A Thread to Discuss Our Grievances

[Xelinis]

Throughout many threads on this forum, we've talked about the mistakes that Suikoden has made in recent memory as well as how we would like to see things fixed. I've created this thread to serve as a centralized location to compile and discuss these issues. It is my understanding that members of the Suikoden team occasionally browse these forums; I hope for this thread to catch their eye and for at least some of the issues discussed here are addressed.

Note: This is a thread for mature and polite discussion about design decisions. Statements such as "He should be fired," will not be tolerated here.

My primary grievance with how the franchise is currently being handled is their source of inspiration for the plot. It's been stated before by Murayama himself that the series being called Genso Suikoden and having 108 characters in each game was little more than a fluke. He wanted to pitch an RPG with a large roster of characters and used Outlaws of the Marsh as an example to his much older boss. His boss loved the comparison so much, that he directed Murayama to go ahead and use that number.

In truth, Suikoden I ~ III were heavily influenced by the western High Fantasy genre, something which Murayama was a big fan of. Much of the backstory, dealing with the clash between Order and Chaos, was inspired by Michael Moorcock's series of books about Elric of Melniboné. Other influences can be seen in the Sindar race, whose name is derived from a race of Elves in Lord of the Rings, and the Dragon Knights, who several of us have theorized may have been inspired by Dragonriders of Pern (one book in the series being named The White Dragon). The inclusion of elves, dwarves, and kobolds (of all the mythical creatures they could have chosen) cement Suikoden's roots in western fantasy.

I feel like Suikoden has moved away from this and has adopted themes more akin to what most teenage anime fans are looking for, especially with the much more obvious divide between good and evil and the new primary theme of "young people banding together to protect the world." I liked Suikoden because it was so different from the rest of the pack of JRPGs. Now I feel like it's trying to follow suite.

[Punkaiser]

So far, I have no prob with teenage rebellion in suikoden as long as the game plot is well developed. But you got a point on how they are chasing the sales towards otaku community. One bad experience to me is the persona series, may be many players like the way persona 3 and 4 were made but they are actually degraded versions to me compared to personna 2. Atlus threw away a good part of battle system and implement the visual novel style into their game which i'm sure it is popular among otakus. Back to Konami and Suikoden 5...i sense a warning since the game starts to force player to strengthen bonds between prince with the others through dialogues, but it's still at a light level so i don't mind. If its meant to pick your route through choices like Chrono Cross, i'd appreciate it , that'd be worthy to replay tha game in new game+ , but dating sim style like persona 3/4 ? hand down right away, never my choice for rpg. Rather pick Rance series for the erotic sim game.

[patapi]

The Social Links aside, I certainly prefer the 1-More battle system in P3 and P4 to whatever they had in earlier Persona titles.

But, that's rather off-topic, since this is in a Suikoden discussion area. I'll be sure to send other grieving posts in this direction then.

[LanceHeart]

My main grievance with the series is how they handled access to the games.

Suikoden and Suikoden 2 have always been relatively hard to find in physical format. When Sony rolled out its "Games Archive" in Japan and its "PSOne Classics" internationally in 2006, I had expected the games to pop onto those systems immediately. Why? Because we were coming off of Suikoden V and many people were already hoping to revisit those first two games. That was unfortunately not going to be the case.

It took them two years (December 23rd, 2008) to release the first game in North America, to coincide with Tierkreis' release. Even then, nearly three years after Suikoden V had been released, the game managed to crack 2008's Top 20 most purchased PSOne Classics after one week on sale and proceeded to stay on the weekly PSOne Classics charts for months. Imagine if they had released Suikoden 2 before Square Enix finally decided to start flooding the store with old Final Fantasy games... They definitely would have made a killing instead of eBay price gougers.

Now that we have PS2 Classics (since October 2011), this is once again a chance for Konami to show support for Suikoden by hurrying up and releasing Suikoden 3, 4, Tactics, and 5 on the store before bigger titles start popping up. However, Konami's past actions give me practically no faith that they will even bother releasing many PS2 games on PSN (Ring of Red is their only release), much less a Suikoden game.

I also get the impression that Nintendo will drop DS cart manufacturing very soon and eventually promote 3DS eShop versions of DS titles. Once again, I have little faith that Suikoden Tierkreis will make an appearance on that store.

