Part of a series of games extremely loosely based on a Chinese epic. Actually, the only thing that the book and the game really have in common is the number 108 - specifically, the number of different characters that can be recruited by your main character's rapidly growing army. Get all 108 before a certain point in the plot, and good things happen. Rather than mess with the world as a whole, the game deals with the politics and military situation of a particular location, typically just as a war is about to break out.
Magic and other special abilities in the games are handled by runes, which can be equipped to a number of places (depending on which one in the series you're playing), including left and right hands, forehead, and weapon; only the more proficient magic users have all of their rune slots available. Runes allow magic spells (such as the healing spells of a Water rune), special weapon techniques (bow users can attack all enemies with a Great Hawk Rune), or other unusual abilities (Waking Rune users start battle asleep, but are berserk when woken up). Some characters come with runes permanently embedded in a given slot, including various unique runes that often relate to the character's history or personality (Circus performer Bolgan has a Fire Breath rune that can deal extra fire damage). Finally, the world's history includes a creation myth involving 27 True Runes, one of which usually decides to attach itself to your hero and make things complicated.
SuikodenIII differs from its predecessors by introducing what it calls the "Trinity Sight System". This is a fancy way of saying that there is no main character - or, that there are three. The game looks at the same events from the perspectives of people from three different sides; the choices that you make in conversations and the like are reflected from chapter to chapter, and events that seem to not make sense from one character's viewpoint often become much clearer after playing through another character's chapter. Eventually, the three viewpoints converge at a single moment; from there, the story follows a single track (though which one it follows still depends on the choices of the player).
One of JeffBrenion's many obsessions, along with the first two in the series.
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