Lusipurr.com – Presenting the Sundry Opinions of Lusipurr and Friends

I’ve been playing Suikoden Tierkreis in a style that reminds me of a certain tortoise in a fabled race. I am thoroughly and surprisingly impressed with the title, as it has kept my interest in a way that a portable game rarely does. But while the game is definitely not perfect, nothing bothers me more than one particular feature. Or, more accurately, one particular lack of feature.

Yes, it’s not necessarily a new topic to some of Lusipurr.com’s readers, but a quicksave feature in a portable game is apparently a hot topic that garners some entirely opposite opinions. Let me provide mine.

When the DS (especially the new DSi) touts itself as more than just a portable gaming device, it is extremely frustrating to run into a game that doesn’t allow me to perform a quicksave from any non-cut scene, non-battle sequence. It is more important than having multiple save slots. If I’m playing Suikoden at work on my break and a co-worker comes up to me and says something to the effect of, “Oh, is that the new DS? Can I play with the camera?”, or, “Hey, you told me there’s an embarrassing picture of Riddles kissing a watermelon, can I see it?” I shouldn’t have to say, “Oh sure, just let me backtrack through this area, fight through any random encounters, find a town, go to the inn, and then save. It’ll only take 5-25 minutes!”. Or say I forgot that I left my DS in sleep mode for the day in the middle of a game and return – exhausted – to try and set my alarm for work the next morning. Sure, it’s not the DS’ fault that I didn’t remember to exit the game earlier, but the penalty for my forgetfulness (and use of a built-in convenient sleep feature) shouldn’t be tedious back-tracking that I’ll need to trek again through later. I think the lack of a quicksave in any DS game is valid reason to speak against it in a review and worth mentioning as a detractor when recommending games to others.

What do you think? Am I being too whiny? Or should the blame be placed on Nintendo for not having a “save state” option on the DSi for quick access to its other features? Let me know like you always do in the comments below.