It was back to Suikoden V tonight, and I discovered to my dismay that I’d done the Big Hole run for grinding the wrong way, as I hadn’t yet had the trigger that opens up a new area occur yet. Oh well. I figured I’d go ahead and do the western ruins first anyway, so I can ditch Zweig and Lorelai since they’re forced into my party right now and I don’t really want them in my core party.

Twilight Forest was along the way, and it’s really annoying since it’s easy to get lost in it and it’s full of irritating Creeper enemies who’ll poison you fairly often, requiring me to burn through a lot of antitoxins. I eventually caved in and used an online map to get through it, but at least I earned a lot of cash and skill points in the process. The ruins themselves and the Ancient Creeper boss were actually fairly easy, and Leknaat popped up to show off how cryptic she can be again. Thanks for nothing. But I did get a new spell attached to my Dawn Rune, and with that I was able to go back and heal Lyon. I also befriended Killey along the way, though he’s a rather big jerk.

Unfortunately, now the Armes army has allied with the Godwins and is invading, and now I have to go fetch the Dragon Cavalry and hold them to their promise to defend us from foreign invaders. And although I could remove Zweig and Lorelai, now I’m forced to take Lun and Logg, the petty gold thieves from earlier… At least they’re pretty decent party members, have a good co-op attack, and I’ve used them a lot before.

It was another brief Suikoden V session last night, as I headed off for the Twilight Forest, and there I finally got the last stupid DoReMi elf for Cornelio, the orchestra leader. They don’t count as Stars of Destiny, so getting them is completely optional, but getting them all allows you to go to Cornelio and ask for any part of the game’s soundtrack to be played.

I then bought a whole bunch of new equipment for my primary party members (myself, Miakis, Belcoot, Zerase, Viki, and Kyle right now) and headed off for The Big Hole again. There’s a character I can recruit there, a powerful mage, but…I’m not going to. There’s one Star of Destiny that’s shared between two people, so if I get her, I can’t get someone else later on, and I think I’ll wait and get that other person instead. That other person isn’t even usable in combat, but I’ve got plenty of mages already and it should be more satisfying from a story perspective.

Instead I was primarily heading there to do a bit of grinding, as it’s supposed to be a good leveling spot. I think I was already too high level though, and wasn’t getting much benefit out of it, so I didn’t stay too long and I’ll just head straight to the ruins next time.

It was only a brief dip into Suikoden V tonight as I did some more recruitment before heading off to the ruins. I stopped by Lunas and picked up the Oracle and her elven entourage, and then headed to Port Spinacks to recruit a couple more. This was one of the more annoying recruitments, because in order to get one of them (Hazuki), you can’t have a certain person in your party when you go to the port or you’ll lose the chance forever, but there’s no clue given ahead of time that this will happen. Fortunately I had a save not too far back… Things like that are why you pretty much *need* a walkthrough in order to recruit everybody possible.

After that I popped over to Sauronix Castle, fairly close by, to talk to the Dragon Cavalry. They won’t ally with me since their duty is to be neutral to internal politics, but their commander did assure me that they were ready to handle foreign powers that the Godwins might try to drag into the war.

And next, I’ll finally be off to the ruins. (51 hours in now and still in Chapter 10 of 14.)

It was another productive day in Suikoden V, as our group decided to invade the fortress of Doraat in order to lower enemy morale.

That led to another war battle, of course, which was supposed to be tough but turned out to be rather easy in the end. The enemies don’t attack until you get close enough, so you can take it at your own pace, and I used my ships to gain naval superiority first, used their Barrage points to soften up the squads on land, and then cleaned them up with my land troops. I only got a regular victory instead of a victory+ though, despite low losses on my side, so maybe time was part of the evaluation (I took it fairly slow, as I was at a severe numerical disadvantage and had to use slowly self-healing ships and strategic retreats a lot).

