Story - It was solid overall but suffered from a few design choices to make recruits/chests/enemies etc unmissable, which I think the recruits should just be moved around if a location needs to be locked off and they don’t want them to be missable. Without going into detail/spoiling anything, there are a few locations at times (like all Suikodens) that should be locked off for story impact but aren’t, and that hurts the writing for me at the time. But on the plus side, you can go back and get stuff you missed at any point. If you can pretend that story-wise you aren’t supposed to be there, it works, but it’s weird otherwise.

Other than that, the story overall is decent but I wouldn’t rate it above Suiko 2/3/5. It works out and has some neat twists but just works out being decent for me.

Music – It’s serviceable, some pieces are really good (all versions of Flags of the Brave), and a few later themes which I don’t know the names of yet, but overall, it’s okay.

Gameplay – Most of my gripes go here. Combos are one of the worst aspects of this game, and it’s sad considering it’s one of my favorite things in the Suikoden games. In Suiko you can activate them on turn 1. In this game you have to have the required SP(party starts randomly with SP, normally you need to wait a turn or two before using a combo, already making them not too great imo, most mobs die by then) to activate them, AND their power is divided by the amount of characters taking part in them. Most of the time the combos are weaker than if you just used regular attacks. I really hope R&B rebalance these and do away with the dividing part of the calculations, cus it really butchers them. I can deal with SP being required, but it’s overkill with the dividing mechanic.

Minigames – As a whole, I enjoyed the minigames and thought they were pretty fun, some super silly scenes during Beigoma. My biggest issue would be locking recruits behind nearly finishing the minigames. I personally didn’t mind since I aimed for it already, but that’s going to rub people the wrong way on getting the best ending. Especially the cooking game being bugged still, and only accepting appetizers as options for 17 battles before you get your recruit is asking a lot lol.

War Battles – At first glance it feels new, but the more I played with them, the more I realized it was a watered-down version of Suikoden 2’s war battles. The map was worse vs what we had seen in 2, battle skills worked similarly, as did a bit of the rng factor? – though you could buff war units eventually in the HQ to make it in your favor. They work for the story so I wouldn’t mind them overall, just wish they had a speed up option as it suffered in comparison. I personally would rank these below all of the Suikoden war battles, serviceable but need improvement.

Graphics / Presentation – Overall this is the games strongest suit for me. 2D sprites on 3D backgrounds, with some excellent battle scenes playing out quite often absolutely nailed it, and I feel it completely passed Suikoden in all regards here. The duels are handled the best that I’ve seen so far, their presentation blew my expectations, and I cant wait to see what the sequel does here.

As a whole, very solid game and definitely worth your time. I hope to see the remaining bugs fixed shortly, and really hope they patch combo mechanics because as is it’s depressingly bad.