now. I just choose not to do so, because it was fun while it lasted and I don’t want to take that away from any potential fans. Apart from the meh beginnings and the charmless, forgettable characters and the nearly unnavigable dungeon maps, Suikoden: Hyakunen doesn’t take too many wrong steps. It’s not a must-buy by any means, but it’s more than playable enough for most RPG fans, as long as they’re not actually expecting to play a Suikoden game.
You’re more lenient on the game than I would be, but overall I agree with this assessment: it’s basically a game you play for the plot.
As far as gameplay mechanics goes, I find most of them really pointless… like, the aforementioned “need resources to cast spells/shoot arrows/whatever” basically never comes into play because you create them every time you sleep at an inn, and you can do it very often at no resource cost, meaning you’ll end up with 99 of them and never have to care about running out.
This game was very poorly received by the Japanese community as a whole from what I can tell, and I kind of hope it doesn’t kill the new series because it always feels like they’re just one step from creating an RPG that will reach classic status, but there’s some issue like maybe corporate meddling preventing them.
A good story covers a multitude of sins in my book. The pointlessness of resources didn’t particularly bother me, for one thing. I just thought it was stupid to have like 8 magic stone makers and 8 arrow craftsmen and 10 cooks, etc. There should have been more variety in terms of jobs and backgrounds.
What I know of the Japanese reception of this game comes from reading reviews on Amazon.co.jp. The vast majority of the 1 and 2 stars reviews can be summarized as “Waah, it’s not Suikoden!” And it’s not, so they have a point. Even for a gaiden it’s veered very far from what makes Suikoden Suikoden, so the title is close to false advertising.
The 3 and 4 stars came from people who were able to look past that and review for the game on its own merits (I didn’t bother reading the 5 star reviews. There’s no way this is a 5 star game). Even for them the low difficulty, bad camera, weak characters, messy ending, etc etc. made things hard going, but they were almost unanimous in their assent that the story is really good.
So tl;dr, yes it’s a game you play for the plot, not for anything else at all. The Suikoden series has too much baggage, so Konami needs to shed that name, learn from the mistakes of this game and come out with something new using the same writers.
I guess ever since Visual Novels became slightly more popular (than they used to in the past anyway), I personally can’t see the point of slogging through dull gameplay just to get to supposed “good stories” that people tell me exists in games like Xenogears (which I didn’t think had a good story anyway). If I had to, I would rather just watch a Let’s Play to cut out those parts.
Which makes me wonder why I finished this game. I guess because it was short since I never collect all 108 jerks anymore.
Incidentally, for the record, outside of Amazon, I usually use PSPMK2 for getting Japanese impressions on stuff. They have some sister sites covering stuff like the DS/3DS and PS3 and PS2 but nothing older than that, I think. Here’s the specific link to this particular Suiko game but I’ll save you some time and say it’s basically the same stuff you already said.
http://pspmk2.net/title.php?title=1217
Thanks for the link. I check MK2 sometimes, but only when I don’t get my fill of reviews on Amazon.
I agree it’s not worth spending 30 hours on a game just for the 2 or 3 hours worth of good story, especially when the gameplay was so bad early on that I almost quit. How should I put it, it’s like, I’m happy because the story took a good turn, and that gives me a more charitable view of that game, but it doesn’t necessarily make the game itself good. But it does make it worth playing for anyone with lots of patience and an appreciation for good RPG stories rare as they are.
Maybe it’s my own fault because I don’t play visual novels, but it’s been a long time since a “shocking twist” actually shocked me and an even longer time since I actually sat up thinking about how my party was going to resolve their problems. The solution was unexpected as well. A little cheap, but quite refreshing. With a few tweaks (better battles, better maps, playable 108 characters, walkable base, stop time travel, change a few things about the story) this could have been a classic for the ages.
This game looks very interesting. I don’t speak Japanese and was wondering if you could email me the spoilers for the story so I can play it and understand. I would really appreciate your help. Thank you!
I wish you had asked earlier. I’ve forgotten so much already, but I guess I can shoot you a quick message with the key points of the story, such as I remember them. Check your inbox in a few minutes.
Sweet thank you!
Thank you soon much.i just found your blog today actually looking for info on this Game. I see a few other games that look really interesting on your blog too. I just finished legend of heroes SC and 3rd using story summaries and I’m having a blast so thank you for taking time to do this!
You’re welcome! Good luck with studying Japanese! It’s not easy, but if you love JRPGs it pays off in a major way!
I know I’m asking a lot but could you do that for Saigo no Yakusoku no Monogram and Entaku no Seito please? Those 3 should keep me busy for a looooong time. Thank you and you rock!
Entaku no Seito doesn’t have much of a story to speak of, but sure. I’ve also forgotten much of the story of Final Promise Story, but I’ll scribble down what I do remember.
Sweet you really do rock. I reeealy appreciate the help there’s not a lot of people who would do this so thank you!
You’re welcome. I’m not sure how much help a story summary will be, but as long as you’re enjoying yourself…
And I will keep studying Japanese. It is hard but I want to learn.