I finally got a decent stretch of time in on Suikoden V, and there are signs of getting closer to the end, like having gotten most of the collectible items like old books and window sets.

I headed off to see the Dragon Cavalry, but had to take a boat and then go through the dwarf mines to get there, since Viki wasn’t teleporting for some reason. Unfortunately, Godwin soldiers were there and I could only take two riders back with me, with the commander unable to cooperate.

Upon returning to the headquarters, news came in that the Godwin and Armes armies were attacking towns, and I had to choose which one to defend. I picked Lelcar since it was supposed to be easier, and it was only moderately tough. I lost one squad, but without any permanent deaths, fortunately. The armies continued to advance though, and I had to decide whether to defend the castle, or abandon it. Unfortunately, defending the castle results in the permanent loss of a Star of Destiny (yet another thing you’d only know from a walkthrough…), so I had to choose to abandon it, and I’m holed up in the Dwarf Mines for now.

I then had to head back to investigate what had happened to the Dragon Cavalry at their training grounds, and could only take men in my party due to a rule that no women were allowed at the grounds. There, we discovered that Godwin troops and assassins were holding the dragons and their eggs hostage, and we got rid of them easily enough. Georg also popped up unexpectedly and rejoined me, and finally befriended me as a Star of Destiny, along with some of the Cavalry members.

Now that I’ve rescued the Dragon Cavalry, next up is a war battle to retake the old headquarters…

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.