I wanted to write something about this game without comparing it to Suikoden because I think it is a great game that can stand up on its own. However, it begs for the comparison at every turn. I don't think that's a bad thing for series fans who have favorite story ideas from Suikoden being given a second chance to have a complete narrative again. And series newcomers can share in that same joy fresh from the beginning. Because when it comes down to it, Suikoden was a series about the world being the main character and each character and each story was a smaller piece of the whole. My hope is to see Eiyuden be able to find the same momentum and become a new loved series.

The story in Eiyuden 1 (as I wishfully am going to think of it as) is basically Costco Luca Blight wants to weaponize Suikoden Materia so that anyone can use it as a means for greater conquest. Which it already seems like everyone has an innate ability to use rune-lens. If a kid who loves beyblades and a little girl who fights with herbs have been picked by runes, then it doesn't feel that unique and hard to find people who can use them already. It all feels like a clumsy way to re-use True Rune/Star of Destiny lore and explain why your companions are special enough to recruit. The story is definitely the weakest part of this game, but does manage some good beats. I think it shows Eiyuden is maybe similar to Suikoden 1, where it was a proof of concept game and a game used to build up the game systems/mechanics for the bigger vision. I will add, that while there are a lot of similarities of Suikoden and Eiyuden but I am bummed that the mysterious nature of the True Runes and making their holders immortal has seemingly not made the jump into Eiyuden. Tir's struggle with his neverending youth is a powerful gut-punch in Suikoden 2 and I don't think they ever got to explore it more in depth other than Ted's appearance in Suikoden 4. I think it's a good comparison to Suikoden 1 narratively because while there's serious things that happen, they ultimately don't have weight behind them or bear much reflection from the characters. Cities get attacked but you can still walk around them as if nothing happened. Nowa's hometown is burned down, but they rebuild it instantly. It's a war with no scars. I think it is designed this way so that nothing is really missable (a pain point in several Suikoden games), but the game design undercuts the narrative if there are no consequences.

On the other hand, I think this has one of the best art designed cast of characters. Though a lot of the main cast are a rehash of characters. The trio of main characters echo the 3 from Suikoden 3. Seign and Nowa have their own riff on Jowy and Riou. Lian is hyper Nanami. Carrie is a more perfectionist and clear-headed version of Viki (I think I enjoy Carrie more though!). Melridge is a Mathiu Silverberg without the prestigious family lineage. The list could really go on! But they went some fun places with the side characters' designs and I think some of the backstories hinted at in the game lore are hopefully exciting things to come. I would love to visit Grimforge or the Fox Village, the University of Carles or the Eastern Reach in a future game. I am excited to see who they would bring forward from this game. One of the best mini-stories of Suikoden 1 - 3 is watching Futch getting older and I think it is stories like that which is the true magic of the series. The characters feel like real people in these games.

The level of work with the localization has been wild. Every line is fully voice acted and it's mostly very good! And that includes the theater mini game for every single character and even side characters that in Suikoden games would just stand there awkwardly in important scenes now have dialog that will pop in randomly. This caught me off guard every single time and is nothing short of magic. It is one of those special touches that will make using other characters on replays feel unique. Having Gigina (someone recruited in the beginning) jump in to say that Foxiel (someone recruited towards the end) is weird during that recruitment event is something they didn't have to do, but makes all of the characters feel more active in the story and world events than just background furniture after their own story has concluded.

The combat feels good! I think there's some balancing needed maybe going forward. Physical attack feels too powerful, Combo Attacks feel too weak for their requirements, Magic feels too limited in the early game. I think people new to the series are a little thrown by how easy the combat is; another carryover from Suikoden. The complexity of combat comes from boss battles and maybe there could be tweaks in there, but it's also nice to have an easier RPG that's a fun world to exist in. Not everything has to be a challenge. It's a difficult balance but probably one that would be less noticeable with a more engaging story. I absolutely love the new SP system for skill runes. Takes a little bit of Bravely Default and applies it to things like Suikoden's Falcon Rune. I wish the mechanics of it were better explained in the beginning but it soon made sense. The addition to including the action command order is such a great improvement and helps the strategy element of harder boss battles. Another great improvement I loved experimenting with was that "defense" was often a different move for various units. If the character was a mage, they might have Dodge or Return Magic. If they have a shield, they might have Cover Row & Counter. This is something I would love to see other RPGs pick up on!

The castle upgrading becoming a more active mechanic is great, but does need to be tweaked going forward. Would have been better to just have it be a list of upgrades like Hades' construction spirit than a zoomed in jumbled tree. And I was a bit frustrated at times when progress was locked behind a recruitment requirement that was a bit confusing. My issues with it aside, it really felt more like I as the player was more involved in creating the castle rather than just returning once a recruitment milestone was hit and seeing that there were some changes.

The mini games in this game are neat but they definitely overstay their welcome at times. It would be nice if they had less or no "mash A" to win games. My poor thumb hurts so much after grinding out two last recruits. The cooking mini game from Suikoden 2 is back and is like three times longer than it needs to be for getting a recruit. I think part of this length is due to being a Kickstarter reward. The Beyblade game feels like it could be better explained of what makes a good top and how to win. I just waited until I had end-game tops and then just trial and errored my way through Reid's recruitment quest. Eggfoot Racing is neat in theory but I frankly find them awful to look at. Fishing is very bare bones and I don't really get the inclusion here. Would be fun to see if it was more fleshed out. The card game seems good, at least on par with other Suikoden mini games, but is a Marvel Snap or card games like that. Also new in this game is the Proving Ground, a boss rush semi-roguelike (that also introduces a very fascinating and mysterious character). My favorite is the theater, which makes its return from Suikoden 3. It's great to play around with and make intentionally bad plays. It's also really good because it is fully voice acted, so it adds in a great depth and warmth.

