Is fate unchangeable? Let's play Suikoden!

As soon as Ledon identifies us as the guy who was hanging out with Odessa at his inn, Ronnie Bell runs off to inform her boss that we've arrived.


Of course this frees Ledon and Kessler up to drop sob stories on us, practically begging to be let into the Liberation Army. Interestingly enough, you'll recall the first time we rean into these guys were when we were delivering the Fire Spear blueprints to Sarady. Perhaps even more interestingly, the only reason ○✗∆□☆ didn't burn down his in after "being served a tea" is because the PlayStation controller didn't have a button for it.

069/108: Ledon
Ledon is all but pointless at this stage in the game; he can't be assigned to the party, and his role in major combat (that of a third Thief) is pretty insubstantial considering we're about to get our second Ninja. Maybe we can put him to work brewing tea...

070/108: Kessler
Kessler, on the other hand, can be assigned to the party. He joins Varkas and Sydonia in the "Bandits" Charge unit, and my gut says he's probably similar to Varkas in battle... not that I know much about what Varkas is like.

Inside the Secret Factory we meet up with the infamous Kage. Since he's almost very literally only asking for peanuts, there's no reason to turn him down. In fact, there are several good reasons not to.

071/108: Kage
Kage is our second Ninja, giving us two freebie rounds per skirmish instead of one. He's got an L-range weapon and an empty rune slot. I don't believe he's a great magic-user, but it's the perfect spot for Killer or Double-beat. I mean, I never particularly get much use from him outside of the mass combat scenes, but if you're gonna reach on the shelf for a ninja in your party why would you pick Kasumi over this guy?


More collectibles! As you've probably guessed most of these are in treasure boxes, but a few have to be won off monsters. It takes something like an hour or two of running around if you really want to have the whole set, so...

Hey peanut gallery!
Do you want me to collect the whole sets? This includes all the Sound and Window Sets plus the full collection of Old Books. Although I'm probably making a mistake deferring to your judgment on this since the answer is just going to be "lol kimberly" anyway.


Mose and his fantastic Hitler 'stache cut right to the point: yes, we have Fire Spears. No, we can't transport them to Eureka's Castle. Why? Because we don't have enough boats. Mose doesn't technically join yet, but once he does he becomes our third blacksmith. For the past few months (year?) his smithering skills have been hard at work mass producing Fire Spears. In fact, you can see racks of them in the screenshot!


Tai Ho thinks he can solve the boat problem by calling in a favor from a buddy of his in Kirov. So, back to Kirov with us! (Of course we'll be taking the Blinking Mirror/Viki shortcut rather than hiking back through Kalekka, because we're not morons.)


Mission accomplished!

We're done with regular combat for this scenario, but there won't be a major recruitment drive before the next one; you pretty much get everyone in the Kirov/Kalekka area in one pass. So keep those votes coming in! For the record, Kimberly wasn't as completely terrible as I was expecting; I was figuring she'd be along the lines of, say, Sergei or Sansuke, when really she managed to pull her weight okay. Sheena was the big disappointment this time around, honestly, though I almost wish there was a boss so I could have at least showed off some cool Lightning Rune attacks. Master list hasn't moved.

Countdown to Quincy: 9 Stars of Destiny.

I don't care about the Sound Sets (or, really, the Window Sets either), but you absolutely have to get all the Old Books.
lol kimberly

It's also twice that your brilliant strategist Matthew waited until the Liberation Army had been decimated before ordering a retreat.

No wait that's wrong. Decimated means "killing one out of every ten" whereas this is "killing 9 out of every ten" so I guess this is the opposite of that.

Let's Just Say that since the Gate Rune is in twosies, it doesn't count as a full True Rune, providing a loophole for Kootie Pie Koopa.

Don't bother collecting all the Sound and Window sets, and here's why:

If you change your window setting and color, then save your game and reset it, the game will remember your new color but NOT your new window. You'd have to go all the way back to Window (up in Milich's area of the castle) every time you turn the game on to change it back.

And as for the sound sets... not worth it since everyone is just reading along.

you are going to collect the sound sets and the windows sets and every other little meaningless trifle you could possibly collect.

in your heart, you know this is the one true path.