While this is a general problem with many game developers/publishers, it's one that greatly weighs down many of Konami's lesser franchises (let's not kid ourselves as to the position Suikoden holds). Digital distribution of games is by far the only way to legally obtain a game while having that paid money go to devs/publishers. Why be such a stick in the mud with it?
Suikoden is one of those few franchises that is in a very difficult position: Even though its popularity is waning, it's seems like the franchise is not small enough for Konami to consider it "throwaway" and want to create a downloadable version of it. It's also not big enough to take a risk on, which means no remake/remaster version where all of the games would be on a single disc/collection for PS3/360/Wii/WiiU/Vita.

Faced with that sort of decision, I would promote and champion digital releases of the games on PSN (least amount of effort, most amount of profit) in hopes of boosting interest in the franchise.
Should it fail to increase interest, at least they will already BE on the store. Any new Suikoden release is bound to increase interest in the digital games, meaning more franchise sales for the same development effort.

Edit: The tl;dr version is this. Release the Suikoden series in a downloadable format. PSN for the least amount of effort, if you're feeling lazy.

[kannyagathon]

Should the fans ask Murayama to make his version of suikoden 4? Maybe another company? Obviously Suikoden 4 and 5 didn't solve any mysteries..it just add more questions...

[Raww Le Klueze]

Fans might want to simply come to terms with the very real possibility that Murayama just ain't that emotionally attached to the series.

[kannyagathon]

Well..if that's the case...there is no way to continue the main story then..

[KC_MCDOHL]

Well, my biggest greivance is just how Konami seem to have handled the series in general. They never seem to have given marketing and advertising much thought (especially outside of Japan). An earlier example would include Suikoden II released the same week as FFVIII. Wasnt SV also released the same week as another big title?

Adding to this, my main gripe here is how they seem to be letting the series fritter away at the present moment. As previously mentioned, why arent all the Suikoden's to date availabe on the PSN? It totaly escapes my understanding why Suikoden II isnt on PSN already. It makes virtualy no sense to me why Konami are failing to do this. Surely it can't be that expensive for them to do? Surely it can't be a hard thing for them to achieve? Surely they would profit form it? Every month that goes by, Konami are failing to bring in revenue from the Suikoden franchise by failing to go down this avenue. Not only are they failing to profit from the Suikoden franchise but they also risk the death of an already little known series through failing to promote it in this manner.

Which brings me to my next grievance. The past two Suikoden games being held outside the familiar Suikoden world and the set within the Infinity concept. Okay, I do not mind too much as these games are spin offs. Konami are most likely using these spin offs to expiremnt on all fronts. What kind of Suikoden games appeal to the modern gamer? What can we change about the familiar Suikoden gameplay? What can we change about the famialir Suikoden storylines? Do Suikoden games even sell these days? All these questions can be answered with these kind of spin offs without damaging the main Suikoden bloodline. However, many people fear that these spin offs are damaging the legacy set by the previous Suikodens. Many fans fear that these spin offs will kill the series off completely or, because such a long time has passed since the last main title Suikoden, the series will take a new direction completely - brushing aside the 'old Suikoden' and creating new Suikodens set within the Infinity concept. Yes, those alarm bells ring in my mind too. But I would not despair so extremely just yet. Konami surely cant be so stupid as to ignore that the vast majority of fans (both inside and outside of Japan) who have no interest in exploring random worlds in the Suiko-verse and want to see the traditional storyline continue.

With all that said. I am not too concerned that Konami are using these spin offs to answer many questions they have about the Suikoden series, as well as trying out a new director and other staff members. However, I feel the next game must be a main title Suikoden. Give us Suikoden VI Konami. Please. And if you absaloutley must make more spin offs, then atleast set them in the main Suikoden world in the familiar geography and timeline. As I said before; the traditional world of Suikoden is so large that its unlikely to be fully explored with further main title installments anyway. So why make a spin off exploiring the Infinity when you can explore Kanakan?

[JiggleBiscuits]

Some good observations continuing on this thread

I still think supporting this game is the best option to pave the way for a Suikoden VI and the kind of game we all want to see. But I agree with others fears that if this game is successfull then they may choose to scrap the traditional Suikoden and continue in this new direction. I still say we support this game but let Konami hear our opinions.

Any support of this game or Tierkreis is a betrayal of the series.

