I first played Suikoden back in Ye Olden Dayes of video games, the original game on the original Playstation, and while I didn’t beat it back then (I had a terrible habit of starting games but rarely finishing them), it did kind of blow my mind a bit. Huge cast of characters, political intrigue out the wazoo, and a curse that follows people through the ages, forced upon one young man who finds himself in the rather unique position of being handed an entire anti-Imperial resistance movement. When you hear about a JRPG like that, what’s not to love?
But it wasn’t until the recent remasters that I finally sat down and played all the way through Suikoden, beating it and closing that chapter of my teenage years at long last.
And holy crap, what a journey!
Suikoden
Genre(s) – JRPG
Original release date – Dec 15, 1995 (remastered Mar 6, 2025)
Available on – PS1, PS Vita, PS4, PS5, Switch, PC, XBox One, XBox Series X/S
Played on – PS4
Loosely based on the Chinese classical novel, The Water Margin (which is a fascinating enough tale in its own right), Suikoden sets the stage for the 108 Stars of Destiny to do their thing and play their part, a theme which is continued in future Suikoden games. But within the frame of this single game, there is no established trend, no formula for the series to follow. The developers who worked on the original may have had no idea they were starting a long and complex saga of political corruption and rebellion that would captivate hundreds of thousands of players the world over.
YOU’LL HAVE TO GO THROUGH US FIRST
The protagonist of Suikoden is Tir McDohl, son of a great general in the Scarlet Moon Empire. But corruption seeps from the cracks of the empire, guided by mysterious forces close to the Emperor, and after it becomes too much to ignore, Tir takes up the cause of the Liberation Army, vowing to root out the corruption and restore peace to the land. Tragedy lands Tir with one of the True Runes, a sort of aspect of universal primordial powers, and one which someone within the Empire craves and will stop at nothing to acquire.
Which there’s much made of the 108 Stars of Destiny in this series, I always think it’s interesting that they’re not all characters who can be used in battle. Which is good, frankly, since with a party of 6 and occasional events with mandatory characters, the grind for enough money and equipment is quite real. While most of them are combat characters, though, some are support characters for your expanding base of operations. Some serve as shopkeepers, innkeepers, blacksmiths, etc. One does nothing but operate a bathhouse. Another is a painter, who can paint a mural for you. Each and every one of them is important, they add something to the story and to the conflict, even if they’re not someone you can use to bolster the strength of your fighting party.
They’re called the Stars of Destiny for a reason. Not everyone’s destiny is martial. Sometimes one’s destiny is to provide important support for others. Doing what you can do so that others do what they can do. It might not be a glamourous thought in the world of video games, where so much is addressed with conflict in one form or another, but it’s remarkably true to life. The thing about the Stars of Destiny is that their very existence is important, they serve a purpose, and that’s not to be trifled with even. I’ve always found that aspect of Suikoden rather gratifying. The fighters would have accomplished less had it not been for a castle full of non-combatants.
Hell, some of the Stars of Destiny are pretty crappy people! Being a big part of important events doesn’t mean you’re a good person. Some of them start as enemies and become recruitable after certain events. Some of them help you but are people you’d rather not associate with if you had any other choice. I hesitate to make this about morality, but I do think it invites some introspection on what matters more to a person when push comes to shove, what about your personal code of honour you’re willing to put aside to further your goals.
Or maybe I’m reading too much into it. Who knows?
THE GRAPHICS ARE FINE; FIGHT ME
Plenty of reviews for the remastered games comment on the graphical quality, how inconsistent the remastering was when it came to style cohesion, and frankly… yeah, but I don’t care. Does it look a little odd to see pixel sprites on a much more detailed background? Yes. Does that affect a single moment of how much I enjoyed the game? No. Not even close.
To a degree, I can understand. You’d think if they’re going to take the time to overhaul one thing, they’d overhaul other things to a similar degree. Make it all cohesive and smooth and like everything belongs where it is. Our imaginations filled in a lot of things while playing the original, because all we had was a 32-bit system and a tube TV, and the original had all that graphical fidelity because what other choice did it have. It was pixels or nothing? But now we have 4K TVs and systems that cater to them, so in some ways, there’s no excuse to not do a little better.
