Camera Angle

[dragonmasterx]

From the interview, official info thread:
"Matsukawa: Since this is a SRPG, we are strongly focusing on making it easy to understand. For IV's ship battles, we experimented with letting characters bring along many subordinates , but we canned it since it ended up being too complex. We considered using hexes for Rhapsodia, but ultimately concluded that squares would be easiest to understand. Starting with the characters, we tried not to make them look too realisitic. Going with more of a cartoonish look in accordance with making everything easy to understand. As for the map, we made the angle and height alterable. So the player can change to the most dramatic angle while easily understanding everything at once."

That's totall bull about being able to change to the most dramatic angle. Generally, possible rotation is never greater than 45 degrees, and some maps don't allow rotation at all. And I'd prefer a more closer zoom-in, especially to get a better look at unite attacks.

EDIT:
Just to make sure I didn't translate wrong, I checked the source:
http://www.dengekionline.com/soft/recom ... index.html
迫力のあるアングルで楽しめる
-Angle with force, appeal

Actually, yea I took a bit of liberty in turning "angle with force, appeal" to "most dramatic angle." And I ended up ranting about my own translation.

Well, at least now we know the camera rotation is quite crappy.

[patapi]

About zooming in, I suppose it's their new measure to deal with lack of details in the graphics. Suikoden IV's first-person view enabled you to see things clearly, and the lack of details were very obvious. Considering how "great" Suikoden II was, I can only imagine looking at those "awesome" pixelated textures.

Looks like the trend is continuing in V.

But, yes, that last sentence of Matsukawa is definitely misleading.