Suikoden Series vs Final Fantasy Series...

With the upcoming release of Suikoden II, an old PlayStation One game, coming to the PlayStation Network for PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita, I thought I'd just go ramble on about Suikoden versus Final Fantasy, two of my favorite Role Playing Game series.

Anyone who knew me as a younger and slightly smaller girl knew me as the sort of kid to stay up well past bedtime playing games on the PlayStation, or the Nintendo, or anything I could get away with staying up playing. It was truly an art-form back in the day, faking sleep while the music of the game still tinkled from the television and then finding oneself inexplicably exhausted the next day when it came time to go to school.

Chief among my favorite games were the Final Fantasy series by SquareSoft (now called SquareEnix in their attempt to be less effeminate, as if any fan from my age-grouping ever cared that their name was SquareSoft... I still struggle to remember that it's no longer SquareSoft, but rather SquareEnix) and the Suikoden series by Konami (who seems to have shifted their game from Role Playing Games to First Person Shooters).

Final Fantasy was created to be a literal Final Fantasy for a game developer about to flop in 1987. The story followed four characters, but you could pick their job class out of six options (white, red, or black mage, thief, fighter, and black belt). This game became so popular, it revived the developer and brought on Final Fantasy II, which was not a sequel but instead referred more as if it was volume two and became a hit, featuring new storyline and characters and world. 

Now, SquareEnix has made it to Final Fantasy XV which was announced in 2006 at E3 but has yet to be given an official release date. Additionally, Final Fantasy has a couple dozen spin-offs and sequels to their main games ranging from games about Chocobos (imagine a giant war-chicken) to mobile phone games to prequels focusing on characters intended to be side-characters in the main series. Final Fantasy has become a cash cow for SquareEnix, and for better or worse, they're milking it. At least they're fixing their mistakes, of course! Final Fantasy XIV was an apparent disaster, but Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn supposedly makes up for that and even soothed the angry, bitter souls of the fans. 

Konami began Suikoden in 1995. They modeled the game after a Chinese book by Shi Naian titled "Water Margin", although the interpretation of the book is loose. The series follows non-linear chronological order... which is weird. So if you want to play them in order, the main series would go like this: 

Suikoden 4

Suikoden 5

Suikoden 1

Suikoden 2

Suikoden 3

There are spin-offs and graphic novels that enhance the series, too, but there certainly are not quite as many spinoffs as the Final Fantasy series has. 

Both of the series of RPGs are fun, however, Suikoden tends to grip the gamer a little stronger than Final Fantasy does, and part of that is because of how the game is designed. Throughout Suikoden, decisions begin to impact the eventual ending. Politics, war or civil unrest, betrayal, love, death, tactics and strategy battles, one on one duels, building an army, building a castle or headquarters, and of course not dying... These are all things that are relatively important aspects of the Suikoden game. It's also important to know that in some battles if your character dies, they're dead for the rest of the game - so... you know... don't die. 

There are 108 characters in each game that you can collect, although you do get a bonus character or two if you load a completed (perfect ending) game from the previous game (example: you complete Suikoden, load the perfect ending save with Suikoden II and you can get a bonus character). 

You don't even have to play other Suikoden games to understand one or another. You can pick it up from the beginning and it handles well as a standalone game. All of the games can be played without prior knowledge, though it certainly doesn't hurt to play them all. Of course... since the goal is to get that perfect ending, you may find yourself vexed and lobbing your game paddle (or game controller, if you prefer to call it) across the room when you realize you made it through hours of game play, got to the end, and found out you missed one of the 108 Stars of Destiny. Unlike Final Fantasy, the Stars in Suikoden can move at times. Sometimes you can't get them when they're in one place or another. Some won't join you until you reach a certain level or certain size of army. Other Stars are key story-line characters who join you based on where you're at. And other Stars can become missed opportunities if you don't get them to join you by a certain key point in your gameplay. 

Final Fantasy typically revolves around a select number of characters who join based on the story-line and it doesn't get any more complex than that. Unless you count Yuffie the ninja (Final Fantasy VII) who you have to seek out in the forest and beat before she joins your party.

