Suikoden V takes place in and around the Queendom of Falena. There, a small band of adventurers will uncover many secrets, the least of which is the power of the Sun Rune.
Queen Arshtst is the ruler of what once was a peaceful land, but civil unrest threatens to tear the queendom apart. As the prince of Falena, you and your shipmates will travel to the origins of the revolt and begin to uncover the source of the warring faction.
There are many elements of the Suikoden series that have carried over into this game, but there also a few differences. Both the standard RPG-group battles and the one-on-one fights return, but the sea-based battles of IV have parted ways for a scaled down RTS-style war scenario.
The war battles start off with you setting up your units and then deploying them to the field. From there, you move your units around the map trying to achieve whatever the victory goal is. If your units encounter the enemy army, then the two fight and the victor of that skirmish is automatically determined. Thankfully, you don't really have to deal with resource management or anything that makes an RTS really time consuming.
The winner of the skirmishes is determined in a rock-paper-scissors fashion (similar to that found in the one-on-one battles). There are three types of land units (Infantry, Cavalry and Archery) and three types of sea units (Combat Ships, Archer Ships and Rams). What type of unit you have is determined by the captain you choose for your unit.
Another change is the use of Party Skill Points. Skill Points are earned during various battles and can be used to enhance or upgrade various abilities that each character has. But if you have a character that you are desperate to level up and he/she/it doesn't have enough points, you can have another character move their points to the party and use those party points for the other character. Of course, there is a loss; when you move points to the party, you have to pay an extra 10% in points. So in order to move 100 points, your character has to have at least 110. This was a nice feature that really helps to keep your team balanced, so now, even if you do seem to level up one or two characters more than others, you can still spread the love around some.
