They found out how to make an escort mission tense and emotionally satisfying. People who say this game doesn't control well don't know what they're talking about. I got stuck and frustrated perhaps twice with how much I was hitting my weapon into the walls. The spiked club is good to know to go for, but other than that it is straightforward and perhaps to short if anything. This and Colossus are of course the graphical powerhouses of what the ps2 can do. This baffles me how it was made in 2001..

Gotten to around chapter 8 and I'm gonna be putting it down for a while, but wanted to get my thoughts down. There is so much content in this game it's crazy, between the customizable weapons and alternate costumes for all of your party members. While some of the teammates come off as somewhat annoying, they are all distinct and have reason for being on the journey. The amount of exploration, space pirate aesthetic, and things to do in this game including insect chess tournaments, this is the fun expansive JRPG experience that Level 5 is best at, and would do even more broadly with the Ni No Kuni games. While a big complaint is the repetitiveness of the dungeons and the amount of power grinding the game asks you to do to complete the "hunter ranking", it didn't affect the simple fun I had with the game. I look forward to completing the story although I likely won't go completionist for this, but I may always return to it for brief periods of colorful fun and pretty much everything I could have wanted that Final Fantasy 12 didn't deliver on at the time.

The credits say "based on Star Ocean" I'm wondering what is meant by that because I cannot find info on a pre-existing book or manga. The graphics and voice ending are some of the most impressive on the Super Nintendo. The action is also fast and fun, until Ratix gets the good weapons and you start mashing A for the rest of the game. Any real strategy after that comes from power leveling your support team so that they wipe out enemies quicker and gain spells to buff you. Unfortunately the pacing of the story ramps up near the end, and it is a little disappointing that throughout the journey in a game that's supposed to feel like "Star Trek" you really only end up visiting like 1.5 planets. Might have been better in its day but I am looking forward to playing The Second Story sometime.

Feels good to have finally finished this after wanting to play it for years. I remember back when I was in middle school trying to emulate this right when gba cartridges became harder to find and I had no credit card to order one for myself off of eBay, that because of the graphical limits pushed it was impossibly buggy and laggy, so it was really good to be able to play this on original hardware. The game also has one of the strongest and most gripping openings to a handheld RPG. Unfortunately, the scale and stakes of the game feel cut short as the rest of the game is made of brief visits to towns that rarely get returned to, and the 4 playable characters themselves mostly fall flat. The protagonist you play as is blank even more a blank slate, and besides the tragedy that he and Garet experienced in the village, background and development doesn't really exist. The game also ends on what by all means feels like a midpoint in every other jrpg. They literally tease you with a vessel that you think would open up the world to more exploration and perhaps revisiting the other towns, but I guess I'll just have to play the Lost Age someday. I can't imagine being a fan and just having to wait until that game came out and paying full price for what all means is a 2nd part to an unfinished story. Still, as a kid I can see that I would've gotten lost in the graphics, world, and combat of this game which still holds up as tremendously fun.

There are a lot of aspects about this game I truly think are great. How can playing an excited Jack Black not bring you joy? The cameos are fun, and the presentation/designs are creative even when they range from badass to ugly-as-hell. Putting this down because some of the missions(the side as well as the main story) became too repetitive/annoying for me to handle much more. Once Jack Black kisses the girl is there really any motivation to continue the plot? He's happy and in metalland, I can leave it at that and have my emotional catharsis. So I'm putting this down and uninstalling from my steam after about 5 hours of playing it through. Probably won't pick this up again other than to drive around in my absolute boredom, but I'll probably turn to any other open-world for that first.

This game is full-throttle badassery. A colorful and memorable cast of characters that shine through the designs of Yoshitaka Amano engage in a simple and effective plot of mechs, war, deep state organizations, and world travel. The environments and designs here are the top fucking tier of Squaresoft in the 90s. The controls are like butter, the best mech game of its time and one of the best still. I went through playing with the shotgun upgrades and it just felt like playing Megaman X with the spread gun from Contra. Nab this fan translation and get playing!!

I really wish they had continued this Front Mission spin-off series in the action genre, even continuing this story with that sequel-hinting post-credits scene.

Solid JRPG experience with some emotional highs, but not THE gReAtEsT RPG on the Playstation. I played around 35 hours to do all that I needed to do to get the best ending, recruit 180 Stars, etc. I'm glad I got a filled out file from the first Suikoden to do this, as the rewards and cameo as well as the depth of the returning main cast made for a really satisfying experience here that wouldn't have been as strong otherwise. It really is the returning characters as well as the main trio who drive this experience to stand on it's own. With that said, I encountered a lot of bugs and freezes, partly because I played this on OG hardware but pirated through POPS which is buggy as hell on its own, but I've heard of others encountering this too now matter how they play. Just some audio stuff and setbacks that happened a few time. The one thing I won't forgive though is to have a "timed-out" sidequest such as the Clive thing when the whole selling point of this game is so expansive and broad. So while I didn't do that minor sidequest I completed the whole thing at my own pace and had fun with it. The war combat was cool to be in a more strat RPG style but it was still noticably shallow overall with how much of what happens relies on plot, making your input feel somewhat pointless.

Still, HOW expansive this game is does manage to impress to this day. Although many of the "108 Stars of Destiny" characters don't develop outside of their recruitment quests and become somwhat of collectable items, it is interesting to touch upon each of them as well as the NPCs inhabiting both your castle and the towns as the plot progresses and the world changes around them. If I was younger and had the time I could easily see myself wandering around for at least 10 more hours doing nothing but exploring and talking to the locals, tracking how they move along with the world. And yes, the main points of the story that involve the twists and friendship fallout do make this game's story stand out from other traditional JRPG fare. For me, I'd put it up with Chrono Trigger for pushing the envelope in terms of what this sort of presentation and storytelling medium could do at the time, even if it doesn't particularly hit me with the full effect now.

I also don't think I'll ever get around to "complete" another Suikoden with it's many many characters and tales of war across the 5 entries, but I do plan to mess around on the ps2 entries a bit if I ever happen to cross their paths.