Video Game / Suikoden III

The first Suikoden game on the PS2, Suikoden III revolves around several smaller groups of heroes long before the Stars of Destiny come into play.

III is set fifteen years after the events of II, during an uneasy cease-fire between the Grassland tribes and the mercantile nation of the Zexen Confederacy. The Holy Kingdom of Harmonia is waiting for the truce to hurry up and expire so they can launch their offensive. When a diplomat is assassinated before peace negotiations are complete, war is raging once again. The first act of III sounds a lot like the second game. However, the "Trinity Sight" system allows players to switch control between four characters, each with a peculiar view of events:

• Hugo, prototypical Suikoden hero. He is the only son of Lucia, chieftess of the second major Grasslands clan.
• Chris Lightfellow, a straight arrow who commands the Zexen Knights. She is known and feared in the Grasslands as the Silver-haired Demon or Goddess of Death, but she retains a sense of honor.
• Geddoe, officer in a ragtag "Frontier Defense Force" who perform duties for Harmonia that the Temple would rather not touch. Apart from him, each unit is named after a playing card.
• Thomas, a hapless young man who inherits a white elephant from his estranged father: a neglected, crumbling "castle" located between Grasslands and Zexen. Thomas' chapter is short but interesting, its naïve tone and colorful personalities meshing with the other groups in later chapters.

In this way, the game introduces many of the Stars of Destiny in smaller groups, resulting in more Character Development and allowing the player a much more extensive view into the motivations of every faction involved in the conflict, up to the point where the storylines merge and the heroes unite against a common enemy.

Also has a manga adaptation.

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This game provides examples of:

• Adaptation Distillation: The Suikoden III manga is pure, concentrated Fanservice.
• Action Girl: Chris, Lilly, Queen, Elaine, Emily, Ayame, Cecile, and others.
• Alas, Poor Villain: Luc's chapter is this in a nutshell. We learn that the real reason he was trying to destroy the True Wind Rune was to prevent the series' actual Big Bad from using all of the True Runes to create a dystopia. Then there's Sarah telling Luc that she's in love with him, minutes before they die together. Finally, there's Leknaat forgiving the spirit of her former student and telling him that he is allowed to rest.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: The Trinity Sight System, as outlined above, cast players in the role of several different heroes. Also factored into the Multiple Endings: gathering all 104 heroes before the final war battle unlocked the final scenario, replaying through the events of the game as viewed by the final four Stars — the villains.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Using Fire and Rage Runes, because their magic attacks are area-based (and the AoE increases with the stronger spells), making it hard to avoid friendly fire. There are ways to avoid damaging your own tem, like using the few characters that can learn the "Precision" skill or by wearing flame-resistant equipment to minimize the collateral damage, but it's more trouble than it's worth.
• Bare-Fisted Monk: A number of characters use fists to fight (except Kenji, he uses calisthenics). Juan and Emily are the most notable examples.
• Badass Crew: Geddoe's 5 (later 6) men ensemble, which you can't swap around for a majority of the game. You don't really need to. There's also Duke's crew, which only consists of four people.
  • Really, all of the main characters have one; Chris leads the Six Knights of Zexen, who are all very capable in battle, and Hugo and his companions (Sgt. Joe, Fubar, Lilly, Reed, Samus, Mua, and Hallec) are all excellent fighters as well. Even Thomas has one, with Cecile, Juan, and Piccolo all able to fight trained soldiers to a degree. Luc also leads one: while he's more than capable with his True Wind Rune, he also leads Sarah (a very powerful sorceress), Yuber (a demonic swordsman who's one of the best swordsmen in the series), and Albert (an incredibly talented strategist).
• Bathtub Bonding: Going to the bath with certain parties renders some very funny dialogues.
• Beast Man: The Duck tribe, and the various Dog people.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Mel. A seemingly sweet girl with a Perverse Puppet who's much stronger than she looks, with considerable magical talents.
• "Blind Idiot" Translation
  • It's the norm for Suikoden games and this one is leaps and bounds over the previous two games, but there are still occasions where lines make absolutely no sense. Often happens when a line is supposed to be indirectly snarky.
  • Hugo's griffon has renamed Fubar.
  • A line in the end of Gedoe's Chapter 3 causes a Dub-Induced Plot Hole. When he meets Sana, he claims that Sana is the Flame Champion. In truth, he was supposed to say "and you too" instead of "or should i say".
  • The manga earns this for the English translation having moments of not only being inconsistent to the spellings/terms used in the games, but at times being inconsistent between volumes.
• Breather Episode:
  • The first two chapters in Thomas' story, as it focus on him interacting with his friends, recruiting allies to Budehuc Castle and fighting against weak monsters.
  • Koroku's chapter. You can interact with the recruited characters and other dogs, but can't change party members, buy items, fight or even leave the castle.
• Character Development: One of the major benefits of the Geodesic Cast is getting to know more of the characters better.
• Characterization Marches On: Yuber was always murderous in the first two games, but he wasn't usually perceived as Axe-Crazy. Then came chapter two of Hugo's story in this installment.

