I finally got back to Suikoden V today, and started off by going through the first war battle of the game, though it was fairly easy since it was more of a tutorial. Unlike previous Suikoden games, where the war battles played like a turn-based wargame, the ones here are more like an RTS, where you control squads of soldiers in real-time and each squad has special abilities based on which party character you have leading them. I’m not too good at RTSs, but hopefully future ones won’t be too tough.

We need more allies now that we’re rebels, so after the battle it was time to head to Raftfleet and Lordlake to try and convince them to join. First though, since I can now recruit Stars of Destiny, I stopped by Haud Village and picked up Cornelio, after interrupting his wacky elf orchestra.

I had to grind for cash for a bit for weapon sharpening before heading to Raftfleet, and upon arriving there Raja said she couldn’t help. The gold bandits I caught earlier did offer to take me to Lordlake, the scorched town at the start of the game, but they also refused to help.

I reported back to the Barows mansion in Rainwall, and we decided we needed a tactician to avoid letting Barows overly influence us, so now I have to go spring one from some prison. Salum Barows is also already trying to set me up with his daughter, as I suspected before, but she’s already aware of his play for power. And his son is still going on about rescuing my sister and how enamoured he is with her, which is rather creepy since she’s only about 10 or 12 years old…