But at the same time, for me, it really didn’t matter. The game was still great. The graphics looked exactly as my imagination once told me they did. Nothing brought me out of my immersion or made me grimace with how out of place it looked or anything of the sort. The graphics were fine. That they possibly could have been better shouldn’t always be a mark against something.
PERFECT? NOT BY A LONG SHOT
Graphical debate aside, Suikoden isn’t a perfect game without flaws. (What game is, though?) The flaws that were there in the original are still present in the remasters, which I guess makes it a faithful remastering, so there’s that. But as I mentioned earlier, with a party of 6 to fully equip, you’ll find yourself often needing to take breaks from the story to grind for a while. Not always to gain levels — the pacing is pretty good that way, at least — but for money. Which is good, because experience is scaled based on a character’s level, so grinding in one area will quickly reach the point of diminishing returns.
But equipment? Now that’s a beast! A character can have up to 5 pieces of equipment, and for a full party of 6, that’s max 30 items you need to buy the best versions of, especially if you’re forced to use a character you otherwise wouldn’t and their standard equipment won’t do a damn thing to help keep them alive.
But then there’s weapon upgrading, which is done at blacksmiths, and that also gets expensive quickly, especially if you want your weapon as strong as it can be at any given moment. I don’t mind a good level-grinding session (gives me time to listen to a podcast or audiobook), but there Suikoden crosses the line into excess.
Is this a problem that could have been fixed with some tweaks to the mechanics, maybe make money a little easier to come by, reduce the cost of weapon upgrades? Sure, but at that point, we reach the issue of how faithful a remaster should be to the original. And that debate could rage for ages!
The real joy of Suikoden is its story, though. Fighting a corrupt empire, trying to avenge those you’ve lost, trying to make peace with those you can’t save, it’s all here. It’s full of political intrigue, a bit lacking in mystery but still full of tension, and every new event, every story beat, made me want to push forward to see how it would all unfold. It’s not without its moments of filler, but at least a lot of them can be hand-waved as needing to find more allies for your cause (even if in a very practical and gameplay-centric way, you don’t always make use of those allies).
Of course, it’s not just the story that this game deserves praise for. I mentioned the fun base-building aspect that encourages you to track down more recruitable characters to gain more unique functions, but the battles themselves are something that can really keep you on your toes. Not the standard turn-based battles that are the genre’s bread and butter, mind you. The special battles.
You see, Suikoden at times deviates from the standard and goes for a one-on-one dual between two characters, making them fight in a rock-paper-scissors affair that can and will lead to characters permanently dying if you mess up. Same thing with the army battles, which use a similar rock-paper-scissors approach, trying to defeat the opposing army’s forces before your own dwindle too far. And yes, characters can permanently die here too. If you’re anything like me, those battles will just lead you to save-scumming to avoid losing anyone, but even so, they can be tense encounters that switch things up from the bog-standard “hit the boss until it dies” tactic.
Suikoden really has a lot going for it, even now in a world where turn-based JRPGs are more plentiful than they were back when this game first released. If political stories, stories of rebellion and justice, appeal to you, then you could do far worse than play Suikoden. If you like those stories filled with magic and speculation about the nature of the very universe and its role in the lives of us mere mortals, then there’s plenty of that here too, though admittedly some of that info has to be deliberately sought out. A lot of that gets expanded upon in future games, so I wouldn’t necessarily come to this initial entry for deep philosophy.
I will forever be a fan of this series. It’s got some amazing stories set in its world, some thought-provoking cosmology, and a lot that makes me feel hopeful. The battles are brutal, and we may lose some of our best along the way, but we’re always striving for a better world, for a place without corruption. Our hearts may get broken a time or two, but we see the journey through.
Flaws aside, Suikoden is a phenomenal experience that I’m glad more people get to have with the remasters, and it’s a title all JRPG fans should at least play once. It’s considered a classic for a reason.
Quadnines 
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