Konami, a Japanese company that operates slot machines and fitness clubs, released a video game yesterday on the PlayStation Network. It’s called Suikoden III. You should play it.
Suikoden III is, as you might have guessed, the third entry in the very-excellent Suikoden series, which you really must play, even if you only have time for #2, which is, incidentally, one of the best video games ever made. Suikoden III isn’t quite as transcendent—how could it be?—but it’s very good, switching up the formula established in the first two games and giving you a rotating cast of four main characters whose stories you can follow in any order.
For the uninitiated, Suikoden games are basically a cross between Game of Thrones and Pokémon: think giant, tragic wars, explored through individual character relationships and enhanced by a recruitment system that lets you build your own headquarters and establish an army of 108+ superstars. Like its predecessors, Suikoden III is gritty, tragic, funny, poignant, and just excellent in a ton of ways. It’s got some issues—the difficulty skews way too easy, and backtracking is a problem—but it’s definitely worth your time.
This version, a PS2 classic ported over to PS3, will cost you $10. The only downside here is that it’s not playable on Vita, which sucks for those of us who like to play our kazillion-hour JRPGs on portable systems. Oh well. Buying it anyway.
You can reach the author of this post at jason@kotaku.com or on Twitter at @jasonschreier.