Eiyuden Chronicle is not a perfect game, I think there is a lot of valid criticisms of the game. But when I first booted up the game, it was a rush of emotions that after 16 years, there was a new "Suikoden" game. This series means a lot to me and I think the series does tons of great work with world building and making memorable games and characters. Eiyuden feels in a lot of ways like a classic PS1 RPG with quality of life improvements. I hope this team is able to further tweak the improvements in any future games, but for right now, they made a really special game.

I'm 10. I stand in video game section of Family Video. I get mesmerized by the sprites on the back of the box. I rent this game. I rent it again. And again. I never beat it but I fall in love. I end up with the gameboy version and play it endlessly.

I'm 22. I drive an hour and a half to used game shop. Going to mostly browse, but I secretly hope I find this game there. I don't.

I'm 37. Nintendo adds it to the Nintendo Switch Online catalog and I finally beat it. The sprite mesmerize me the same as they did when I was a kid. The OLED screen of the Switch feels perfect for these happy and colorful sprites.

The game itself is repetitive and lacks the depth that future farming sims will create in the wake of this game. But this game not only inspired a brand new genre and slow life games as a whole, but really has charmed me into what is going to be a lifetime appreciation of the beauty of its sprite work and the relaxing, calming simple gameplay loop.

The Saboteur is one of those games that blew me away when I played it back when it first released. It would take almost a decade for a game to come around that I think understood the open world genre better than this game (and more broadly, the way that Pandemic Studios understood it). Thankfully due to the recent re-release on Steam, I was able to revisit this gem.

I think firstly, I need to talk about if it has held up, as often is the question when revisiting nostalgia. Yes, with an asterisk the size of a boulder. The story is bare bones and frankly not great. The character motivation of revenge is a tried and true plot device and it is mostly the only thing that works here. I think Sean being a mechanic and racecar driver is great stuff, but there's no in game explanation why he is so good with explosives. Other than he is Irish I guess and oh god, did they only make him Irish because of the IRA? The other characters are all forgettable. The game is clunky at times from a gameplay perspective. Sean will often be confused about climbing over a wall and not just immediately grabbing the other side, or grabbing at all when you need him to, like trying to grab a wire. It's definitely a game made in the aughts with all of the bad movement and awful game and narrative design that statement entails.

So, why do I think it still holds up? This game oozes style. The noir black and white visuals with splashes of reds, yellows, or blues with full color in liberated areas is such a cool motif and still works so damn well to tell a story while also just being visually interesting. I think, though, while the story here is not great, Pandemic Studios' games only really use a vague story as a driver to make really interesting open world games. I think they really understood the genre and it wasn't until Breath of the Wild did another game really nail it in a way it felt The Saboteur did. The climbing in this game felt unreal in 2009 in comparison to its contemporaries. Lots of games were trying to figure out this freedom of movement and I think Pandemic Studios should be applauded for doing the best attempt at it. The market shifted on open world and freedom of movement took a big back seat until BOTW's climb anything, paraglide everywhere made the case with a massive exclamation point (though maybe telling that the only game since BOTW that understood this was Tears of the Kingdom). Now, I will take the rose-tinted glasses down a bit and say that the climbing has aged here. I think this argument probably seems silly if you first played this game now at least. It is a good reminder that this is a 15 year old game and give it a little grace. The open world design here is a map without a whole lot of different markers, which runs counter to the direction of Ubisoft open world games and heralds the noiseless maps of BOTW or Elden Ring. The free play elements of The Saboteur feed into the main game in a brilliant way. You can go in and clear out sniper towers and tanks and it'll make missions in those areas easier. And the free play stuff is definitely a good 'turn off your brain and listen to a podcast' gameplay loop. It can get repetitive and lacks variety after a while however. Fun to do in small doses when the mood strikes or when you know a mission is going to be in the area. These freeplay targets are also not critical to complete, they help to earn funds to buy upgrades or just as a fun distraction.

I think the last point I want to make on 'yes this holds up' is that the shooting and blowing things up is still just fun! Tossing a grenade from a roof down to a group of nazis and watching them ragdoll away is hilarious. I think shooting in third person games is such a tricky thing to nail. Rockstar only started to get it right after acquiring Team Bondi and how good it felt in LA Noire has then followed with GTA V and Red Dead 2 having some of the best feeling shooting in gaming. Pandemic was great at this with far less resources than Rockstar. It would have been interesting to see how they could have improved their systems into the Mercenaries game they were working on.

But I think the bigger picture includes a discussion of Pandemic Studios as a whole and the death of the AA game space. The last three series they made games for (Mercenaries, Destroy All Humans, The Saboteur) show that they understood making an open world fun and doing interesting things in the space. Their games are clunky and the stories are forgettable, but they are fun. They are games that have stuck with me for being fascinating and introducing mechanics that not many developers were going for. I think we started to lose these mid-tier games around this time as the industry chased bigger budget games and every game jockeys to be a blockbuster. Unfortunately, we are seeing the cost of these decisions now, with wide spread layoffs even if a game does well because it was not enough. News of more and more layoffs at game studios weighs on me and breaks my heart with each one. Now more than ever, we need more games like The Saboteur. We need more developers to be able to take risks with style and mechanics. And most importantly, these corporations don't punish these developers with layoffs or studio closures. I would love to see more games like The Saboteur and more studios like Pandemic be able to thrive instead of suffering the same fate that Pandemic ultimately did and like so many other studios did and continue to do.