After the war battle we fought through the town, faced the Queen’s Knight Alenia (now possessing the Twilight Rune) and beat her, though she got away afterwards. I also had to duel Miakis, my sister’s old bodyguard, and actually lost the first time. It’s a damn good thing it let me retry the duel, since there hadn’t been any save points for quite a while and I would have had to redo the whole war battle and town crawl. Miakis then revealed that Georg had killed the Queen (though it had been heavily hinted at in previous cutscenes anyway) during the coup, and Georg left the castle.

After that was a bunch more recruiting, including finally getting a magic trainer. I also finally got the Tablet of Stars, which let me double-check that I hadn’t missed any of the recruitable characters so far.

The tactician then came up with a plan to ‘kidnap’ the princess and end the war that way, since Godwin would lose any legitimacy then, and I had to build three groups for three different tasks. This was hyped up as being the final battle, but I knew it wasn’t. (How? Well I’m still only on Chapter 10 of 14…) There was also an ominous cutscene where Sialeeds encountered one of the Nether Gate assassins, but was not entirely surprised by him…

My newly-crowned sister was now leading the front-line troops and sending them our way, so another war battle occurred before I could get close enough to rescue her. I got sloppy and lost a squad the first time, so I had to restart it, which was annoying because it required going back through numerous cutscenes and reassigning the squads again. It was fairly easy on the next try, though.

The three squads held their separate battles against the Queen’s bodyguards, and won with only a little difficulty (not all of them were my best, most well-equipped fighters). I was then reunited with my sister, but only briefly, as then my bodyguard was stabbed by an assassin and Sialeeds betrayed us and kidnapped my sister herself, vanishing into thin air. Damn.

Lyon was partially healed by the Dawn rune, but still needs to recuperate a lot, so Miakis is acting as my bodyguard now. Galleon, one of the more honorable bodyguards we fought, has now joined us as well, and he clarified further exactly what happened when Georg had to kill the Queen. She had used the Sun rune to fight off assassins, but it made her loopy again, she lashed out and killed the King, became completely crazed, and Georg had to kill her before she used the rune to destroy the whole country.

Now, the next plan is to investigate some ruins in the west for more information that might help cure Lyon, with a detour to check out a keep.

It was another fairly busy night in Suikoden V, as news arrived that Rainwall had fallen to the Godwin armies, but we decided to just leave it for now, for political reasons. A cutscene showed that the princess was being prepared for her coronation, though she was none too happy about it. And before proceeding, I recruited Isabel and Mathias, foiling another of Euram Barows’ traps in the process, and also finally found and recruited Linfa.

The Godwins are apparently going to use the coronation ceremony to cement alliances with other groups, including the Island Nations, and the tactician recommended that we reach them first, so I set sail for a lighthouse island where we found an admiral of their fleet. While there, pirates barricaded themselves inside the lighthouse, but were fairly easily beaten. The admiral turned out to be sympathetic to our plight already, but had to officially maintain a neutral stance, so he couldn’t ally with us. He did send his daughter along to assist us, though.

Upon returning, the princess’s coronation cutscene happened, and I discovered that my headquarters had grown as the falling water levels revealed more rooms on the lower levels. This was also a good time to do more recruiting, so I spent a few hours on that, most notably picking up a chef and bathhouse operator, and getting Babbage to repair the elevator in the castle.

It was time to head to the town of Sable in Suikoden V and finally deal with this bandit leader. He was fairly easily found in a nearby mountain, and after a quick duel, it was revealed that he was just wearing a wig. There was more to it, of course, and it turned out to be part of a Barows plot to discredit me. After exposing Euram’s role behind it, Sable is now allied with us and the bandits have joined our cause.

Upon returning to the castle and resting, I was awoken by news that the Beaver Lodge was under attack and had been set on fire. I ran over there and fought through some assassins in order to reach the elder, where there was a Nether Gate assassin that my bodyguard knew (long story), and whom we had previously encountered during the Godwin coup. After beating him, the fires were put out, and I gained some more recruits and the beavers as allies.

I also picked up the Silver Hammer along the way, which let me finally recruit the dwarven blacksmith for my castle, and also recruited an Armes soldier in Sable. I still need to get Linfa though, as she hasn’t resurfaced yet. Chapter-wise, I’m now halfway through the game, but the chapters seem to be proceeding a lot quicker now too.