The most sickening thing is, they could have had the exact same story, but set in an old world areas, work in the new areas to the old geography, had 3-4 lineage characters and they could pleased EVERYBODY... instead they chose not to. Pieces of crap over at Konami, I swear.

Agree completely. At this point I wish Konami would just hand the series off to someone who actually cares about it. They obviously don't.

[Belle]

Any support of this game or Tierkreis is a betrayal of the series.

I do believe there's a thread to discuss our grievances about the series... located here.

[Djungelurban]

Wasnt SV also released the same week as another big title?

Japanese release coincided with Disgaea 2, Samurai Warriors 2, Monster Hunter 2 and Baten Kaitos Origins.
And in the US it got released the same month as Kingdom Hearts II and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion among others.
So yeah, one could say that...

[LanceHeart]

Only those aren't big titles in Japan. Disgaea rarely moves more than a few hundred thousand units, Samurai Warriors is the inferior little brother to Dynasty Warriors in both fame and fandom, and Monster Hunter has never sold very well on consoles. When Suikoden V came out in Japan, it was the best selling franchise out of anything else that launched in the same week. Suikoden IV and Tactics already did more damage to the franchise than Tierkreis could ever hope to achieve.

Any support of this game or Tierkreis is a betrayal of the series.

That's my grievance with the Suikoden fandom. The ones who think that Tierkreis was the actual betrayal of the series are the same ones to blame for not convincing more people to buy Suikoden V when it came out. Now that the PSP game has shown that Tierkreis hasn't done as much damage to the franchise as previously thought, don't count on the old universe returning any time soon. We older fans did this to ourselves and Konami doesn't care for us anymore. Get used to it.

[Celedril]

My greatest grievance is that Konami has consistently shown that marketing dictates the series' direction. Let me clarify. Marketing is necessary and not a bad thing, but since this new team has come in and the old disbanded, there is, at least to me, a clear intention to market the series to young otaku, girls especially. In service of this goal they have basically raped the name Suikoden for recognition even as they change everything that made the series wonderful in the first place. The earlier games had a unique world whose depth had not yet been plummed, incredible characters whose storylines gave heart to the skeleton that was that world, and the continuity was what brought it to life. Any of these silly spin-offs could have been set in that world, with new characters and storylines, and maybe 1 or 2 returning characters, and no one would complain. Every move the series' directors have taken could have been possible within the canon world. The only way it makes any sense to me is if basically they have no confidence in the canon world's ability to sell titles, and/or they don't care about the core fan base and would rather discard us and attempt to harness the otaku/young squealy girl crowd.

The new PSP game, which I'm currently playing, has no epic battles, no runes, not even a real focus on the stars of destiny. The characters are good, and so is the story. Why couldn't they just set it in the canon world? I ask this question everytime I play a new iteration that is not set in the canon world. I understand if they want to change directions, but it is absolutely possible while maintaining the core characteristics of the series.

I feel that Konami, slobbering at the thought of harnessing the otaku fanbase using the cache of the Suikoden title, truly doesn't care about the core series anymore, or the voices of the fans that gave it what success it had. Every move they have made since 4, aside from 5, points in this direction.

It is so funny, because as I said above, fixing the series would be so very, very simple. Include a few characters from the past and some links to the original series, and I don't think any of the moves or changes would bother me at all. Every series needs to evolve, but the best ones maintain that which made them special enough to develop a core fan base in the first place.

[EstrangedIX]

Totally agree about Konami's use of the name. It's obvious that they are only calling these spinoffs Suikoden because of the attachment the fans have to the original games. I may have said this before, but no one can convince me that fans of Tierkreis and this new one will feel the same about them as we do about SII after they've been out as long.

[LanceHeart]

That's unfortunately where we're at: The people who are still buying Suikoden games are interested in the name alone, not the elaborate world or most non-RPG gameplay mechanics from the "old series".

Whoever still calls Tierkreis and the PSP game spinoffs aren't paying attention to Konami's own PR and media. They consider Tierkreis to be a major release, much like the newer PSP game. Expect to see them appear in official encyclopedias and official "main series" art collections, unlike Suikogaiden, Card Stories, and Tactics. That's pretty much all that matters at this point. While it's a cause of much grief on our part, we won't be changing Konami's mind anytime soon. Especially since most old fans have moved on from Suikoden and the few who still care about the "old series" are outnumbered by those who don't.