• Deadpan Snarker
  • Geddoe. His whole party, actually.
  • Albert and most of the Harmonians (Nash, Dios and Sasarai) have these moments as well.
• Death of a Child: The young Lulu is killed by Chris at the end of both her and Hugo's first chapter.
• Defeat Means Friendship: Not always right away, but the game's setup results in plenty of matchups between future allies.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: Chris for one. Staring off she's as rigid and cold as her armor, but mellows a bit by the end game. Yuiri.
• Demonic Dummy: Branky, a nasty, foul-mouthed puppet carried by Genki Girl Mel, who insists she isn't a ventriloquist, and cheerfully bashes Branky's head against various surfaces to punish its arrogance.
• Enemy Mine: First, the longtime enemies in both Zexen and the Grasslander tribes unite to defend themselves against the greater threat Harmonia poses. And towards the end, the Harmonian forces unite with them in order to stop Luc.
• The Empire: Harmonia makes its first real move in the series here. It's apparently a very huge and powerful empire with a habit of adding other lands and cultures to its own, not unlike ancient Rome.
• Empathic Weapon: The True Runes and the Star Dragon Sword.
• Eyepatch of Power:
  • Geddoe, the biggest bad-ass out of the three leads, and a pretty big badass in general.
  • Gau from Duke's group also counts.
• Fake Longevity: Courtesy of the new world map system that forces you into constantly backtracking areas to recruit characters and advance the plot.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble:
  • The four main characters; Hugo is Choleric, Chris is Melancholic, Geddoe is Phlegmatic and Thomas is Supine.
  • Duke's group: Duke is Choleric, Elaine is Sanguine, Nicholas is Melancholic and Gau is Phlegmatic.
  • The Destroyers: Luc is Melancholic, Sara is Supine, Yuber is Sanguine and Albert is Phlegmatic.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: For a good fourth of the game, Chris loses her armour and dons a (much more flattering) casual attire for her travels into the Grasslands. While wearing this, she cannot equip any heavy armours like before, and instead dons light armour and chain mail options, which have lower defense but generally higher mobility.

