I made it quite a bit further in Suikoden V today, though at 21 hours in I’m still apparently only about a third of the way through the game, judging by the chapter counts…

I had to head back to Raftfleet and then took off for Agate Prison, though I had to take the long way through a mine and dwarven town to get to it. There we recruited the tactician we needed, and learned some more about the Lordlake uprising and how the Sun Rune was involved.

Upon heading back to Raftfleet, it came under attack from the Godwin navy and another war battle occurred. This one involved ships instead, but played pretty much like the first one, and was fairly easy in the end since I only had to defeat two ships. Having saved them, Raftfleet is now an ally.

I returned with the tactician to Rainwall, where suspicions developed that Lord Barows was hiding something, so next I needed a detective. Fortunately, there was one right in town, and after a bit of work we discovered a drunkard who was involved in Lordlake and took him there to confront it and fess up. After that I then recruited a few more characters, as per the walkthrough, since some of them can be missed if you don’t get them at the right time.

After returning to Rainwall again, another war battle was approaching, and some intrigue about Barows and his involvement with the neighbouring country of Ames was revealed. The war battle turned out to be a Barows trap, but we turned it back on them by following the tactician’s advice. After that, the Barows’ guilt was too evident and even his own daughter demanded to know what he was hiding. I had to duel the storehouse keeper to be let into the basement, where the missing Dawn Rune was discovered, along with the mysterious vanishing lady again.

More was revealed about how the Dawn Rune went missing, the Lordlake incident, and how the Barows were involved, and we clearly weren’t going to be able to remain allied with them, so our party left town and headed back to Raftfleet, including the Barows’ daughter, who has sided with me. Raftfleet will be my new base of operations (for now anyway), and I finished off the session by recruiting a few more characters.

I finally got back to Suikoden V today, and started off by going through the first war battle of the game, though it was fairly easy since it was more of a tutorial. Unlike previous Suikoden games, where the war battles played like a turn-based wargame, the ones here are more like an RTS, where you control squads of soldiers in real-time and each squad has special abilities based on which party character you have leading them. I’m not too good at RTSs, but hopefully future ones won’t be too tough.

We need more allies now that we’re rebels, so after the battle it was time to head to Raftfleet and Lordlake to try and convince them to join. First though, since I can now recruit Stars of Destiny, I stopped by Haud Village and picked up Cornelio, after interrupting his wacky elf orchestra.

I had to grind for cash for a bit for weapon sharpening before heading to Raftfleet, and upon arriving there Raja said she couldn’t help. The gold bandits I caught earlier did offer to take me to Lordlake, the scorched town at the start of the game, but they also refused to help.

I reported back to the Barows mansion in Rainwall, and we decided we needed a tactician to avoid letting Barows overly influence us, so now I have to go spring one from some prison. Salum Barows is also already trying to set me up with his daughter, as I suspected before, but she’s already aware of his play for power. And his son is still going on about rescuing my sister and how enamoured he is with her, which is rather creepy since she’s only about 10 or 12 years old…