Okay.


Wait, what? But you just said--!

Collect everything.

And you're just lucky you didn't get voted a party of six S-Range people.

Get books and windows, skip the sounds. And while fighting the monsters, take a bunch of screen shots of random chumps in your party doing stuff.

Also use Kasumi and don't use Kage. 'Cause I'm mean.

I say just get the books.

The alternate windows all suck anyway.

Also, I'd like to see you use either Sarah or Ronnie Bell.

Kage was a mainstay of my party from the moment i got him till the endgame. I stuck him with a water/flowing rune and just rocked house from there.

him and clive may not be the best charas, but damn it, they're my favorites.

and ronnie bell is pretty rad.

That fetch quest is triggering a vicarious moment of rage and I'm not even the one playing!

What happens if you decline to fight your father? I'm assuming the plot requires that it end the same way, but I'm hoping it means that in your absence, Qlon steps up to lead. It is his destiny.

Think of it this way: if Leon hadn't garnered enough popular support for a strong, expedient push against Jowston(e), he would have had a prolonged occupation on his hands. Ousting the invaders later would have resulted in more lives lost than ousting them now, which is why he did what he did.

It's interesting to note the differences between the various tacticians in the Suikoden series. In order to win the Liberation War, Mathiu essentially does the opposite of what Leon did towards the end. You'll see!

No, it's a "but thou must!" situation. I just like jerking your guys' chains.

I don't see the point of getting all the collectibles, especially not the sound settings. Only get the books if you're planning on masochistically reading/showing us what they all say later on.

That's not the only thing you like jerkin'! Woooooooo!

yeah, okay, I'll go back to my corner now

I vote no on all the doodads. Really, this LP is entertaining, and getting bogged down in hunting for books and sets would really kill the momentum.

I wan to to vote for party members, but I won't. I'm doing this because I hope I'll score some points not sticking crappy characters in your party, and at the endgame you'll say "That Issunbug is alright. I really should eat up my last frontline spot with Sonya."
Although you should anyways, because she rocks so hard.

I know I die a little inside whenever I find treasure in a game and it's something lame like a new sound effect or something.

I don't want you to suffer like that Brick, you ignore those side quests.

The books seem important to get, show off all the windows you get without, I dunno, doing anything frustrating like grinding random monsters, and sounds are really kind of pointless in this medium.
There, those are my votes. And thank you for using Gon. Hooray!

I'm quite impressed with the little scamp too. If S-range space wasn't so scarce in this game I'd ask to use him more.

I'm changing my votes on the collection aspect. Showcase the stupid shit you got without any real effort and don't worry about the rest. I fully support running around with ugly flower menus or whatever whenever reasonable, though.

goddamn it. because of you, i started replaying suiko 1, and made it up to lepant and friends. And now, i'm gunning to beat you to the end. The race is on, son.

Yeah, I concur with the "show off the windows you get but don't grind for 'em" opinion. Also, books are cool, but y'know, since they're just text, you could just link to gamefaqs or something if you want to let people read any that you'd have to grind for. Though, they don't actually make books random drops, do they? That'd be mean.

Also, you should totally use Sarah for Xtreme laundry combat.
And Kasumi instead of Kage because we love you.

All right, I need to know: is Kasumi really a guy, or is Brick just foolin' with my head?

Brick is foolin' with your head. I, on the other hand, am doing my LP 100% straight and would never do that to someone.

Brick is not being a gentleman.

It's R3. I know, no one ever remembers about the stick buttons. Lousy design, eh?

It's even easier to forget them when you play a game that was released before the dualshock was created!

I know! Suikoden's design was just that advanced.

There needs to be an out-of-universe Suiko game where your hero goes around recruiting 107 characters from various Konami games. "Wai Wai Suikoden" or something.

you could fill out 107 slots with Pop'n Music characters alone!

this includes Upa and Goemon and Vic Viper and Simon Belmont, of course.

If I knew Suikoden better, I'd totally go down the stone tablet and assign a fitting Konami character to each star.