Suikoden (幻想水滸伝, Gensōsuikoden) is a series of Japanese role-playing games published by Konami.
Dating back to the Sony PlayStation with the release of the original Suikoden in 1995, the game series is loosely based on the classical Chinese novel Shui Hu Zhuan. Each individual game in the series centers on relative themes of politics, corruption, revolution, mystical crests and the 108 Stars, the 108 protagonists who are loosely interpreted from the Shui Hu Zhuan.
The series contains varying gameplay, settings and stories between each installment, with a lineage of shared continuity running through many of the games, particularly the first 10 games of the 14 released to date. Games in the series tend to use the temporal politics of the game events in order to examine notions of destiny, order, chaos, and the meaning of will.
Though the core series is a role-playing game franchise, it has branched into other genres, such as tactical role-playing games, visual novels, and card games. The series has been distributed on many platforms, beginning with the Sony PlayStation, and including consoles, computers, and mobile phones. The Suikoden series has also branched into other forms of media, particularly novels, manga, and audio dramas.