Of course, if you played Final Fantasy or Suikoden, you know that both series managed to similarly get one thing right: vexing, nearly impossible to beat boss baddies. 

A couple for Final Fantasy include:

•  Sephiroth (Final Fantasy VII) - (SPOILER) he kills a character right in front of you. After traveling that far, going through everything, and he just runs her through and smiles about it. I cried, I screamed, I couldn't play the game for days... I was so upset! I can't recall the actual battle against Sephiroth, because this scene plays so prominently in my head every time I remember him.
• Kuja (Final Fantasy IX) - I don't actually know what the heck he's wearing but it sure doesn't look like pants. Did you have trouble beating him? I did. I think it was because his clothing distracted me. I couldn't figure out whether he was a male or a female. 

 A couple of Suikoden villains include:

• Neclord (Suikoden I and Suikoden II) - Specifically in Suikoden I, this guy was a pain in the butt. You had to save outside his castle, make it through the castle to him, and then battle him without dying or using too many potions or healing spells. Why? Because you couldn't save after his battle, and you still had to survive getting out of the castle. (SPOILER!CHEAT!) In the room with the coffins, there's a spot in the upper right side of the room where you can click on a coffin and "sleep" to regain health. Power level and keep sleeping instead of wasting potions or rune uses. He's strong and can wipe you out. Don't let yourself get to the point where all of your characters have to heal at once. 
• Luca Blight (Suikoden II) - most evil villain ever. Luca Blight is a murderous psychopath mad prince who lived through trauma as a young boy and now commits horrible acts as an adult. He's the main protagonist and your best friend betrays you to join Luca in his horrid conquest of the world. You fight Luca and his armies many times, but to this day I've been stuck at a point where you fight Luca in a three pronged attack after a strategy fight, and follow it up with a one-on-one duel.

I apologize ahead if I get anything of this wrong, dates or details. I'm going off of memories of the games, and it has been a long time since I played!

But Suikoden II is finally coming to the PlayStation Network on 12/09/14!! Are you going to be getting it? 

So, in light of all this information, please let me know what you think in the comments. Which is your favorite series?  Why do you favor that one? Have you tried the other one? I hope to hear from you in the comments!

Something Strange chapter 3

Thanks for reading this and I hope you are enjoying it so far. 

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            Something Strange

A Story Through Blog Posts

Chapter 3

Cecelia was decidedly not calm when she found someone looming over her bed in the morning. She let out a high pitched scream that was designed by nature to inform her father of something foul being afoot—and that he better come immediately because Cecelia was not against shattering glass in her terror.

The dim light from the window illuminated the screaming child in the bed and Red Hood knew she had to quickly silence the girl. However, the strange situation meant that she did not want to do anything too drastic. There Red was, standing over the bed of some young girl when not moments before, Red had been comfortably at home in the woods.

Cecelia scrambled away from the red woman when she reached for her. Her father wasn’t coming in, which certainly was not comforting. Of course, then Cecelia remembered that her father was away at his one-weekend-per-month with the National Guard. Cecelia’s mother wasn’t coming in because of who-knew-why. When all this was over, Cecelia determined she would have to figure out why her mother hadn’t come to investigate.

Red said hastily, “Please, child, hush! I am Red, and I am lost! Strange magicks have brought me here, and I fear for my safety if I am discovered.”

Cecelia let her screaming die down. The strange red woman had an even stranger accent. “There’s no such thing as magic. What’re you suggesting? You broke into my house and attacked me!” Cecelia wondered if there really was such a thing as magic… Tristan was always saying magic had to be real otherwise how would so many people from different corners of the globe be able to think so similarly that they could create many stories on the same subjects?

Red resisted the urge to roll her eyes. She really had not even come close to attacking the girl. However, she decided it was best to utilize every tool available to placate the child. “I am sorry, but you scared me as much as I startled you… Forgive me…”

Cecelia nervously bit her lip. This was all such a bad idea. Strange women didn’t appear in her bedroom via magic. How could they? Magic wasn’t a real thing! “Who are you? Like, who’re you supposed to be, I mean? You sound like a princess. Well, you sound like what Tristan says princesses sound like, if that even makes sense.”

