This review does not contain a numerical rating. Much of this page's content is simply my subjective opinion, and numerical ratings give the illusion of objectivity.

This review will not delve very far into details relating this to other games in the Suikoden series, or judging it against other games. This is for two reasons:

1. This is unfair to a game being reviewed. This kind of discussion is relevant in some cases, but not in a review.
2. Doing so would involve many spoilers. As reviews are meant for people interested in buying the game but have not made the decision yet, this would be unfair to them

Because of this, I will soon write an analysis of the game, using the full plot of the game without regard to spoilers, and relating concepts in it to those from other games in the series.

The concept of the million worlds has been used throughout the Suikoden series in various smaller roles, from Windy's monsters in Suikoden I, to Viki's homeland, to Yohn's home world in Suikoden Tactics. Most fans of the series would not have guessed that they would become the basis of an entire Suikoden game. However, Konami went and did just this, using the concept (renamed the 'Infinity') as the central premise for Suikoden Tierkreis, for the Nintendo DS.

The plot revolves around a main character (named by the player), and his friends; Liu, Marica, and Jale, who live in a small farming village called Citro. Their quiet lives end when they get embroiled in a fight against the Order of the One True Way, a neighboring power who is trying to gain power in the region. The Order has a habit of sending envoys to villages to convert them to the One True Way. When they don't, a battalion will soon follow to subjugate the village. After successfully defending Citro Village, the main character and his friends become heroes, and their power grows.

The story is compelling, and paced very well. There really is never a dull moment in Tierkreis, which is pretty impressive for a 30 hour game. The story has depth that you wouldn't expect from a handheld title. I would go into more details, but will refrain for the sake of spoilers. I was impressed by the story - it turned out to be better than I was expecting.

The scriptwriters didn't shortchange the characters either. Not all 108 stars are important, but there's plenty of development outside of the main characters. True to Suikoden form, the recruitable characters range from ambitious heroes, oddballs, and regular people, and from a variety of demi-human races.

There are 108 recruitable stars in Tierkreis, similar to previous games. Some are combatants, and others just fill a support slot. The vast majority seem to be combatants.

The combat revolves around one system - the regular party system from other Suikodens. Duels and strategy battles are all handled using this system. A party involves up to four combat characters and one support character. The four combat characters can be arranged in the traditional two rows/three columns formation from earlier Suikoden games. In addition to the obvious two-and-two formation, this allows you to place one heavily armored character in the front row, to protect three mage characters in back, or three short-range characters in front, leaving one character in back.

Weapons are bought and sold instead of upgraded. This lets you put different types of weapons on each character. For instance, most fighter type characters can handle a vast amount of weapons, such as one-handed swords, axes or spears.

Magic is handled by the 'Marks of the Stars', a new system connected with the plot of the game. Any of the combatant stars can use magic, and spells are chosen from each character's spell bank. Often, next to save points, there will be spell switch points (they may have a special name, but I'm not aware of it), where you can swap out spells for any character. The spell banks seem to increase in size as the story progresses. Spells are not exactly unique to each character, but the banks of available spells are. For instance, there's several characters who can use the 'Masterpiece' spell, but there doesn't seem to be any two characters who have the exact same spell banks.

My main complaint with the battle system is more of a complaint about the enemies. I enjoyed the customizability a lot, and had fun tweaking parties exactly how I wanted. The problem is, I never really had a chance to put them to the test. Most winnable boss battles were really easy - if there is anyone in the party capable of healing, its tough to lose. Most boss battles were over in a few turns, when I had just got my party's combat wheels running.

Another complaint was with unwinnable battles. There were a gigantic number of them. It sometimes makes sense plot-wise to have an unwinnable battle, but it gets to a point where it just becomes annoying. In a couple cases, it was actually clear from the first few rounds of the battle that I was going win, yet after three turns the battle ends and my characters are panting.

Lastly, I felt that the somewhat high random encounter rate (combined with the small visible area around the character, likely due to the small screen size) dragged the fun of dungeon crawling down a bit.

The graphics in Tierkreis are mixed between 2D (backgrounds) and 3D (character models), with anime-style cutscenes during important plot points. I was impressed by the artwork (including the 2D backgrounds) and cutscenes, but the 3d character models were laughable. It was actually tough to tell characters apart in scenes until they started talking. They look like the first forays into 3D on the PS1, which all look ridiculous now (eg. Final Fantasy 7, Xenogears). To me, this was a game that screamed out for 2D sprites. This is a small point, however, and it did not really detract from the game for me.

The voice acting was of mixed quality. The first thing I noticed is how annoying the main character is. He always sounds like he just drank five Mountain Dews, and this combined with the endless repetition of his catchphrase made me dread scenes with him (which is almost all of them). This was actually the single most annoying thing throughout the entire game - hearing him talk. Other than him, the voice acting was not bad, but also not great (save a few cases).

Its been speculated that the reason for the talking speed of the main character (and of a couple others) has to do with storage capacity on the DS cartridge. If this is true, then thats unfortunate - it would have been the number one reason to develop the game for a home console, as opposed to a portable one.

The music, I thought, was a good point. Some of the new themes were actually pretty catchy, a phenomenon unheard of, for me at least, since Suikoden II. They also reused some of the old Suikoden themes in various parts of the game. This might have been the number one reason to develop the game for a portable console - having less storage space forces the composer to focus more on the melody. Still, I wouldn't put the soundtrack on the same level as those of Suikoden I or II - I don't think Miura is a bad composer, by any means, but I feel like they need to hire Miki Hagashino back.

The verdict? This is a fun, deep game, which, while not without flaws, certainly deserves a place among the rest of the Suikoden titles as part of a great game series. If you're on the fence about buying it, then get off the fence and try the game out.