Suikoden Topic

[Gen Eric Gui]

Having a large cast is never, ever a bad thing.  It's more choices!  Choices are good, last time I checked.

And Suikoden 3 is quite different from the rest of the series in terms of the way the story is presented, as well as in the way the battle system works and in the way everything is structured.  It's absolutely FANTASTIC, though ,and anyone who hates it is a terrible person who should feel bad.  Lord Thomas FTMFW.

[kyuusei]

I never got far in III, but I for sure didn't hate it. I don't have my copy anymore, unfortunately.

I like choice. I just happen to dislike a bunch of the choices in Chrono Cross. :P

[Mickeymac92]

Choice is alright, I guess. I just don't like it when there's too many choices, and when there's no "right" choice that I have to figure out.

I'll see if I can pick up a cheap copy of Suikoden III someday, as well as Suikoden V and Tierkris.

[beach1]

Suikoden II is probably my 2nd favorite rpg ever behind Final Fantasy 4. The game was just so addicting on the first play through. The music, story, main characters, and graphics are fantastic (if you like 2-d, handdrawn sprite graphics.) The gameplay is great too. There are so many cool little minigames to do in it as well and so much charming, fun little things about the game. It's probably one of the few rpgs where on my first playthrough I didn't get sick of it at any point and had to play it everyday until I beat it. That's how fun and addicting it was to me. Suikoden I was great too. Not as good as 2, but still really good.

I was really disappointed with Suikoden 3. It felt so different from 1 and 2. I didn't like the 3-d graphics as much as the previous games' 2-d graphics. The battles were weird and kind of annoying. It wasn't horrible, but it didn't seem to click with me as much as the first 2 did. I may have to try 3 again. Maybe my opinion of it will change.

[TurnBasedDude]

My problem when i played III was the pacing. To me, it felt like the intros felt way longer than the actual main portion of the story when everyone unites. With IV, yeah, it is shallow, but it was not a bad game at all. Easy to get to in some ways the very least.

[Dice]

My problem when i played III was the pacing. To me, it felt like the intros felt way longer than the actual main portion of the story when everyone unites. With IV, yeah, it is shallow, but it was not a bad game at all. Easy to get to in some ways the very least.

They all had pacing issues in a lengthy starting.
Suikoden V's drags on a good 5 hours!
The second one has you stashing boxes.

[Raze]

Suikoden III was for me a LOT better after the first playthrough. Not like the story was impossible to follow first time through, but everything just clicks when you're playing again and know everyone and their perspective. I don't know if I can really recommend the game to a new player and say 'Play it twice and you'll love it!', but I can recommend people who played it and found it to be 'eh' to give it another go.

[Themadcow]

The 108 characters thing is either 'your bag' or not. It's very much a Pokemon "gotta catch em all" factor.

The thing is, you don't have to use them and the collection of the characters acts as a secondary level of difficulty if you complete it without the full set - I'd strongly recommend playing S2 without a guide on your first run to see how many you can get, and then doing it again with a guide. I'd say it's almost impossible to collect all 108 in S5 without a guide as the windows for recruitment and pre-conditions are insanely tough compared to previous versions.

In terms of being 'generic' - there are many elements that are fairly generic but it just doesn't feel like it. The Suikoden series stands out from it's contemporaries because of the incredibly powerful stories, fantastic music (S2 final battle with Neclord ftw) and some of it's unique factors - such as the HQ that grows with you during the game. The only thing I'd genuinely change about the game is making the battles tougher as it's more than possible to beat most of the games in the series without getting 'wiped' once.

[sandiny0ursh0es]

Honestly what hooks me to this series is finding all the characters and watching your castle grow. I could care less about the story. The battle system is boring and extremely easy. In Suikoden V, I just spammed Auto-Attack/Battle and coasted through the entire game.

However, once you get your castle and start recruiting people, the game gets all kinds of fun!

