The arrival of a new generation of consoles is almost always seen as a good thing. With each new wave of technology we receive previously unimagined upgrades to our gaming experiences. Sprites turn to polygons, full motion video cutscenes make way for in-game storytelling and soundtracks once performed by Midi orchestras are now recorded by Philharmonics in Prague.

But the cost of this evolution is absorbed the game makers, those creators whose task it is to realise these machines’ vast but expensive potential. With such broad boundaries their games now take ten times as long to make and cost a hundred times as much they once did. The knock-on effect is that, perhaps for the first time ever, some genres are simply no longer feasible for anyone but the biggest players.

So it is for the Japanese RPG. Today the sort of winding 60-hour, world-touring epics that flooded the PlayStation’s library are prohibitively expensive to make, certainly costing more than the genre’s increasingly niche fanbase can support. Which series beyond the Final Fantasys and Sony-funded White Knight Chronicles of this world can afford the next-gen treatment? This has left JRPG developers with one of two choices: let their modestly-successful series continue to play out on last generation hardware as in the case of Persona, Grandia, Wild Arms and Valkyrie Profile or, like Suikoden Tierkreis, head to the handhelds, where the technology is still sufficiently restricted to make a long-form epic affordable.

Konami’s flagship RPG series has never been characterized by technological superiority, instead building its small but vociferous fanbase on gritty storytelling and a narrow, collect ‘em up focus. But despite the developer’s best efforts to make the most of what they have here, Suikoden Tierkreis is clearly a game made on a limited budget. As with the early PlayStation JRPGs, woefully basic 3D characters run about on still, flat CG background pictures. No matter how pretty these locations are – and the lush, green pastoral vistas have an inviting charm – pictures they remain, lending an anachronistic sense of disconnect between character and environment that never quite dissipates.

You can read the rest of this review over at Eurogamer here.