Five games and five legendary strategists.
From Mathiu Silverberg to Shu, Lucretia, Elenor, and Apple.
The Suikoden series has given us some of the most memorable military minds in JPG history. But who is actually the best?
Today, we’re ranking all five, from mediocre to greatest.
That’s based on their intelligence, battlefield tactics, adaptability, experience, and most of all, what they actually accomplish. And trust me, the top three are extremely difficult to separate. Let’s begin!
Before anyone gets angry that it should be Caesar Silverberg, I have to disagree, because Apple has been there around the block. She’s been in the works now for another war, her third one ongoing. And to me, she is a military strategist who was trained by Mathiu and now is more other than just supporting Caesar as counterpart to Albert. She has taken over and you can tell. But the problem is that when you put her next to the other four people on this list, she is still developing.
Apple is essentially the apprentice among masters. In sweet one, she’s already working with the liberation army. In sweet and two, she becomes part of the new alliance against Highland. And this is where things get particularly interesting because Apple isn’t simply presented as some idiot who comes up with bad plans.
The problem, for example, in Suikoden is that she was fighting an opponent unlike almost anything anyone had faced before in Luca Blight.
She can make a sound strategic assessment and then Luca Blight simply smashed through the assumptions with overwhelming aggression numbers and unpredictability.
She’s got a lack of experience maybe, but she’s learning how to become a strategist while dealing with the human consequence so far. She isn’t Mathiu therefore.
She isn’t Shu, but she definitely has an edge knowing the tactics that the Silverberg family have used. She isn’t Lucretia, who appears to know what’s happening three moves before everyone else.
And she’s certainly not Elenor, whose military reputation was already legendary.
But Apple has something the others don’t have quite in the same way.
Growth. She gets better. She learns from the people around her. And across the series, she becomes a much more capable strategist than her initial reputation might suggest.
So why number five?
Because of ranking mastery and not potential. She is intelligent, she’s talented, she’s useful, but she always has a shared stage either with Mathiu, with Shu, or with Caesar.
So compared to the other four, she still seems like the student even if she’s the master now. And that is why Apple takes fifth place.
At number four, we have one of the most underrated strategists in the entire franchise. And honestly, this is the rank that feels the most unfair because if you only looked at Eleanor’s reputation, you’d probably put her much higher. She is a legendary strategist and has military experience from her time serving the Scarlet Moon Empire. And by the time of weaker than four, her name already carries enormous weight.
She’s a veteran and a genius, someone who has already spent years thinking about warfare on a level that most people simply cannot match. And yet, Suikoden IV is the problem. We don’t get enough of her. She has been out of active military life for years and carries enormous emotional baggage.
She’s a heavy drinker and a withdrawer. And by the time the heroes need her, they’re effectively trying to bring back the old Eleanor. And that means we’re consistently hearing about how brilliant she is.
But we don’t get the number of spectacular demonstrations that Mathiu, Shu, or Lucretia receive in the game. And that’s the crucial difference because Eleanor is told to be incredible, but they have more opportunities to show it to us.
While Eleanor does get involved, you can see why her reputation exists. She quickly understands the larger strategic situation, works alongside Kika and Lino en Kuldes, and helps organize the resistance against the Kuluk thread. But the scale of the game simply doesn’t give her as many legendary moments as some of the other strategists.
Not because she’s necessarily worse or less intelligent or whatever reason, but because the evidence we actually get to judge her on is smaller. And that’s a shame. Honestly, I believe Eleanor is one of the biggest what if characters in this ranking. Had we seen at least a flashback at the height of her career and Scarlet Moon or more interactions in the meantime with Graham Cray.
It wouldn’t have made the ending between them so weird, finding out that Graham Cray was Elenor Silverberg’s apprentice. This list might have looked way different had we seen more of Elenor instead of just her bumping around every few hours of gameplay. And that’s about it.
That is the very reason why Elenor Silverberg is ranked number four.
At number three, we have the strategist who might be the most terrifyingly competent person on this entire list. Lucretia, her reputation is ridiculous.
Constantly thinking several steps ahead of everyone else, she seems to know what her enemies are going to do before they actually think about it. She has an almost absurd number of successful strategies throughout the game. From the army’s invasion to the Barows conspiracy, to Raftfleet, to the recapture of the Sol-Falena City.
Over and over again, she is put into situations where the odds look terrible and then comes up with a plan that nails it. This is why some fans genuinely argue that she should be number one. Because if the question is simply which strategist gets the best results, Lucretia has an extremely strong case.
She doesn’t just survive the impossible, she dismantles it. And some of her plans are brilliantly specific because it exploits circumstances that other people wouldn’t even think to use. Her ability to manipulate the situation without necessarily revealing her entire plan is all incredibly impressive.
But there’s one criticism of Lucretia that comes up and up again. And it’s a pretty fair one. She’s almost too perfect. She rarely seems surprised by what she’s doing or seems genuinely outplayed. She often two or three steps ahead. And as a result, some fans feel that her intelligence is harder to evaluate because we don’t always see her struggling with the problem. We see the answer.