• Gravity Barrier: After Karaya Village is destroyed, a vertical drop prevents you from accessing the village itself (even though this was never a problem before).
• Gray-and-Grey Morality: Most of the game's plot revolves around the three-way conflict between Zexen, the Grassland tribes, and Harmonia, all of which have their good and bad points.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Hikusaak. As the High Priest of Harmonia, he is not only responsible for meddling in the affairs of the Grasslands, Highland, and City States of Jowston, but he's also the reason for the Big Bad's turn to the dark side in this game. He concocted a scheme to take the power of all 27 True Runes for himself by making clones who would be able to wield them separately, like Luc and Sasarai. Implicitly, it was a vision of what would happen should he succeed that drove Luc on a mad quest to destroy his True Wind Rune and keep that from happening.
• Hate Plague: Sarah sets up a magic field that amplifies aggressive emotions near Karaya Village, to encourage the Zexen Knights there to raze the village. We later find that even their most hot headed member has the training and self control to disarm and restrain a warrior rushing him with a knife under calmer circumstances, so his and the rest of the Zexen Knights' actions were decidedly and intentionally out of character as a result.
• Hate Sink: Guillaume is an overweight, cheating, dog kicking, lying coward who has no qualms about harassing children... And you can recruit him.
• He Who Must Not Be Heard:
  • Toppo, Jacques, Eike, Watari and Ayame. While all of them are pretty silent, Toppo speaks the absolute least. In Toppo's case, he believes that as an actor, he should save his voice for the stage. Put him in any single play, and he'll drop more lines than all of the above characters do throughout the entire game.
  • Geddoe is often a man of few words but becomes this trope when put on stage.
• Hello, [Insert Name Here]: You get to name the Flame Champion, however... He's not a playable character; instead, one of the three leads takes up the True Fire Rune — and his name, if you so choose.
• Her Code Name Was "Mary Sue": Erk de Forever from 'Erk's Adventures', penned by 'Hitman Bravo', aka Ace.
• Heroic Bastard: Hugo has a Disappeared Dad, and Thomas is the illegitimate son of a Zexen noble.
• Heroic BSoD:
  • Hugo has one when Lulu gets himself killed fairly early in the events of the game.
  • Sasarai gets this one big time when he gets told he and Luc are clones who only exist as placeholders for the true runes. He doesn't exactly take it well. The manga interprets this scene differently.
• Heroic Mime: Averted. All four of the main playable characters talk. The ones that are real silent are some background characters and even THEY don't stay quiet the whole time.
• Hidden Elf Village: Alma Kinan, hidden from the world by a magic barrier and the only one of the Grassland tribes not to appear the truce meeting with Zexen.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: Subverted. Other than the duels against Guillaume (as Melville) and Yuber (as Hugo), every boss battle is winnable.
• Improbable Weapon User: Several; Mel stands out by using her puppet Branky. Then there's the Buskers...
• Interspecies Romance: It is hinted in this game that Nash married the 1000-year-old vampiress mistress Sierra, a playable character from Suikoden II, whom he met during the first of his gaiden games. Though, considering that she did suck his blood (and that he doesn't seem to have aged a day in the last 15 years), he may no longer be human.
• Inexplicable Treasure Chests:
  • Can be found at the end of most dungeons, guarded by a Mini-Boss... including in the middle of a canyon that the player passes through several times. With the chest mysteriously refilling every time, along with the Mini-Boss coming back.
  • Also, there are corpses littered around to serve the same purpose.
• Jeanne d'Archétype: Chris inherits her position from her dead superior and feels uncomfortable in it but carries it out for the good of Zexen's people.
• Jerkass:
  • The Zexen Council is full of pompous, self-righteous, money-hungry jerks.
  • Thomas' father. His son comes to see him for the first time after his mother dies, and what happens? The jerk of a father sends him to a secluded, forgotten castle where he "won't be any trouble".
• Lady of War: Chris Lightfellow is one of the series most prominent examples.
• Large Ham:
  • Fred Maxmillian is exceptionally hammy, especially when it comes to virtues of justice. Ironically this makes him a horrible actor in theater plays.
  • Other honorable mentions include Yuber, and any of the stars from the Lizard Clan.
  • There's also Leo and Wan Fu, who actually has a Combination Attack made pretty much entirely of ham and testosterone.
• Lizard Folk: One of the major Grasslands tribes. Surprisingly, they're not evil. They live in a huge underground cave and their beds are "nice and chilly" because, being cold-blooded, they can only go to sleep when it's cold.
• Luke, I Am Your Father:
  • Played straight with Chris and Jimba.
  • An unconventional one comes when Luc tells twin brother Sasarai that he's the son of Hikusaak, leader of one of the most powerful nations of the world, through cloning.
