Having seen the Suikoden fandom closely for the past few years, one thing that has always puzzled me is the popularity of Pesmerga. Let me lay this out--Pesmerga has zero character development, and lacks personality. I believe that the only reason people like him is because he wears black armor, and many people somehow find that appealing.

Many people say that Pesmerga is strong and claim that he is one of the best, if not THE best fighter you can have in your team. They rave and preach that he is "a tank" and how his attacks are "reely powful." Some go as far as saying he is excellent as a fighter and a magic user.

However,Any genuine Suikoden fan who has fiddled around with character effectiveness would know that an effective combatant needs to have balanced stats and free rune slots. Pesmerga has neither of these. Besides the fact that he is a slow attacker, he only has one open rune slot (In Suikoden 2), making it impossible for him to be anywhere as effective as a character who has two free rune slots.

Furthermore, the fact that Pesmerga can't remove any of his armor, and only has one removeable accessory slot limits his potential. Pesmerga has a Horned Helmet, Knight Armor, Chaos Shield, Iron Boots, and Crimson Cape as unremovable equipment. None of thse equipment gives him stat bonuses or protect him against elements. You only have the liberty to fiddle with one accessory if you want to give him some sort of stat bonus or elemental protection. Because most attacks you would receive from enemies after you acquire Pesmerga is magical in nature, his high DEF doesn't really help at all. Most random encounter enemies would be defeated before they get any attacks (and often before Pesmerga gets to attack at all), thus, the only real attacks he would receive are from bosses. Most all bosses later in the game do not use physical attacks. How useful can Pesmerga be with his non-elemental protected, heavily armored buttocks against that? Zilch.

What's worse is his unremovable rage rune on his sword. A rage rune is a powerful thing to put on your sword, considering the fact that it does plus 50% damage to the enemy. However , an unremovable rage rune will make Pesmerga unable to do any damage against enemies who have resistance against fire.

As far as Pesmerga's magic power goes, he is simply average, and his rune affinities suck donkey. Besides, a character who has both physical and magic attack capabilities can still only do one of these/round. He is clearly better with a rune that would enhance his physical attack capabilities. He is simply crummy as a magic user.

Stat-wise, he has the highest STR along with Georg Prime (besides monsthers who have no weapon advantage). However, STR alone doesn't add much to overall damage, because the basic damage forumula is (Weapon ATK + STR)-Enemy DEF = damage. This means each point of strength equals 1 point of damage--not very impressive. In comparison, open rune slots mean a character can have damage multiplying runes such as Fury, Doube-Strike, and Double Beat. The combination of the above three runes sextuples the damage. Add an exertion rune to the an open weapon slot and the damage can be duodecupled (x12). That means a character with weapon strength of 100 and STR of 100 would do 2400 damage--while Pesmerga at his maximum STR and weapon power would do 950 damage with a double strike rune. Thus, even a weak character can outdo Pesmerga in the damage department.

Anothert problem with Pesmerga is his speed. He is slow--and because of that, most battles would be over before he even gets to attack. How useful! His low TECH makes a critical hit less likely, which means Georg Prime is better in pretty much everything besides MDEF (which can be augumented with accessories).

All in all, Pesmerga is a lousy character. He has no impact in the plot so far, and who knows if he ever will (especially after Murayama has left the Suikoden team). Originally, he wasn't even supposed to appear in Suikoden 2 (Lucia was supposed to be recruitable), which shows his lack of importance. He has a personality of a piece of cardboard, and has zero character development. How can anyone possibly like him, besides for some lame reason such as how his armor looks cool? Thats a lame reason for like a character--and it is also true that people who like pesmerga tend to be lame.

In a recent discussion I had with my comerade of many years, Kuromimi of Suikosource, he wisely pointed out how most people at message boards who like Pesmerga share the following traits--

• They can not spell ("pezmeragera iz kool lol0rZ!!")
• They display no logical thought ("pesmeragra is teh b3st!!")
• They use no punctuation ("i wuz playin sukoden 2 and wuz uzin pez he iz so kool i tink im hungry an stuff omgwtf lol wherez mommy"
• They do not capitalize ("i lurve pessy")
• They spam (making topics such as "i saw a skunk today...")
• They have no skills, and often beg others to make their avatars, etc. ("plz mek mee a picture thingie")
• They make unrelated topics in unrelated forums (Talking about DBZ in the error report forum).
• They do not wash.

The effect of attracting such undeirable persons is in itself a drawback for Pesmerga. Good thing he did not appear in Suikoden 3. I hope he doesn't appear in Suikoden 4 as well. Pesmerga is a boring, tedious character that totally sucks, and if you disagree with that, you're probably boring, tedious, and sucky, too.

Written by SARSadmin
September 7th, 2004