And that’s an important distinction because Machu and Shu often make you think: “How the hell did they come up with that!?”
With Lucrecia, the reaction is more often: “Of course, she already knew.”
And that can actually make her feel slightly less impressive as a character, even while making her look more impressive as a strategist.
So, where does that leave her? Because her accomplishments are enormous, her execution is probably the best on the list. But when we’re talking about the combination of all of these factors mentioned earlier on, there are two people I’d still put ahead of her.
And that leaves Lucretia at number three.
This is where things really get difficult because if you told me that Mathiu Silverberg is the best strategist in Suikoden, I wouldn’t argue it very hard. Mathiu is the definition of a military strategist. He has experience, real experience, because he served as a military strategist during the Scarlet Moon Empire’s campaigns. He knows what war looks like and what soldiers need. He understands logistics, deception, and morale.
But most of all, he understands people.
His strategies aren’t flashy simply for the sake of being flashy. They’re designed to produce results. One of the best examples is the way he handles its internal security. Rather than simply trying to identify a traitor directly, he creates a situation in which a traitor effectively exposes themselves.
That’s classic Mathiu. Don’t fight a problem head on. Control the conditions around it and let the enemy reveal themselves. He also demonstrates some extremely creative battlefield thinking throughout the whole of the Gate Rune War.
And this is one of the reasons fans so often put him at number one. Deception, leadership, psychological insight, and the ability to make decisions where the situation gets ugly.
And this last part matters. Mathiu understands something that many fictional strategists don’t. Sometimes there is no good answer, and there is only one answer that costs the least.
That’s one of the central ideas behind his character. He has seen what war does to people and he’s seen what happens when strategic decisions become detached from human consequences.
And that makes him more than just a genius. It makes him a strategist who understands the price of strategy. So why isn’t he number one? Because there is one person who does something that is arguably even harder than what everyone else has done.
We’re going to get to number one.
Mathiu has a strong claim to number one. Lucretia has a strong claim to number one. But looking at the arguments that fans repeatedly use to defend the best strategist in the series, we keep coming back to Shu because Shu does something different.
He doesn’t calculate the battlefield. He calculates the person across the table.
Shu understands that the best way to defeat an intelligent opponent isn’t necessarily to outthink them in the way they expect. It’s to make them think they’re winning and then punish them for it.
That’s particularly important when we talk about Leon Silverberg because he isn’t some random enemy commander. He is one of the greatest strategic minds in the world of Suikoden. And Shu knows exactly what kind of man he’s dealing with.
Leon is rational, methodical, predictable, and extremely intelligent. And Shu turns those qualities into weaknesses. He weaponizes Leon’s expectations.
That’s a thing that separates Shu from the other strategists. He loves doing things that his opponent simply doesn’t expect. He uses deception. He’ll manipulate assumptions and he’ll create situations where his enemy’s own intelligence becomes a liability.
And that is arguably the highest level of strategy because there is a difference between I know what you’re going to do and I know why you’re going to do it.
Shu constantly operates on the why level and that’s why fans so often put him at the top when the question is raw intelligence. But there’s another important reason he’s put above Mathiu.
Shu was trained by Mathiu and he eventually develops a philosophy that is distinctly his own. Mathiu understood war as a complex moral problem. Shu understands war as a problem that must be solved. That doesn’t necessarily make Shu a better human being. Just think of the lengths Apple, Riou, and Nanami had to go through to convince him to join.
He is an exceptionally dangerous strategist and is willing to think outside the traditional military doctrine. He’s willing to gamble and use himself as part of the plan. He’s also willing to exploit the psychological expectations of his opponent. And when all of that comes together, he becomes incredibly difficult to beat.
So when the question is who is the best and smartest strategist, I think Shu deserves the number one spot.
If you disagree with this ranking, you probably aren’t actually disagreeing about the characters.
You’re disagreeing about what makes a strategist the best.
If you value experience, and overall military competence, it’s Mathiu, successful execution, it’s Lucretia. But if you value adaptability, psychological warfare, and the ability to completely surprise an intelligent opponent, she is number one.
And honestly, that’s why this is such a great group of characters to rank because unlike a lot of RPG genius strategist, these five actually have very different approaches to strategy.
Mathiu is the veteran, Shu is a chess player, Lucretia is the grandmaster, Elenor is a legendary tactician, and Apple is an apprentice turned master, but still in need of help.
Who is the greatest strategist in Suikoden?
Is Shu really number one? Or should Mathiu take the crown, Lucretia, maybe even Elenor or Apple?
Let me know your ranking in the comments.
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Suikoden theories and deep dives, and more on various RPG series.
Thank you very much for reading. I’ll see you in the next one.
So, make sure your pixels are plentiful and your adventures are prosperous.
I'm Amethyst, 30, and from the Netherlands. I've always had a passion for adventure in roleplaying games. Being able to immerse myself into these universes allowed me to escape the trauma's of my youth. Now I want to share my gaming passion with all of you!
