The Alliance Alive, an epic Japanese RPG focused on war and politics, is perhaps my favorite game of 2018 and perhaps the best JRPG we've seen in years, despite the relatively quiet launch and fan-fare the game has received thus far. This article won't aim to be a comprehensive review. Those are available elsewhere. Instead, I'd like to focus on introducing this game for those of us who are fans of the Suikoden game series or similar games, and I'll try to keep this article as spoiler free as possible.
Suikoden's own producer, writer, and director, Yoshitaka Murayama, returned as the Scenario Writer for the Alliance Alive, his first game in over a decade. His influence comes through in all of the best ways possible.
The Alliance Alive takes place in a world of military occupation, where daemons successfully conquered and colonized the human population. Another race, the beastfolk, serve as enforcers for the daemon population. Players are quickly introduced to the dreams of those humans living in the occupation, and their aspirations to be free.
Like Suikoden 3, the game takes place from the perspective of multiple protagonists each with their own story arc, and their perspectives from different sides of the war. The game also has excellent talent point sharing mechanics across the multiple parties that encourage the player to fully experience and play with each of the characters available to them.
A Suikoden-like recruiting system is here as well, in a slightly different form. Instead of 108 Stars of Destiny, there are a smaller number of core recruits who are playable, plus an additional ~180 recruitable guild members who take on different jobs in the player's guild. Unlike Suikoden, the game does not penalize the player for missing one or two recruits. The recruits instead increase the player's power and enable the player to unlock new abilities. For example, recruiting more members to one's blacksmith guild enables the player to buy new weapons. The recruits also live and work in the equivalent to Suikoden's castle system.
The game also has a familiar concept of uniting and recruiting members from different species, including dragons and even some really, really cute penguins and frogs. The game itself is hilarious, and the dialogue is rich.
The Alliance Alive's battle system is truly unique, centering around "Arts" that the player learns over time, and an SP guage that refills slowly. There's also a system called "Ignition" that functions similarly to Final Fantasy's Limit Breaks. The mechanics feel heavily influenced by Radiant Historia, Final Fantasy, and Suikoden respectively.
This game is a really great game. I can't recommend it enough for those of us who are still hoping for the eventual return of Suikoden.