Modernizing Suikoden

[luceys]

Things I'd like to see implemented:

1. More strategic warfare battles. I'd also like to see the opportunity to use the warfare battles beyond just advancing the main storyline; perhaps having side-quests (radiant) or online capabilities?

2. More freedom to grow your army/castle and affect the game-world. I think having a more open-ended castle could be a huge hit and add re-playability to these types of games. As would having more ways to interact with the towns, etc.

3. I think V took too long of an introduction and alienated a lot of gamers; I hope the next one's intro has a little more hook to it and doesn't take hours to get through.

4. More balance between size of the cities compared to time to load/navigate them. Ever since III the sheer amount of time to explore the cities (and wait for load times) detracted from the overall gameplay.

5. Tweak the random-encounters and come up with something that makes encounters feel like less of a grind.

6. I like Tierkreis' idea on dispatching some of your members to other players to complete missions. On the DS this seemed very limited, but on a console with a greater online community this might actually be a really cool feature (and a way to utilize all of the 108stars more often).

7. Sticking with the great stories (a la II and V) and characters is always a must.

[supadav1]

Just watched a great gameplay video of Ni No Kuni on YouTube (it's called 13 minutes of Ni No Kuni if you wanna check it out). I think it the art style and way the world map are handled in that game would be a perfect fit for a moderized suikoden 6.

[Flufflez]

i've always envisioned the next suikoden game looking a lot like that. you are dead on about the art style. it's somewhat reminiscent of the intro for s3, and the way they've integrated that art into the gameplay in this ni no kuni game is pretty awesome. the worst map looks pretty cool, but i'm hesitant about the way they handle random battles. the battle system itself reminds me of star ocean 2nd story or tales of symphonia or ff12, all of which i think have pretty solid battle systems. if you're going to shy away from the traditional turn based, i think this is the direction to go in. i wonder if this style of game is easier and cheaper to make than the average konami product and also what affect that would have on profitability. either way i don't see konami reviving the original series unfortunately (but we can always hope)

[True Griever]

Perhaps online warfare and battles. Customizing your own units and parties to battle others.
Allow every element to be combined with eachother along with character specific spells and techniques. I mean the falcon rune is basically a tech, but it takes up a runeslot, introduce fatique points for those things. Begone with the 9/7/5/3 magic system and just use magic points with a growth rate. Be original by using 2d sprites open field and 3d in battle, hold on 2 the suikoden style of 6 vs 6 or change it to 7 vs 7, idk.
Create a new suikoden or remake suikoden 1 with all these new thoughts, remove some useless characters put in some few new ones, I mean more than half of the world hasn't even heard of suikoden and could look at the advertisement and go; wow this looks cool. Let Eikei have his own arena where you can have tournaments with you party against lvld opponents or Barbarrossa with his five generals. It could be like a new yu-gi-oh only without the cards, all about tactic. We're all gamers here who invent tactics how to defeat opponents easily. Why not against eachother? That would add new dimensions.

[EstrangedIX]

Eh, I pretty much like the series for the fact that it doesn't have all that, which makes it stand out imo. Although I do like the arena idea.

[ninjaluc79]

I think the purpose of single-pool MP systems is actually making magic spells more useful in random battles instead of the player saying, "No way, dude. Save it for the boss." But BROKEN is BROKEN.

If you can spam Flare without breaking a sweat (no MP? no problem, we got mana mints), yeah.

About removing useless characters, you know without them there would be no 108 SoD's right? And by what exactly do you mean of "useless character" by the way: a character with sub-standard stats and low twinking potential BUT is ALWAYS required to be in your party as part of the so-called PLOT? Might as well make them stronger then so Munchkins won't complain.

[True Griever]

If the mp cost is high for final spells, and the healing capabilities of "mana mints" are generally low, that wouldn't be such a problem. Games such as ff where you're bag is almost endless, would not suit suikoden, however with only a limited amount of pages like in 2, you'd have to think what you bring along. Mages would be overall better in random battles.

As for useless characters, I mean chars like the 5 smiths, leave it at Mose and we'll be fine. Put in a dragon like Trash for an alternative style of play.

[ninjaluc79]

Or mana mints can fully heal MP, but could exist only in limited quantities and/or are absurdly expensive.