Suikoden Part #20 - The Fire Spear

Part 20: The Fire Spear

… Okay.

Leknaat: … Miles... wake up, Miles.

this isn't chrono trigger, fuck you Leknaat

Leknaat: Gremio's death, your battle with your father. But you must go on.

Leknaat: It is about time I tell you about myself and my older sister Windy. We are survivors of the Clan of the Gate. Miles, look at the rune Ted gave you on your right hand.

Leknaat: There are many Runes in the world, but they were all born from the 27 True Runes. Therefore the 27 True Runes hide terrible powers within them. The Soul Eater you carry has yet to unleash its true potential. My sister Windy also carries one of the 27 True Runes, the Gate Rune. The Gate Rune is terribly powerful, but she wants something greater. That is why she is after you. If my sister obtains two true Runes and uses them for revenge, it will be catastrophic for this world.

Leknaat: Time is running out. Do not lose your confidence. Be brave.

Look at you, all perky.

Flik: Fire Spears. Remember?

Viktor: Sure, we delivered the blueprint to Sarady.

Flik: If we can get those things, we should be able to defeat the armored cavalry. After all, they were Odessa's final gift.

Mathiu: But we have no choice but to find out.

Let's go take our boat north then.

While we were asleep, Gen and Kamandol made our boat futuristic and high-tech, capable of going really fast across water.

However, we can't take it for a test run without Tai Ho.

This is the first time in the entire game that we can decide our entire party, so I'm going to put in totally random dudes.

Here is our random as fuck party. We have Milich and Lotte for Rune usage, Sydonia and Kasumi for long range attacking, and unfortunately, Miles is in front. But that's not bad really.

As you can see, Milich is a very good mage.

Kasumi is one of the fastest characters in the game, and has the unique Shrike Rune, which allows her to do double damage to a foe without the cost of Unbalancing. Like the Falcon Rune, if you're not constantly abusing her Shrike Rune, you're using Kasumi wrong.

And Sydonia is just okay.

Milich also has the super-fruity Rose brooch as an equip we cannot strip from him. I think only he can equip this item, but I'm free to be proven wrong.

By the way, the plot loves to lock you into doing something, like test driving the boat, by making Viki forget her spell. This happens throughout the series.

Gen prefers a less-formal title for us.

LOOK AT THIS HIGH SPEED BOAT OF THE FUTURE

The point of this new boat is to go past the rapids up north to the city of Kirov, but I have people to get first.

Because he can call Antei by its original name now, he wants to join us so he can tell everyone that they are, indeed, at Odessa Castle. Think of Qlon as our personal child slave valet.

She assumes we're going to kidnap her for ransom or some shit, but that it's her fate to be kidnapped because she's so beautiful. She wants an Opal. I don't like farming for Opals.

Let's show off the Shrike Rune.

She can even pick up the final boss this way. It's not quite as cool as The Shrike of Hyperion, though.

If you were wondering, the Queen Ant's move on us in the beginning of the game was Voice of Earth. It's pretty damn strong.

Milich is such a gay.

not pictured: taking thirty minutes to get an Opal.

YES.

By the way, if you were wondering, Sydonia doesn't teleport when we use him as a character. He just throws Japanese knives. :|

Esmeralda is the most useless recruit in the whole game. She does nothing but drink tea in the garden on the top of the castle. She's the epitome of bourgeois uselessness.

Ivanov wants to show us the freedom that we see, by painting a mural for us in the castle. We'll check that out later.

We need Milich in the party to recruit Kasios, and that's all we need. Kasios is a bard who can play most songs in the game. It's a neat little feature.

Suikoden Tunes – Dancing Girl ~ Kirov

More people should say “S'up?” in RPGs. We're now in Kirov's inn, and there are people we can recruit in this town at the moment.

To put it simply, he's an idler. He has a game of Memory we can play. If we beat him, he joins.

Basically, match two cards and they disappear. Make all the cards flip before the time ends.

The game helps you in that cards around ones that have been flipped will then flip themselves over, and if they happen to find matches, the cards will disappear on their own. All you need to do is beat any match's record, so I usually go for 5 different matches (which means only 5 characters' portraits show up).

To get another character, we need to taste the stew in the two houses in Kirov. Then we head to the big house to the south.

To meet Lester, the other cook in the game. Him and Antonio have a Unite.

The final character we can get in Kirov at the moment is housewife Sarah. She's eternally doing laundry.

She LOVES doing laundry, but will only join us if we get soap. Thus begins a mini fetch quest.

scrub scrub scrub

First we must buy Sugar at the item shop. Note that it also sells Fire crystals AND Fortune crystals, if you want those.

However, you have to talk to all the NPCs to get this quest to work, because each of them wants an item you have to get from someone else. This guy will only talk about the sugar if we talked to the person who wants a yardstick, and then he gives us one.

This chick then gives us salt for our yardstick. What am I playing, Pathologic?

This guy gives us soy sauce for our salt.

And finally the guy next to the armor shop (which sells Dragon Armors, really great armor all the way up to the last hour of the game) gives us soap. He even jokes with us that he has another favor. Fuck him.

We give Sarah some soap and she tells us that she found she already had some. Goddammit.

To the north of Kirov is Kalekka, the sight of a truly terrible battle in the Suikoden series. You'll see people referencing this in this game and the next one.

In Kalekka, there are enemies that have Shrike Runes. They're assholes, because they can dodge really well.

There's also a Silverberg here. Interesting.

Leon: Be careful. In war, only the strong survive. That's all there is to it. Recruit as many soldiers as you can.

Leon here is one of the biggest dick move recruits in the game. His recruit window is the shortest in the entire game, and we'll get into that when we can actually recruit him.

Who would've thought demon dogs would roam an old battlefield?

This well-described crystal is needed for a character back in Kirov, but we'll get him later.

also that is indeed soap alright. “Bubbles arise”

Meet Blackman, who is most definitely not black. If you step on his plants, he won't join you. Luckily, Suikoden plants grow at the rate of load times, so you can leave the town and come back and they'll be okay again.