After recruiting a bunch of characters last time, it was time to get back to the main plot in Suikoden V. I got sent off to a town called Lelcar in order to help it, but it was in enemy territory, so I had to travel there incognito. The town was officially supporting Godwin, but many of the residents were unhappy with that.

While there, we discovered that some young men had been forcibly recruited into the Godwin army, so we set off to rescue them, resulting in a fight against a gladiator that I had seen back at the Sacred Games, now hired by the local leader. She was rather easily beaten, but then the Godwin army attacked the town upon discovering that I was there, leading to another war battle.

This was by far the toughest war battle so far, since it had both naval and ground troops in different parts of the map, requiring a lot of rushing back and forth between them. The battlefield for the ground troops was also rather cramped, making it difficult to get the right squad in the right place at the right time, and I often had to make do with suboptimal matches between squads. I managed to avoid completely losing any squads (which would have resulted in the permanent death of allies and making it impossible to get all 108 stars), but it was awfully close in some cases. In the end, I still managed to somehow eek out a Victory+ condition, and got the bonus loot.

I discovered that the local leader wasn’t so bad after all, helping clean up the now heavily-damaged town, and recruited him and the other two islet leaders as friends, and Lelcar is now an ally to us. And, on the way out, I recruited the local armour dealer who lost his shop in the battle, and now have him as a shop back at my castle.

Next up is more recruitment, it looks like.