30 Years Ago, Sony Had Its First Epic RPG
‘Suikoden’ walked so ‘Final Fantasy’ could run.
You only get one chance to make a first impression. Whether you’re launching a gadget, premiering a hit movie, or simply going on a date, there is little room for error. For businesses, this is especially true when offering something brand new. It’s easy for us to forget that the mighty Sony PlayStation was, at one time, an untested product. And soon after its release, with everything on the line, it dropped one of the most respected and influential RPGs of all time.
When Suikoden arrived on the PlayStation on December 15, 1995, the console had only been on the market for a few months. Those early titles matter, and Suikoden set the bar for the RPG experience on PlayStation. It was the perfect blend of classical ideas and ambitious design. A sprawling epic that influenced decades of development, Suikoden launched a legacy few franchises could match.
Suikoden offered players equal parts sweeping palace drama, recruiting checklist, and cozy social sim. It was, at the time, an unusual mix that charmed the lucky few who were able to experience it. Suikoden didn’t achieve much commercial success, but critics and industry insiders were quick to recognize a game that made bold choices and made the most out of the PlayStation hardware.
Gameplay is deceptively classical. You explore towns and dungeons in a top-down mode, fight turn-based encounters, and level up familiar RPG archetypes. What sets Suikoden apart are two signature systems. First is the “108 Stars of Destiny” recruitment premise. Players are tasked with finding up to 108 named characters, many with unique skills, who populate battles and add new features (and personality) to your castle.
The second system, and arguably the most appealing to fans, is the strategic layer of base building and politics. Your headquarters isn’t a static menu. It’s a place where characters mingle, shops open, and new gameplay options are discovered. Together these systems reward exploration and social curiosity in ways few contemporaries matched.
Party dynamics were central to the Suikoden experience.
Then there’s the story. The narrative leaned into adult themes like corruption, revolution, and the moral fog of warfare. Rather than a lone chosen one smashing an abstract evil, Suikoden tells a story about the messy, human consequences of power. The script often favors understatement over melodrama; big moments land because you’ve spent time with the people involved. This is a political RPG in the literary sense with a communal scope that still feels rare in games.
Critically, Suikoden earned praise for its ambition even when reviewers sniffed at its modest production values. Suikoden’s sequel is widely celebrated, and retrospectives frequently point to the first game as a foundational work that did more with characters and political complexity than many bigger budget titles. It earned nominations from DICE for both Console Game of the Year and Console Role-Playing Game of the Year.
Commercially, Suikoden was never a blockbuster on the scale of Final Fantasy, but it built a loyal audience that sustained a series of follow-ups and spinoffs. The franchise grew into a cult classic: a title collectors and completionists still cite today. That passionate fanbase is part of why the series has seen intermittent revivals and why its legacy looms larger than simple sales figures might suggest.
Even by today’s standards, a game with 108 unique characters is a staggering feat of writing and design.
Suikoden’s influence became an inspiration for numerous games, including the legendary Deus Ex, because of how it balanced player agency with in-game drama. Even its limitations helped shape the medium by showing that scope and heart can outweigh graphical polish. That’s party why the franchise is in a renaissance of sorts. Konami’s HD remaster of Suikoden I & II (released in 2025) breathed new life into the originals and was promoted by the company as a first step toward reviving the property.
If Suikoden’s original PlayStation entry feels imperfect, that’s part of its personality. It’s a game of big, earnest ideas sometimes constrained by the hardware and budgets of its time. Its legacy isn’t that it perfected every system it touched, but that it dared to imagine an RPG where a kingdom’s people, not just its destiny, were the prize. For anyone interested in what role-playing games can be when they focus on community, politics, and attachment, Suikoden remains essential.