[Gen Eric Gui]

The point of the battle system is that it removes boring combat from the game by making combat quick and painless.  This solves several level-grinding issues and makes it easier to get back to the exploring/recruiting parts of the game that are the real draw.  I'd hardly call the easy combat in Suikoden a negative.  At least several of the bosses are tough.

[Dice]

The point of the battle system is that it removes boring combat from the game by making combat quick and painless.  This solves several level-grinding issues and makes it easier to get back to the exploring/recruiting parts of the game that are the real draw.  I'd hardly call the easy combat in Suikoden a negative.  At least several of the bosses are tough.

Any difficulty spike, I found, was conquered by easy and quick levelling. In the end, the advantage comes from the better tier'd characters that exist (it's not a matter of function, some just suck more than others).

I'm surprised; I'd probably be angrier (ARR) with such simple gameplay mechanics except the game really carries itself well to pretty much all other departments.  Music and scenery (not so much graphics exactly) were a real highlight, taking you through quite a worldly experience of middle-aged earth.  I think thats one aspect I *love* about the series - you get a lot of culture from the places you see.  No wonder there's god knows how many arrange albums.

[Hobbun]

I am playing Suikoden III right now and am enjoying it. I have almost finished the first chapter for the characters (just have to finish Thomas Chpt 1).  Please tell me that the actual 'main' story is longer than all the beginning chapters of the game. Not that they are short by any means, but I just want one of those experiences where you just played a large part of the game, but now the 'real' story is just beginning. 

I hope it isn't the character chapters take up the meat of the game, and then chapter 4 and 5 are a lot shorter. That would be disappointing.

[Mickeymac92]

*Sigh* The more I see, the less interested I become, but at least the question no longer burns. Quick and simple combat isn't exactly my thing (in fact, it usually kills most games for me), and gameplay's always the most important part for me. I'll see if I can pick up some of them for cheap someday, but otherwise I'll just skip out on the series for now.

[Kup]

I was thinking about this earlier and there are a few things that I was impressed with back in 1997, when I first played Suikoden II:

- 3 different battle systems (standard turn-based, army battles and 1 vs. 1)
- 6 character turn-based battles
- 108 (mostly) playable characters
- The story is very powerful
- The music is beautiful
- And the visuals are clear, neat and well presented for a 2D RPG

I'm not trying to troll here or give anyone a reason to play Suikoden II by raging about these points - those are just a few of the things that really made the experience quiet unique for me back in the day (especially the top 3 points).

Does anyone feel the same way about some of the things I've mentioned here?

[pseudonym]

I was thinking about this earlier and there are a few things that I was impressed with back in 1997, when I first played Suikoden II:

- 3 different battle systems (standard turn-based, army battles and 1 vs. 1)
- 6 character turn-based battles
- 108 (mostly) playable characters
- The story is very powerful
- The music is beautiful
- And the visuals are clear, neat and well presented for a 2D RPG

I'm not trying to troll here or give anyone a reason to play Suikoden II by raging about these points - those are just a few of the things that really made the experience quiet unique for me back in the day (especially the top 3 points).

Does anyone feel the same way about some of the things I've mentioned here?

Suikoden II stands as one of my favorite RPG's. At the time, the story was, at least for me, very interesting and original. I don't remember any other games during that time that were similar to Suikoden II. Comparing Suikoden II to games that we currently have, then yes, there are going to be some similarities and that may cause Suikoden II to seem less than original. However, in my eyes, Suikoden II came first, others later.

The music is very memorable. It draws from different types of genres to make it unique. Just like Final Fantasy VI (our 3), the music can often wrap the person up in the experience.

The gameplay may seem simple and almost trivial but, as you progress in the game and get stronger, the "auto" part becomes necessary for lesser enemies. Also, the game did offer a rune that would allow weaker enemies to stay away from you. I like the fact that some battles are drawn out. I think that's the problem with some current games. I like quicker battles.