“My mother called me Little Red, for she was Mama Red,” Red explained. “And this is not my world.” She added. “I no longer know where I am. Can you tell me where this is?”

“Oh… This is Rose Chocoo. It’s a private, gated community in Wisconsin. My father founded it when I was still in my mother’s stomach, and he gathered the best and brightest, to create a future against the impending zombie apocalypse. We’ll all be safe here inside the gates, as long as we don’t make any mistakes like in Resident Evil, or World War Z. But it really all depends on what the zombies are like—if they’re the fast kind, or the slow kind…” Cecelia was more than happy to have something to talk about that could bring things back to normal! Stranger or not, Red didn’t seem truly like she wanted to hurt Cecelia… right?

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Something Strange  chapter 3 © 2014 Jaimie Gross

Something Strange chapter 2

Hello and welcome back. Thank you for reading! Not sure when I'll update again, but so far the story is fun... and a challenge for me. Enjoy chapter 2!

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Something Strange

A Story Through Blog Posts

Chapter 2

Tristan hovered over the knight as he woke up the next morning, slurping his orange juice noisily through his favorite blue swizzle straw. He had done his research and figured out who the knight was. Of course, that wasn’t too hard… Fairies, witches, princes, princesses, and all manner of crazy things had appeared in the neighborhood the night before. It was a memorable event, and so Tristan’s research amounted to grabbing the book from under his sheets and aiming the beam from his flashlight back and forth between the knight and the picture of the knight in the book he’d been reading until he determined that the knight could only be Black, a knight known more than anything for his many acts of getting in the way of various other knights and citizens on their quests.

Black, on the other hand, felt groggy and his vision swam as he struggled to focus on the odd shape above his face. He supposed it could be any of the women he’d gone to bed with the night before. Being labeled as evil certainly had its perks, because he was a hit with the ladies! But then, he also had a strange recollection of standing over a child’s bed for a moment. His vision finally cleared and he was quite disappointed to find it was indeed a child. The noise from the child’s mug of odd potion was as noisy as one of Merlin’s spells if it went wrong. The smell of it was worse than the noise.

“Hullo!” Tristan let his straw drop all the way to the bottom of the glass. If Black hadn’t woken sooner, Tristan had felt ready to go grab a stick of some sort and start poking him. “Do you speak my language? If you speak another language, there’s some really cute girls on my block that are bilingual.”

Black rolled to his front and pushed himself onto his knees, feeling dizzy with his hangover. He’d feel better as soon as he had a fat mug of ale. That always perked up his mornings. “In ordinary cases, I’d be all over stammering a few words of another language to meet those girls, but considering your age and use of the word cute, I’m left to think those girls aren’t my age.” Just Black’s luck, too.

“My mother is your age!” Tristan offered. “She’s single, too. Sort of.” Tristan had always wanted a father! How cool would it be if Black was his father?

Black wished the boy hadn’t offered up a puzzling comment like that. How could one be single—sort of? It was one of those things that made his hangover decide to point out a big, fat soft spot on the inside of his head, and then hammer on it a few times just to be sure it was really soft. “What do you mean?”

“You could call her a bar wench from one of your stories!” Tristan said. “Except you don’t want to actually call her that. That’d be a pretty big mistake. Just call her Elizabeth Quicksilver, or Miss Quicksilver. She’s always getting real mad if you use the wrong form of address. My teacher always uses the wrong form of address… so they don’t get along well, my mother and my teacher.” Tristan couldn’t even begin to describe how excited he was for this to happen. He felt like with the explosion of story-book characters, suddenly he might have that adventure he always dreamed about.

Black just wanted his headache to go away. “Do you have ale, kid?”

“It’s Tristan. My name. I don’t have ale, but I saw a magic hangover cure recipe on the television… Come on. I’ll make it for you.” Tristan thought for a moment and then decided, “But maybe take the armor off here. I’ll get you some clothes from Cecelia’s house and fill the bath-tub for you.”

Well, the situation could be worse, Black thought. If the kid had a magic cure to the headache, that would help. Of course slamming the door to the room shut as he ran out on feet that pounded the floor like drums didn’t help.

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Something Strange chapter 2 © 2014 Jaimie Gross