Suikoden Tierkreis: A bunch of stuff happened, and I'm not going to recount it all, so: brief detours to random topics, like child abuse. Earlier in the game there's this ~12 year old (hard to say? but absolutely younger than her half-brother who's a teenager at best) who is dying due to magic but we rescue her. So what better way to have her go out then making her part of my army and making her continue to use magic & such? Hey, if you're going to die anyway, might as well go out a blazing star. She's pretty good, actually, mostly because Sleep is really good in this game and works on nearly everything.
Speaking of which, how old am I, anyway?! It's implied Liu, one of the kids from the starting Citro village's gang, is a peer & friend to Our Hero. He joined the village ~3 years ago. More recently in game, it's revealed that he left his own hometown before he could get gnarly tattoos, which happens at age 12. So he left at age 11, then, let's say (yikes, 11 year-old alone in the world?!). Now, you might think that perhaps it was simply a 2-year journey to Citro Village seeing the world, but nope, people in his hometown confirm he left 3 years ago for them, too. So he's 14?! Does that mean I'm also 14, or perhaps 15?! Okay yes I know in actually realistic Renaissance-y settings you're already working or being an apprentice then and there's no such thing as an education beyond elementary school for the vast majority of the citizenry, but still. This is some precociousness. And I guess if I'm already throwing my 14-15 year old self into deadly peril, not a big deal to take along the 12-year olds too.
On a slightly different note. One of the tactics the antagonists in Tierkreis use relates to their uncanny ability to predict various natural disasters. This is used largely for military purposes, doing things like tricking armies from Astrasia (in the backstory) and Janam into getting blow'd up by this. Everybody in the party agrees this is horrible and beyond the pale, and people wonder if the "honorable" general types on the other side could possibly have agreed to this. I find this a little strange; didn't the narrative approve when the Prince drowned an entire fortress by smashing a dam in Suikoden V, an *unnatural* disaster caused by us if you will? Like... this is war guys. Killing your opponent with a landslide or whatever rather than risking your own soldiers' lives seems crafty, not necessarily evil. Granted, the weird thing where they released prisoners first is a bit off... the game tries to portray this as a strategem, but it's more like an anti-strategem in that it tips off at least some of the group (aka Our Heroes) that something is amiss. It's not like the prisoners are particularly a threat while captive, so it is pretty dishonorable to just get them killed, even if weirdly indirectly, so I can see holding that against 'em. But the other soldiers, not really. I suppose that perhaps the game is assuming that close-quarters fighting happens with nerf bats and is basically harmless posturing, while these natural disasters can really kill people, which might explain the difference. It's certainly how things look elsewhere: after fighting General Honorable later on and defeating his two unnamed mook buddies, his reaction after the battle is a hearty laugh and compliment and friendly chat about the plot, not "oh my god you slew Eugene & Fred, what will I tell their families". (And... yes, the bad guys do something incredibly villainous and horrible LATER, but everyone's mad at them before that.)
I've got quite the international coalition now. People from all over just want to join my army, especially nobles. Lots of 'em.
All young, beautiful, and wanting to play down their titles and just be treated like a normal girl, of course. Because that's always so common. Still, you can do the sophomoric "take a party of 3 princesses with you to your hometown bed, take a nap... ladies?", or alternatively a Maoist "send all princesses into the fields for backbreaking labor to grow food". Or both.
On the international relations note, the princess from the really really Hawaiian sounding place that has a chain of islands is of course a pale blonde. She also complains about being shorter than her real age. Thanks, Japan. There's also an isolationist country far-off that's super warlike and is run by
a shogun seven generals and maintains no diplomatic contact with anybody, BUT we researched them and they're actually super-cool and sugoi and here have a lady samurai war priestess princess in a kimono who'll join up. Uh huh.
I still like the narrative slant to the game so far, at least. More on this later when I see how the game continues, but the hero trying to demonstrate to Dirk that their actions *aren't* that of yon average teen superheroes drunk on power, but rather because they're right and they'd be done anyway (e.g. letting a non-Mark of the Stars person fight him), was pretty good. The right thing, morally, shouldn't change whether you have superpowers or not, a distinction often missed in other games.
In actual spoilers... marking this down now so those who played the game can make fun of me, don't reply to this speculation.
By narrative law, you're supposed to already have met the villain by now. (I mean, sure, it can be a Zeemus/Zeromus type twist where The One King is just some guy, but no shame in missing that.) The obvious suspects from early in the game are the Hero, Liu, & Atrie. But now I dunno if any of 'em fit. The Hero doesn't seem to really work anymore. Liu acted super-sketchy early like he discovered he was the Dark Messiah or something, and later used a mysterious blast of unknown power, but they've since kinda explained it away differently with his whole plotline in his hometown. Liu does allegedly know the "true form" of the One King, which might be an oblique way of saying "himself", but then the elder was a moron to give Liu the power, so seems unlikely. Atrie has very conspicuously never helped directly at all and merely been monitoring Our Hero because... look he knew Alternate Reality Hero or something, or he's time-travelling future Hero from a bad future, or whatever. Possible. But it was also possible it was because he was the villain slowly trying to get let into the world or the like. Yet there was a quest to visit Atrie's world and he's apparently a good guy there also fighting the One King. Furthermore, the Chronicle scene in the Scribe's Village showed a *blonde* guy... none of these three are blonde. Possible the blonde guy isn't the One King of course, just someone talking to him, but still.
