Suikoden Tierkreis for Nintendo DS Reviews by Gamers

Like the other Suikoden games, Tierkreis' most notable feature is that there are 108 potential party members. Outside of that, Tierkreis is more or less your standard JRPG.

The battle system is pretty much what you'd expect from the genre, with the notable additions of support characters (who make up 4 of the 108, although only 2 are even somewhat useful) and spells being replaced by the "Marks of the Stars". MotS consist of 25 or so abilities, 12 of which are granted to every character by the end of the game. Since only four of those 12 can be equipped at once, you might expect there to be some strategy involved in distributing them. Unfortunately, it's usually pretty obvious which MotS a character should have. Some are clearly good, others clearly worthless.

Although the story itself is in the middle of the road when it comes to quality, ST features some very impressive character/background art and voice acting. (with the exception of the main character, who talks at about 100 words per minute for some reason) Probably because of large features like these, ST relies on a menu-based town and world navigation system instead of the traditional walking. It takes a bit to get used to, but has the welcome effect of making traveling much faster.

Unfortunately, the dungeons and fields of the game (which rely on the walking system) are usually rather bland and have an annoyingly high encounter rate. Normally I wouldn't mind a high encounter rate, but unfortunately the game's dynamic EXP system drops off a little too quickly, resulting in challenging battles that provide very small amounts of EXP.

My review title refers to the smaller systems the game has, like trade and seasons, most of which are unfortunately useless.

Despite its issues, ST manages to be a fun game, although some may find it hard to justify spending the 30+ hours it takes to finish. It isn't the best of DS RPGs, but it's definitely worth a look.

I loved this game. I've played all of the series and i have to say they all have been fun to play and also a challenge to get all 108 stars of destiny. Tierkreis did in fact change the setting and world from the other 6 games, but it also changed systems. I did like that fact that i could change the marks of stars around. This game is really fun to play. The graphics are awesome and so is the gameplay. I'm giving this game a 10 and hope the next one will be even better.