Niahak's Place

So one of the Wii’s many random features is the “Everybody Votes Channel”. Basically, this is a polling system where you register 6 voters. There are a few polls at a time and each voter can pick one of the two options offered (and predict the majority response). After a poll is finished and results are in, they can be viewed by anyone – you can view percentage of each answer by gender or region.

One of the international polls recently was “Do you like your name?”. The response was “Yes” by a large majority, but of interest – the country that, in general, disliked their names the most was Japan.

I beat Luca Blight yesterday. The scene where you have the confrontation with him is absolutely my favorite single scene in a Playstation game. The buildup, the previous scenes with Luca, and the fact that you need 18 of your very best fighters (I don’t think I’ve ever beat him all 3 times on the first try), a few quivers of arrows, and finally a duel against him to defeat him has convinced me he is my favorite villain of all-time. Too bad you only find out the reason he’s a maniac so indirectly.

Little touches in other scenes flesh out the story wonderfully. For example, if you load data from the first game and get McDohl with Kasumi in your party, you get a (rather sad) scene between her and McDohl. I didn’t have time to experiment, although Viktor had some brief dialogue with him right when you first talk to him.

So now I’m wondering what happens to all these main characters after the games. I mean, McDohl wanders off somewhere, obviously. But he’s probably got a long life ahead of him. After S2, in the “best” ending, if I’m remembering right, the main character keeps a true rune (trying to avoid spoilers). I also recall in S3, all the characters still had their true runes at the end. What do they do then? Is an eventual Suikoden going to involve lots of True Rune-wielding heroes taking down the power-hungry Harmonian empire (which had a subplot in S3 about their hunger for the True Runes)?

Back to my current run-through of S2.  Beating Luca was the 11-hour mark, if I’m remembering right. 2 hours earlier than most of my previous times.

Now I’m at the 16-hour mark and just past the Rockaxe Castle stuff. I’ve seen the second Clive scene at Muse and I also know I pulled off the 108 stars / reaction-time thing at Rockaxe correctly, so now it’s time to hurry up and wait, I guess.

Should finish this one tomorrow mid-evening, and I’ll probably start up number 3 tomorrow as well.

Started Suikoden 2 this morning. Great game.

There is one plot point early on that I don’t think I ever made note of before. When you first see Luca, he says “all I’ve had to fight lately is that old man”.   I guess you never do find out how Genkaku died…

Anyway, the main point of this post was to comment on another aspect of Suikoden 2.  I can’t be the only one who’s noticed this, but Suikoden 2 has several links to Three Kingdoms.  Some of them are more tenuous than others, but here’s what I could come up with off the top of my head:

• When you’re in Genkaku’s house, take a closer look at those weapons.  There are a pair of swords, a long spear, and a halberd.  If you “search” them, you find the halberd is named the “Blue Moon Dragon”, one of the multifarious translations for Guan Yu’s weapon.  The others would be for Zhang Fei and Liu Bei.
• When you recruit Shu, I believe you have to meet him 3 times (and pass his last test) to get him to join you.  This would be a parallel to the Three Visits.
• Look at the geography.  Highland’s mostly in the East and North; when you flee the sacking of Muse, you go South across a river and seek refuge with the leader of South Window (Granmeyer?  South Window is probably a mistranslation, but whatever).  If you look at him as Liu Biao (or Liu Zong), notice he surrenders and is immediately executed.  Your first task is – after beating back the Highland troops initially – to unite that small area, which could be a parallel to Jing.  After a while, you get the Western areas to ally with you, and eventually the far Southwest (a mountainous area… a parallel to Shu?).  You also ally with the Blood Moon Empire (Wu?) in the Southeast and eventually take Greenhill in the Northwest (Hanzhong?)
• Maybe a bit of a stretch, but Viktor is a parallel to Zhang Fei and Flik to Guan Yu.  If I remember right (I’ll confirm it if necessary when I reach that part) they don’t really trust Shu at first.

More on this later, I guess, if I find more.

I started Suikoden yesterday morning.   I finished it about a half hour ago.

I recruited all 108 stars and my last save point had a timestamp of 13:30ish.  I beat my old record of 14 something.   I never realized how incredibly short that game is.  True, I have practically no homework this quarter, but still.  If I hadn’t recruited all the stars or improved my characters for loading into Suikoden 2 I probably could’ve finished in less than 10 hours.  It’s a really fun game, but it’s too short.  And the strategy battle system is too simple, but that’s been true of all the Suikoden games.  Also, the translation is pretty bad (“We’re all over.” “See the power of the science!”).  But it has more flavor of the original material.  To explain a bit, all Suiko games are loosely based on the Shui Hu Zhuan (Outlaws of the Marsh), one of the four Chinese Classics (Others: Three Kingdoms, Journey West, Dream of Red Chamber).  I think I have a bit on this in my Suikoden series review (which I plan to rewrite after beating them again, naturally).  Anyway, Suikoden has several scenes that are almost directly from Shui Hu, including the tea scene and the recruiting of Lepant.  The game’s more enjoyable if you’ve read the book, and I can but recommend it, since its flavor is very similar to that of Three Kingdoms, even if it does tend to ramble more.  Sadly there is no place I know of to read it online.

I’ll probably start Suikoden 2 tomorrow.  Hope to do the Clive subquest, and I think I’ve got a good idea of what order to recruit characters in to do so.  I just hope it doesn’t have any issues playing, what with its scratched-ness and my PS2 not liking the cleaner Suikoden 1 (no major issues, just the “insert valid PS1/2 disc” screen when starting up every so often).

As I’ve mentioned, I beat Rogue Galaxy Sunday, and I beat the 100-floor postgame dungeon yesterday (it took nearly 6 hours).  I think I’m done with the game; I don’t have the patience to go through the Insector stuff right now.  Writing review soon and will probably post it here a bit after it’s published at vl.

I’m not the only one in the room to beat a game, though.  One roommate beat Earthbound yesterday, and another is nearing the end (if not there already) of Tales of Symphonia.   I was really glad I could lend the former Earthbound, as it is an excellent game and everyone should play it.  Too bad the sequel’s not coming over anytime soon, except through the usual fan translation channels.

Tales of Symphonia does deserve some special mention.  I have to admit, the game looks really fun; it improves on several aspects of Tales of Destiny 2  (or Tales of Eternia, if you prefer).  It’s in beautiful 3-d, stylized, has good characterization, solid action, good music and an enjoyable plot.  If I ever get a Gamecube or Wii, it’ll probably be one of the must-buy games.  But I don’t want to play it yet, since I’ve seen it played several times.  ToS, notably, also has 4-player co-operative gameplay.  I love that kind of stuff, and it would be ideal in a college setting… if it weren’t for the fact that gameplay is awkward at best for everyone who’s not first player.  If they fixed that, it could be a really fun co-op game.

I wonder if I can manage to beat Suikoden by the end of the week if I start it today.  I recall beating it in less than 14 hours the last time around, even getting all 108 characters.