My 6-year plight to own my favorite JRPG involved a rave, an all-nighter in Manhattan, and a region-locked PS2
Nov. 6, 2023Opinion | Suikoden is a special series that’s totally worth the effort
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The drunk guy in the nightclub toilet told me to check GameStop on Fifth Avenue. Despite his state of inebriation in the wee hours of Saturday morning – his slurred speech barely audible against the muffled bass and piano loops booming from the main room – he was clear that the bargain bins at the video games store might, justmight, contain one or two rogue copies of Suikoden 3. In a similar state of insobriety, I hugged the stranger with open arms, offered thanks, and staggered back onto the dance floor.
No matter what, I was nowdefinitelygoing to pick up an NTSC-region PS2 to complement my PAL console back home in Scotland. I checked my watch: just after 5 o’clock in the morning. Dutch DJ Ferry Corsten still had another hour of his set left to go. I was flying home to Glasgow at 4pm later that day. And GameStop on Fifth Avenue didn’t open for another few hours.
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I discovered the Suikoden series by accident. After my 12th birthday way back in 1998, I used money from my family to buy NanaOn-Sha’s rhythm game, PaRappa The Rapper on PSOne. I hated it – so much so that I traded it in at my local video games store just a few days later. I hadn’t heard of Suikoden before then, but its gorgeous box art caught my eye, and its promise of waging war against a corrupt empire and building an army of 108 playable characters captured my imagination. Having not long finished Final Fantasy 7 for the first time, my experience of JRPGs was limited, but I fell in love with Yoshitaka Murayama andKonami’s flagship role-player from the title screen onwards.
Fast forward a couple of years, and Suikoden 2, a game that’s now widely considered to be one of the best JRPGs of all time – oneI’ve since likened to Pokemon-meets-Game of Thronesin more recent years – arrived on European shores. Building on everything its predecessor put in place and then growing it beyond recognition, the sequel is to this day one of the best games I’ve ever played; with over a hundred playable characters, each with an array of bespoke weapons, armor and magic, and a suite of heartfelt and sophisticated backstories to match.
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“Surely it was fitting given that I picked up the original Suikoden second-hand all those years ago in a video games store, right?”
And so, in 2008, following a close family bereavement, my mum, dad, girlfriend and I booked up for three nights in New York. With my parents traveling on to Boston after that, and my girlfriend and I heading back to Glasgow, we spent the first three days speeding round the Manhattan tourist circuit – from the Empire State Building to Staten Island, Little Italy, Central Park and more. By the end of it, weshouldhave put our feet up on the final Friday night… but then I discovered the aforementioned DJ Ferry Corsten was playing at the nearby, now shuttered Pacha nightclub.
I hadn’t, of course, but suddenly my mind was racing. I concocted a plan on the spot: I’d go to GameStop for it opening its doors, I’d grab a US region PS2 console, and I’d raid the bargain bins for a discarded copy of Suikoden 3. Surely it was fitting given that I picked up the original Suikoden second-hand all those years ago in a video games store, right? I’d then travel home to Scotland and play Suikoden 3 and fall in love with it in the exact same way I had all the other games to that point.
And that’s exactly what I did. I stayed till the club’s 8am curfew, long after the headline DJ had left. I dragged my girlfriend straight down to GameStop on Fifth Avenue in last night’s clothes, I waited for the manager to arrive and open up, I grabbed a second-hand US region PS2 and… drumroll…did notmanage to pick up a copy of Suikoden 3. I was gutted.
What I did do, though, was try eBay again for the first time in years. It took a bit of digging, but I managed to get a second-hand copy of Suikoden 3, plus VAT, plus shipping for under £50 (which, at the time, wasprobablyaround $80). I played Suikoden 3 to death, and it was glorious – so much so that it’s now my favorite JRPG. I love Suikoden 2, and I love Chrono Trigger,Final Fantasy 7and Final Fantasy 8, but Suikoden 3’s story, characters, and sheer weirdness, for me, puts it just above the rest.
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