Music: Tiny Characters in a Huge WorldThis is the overworld theme. The combat theme is a pretty generic, forgettable melody.
Outside, Mute is accosted by the local wildlife! Random encounters!
The battle system in Suikoden is quick and breezy. The battles are only in pseudo-3D, so there's no loading time between the map screen and the battle screen; the transition is as fast as it was in SNES games. Once in battle, there are four overall options: Fight lets you choose battle commands for everyone in the party one at a time, allowing for manual control, use of items, and the casting of magic. Run gives the party a single chance to flee. If it succeeds, the battle ends with no EXP or money reward. If it fails, the enemies get a free turn to hit the party. Bribe is an option to flee that's more likely to succeed, but costs money.
Free Will is what makes the battle system a paragon of speed and ease unmatched by almost any game released before or after (including, sadly, later Suikoden series titles). Free Will lets each party member choose an enemy and hit it with a physical attack. Since party members that are targetting different enemies will all leap forward and strike at the same time, a round of combat in Suikoden only takes a few seconds to resolve.
Compare to Final Fantasy 9, for the same system but several years later, where you may actually fall asleep between issuing your party commands and having those commands resolve themselves. It's kind of sad how much the genre has resisted the obvious innovation of "Don't make combat fucking boring".
It took you longer to read that explanation than it did for this fight to end.
No matter what their current experience level, it takes 1000 EXP to reach the next one. If the enemies defeated are tougher than the characters that defeated them, the characters gain proportionately more EXP for winning. If the monsters were particularly weak, EXP gains are similarly decreased. This means that later in the game, when characters I've largely ignored are forced into the party and are twenty levels behind, they'll catch up quickly.
In this case, beating a single BonBon (the game's equivalent of a Dragon Quest Slime, only fuzzy instead of oozy) is enough to bump Mute up to level 3.
A few more fights, some demanding Mute flee -- those Boars are tough -- and a handful won bring Mute up to level 8. At this level, he's so much stronger that he no longer needs to run from the monsters. The monsters run from him! Ha ha! The "Flee" option turns into "Let Go" if the party is significantly stronger than the enemies they face. There's still no EXP or money reward, but Let Go never fails. Again, compare to other games that are full of random encounters that refuse to let the party get away until the monsters have plinked away a few time-consuming but barely-damaging hits.
Anyway. Mute's got places to go. Across a bridge to the west, and up into the mountains.
