Introduction

Many long years ago,

Konami used to have this logo. And now their logo looks like it belongs on a tin of dog food.

well i suppose that depends on your definition of fate

but it would probably be a good idea for fast food corporations to adopt "fate" as a buzzword for "genetics" so they can tell fat people that morbid obesity is their destiny to stop getting sued by fatties with uncontrollable appetites

Today, we are playing a game

that is so, so rabidly 1995.

A game full of magic,

heroes,

glory,

and the odd piece of sage wisdom.

Aloha kakou, hi everybody and welcome to a joint presentation of the Suikoden series brought to you by me, Azure Horizon, and one more fella who has yet to be set in stone.

Suikoden is about as old-school as 32-bit gen games get. The first game having been released in 1995 (1996 in the US), it was simple, stunning, and if you paid attention, full of weird "suspension of disbelief"-type scripting flaws.

It is the first in a long line of games, from your standard chronological Suikoden games to your spinoffs like the Suikogaidens--visual novels about the adventures of the characters between the events of Suikoden 2 and 3--and Suikoden Card Stories, to a strategy RPG half-sequel, to a disgraceful and hideous thing released on the Nintendo DS.

Suikoden has all kinds of weird lore shit written about it in Japan, such as hundred-year-old characters being born 100 years after the events of Suikoden 3. We do not care about that. What you see is what you get.

As the thread title implies, this is the Suikoden Ultrathread. If it has a number, and if it was released in the US, it will be getting played. Most of the series will be brought to you by Azure Horizon and myself; Suikoden 4 and Tactics will probably be done on the side by some other folks (tentatively, vilkacis). If you want to see the Suikogaidens, you'll have to go to some site with the transcripts. If you want to see Suikoden Tierkreis for the DS, be my guest and waste thirty-odd bucks on it.

Suikoden's main writer left halfway through the production of the third game. That is why the fourth and fifth games in the series, try as they might to emulate the first two and a half, feel... how do I put this, have you ever bought a knockoff Chinese product, or went from Harvest Moon 64's vibrant and cutesy characters to the shady, rapey-looking cast in the subsequent games? They feel kinda like that. Yes, slapdash and like they want to violate you. Precisely.

Still, it was originally based on--and we all know what that means--the ancient Chinese novel, The Water Margin. That is why the game features 108 recruitable Stars of Destiny, and why it's such a prominent and important number. Apparently it's not just in The Water Margin, but also a number that recurs in Buddhist lore as well.

So without further ado, I present to you all

Suikoden 1 takes place at the start of Suikoden 1. It is about the Liberation Army fucking up the Empire.

Let me suggest you turn down your monitor's color saturation at this time. Even CRTs used to be able to do that. First time I ever played Suikoden, it was on a TV long overdue for being on its way out, and if you had the color turned up very much at all, they bled like hell. And now, I can't imagine playing Suikoden 1 but in a highly desaturated environment that only barely hints at colors.

Our hero is the son of a great imperial general. Born with a silver spoon in his mouth, his age is ambiguous in western texts, but I've always kind of seen him as a goony sort of guy who's still getting pampered by his manservant even though he's in his 20s. It is here that our story begins...

Standard History by Azure_Horizon