This was actually the first "traditional" style RPG I ever played, and it was also one of the first to appear on Playstation. The game has its good points and its flaws, but the good definitely weighs over.

The hero (who doesn't have a name of his own, you have to give him one) is the son of Teo McDohl, one of the emperor's five generals. He enjoys a care-free life in the imperial capital Gregminster, together with his attendant Gremio, his father's servants Cleo and Pahn, and his best friend Ted. One day, his father gets sent off to the border on a mission. At the same time, the hero begins to work for the emperor, and together with his friends he sees the world while following the emperor's orders. He learns that the emperor isn't such a nice ruler as he thought. Not giving too much away (since it's told in the manual), I can tell you that you will end up building an army to defeat the emperor.

One of Suikoden's greatest features lies in the HQ-system. During your quest, you will meet and recruit up to 108 characters (must be some kind of record). Some of these have special functions in your castle. For example, Chandler opens up a general store and Window will let you change the way the menu-windows look. Finding and recruiting all these characters is the real challenge of the game. The game itself is just about 15 hours, but I played through it several times before I managed to track down every single character, and the feeling of joy was very high.

The battle-system offers little new. The battles are viewed from an angle, kind of like the Breath of Fire-games. You can have six characters in your party at once, and the battles are turn-based. I know what you're thinking: "Six characters? That would take an eternity to fight with!" Actually, no, because unlike every other RPG, your characters don't just sit around and wait for their turn to attack. If two of your characters have targeted different enemies, they will attack at the same time. There is also a Free Will command, which lets all your characters choose a target at random and attack, which makes battles flow very well.

But that's not all! There are actually two more kinds of battle. The second is the major battles, where the Liberation Army (that's you) and the Imperial Army fight it out. This is a nice break from the traditional way of fighting, but is a bit too simplistic. It's basically rock-paper-scissors, but with the ability to cheat because if you use a ninja, you will automatically find out the enemy's next move. The third kind of battle is the duel. This only happens three times in the game and it is in fact rock-paper-scissors as well, but during the turns your opponents will say something, and you will have to guess his next move. For example, he might say "Ouch! I have to be more careful..." which probably means he's going to defend. These duels are very fun, IMHO.

The graphics are not very good. The sprites are poorly animated, and the overworld map is very ugly. The dungeons are also fairly general, often just caves or castles. The magic effects are also below-average graphic-wise, but they are all very quick, which makes them less tedious than the summons of FF7 and FF8. The worst part of the graphics would have to be when the game zooms in for a critical hit. The sprites get extremely pixilated. In fact, I don't think I can say anything positive about the graphics at all.

The music, however, is a totally different story. The tunes played during the adventure are all above average. The battle-theme never gets irritating, and the music played during important events strengthens the emotions the game sends out. The sound effects are nothing special though. Not overly good, not overly bad.

The story is quite nicely played out, at least for the first half of the game. Following the hero while he's becoming the general of the Liberation Army is very enjoyable, but after awhile it becomes nothing more than quest -> sub-quest -> sub-quest. Overall, it's a nice story, with good dialog.

Suikoden is one of those games that's better than its individual parts. The greatest aspect is undoubtedly the recruiting of the 108 characters. This aspect alone makes the game great. This is an extremely fun RPG to play, and it is ideal for those who has never played an RPG before.