Well, over break I picked this game up for my DS. Thankfully I had it preordered since more often then not, this series is overlooked and hard to find. To be honest, I've got to say, for both a person who has played every suikoden game, it may be a leap towards the FF series, I actually like where the game is going.

It still has elements from the previous installments, you collect the 108 stars of destiny to thwart an attempt of evil doers to either A) Destroy the world or B) Take Over the world. The music is very impressive and the voice acting of the main character sucks and blows, the rest of the characters make up for it.

The only two problems of the main game is that they didn't inclued the army battles and the duels, which was my favorite thing in all of the suikoden games.But even so, they make up for it by applying old gameplay elements that didn't quite take hold in previous installments until now.

If you have played suikoden 2-5, you know that they have the trade house, where you can play in a sense a stockmarket game, know insider trading knowledge and hopefully get ahead in some cash to buy that really expensive but powerful piece of armor, or hire the blacksmith to powerup your sword. I never did that, because I was a level whore and killed as many monsters that I could.

Instead, Tierkreis applies this to make it the primary source of income. Unless it's a soldier or a Human, monsters don't care any money. Instead, say you kill a Gazelle, you earn a pelt for each Gazelle killed in battle. This means that you have easily 100 Gold pieces, but in a different town, it may be worth over 5000 Gold pieces. This means the items may cost more, but in the end, you have to put a little less effort into hunting down monsters, just sacrafice some game time to get to the city that buys it for the most.

Another feature that they applied in older games that really didn't take, was the mission board. Often times unless you knew a mission involved acquiring a star of destiny, you avoided it. This time, if you want either easy money, a star of destiny or progress a plot point, you accept a mission. While it could be a hinderence, it provides an oppurtunity to replay through caves and cities that you may have skipped or missed, and find new items. And some of them just involved you going to the site and watching a cut scene, while easily earning money or the ever so important star of destiny.

Some minor features worth mentioning, you can equip almost any weapon to any character, providing a change of battle plans. The anime cut scenes are remarkable for the DS, Mobi Codec so far has become my favorite DS codec. And lastly for now, Turn based combat is much more comfortable then the Real Time countdown you see in Final Fantasy.

So overall, if you never played any Suikoden games, this one is Perfect for you to enter the series, and if you have already played them all, like myself, this one is it's own grounds and is capable of bearing it's own weight.