Niahak's Place

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.

Today I finished up Rogue Galaxy. Which is to say, I beat the main plot. And the first optional post-game dungeon.

To sum it up: fun game, but don’t play it for the originality of the plot. There’re more cliches in it than anyone can comfortably shake a stick at. That said, I really did like the characters (except for one), and I liked the battle system. I’m not planning to complete everything, but I’m 12 floors into the 100-floor bonus dungeon and I may dabble a bit with the Insector system as well.  My review for RG will probably be at videolamer before it’s here, but it may be the next article I write.

What’s next? I’m not sure. I’m thinking either WA ACF or the Suikoden series (probably except 4) again. Both are good stuff.

Also, I’m in a Game Development course this quarter. We’re making what can only be described as an open-ended space action RPG. It’s sort of a compromise between the RPG crowd (2 of us including me), the space shooter crowd (another 2), and the don’t-care crowd (again 2). Hopefully we aren’t biting off more than we can chew, but I don’t think we are. Most of us have lots of free time, so hopefully it’ll turn out nice.

I’m minoring in East Asian Studies (as well as Japanese) – probably the only senior doing so, actually.  To do this I had to take three separate Japanese culture/society classes, one in Japan and two here at school.  That one was even offered last quarter was somewhat of a fluke (if fortunate for me, since it got me the minor).

Anyway, I’d like to share one of the most foreign-seeming yet familiar aspects of the culture: Amae.  The dictionary I have says it means “depending on others’ kindness”, but it’s a bit more complex than that.  The word contains the kanji for “sweet”, but the actual concept involves showing one’s weakness to others.  From what I recall, this means showing some sort of flaw in one’s personality to others, and to depend on them in that regard.  To have amae for someone is to sort of entrust them with the knowledge of this weakness.  This can mean simply revealing some sort of vice or even a bad habit.  It’s not an entirely foreign idea; we only show our worst parts to those we trust.  Amae is sometimes it is something harmful to others as well; the most extreme example we learned was a husband beating his wife: the wife can, in some way, see this as an expression of his love for her, as he is revealing a weakness in his soul (the fact that he beats his wife).  I very much doubt it is seen as a positive thing to others; this is just an example I remembered.  Something to think about.

I may do a little bit on tatemae and honne (one subject, two words) later.  Could be an interesting topic with the way anonymity works on the internet.