Master Run: Suikoden

A Master Run: The playthrough of a completed game in which the player challenges himself by putting self-imposed restrictions on the playthrough to make the game more difficult. Classic master run staples include the Speedrun (beating the game as fast as possible), the Single Character Challenge (using only one character period, found mostly in RPGs), and the No Death challenge for games which tend to be easy to die in (such as Contra and Battletoads).

Three days ago I got the sudden inspiration to Master Run another of my favorite games, Suikoden 1 for the PS1, not more than two weeks after I went through Pokémon FireRed using only a Raticate in battle. Close to a year ago I did a Master Run for Suikoden in which I did a speedrun while collecting all of the 108 recruitable Stars of Destiny in just about 9 hours.

However, that run was both unplanned and a tad lazy, and looking back on it Monday, I decided that I could do better. So, I changed up the criteria: I would not recruit ANY optional Stars of Destiny, and I would only use people in my party who I could not remove. So if the hero was left alone for something, I had to do it with just him. It doesn't seem like much, but realize that the game has at least 60 combat-usable characters, and you can have up to six people in your party at any given time.

I'll break it down into chunks of the game. Note that if you have not played Suikoden 1 and you do not want the game spoiled even a tiny bit, then reading the following will not be good for you.

I repeat: Spoilers ahoy.

Start of the game to acquiring my castle: You can't use anyone optional until your castle is up and running, so this went exactly like a normal playthrough. I didn't bother getting the best equipment for Camille or Tai Ho, but I did get everyone to about 19 by fighting the Kobolds in the Great Forest Village southeast of Kouan. I also got lucky on a Lightning Crystal drop from the Zombie Dragon.

Visiting Lepant: The challenge pretty much started here. Normally I'd go grab Kai, but he's optional. Using just McDohl, Cleo, Viktor, and Gremio wasn't so bad though. Cleo had the Fire Rune from Leknaat on, and outside of the giant roulette wheel and it's battles I think I got into like 3 random encounters total. Didn't struggle at all.

Taking down Kwanda: Going from the castle to the Elf Village with just McDohl, Gremio, and Kirkis was a bit tough since the latter two weren't able to crank out good enough damage. I did have Kirkis with the Lightning Rune I got the entire time though. When Valeria showed up, things improved drastically thanks to her Falcon Rune. Not many encounters in the Dwarves' Vault, and the boss didn't like Kirkis' lightning spells. Pannu Yakuta was easy like usual since Viktor and Kuromimi decided to tag along, and I had a six-person team for that.

The fruity Flower General: This whole segment was more about walking from town to town than actual fighting. Even though I only had Flik, Viktor, and Gremio alongside McDohl, the enemies weren't hard. The main difficulty came from dealing with the lack of Viki's teleportation and the Blinking Mirror for easy travel.

The greatest of the 5 Generals (imo): If I didn't have Black Shadow on the Soul Eater, going to the Secret Factory with just McDohl and Tai Ho would have been a LOT harder. Luckily though, I did. That, plus how much exp Tai Ho got from a two-man party meant that within several battles I had a high enough party level average to just "Let Go" all random battles I didn't care for. Love them Fire Spears, but the enemy didn't.

The Runic Vamipre: Nothing hard, or unusual about this at all. Cleo with a Flowing, and McDohl's "Hell" spell made this a cake-walk. Hix kinda felt unneeded and Viktor with the Clone Rune hit hard.

The Knight's of the Dragon's Den: Until I entered Sonya's Floating Fortress, I thought that the highest weapon level I could get to was 12. As such, I did everything before it with that as the max, and it wasn't that difficult. I just left Liukan for dead until he was removed from my party, and the trio of Humphrey, Milia and Flik hit the Crystal Core hard. I also gave Flik Cleo's Flowing Rune here, which he kept until the end of the game.

Moravia: The comments about the Hell spell and using "Let Go" on enemies pretty much sums up the difficulty here.

Sonya's Fortress: Ok, I had to stop and think at this point. Just McDohl and Viktor, a smallish dungeon, and two bosses in a row all without MP restoration. Prior to entering here, I went back through Moravia and grabbed the Mother Earth rune at the top and slapped that on Viktor (even though his magic is bad). Then, I got both of their weapons up to level 15 for the extra damage, pimped out their equipment and went at it. Funny thing: A level 60 Viktor with a Mother Earth Rune and around 98 magic can do 1,400+ damage to the Shell Venus with a single Earthquake. And Sonya? She didn't like Judgement.

The Final Stretch: I had to re-do Yuber's war battle three times becuase only 45 SoD = horrible war battle situation. I did get lucky in the end though and ended up winning with 500 troops left out of 9750, compared to Yuber's 20,000. Pimped out McDohl, Flik, and Viktor with the best equipment, level 15'd their weapons, and made sure that Viktor had Mother Eart and Flik had Flowing. I was a tad torn though, since I didn't know how much use Copper Flesh would be compared to Viktor throwing Rage or Thunder Rune spells. Went through the place twice, since I used magic to wipe out the forced battles on the first run, then I went after Barbarosa.

Final Boss: I had at least 3 Sacrificial Buddhas in each character's inventory, but I didn't end up using any of them. Viktor's Copper Flesh spell came in handy, and he did decent damage to all three targets with Earthquake and Voice of the Earth. Flik spammed healing spells, and McDohl spammed Judgement and Black Shadow, then all three fought until the final boss died.

Reflecting on it now, I'm a tad disappointed that it wasn't harder, or longer. It only took me about 14 hours to do the entire run, and I never needed to grind for levels or cash really. I'm tempted to do another run, like a No Rune run suggested by Hojo, but that'd just end up with a party of big strong hitters and lots of Mega Medicine/Sacrificial Buddhas. Not sure how challenging it'd be.

Still, it was a fun run for an amazing game, and I'm glad that the emotionally moving scenes in the plot still get to me, even after having beaten the game over 15 times in the last 10 years. I'd recommend doing a Master Run of Suikoden to everyone out there, provided they can stand jRPGs.

Until the next save point, Sobou's out.