Suikoden is a game in which a seemingly normal young man gets caught up in a empire-spanning quest to get to the root of the corruption in the empire, and amasses an army of allies in the process.

The game is caught up in a strange limbo where the game itself is on the Playstation but the compact and at times vigourless storytelling is from the earlier eras. Important story moments that would deserve more savouring are sometimes shrugged off with just a few lines of dialogue. Sometimes this leads to unintentionally comedic scenes where a character sacrifices themself in a dramatic fashion to the tune of emotional music, and then a few seconds later the music cuts off and the other characters effectively go "Okay, gg guys! Let's go home and eat lunch." On the other hand, sometimes the game goes out of its way to give emphasis to scenes with animations that are only ever seen once throughout the course of the game.

Ultimately, though, the game balances this out with the brisk pace of the story and its interesting concepts, delightfully expectation-subverting character-driven moments and their hijinks. These just about elevate the game to be more than a companion game to the greater Suikoden 2.