	Suikoden IV
	Developer: KCET Publisher: Konami Release Date: Out Now Players: 1	Words By:
Suikoden was one of my favourite games on the PSone but after the first game I kind of lost touch with the series. I was disappointed when S3 for PS2 was cancelled for Europe, but now the fourth in the series has arrived. You start the game with your character as a trainee Knight of Gaien, these guys aren’t your typical knights riding on horses though. The game is set in a world that consists of one huge sea with small islands. The knights of Gaien sail the seas in an effort to keep their home island of Razil safe. After your graduation things go horribly wrong when you intercept a ship and a powerful ‘rune’ (an item that gives you magic) transmits itself to the King of Razil and then to you. Unfortunately you’ve been exiled for the murder of the King and if that isn’t bad enough the northern isles of Kooluk are planning an invasion south. After the rather convoluted and frankly boring start to the game your adventure truly begins. In your quest to destroy the Kooluk forces you’ll battle across the sea not only in Final Fantasy-style turn-based action, but also in intriguing ship to ship naval combat. These naval encounters are like the army battles seen in Suikoden 1. You use a grid and take turns controlling your ships until you’re within Rune Cannon range. This type of combat has a system in which the different types of Rune Cannon shells can block or go right through each other; for example firing a water shell at an enemy using a fire shell will not only stop his incoming shell but will go past and hit the enemy as well. Each element has an opposite. You’d think it would be hard to guess which of the 5 elements they were using but you get a handy icon telling you which Runes they have equipped, then you must choose yours on that intelligence - this makes the naval combat pretty tactical. The main objective of the story is to sail the seas recruiting members for your army to take on Kooluk, like the previous games there are over 100 members to find which brings you to one of the problems with the game; sometimes you’ll get a cut scene that tells you what to do, then when it ends there’ll be no marker on the map and you have to guess what to do. Again, like the previous games, you’ll get a base that gets bigger with the more people you have. You can choose any of the recruited characters to join your party and fight alongside you. You can upgrade everyone’s weapons and buy hundreds of different types of armour, runes and random items. There certainly is a lot to do in Suikoden IV, treasure hunting, trading, making armour and of course the main quest. Graphically the game is okay, not as great as Final Fantasy looks, but it isn’t terrible, and quite nice in places. The many characters each have a different look, their facial animation looks okay and the characters are all smooth and well animated. Suikoden IV sounds reasonable, with nothing that grates too badly (unusual for a RPG). All the cut scenes are voice-acted and for once there are no really annoying voices, and none of them sound out of character. Music is the typical epic orchestral score. Overall Suikoden IV has so much to do and features a different kind of world worth exploring, but unfortunately it lacks excitement and the parts where I had to bumble around for ages and guess what to do were a real turn off.

Best Bits
- Loads to do.
- Over 100 heroes and villains
- Naval combat.
- HUGE world.

Worst Bits
- What do I have to do now?
- Lacks the exciting bits that some other RPGs manage to supply.


by: SteMacD