Back in Suikoden V, I discovered that there was some “bandit prince” apparently impersonating me in the town of Sable, so I next have to go investigate and set things right before my reputation there gets too sullied.

First though, it was time to recruit more people, including the infamously lightly-dressed Jeane (a staple of the series), which required a lengthy detour to investigate a dungeon and farm some orb parts, and also the gladiator I’d run into back at the Sacred Games and in Lelcar, after beating her in a duel. I have to remember to go back and finish recruiting Linfa though, since she has to be done in stages and the next one might not occur for a little while.

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.

I did a small bit of unlocking in Mario Kart Wii today and got Birdo and another bike, but the majority of the day was spent getting back to Suikoden V. I first finished recruiting Sorenson, which involved shutting down the revolving bridge, and had what is probably the first actual challenging boss fight of the game.

After that we were off to Lordlake again, where we had to figure out some way to restore the water. Raja said that we had to deal with the Hatred Fortress that was damming the water, and the beavers might be able to help. I headed to the Beaver Lodge, but they didn’t want to get involved, though one of them joined our party. The tactician sent me to some ruins along a nearby lake instead, to meet someone she knows, and after another duel and a tough boss fight there we discovered that the lake was actually an artificial dam, created by some ancient civilization. Outside, we ran into Viki, a teleporting mage who’s shown up in other Suikoden games, and she joined our little army and will help out a lot by being able to teleport us to important spots.

An alternate plan came together, to open up the sluice gate in the lake and flood the fortress, but we had to lure the soldiers out first, and a naval war battle commenced. It was an easy one though, since the enemy ships didn’t move until you got within a certain range, making it easy to pick them off individually. The water was released, the fortress was destroyed, and Lordlake was restored and joined us as an ally.

An unexpected set of ruins was discovered in the now-drained lake, and we decided to make it our new headquarters, probably for the rest of the game. The people I’ve been recruiting all show up here now, and the mysterious woman in black that we’ve run across before also showed up again, but she’s being tight-lipped. Getting the headquarters also allows for recruiting more people, so I finished up by spending a while running around and recruiting a whole bunch. It took a while since some of them required grinding a bit for levels, but at least I’ve got a decent amount of cash and some good equipment now.

And I’m now 31 hours in, and still only in chapter 6 of 14…

I made it quite a bit further in Suikoden V today, though at 21 hours in I’m still apparently only about a third of the way through the game, judging by the chapter counts…

I had to head back to Raftfleet and then took off for Agate Prison, though I had to take the long way through a mine and dwarven town to get to it. There we recruited the tactician we needed, and learned some more about the Lordlake uprising and how the Sun Rune was involved.

Upon heading back to Raftfleet, it came under attack from the Godwin navy and another war battle occurred. This one involved ships instead, but played pretty much like the first one, and was fairly easy in the end since I only had to defeat two ships. Having saved them, Raftfleet is now an ally.

I returned with the tactician to Rainwall, where suspicions developed that Lord Barows was hiding something, so next I needed a detective. Fortunately, there was one right in town, and after a bit of work we discovered a drunkard who was involved in Lordlake and took him there to confront it and fess up. After that I then recruited a few more characters, as per the walkthrough, since some of them can be missed if you don’t get them at the right time.

After returning to Rainwall again, another war battle was approaching, and some intrigue about Barows and his involvement with the neighbouring country of Ames was revealed. The war battle turned out to be a Barows trap, but we turned it back on them by following the tactician’s advice. After that, the Barows’ guilt was too evident and even his own daughter demanded to know what he was hiding. I had to duel the storehouse keeper to be let into the basement, where the missing Dawn Rune was discovered, along with the mysterious vanishing lady again.

More was revealed about how the Dawn Rune went missing, the Lordlake incident, and how the Barows were involved, and we clearly weren’t going to be able to remain allied with them, so our party left town and headed back to Raftfleet, including the Barows’ daughter, who has sided with me. Raftfleet will be my new base of operations (for now anyway), and I finished off the session by recruiting a few more characters.