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.

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…