• Magical Native American: Aila, a young shaman-in-training from the Karayan Tribe, can read the spirits of the earth and nature.
• Mayfly–December Romance: It is a Deconstructed Trope for this game.
• Multiple Endings: Taken a step further in that any of the three main leads can become the main lead by taking up the True Fire Rune, leading to special endings for each. Also, collecting all the Stars of Destiny adds a Playable Epilogue recapping the events of the game from the villain's point of view.
• Musical Assassin: The Buskers Toppo, Nei and Shabon.
• My Country, Right or Wrong:
  • Chris is not particularly fond of how the Zexen council decides to use its knights, but still will follow the orders while grousing about it.
  • Sasarai is also an example of this, more in the manga than the game. He's not one for pointless violence but proceeds with his given mission to collect the true runes. It takes the possibility of someone using the runes to effectively nuking the continent to bring him around.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Luc will remark that Hugo had similar vibes with Tir and Riou from the previous game. Hugo is not the Tenkai star, but he pretty much held the 'main protagonist' spot, something that Luc wouldn't comment on Geddoe and Chris.
  • Lilly will get goosebumps if told to play/narrate at the Neclord stage play. Well who can blame her? She nearly got taken as his bride when she's just a kid... and take note that unlike Tengaar, she didn't have the upbringing or training of a warrior and was still far from reaching puberty.
  • Same play, Nash will always refer Sierra as 'Old Hag Sierra' and makes snide remarks about her.
  • Heartwrenchingly done in case of Viki or Futch, who still remembered that Luc used to be their ally and now they're practically fighting their ex-ally.
• Ninja: Ayame and Watari.
• No Indoor Voice: Peggi, the very enthusiastic Lizard Clan blacksmith.
• Non-Action Guy: Thomas is the Tenkai Star this time around, but generally lets more capable people do the fighting for him. Still plays an important role in events, however, and goes through some nice Character Development in the process without going all gung-ho for combat. Also, he won't loot bodies for treasure. Or climb ladders, for some reason. His stats are also arguably the worst out of the heroes... Or just the worst, period. It is possible to make him a decent fighter, however.
• Not the Intended Use: The Theater minigame is intended by the developers to create epic, moving playwrights that generate revenue when people cheer for the well-done plays. However, players are more likely to miscast the players with people not fitting with the role, which results with less money and the crowd booing the plays. Because it's looking more like a comedy gold mine than an actual money-making tool.
• Oblivious to Love: Chris is adored and fawned over by most of her knights. Their subtlety is a rock that still manages to fly over her head.
• Oddball in the Series: Out of the mainline games, Suikoden III is easily the weirdest: you have multiple protagonists who can talk instead of single Heroic Mime, the new True Runes are about standard Elemental Powers instead of abstract concepts like death and punishment, the antagonists counts as Stars of Destiny, the overworld is a point-and-click map, etc.
• Old Save Bonus:
  • Save data from the first two games unlocks some extra goodies and more personal Continuity Nods.
  • There are some for the Gaidens, but for obvious reasons these don't appear in the North American version.
• Older and Wiser: Lucia, Apple, Sasarai, Nash (applies to the Gaidens) and Futch.
• Older Than They Look: Geddoe (looks 35ish but is actually over 100}, Jimba (Looks like late 20s but is actually about 80), and the Twins (in their 30s and look like androgynous 16 year olds). ALL are justified by their True Runes.
• One-Winged Angel: So we got the Big Bad cornered and all the True Elemental Runes at our disposal so we can beat him... Oh, Crap!! DID HE JUST TRANSFORM INTO A FUCKING WIND PHOENIX?!?
• The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: Duke and the 14th Unit have this attitude towards Geddoe and the 12th Unit, which led to their Heel–Face Turn.
• Papa Wolf:
  • Put Toppo and Shabon in your party. Should Shabon get knocked unconscious during battle, Toppo will go berserk, meaning he will get even stronger than before.
  • This occurs with a number of character combinations, but in keeping with the trope: Sergeant Joe is a more apparent in-story example to Hugo and Lulu, and berserks when either of the boys are heavily injured or knocked out.
• Play as a Boss: If you recruit all of the Stars of Destiny, you unlock the ability to play the story from the villains's perspective and get to replay all of those Hopeless Boss Fights as the powerful bosses.
• Plucky Girl: Cecile, a little girl who appointed herself captain of Budehuc's guard. She's confident in her role and refuses to be depressed.
• Point-and-Click Map: An interesting case. Unlike its predecessors, Suikoden III uses a point-and-click world map, however you cannot instantly warp from one place to another (at least until you get Viki) and have to backtrack every town or dungeon in the way to move around.

