Geddoe Chapter 2 beginning choices & reduced party free-roam

[HolyPaladin]

Yeah, Suikoden III is deceptively hard, especially after coming off of the more easy Suikoden II; more than once, I've had to rethink my strategies and which skills to use just to get through to the end.

I once got stuck against Franz in front of Le Buque. I levelled the wrong skills, that battle is pretty tough just like when you have to fight in Vinay del Zexay with Hugo

I think I had to check the GameFAQs forums on how to beat the Leo/Percival battle, but I finally did it !

I think by the time Franz rolled around, though, I had a good grasp of the battle system. Still took me some time to understand the battle system restrictions put on the war battles, though. That said, S3's are my favorite because they use the regular battle system. Therefore, you don't have to relearn too many new things. Once the war battle restrictions are understood, war battles get a lot easier to do.

I tried not using/levelling Fire Magic with Joker, bad mistake. The game is so tough, never gonna do it again

I can't remember exactly what I did with Joker (I think I went with Water magic instead of Fire because I needed heal more), but I do believe I fell into the Ace-and-Joker-not-being-in-the-same-pair trap once but only after realizing much later in my playtime that two-person unites require the two characters to be in the same pair, and never mind that stupid single-target-healing-cannot-target-other-pairs mechanic that made me lose way too many times than I care to count.

I even have to give up on Thomas chapter 2, forced to level Shield and Armor Protect for Cecile

Yeah, if Geddoe is the hard mode of an already hard Suikoden, then Thomas is practically KH2FM's Critical Mode: seemly impossible if you don't know what you're doing, a fun challenge if you have near mastery of the battle mechanics. Because of S3's deceptive hardness, I use a very strict order to play the game. I'll link them here, just DO NOT check the links if you don't like Spoilers, my advice contains some. If you have any questions about Suikoden 3, let me know. Out of all of Suikodens, I've researched both S3 and Tactics the most because it's near necessary if you want to beat the game.

Here are the links:

My Suggested Optimal Chapter Order & Strategies
My Suggested Optimal Thomas Chapter Recruits & Strategies
My Suggested Optimal Chris Chapter Recruits (Example of Only Three Recruits, Though)

If you find these links useful, I can also give you my full recruitment suggestions list; I've tested that list through several different game playthroughs, and I found it to give you the most ways to fully take advantage of all different ways the game mechanics of Suikoden III try to help you have an easy time with the game.

[eldrasidar]

Suikoden 3 isn't per say hard, as much as it rewards you for grinding, which is time consuming, but not hard. There is also a difference between choosing to power game or not. Getting Geddoe to level 46 at the start of chapter 2 is great, but the game doesn't expect you to reach that level until the end of chapter 3 or start of chapter 4, so you will pretty much be coasting along with Geddoe for the rest of the game.

There are definitely moments though, especially in the first 3 chapters where choosing the wrong skills to focus on can be very problematic and force you to grind extra to tweak. For example, it took me a few playthroughs to realize that with Joker and Geddoe, one should focus almost exclusively on maxing out their magic skills before moving on to other things. Likewise with Thomas and Cecile, you really need to spend time on defensive skills. Cecile especially becomes hilariously silly with a maxed out shield defense.

I always found the early chapters of Hugo more annoying than Thomas, since until the end of his 3rd chapter, he is often restricted in his access to different things like bujitsu trainers, or magic runes or armor shops. His fight with Yuber in chapter 2 I always found particularly hard.

[LucMcDohl]

I wouldn't really call Geddoe's chapters hard... they just reward you more for using magic which is this arcane concept no one thinks to use after coming off of the other two characters if you look at the terrible charge times and general stupidity/lack of magical prowess of the characters they give you there. Queen with a Wind Rune, Joker with a Fire Rune, and Geddoe with his devastating Lightning magic (True or otherwise) will clean things up nicely. If you're REALLY hardcore, you can pick up a Rage Rune for Joker as soon as Chapter 3 and then nuke the dick off of everything else with or without Geddoe's epicness.

I really hated Hugo's Chapter 2 fight since they don't give you a chance to use any of your skill points once you get done with Vinay del Zexay in Chapter 1 and Fubar can't get any skill boosts after you enter that town for the first time. I mean... I GUESS you could try to farm Gale Runes before he leaves and use the skill points you get in the process to beef him up but... Gale Runes are such a pain to farm.

[KFCrispy]

I once got stuck against Franz in front of Le Buque. I levelled the wrong skills, that battle is pretty tough just like when you have to fight in Vinay del Zexay with Hugo

yes i'm replaying the game to check out whether some forced battles are winnable/losable and whether you can avoid some through dialogue choices, and i'm finding the default choice often leads to a difficult battle! For example, I think Hugo's default choice when escaping Vinay del Zexay goes into battle, but you couldn't really tell based on the response options.

however, once you've done enough skill training (and trained the *right* skills), regardless of level, the game becomes very very easy. i ended up being able to max Percival's skills pretty quickly, and he becomes a one-man wrecking crew in Chris chapter 2 with all his parries and counters.. and of course training Armor Protect for Chris, Borus, and Leo can result in all enemies doing 1 damage to them.

[KFCrispy]

i added info that you can ditch Aila when she leaves the party in Le Buque to spy on "that woman" and roam the map without her. not a great opportunity to use recruits, but it's just a detail. Maybe you can hire Edge for a while lol

Also if you choose "I guess" instead of "Let's see what she has to say", Aila and Queen will sit down to listen to Iku's story, and you can ditch the ladies to roam the map again.