Suikoden Tierkreis Game Critique

The game is called Suikoden Tierkreis for the Nintendo DS. I recently purchased this game at Wal-Mart for only one dollar. Needless to say, I did not have high expectation for this game giving its low price. To my surprise the game received positive reviews online. The game is a turn based RPG which is very similar to Final Fantasy. 

The game play mechanics are very similar to other RPG’s. The player gets into random battles and must defeat monsters in order to gain levels and progress the story. The combat system is very easy to use. There is an option to auto battle, which I find very convent as it saves a lot of time during mundane battles. All of the games menus are easy to navigate and are clearly labelled. The level design is also well implemented. The over world gives you an ability to warp large distances, saving lots of time. The environments contain branching paths which bring in a risk vs. reward strategy. If the player branches off from the main root, they run the risk for getting into more battles, but might find hidden items. The environment backgrounds are hand drawn and the characters are 3D polygons, the game has put little markers to prevent confusion of where the exits are. The game also flows very nicely, new characters and environments are introduced as the player progresses. I personally found that this kept me “hooked” as I wanted keep playing to see what else the game had to offer.  

The story is engaging and the characters are interesting and believable. This is very important for this game as the story is usually a major part of RPG’s. The game is also very polished. All of the background are hand-drawn, and look wonderful. The game also has full voice acting and full motion video cut scene which is very impressive for a cartridge based DS game. I found the music to also be of very high quality as most of it is orchestrated and very memorable.   

On the left is an example of a voiced cut scene, on the right is an example of a turn based battle.