• Purple Is Powerful: Lilly, Fred, Rico, Picolo, Ayame, Salome, Melville, Wilder, Roland.
• The Quisling: Franz, a Mantor trainer trying to earn second class citizenship for his hometown, Le Buque. Unlike most examples, he's treated Sympathetically (Foolish, but sympathetic) — since everyone else in Le Buque just sit on their asses and complain about the conditions.
• Questionable Casting: In-universe. Nadir's Theatre Mode allows you can choose characters to play roles in his plays. Hallec, Geddoe and Viki are some of the least qualified ones to use.
• Rose-Haired Sweetie: Estella inverts the trope by the opposite of the page description. She's an abusive mentor to her only student and lacks any kind of emotional warmth for anyone else.
• Rotating Protagonist: The "Trinity System" allows the player to experience the story from different perspectives. Hugo, Chris and Geddoe are initially available, but more three characters will appear if certain conditions are meet.
• Rule of Funny: Getting a badly cast play in theater will get the show booed... But who cares about that when those reek of complete hilarity!?
• Sexy Surfacing Shot: Occurs offscreen during a Bathtub Bonding scene between Lilly Pendragon and Jeanne. Lilly confronts Jeane about having a True Rune somewhere in her body, and Jeane gets out of the water for her to inspect it, but Lilly doesn't find anything.
• Shout-Out: The child detective Kidd is a rather obvious Captain Ersatz of Case Closed.
• Simultaneous Arcs: For much of the game, you alternate playing chapters between the three leads. (i.e. Hugo Chapter 1, then Chris Chapter 1, then Geddoe Chapter 1.) The three Chapter 1s cover roughly the same period of time, but from different perspectives.
• Spin-Offspring:
  • Emily (Ronnie Bell and Mose from Suikoden), Sanae (Freed and Yoshino from Suikoden II) Sharon (Milia from game 1 yet again), Fred (Maximillian from the first 2 games' grandson) and his retainer Rico (the granddaughter of Maximillian's own retainer, Sancho), Ceasar and Albert (Silverberg descendants) compensate for the relatively few recurring characters this time around. Belle is implied to be Meg's (from the first two games) daughter.
  • There's also Goro, the son of Tetsu from Suikoden II, who has followed in his father's footsteps as a bathmaker.
• The Strategist:
  • Caesar, with an Older and Wiser Apple returning as his personal mentor. Also, Salome serves as this in the Zexen Knights.
  • Just about all of the major factions have one except for arguably Geddoe's party, who mostly work behind the scenes and never get into major battles until the routes join together. Albert is this for the antagonists and Dios for the Harmonians.
• Stripperific: Unlike the other installments, this game gloriously averts this, as only Estelle is a major example. It is notable that this is the only game in the series where Jeanne averts this trope. She makes up for it later.
• Surprisingly Easy Mini-Quest: The castellan's sidequest. Also gets subverted later.
• Take Your Time: You can actually leave the Very Definitely Final Dungeon at any time you want and spend as much time as you want riding horses, putting on plays, rearranging the furniture and so on. Your enemy will hold off on the whole ceremony to destroy the world thing. ^note Though it's fun to nab all the other runes first, effectively derailing his plan anyway...
• Theme Naming: Geddoe's mercenaries are named: Joker, Queen, Ace and Jacques. Hint: think of a deck of cards. All of which, or at least in Joker's case which hints that the others may be as well, are pseudonyms.
• Those Two Guys: Lilly's attendants Reed and Samus. They're Palette Swaps of each other with notable personality distinction between them.
• Together in Death: Luc and Sarah at the end of his path.
• We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties: In the William Tell play, if the Son gets hit, the screen will fade to black, and Nadir will apologize for that technical difficulty.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Luc, whose Evil Plan is supposed to avert a horrible future.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: Plays a critical role this time around, as a True Rune bearer gave up his power and immortality so that he could grow old and die with the woman he loved.
• William Telling: William Tell is one of the plays available in "Theater Mode".

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