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Having played each of the Suikoden games up to Suikoden IV, I was ecstatic when I was given the chance to finally play Suikoden IV. Unfortunately my belief that Suikoden IV would build on what Suikoden III did for the series was horribly incorrect. When all is said and done, I enjoyed replaying previous installments of Suikoden quite a bit more than playing Suikoden IV the first time through.

The Suikoden game world is both simple and complex. The entirety of the game is played in an archipelago populated by Humans, Elves, and Kobolds (a race of humanoid cats). The main character, who you get to name at the beginning of the game, is a member of an elite knight training school on one of the islands in this archipelago. Through a series of unfortunate events, your character is blessed and cursed with a rune (magical tattoo) of great power. The story revolves around your learning about the rune and building a small army of The 108 Stars of Destiny. Overall, the story writers wrote a beautiful and intricate political and personal plot supported and interlaced with side quest plots. Several of the characters have such vivid personalities I wish for a continuance of the storyline in another game or a book explaining in greater detail the backstory.

The Suikoden IV game world is expansive. Unfortunately, since the game map is largely water, this means that quite a large portion of the game time is eaten up sailing from one place to another until the acquisition of a teleporting character named Viki (who has made appearances in previous installments in the series). Water travel, for the first few hours, is a delight. The wake of the ship, motions of the waves, and the ripple sequences initiating battles on water all hold their appeal for a reasonable length of time. Land-based maps are fairly small and lack the graphic detail I expect from modern RPGs. Fortunately the characters and creatures are all well-drawn and fluid considering the “back to basics” format of the battles.

The characters in Suikoden IV are all fully voiced except for the main character. Not having a voiced protagonist is a surprising disappointment for a game with this much potential. Ambient sound effects are adequate for the task. The musical score is beautiful and inspiring with the same drawbacks which most RPGs have; variance within an area. Too often I would enter an area I spent a long time exploring just to mute the television to avoid hearing the same music repeated constantly.

The battle system has gone back to the basics of turn-based, lined combat with fewer combatants than ever seen in previous Suikoden titles, four. Not much strategy or complexity is evident in either the normal combats, the naval combats (eight variety paper, rock, scissors), or the duels (three variety paper, rock, scissors). Normally, combat was repetitious and tiresome except for the few boss battles scattered regularly. Combat, since it occurs just as frequently on the water as it does on land, is another reason why having such a large, water-based map was problematic. While it may only take a few minutes to sail from one port to another directly, every fifteen seconds a battle sequence is initiated which increases the time spent between ports by up to several minutes each (depending on monster difficulty and character level).

Overall, Suikoden IV didn't live up to my expectations, but was still worth purchasing and playing. The breathtaking storyline and wonderful character voicing would have been wonderful cornerstones to an outstanding game had several steps not been taken back to games made ten years previous. While violent, I feel Suikoden IV is suitable for most children with the patience and intellect to play RPGs such as the early Final Fantasy games.