Well, I *almost* finished Suikoden V today, but after spending most of the day on it, I’m pretty damned close. Endgame spoilers ahoy:

It started off with the campaign to retake our old headquarters, in another war battle. This one was very easy since there were low numbers of enemy troops, and none of them had any special abilities. After retaking it, the castle expanded again and I could now plant seeds and grow fish for the cook. A quick check of the tablet confirmed that there were only six more Stars of Destiny to recruit.

There was another war battle immediately after that, where I had to choose where to attack, and I took Doraat so I could get some revenge against Childerich. It went pretty much just like the initial Doraat war battle, except this time I used the ships and land squads simultaneously instead of waiting to get naval superiority first. After that I fought the enemy admiral, Bahram, and defeated him in regular combat.

I then went and got the second-last manually recruitable character and then went to talk to one of the Armes generals that was present, but not really part of the invasion. It turns out that Armes has decided to support me, and the other invaders had been acting without authorization. I befriended them, leaving only two more stars to go.

It was now time to attack Stormfist, in another fairly easy war battle where Shoon, a gladiator I met near the start of the game, showed up to help out and joined us afterwards. The attack wasn’t fully successful, so we snuck into Stormfist by the gladiator tunnels instead. There, we encountered Childerich, and I let Belcoot duel him to finish him off for good. I also beat Dilber, the last of the Godwins’ non-Knight generals, and found Sialeeds there. She apparently has the Twilight rune now, but wouldn’t explain what she was up to, and after a brief fight she fled again.

Soon after, there was a cutscene in which Sialeeds killed Salum Barows, and the Godwin forces withdrew from Rainwall. At this point I finally went back and did the rest of the Big Hole dungeon, only letting Eresh join the party temporarily since she’s the one I don’t want to recruit. After getting quite a few levels and goodies there, I then went back to Rainwall and recruited the very last Star of Destiny, Euram Barows, who is now somewhat more regretful over everything his family has done before.

Next was another war battle to attack Sol-Falena, and it was a fairly easy one since I only had to use a small handful of ships. There was another fight with Sialeeds, and immediately after that the Godwins fired the Sun Rune and destroyed the dam, but it was fortunately countered by Lucretia’s plan to have the dwarves and beavers reactivate some ancient drainage systems. Sialeeds and I then combined our runes to stop a second Sun Rune attack that was building up, but she collapsed and died after that, with the Twilight Rune moving itself to Lyon as its new owner. I’m still not exactly sure what Sialeeds’ plan actually was; she was trying to work for both sides, but what her ultimate goal was is unclear, and she only mumbled something about how she didn’t think the Prince could handle the senate as she was dying.

Next was the final war battle, but this was an annoying one, because my fleet of ships was split into two separate parts by an extremely narrow walkway, the ships were outnumbered and not optimally matched types, and in my first attempt I lost a squad that resulted in a permanent death. I had to reload at this point, since I didn’t go to all that recruiting hassle just to fail to get the good ending *this* close to the end, even though it required going through the Sialeeds fight and a whole bunch of non-skippable cutscenes all over again… I got a Victory+ on the second attempt though, despite losing one squad (without a permanent death this time), and having to keep moving one ship around in a circle to keep it away from the enemy fleet.

I finally breached the castle, where I fought the Queen’s Knights that had switched to Godwin, Alenia and Zahaak, together twice, the second time in raging form from an assassin drug. After them, I dueled Gizel without too much trouble, and finally rescued my sister. The Godwins had been purged from the country at last.

It wasn’t over yet, though. Word came in that the elder Godwin had stolen the Sun Rune and fled to another set of ruins in the mountains, where he was using the rune to melt the glacier there and could flood half the country. I stopped off at the West Palace first for some loot, did the usual equipment and training preparation, and headed off to the ruins via Lunas, and that’s where I’ll pick up next time.