About 30 minutes from finishing Suikoden IV

[TMan]

I'm replaying Suikoden 2 now, where everyone has the biggest complaint about this. In real pitched battles you wouldn't fight until your enemy was dead, you'd fight until they started running away (then chase as many of them down as you could). I think, in this way, Suikoden's battles are substantially more authentic than the other ones. My question is: do Suikoden 2's battles ends after a certain number of turns or after a certain amount of damage has been inflicted on the enemy? If it is the latter, then I don't think they've done anything wrong.

[gildedtalon]

I have no idea what you are trying to say, sorry

[Antimatzist]

I have no idea what you are trying to say, sorry

That strategic retreats are more realistic than battles-to-death, at least most of the time. Of course there are real life examples for both.

[sticky-runes]

I understand that realistically, battles would not always end in total annihilation, but in a video game, not being able to make the most of your own units and wipe out all the enemy units just makes for a dissatisfying experience. They might as well make it a cut scene if they aren't going to let us try and complete the battle.

Suikoden 4's naval battles did right by actually letting us wipe out the enemy ships, then leaving the retreating scenes to a cut scene event.

[TMan]

Strategic retreats isn't necessarily what I mean. If you think about the Total War series, you basically bloody a unit until it turns tail.

One might argue that in the Suikoden series, defeating a unit serves to represent the fleeing of a unit, which is a pretty reasonable case.

I guess I'd just like to see a generally more detailed big battle system.

Alternatively, they might try something like us to keep us all happy. Within the first five turns you're able to totally annihilate the opposing team, but if they are over 50% damaged after the 9th turn, the enemy retreats. Idk.

[sticky-runes]

Apart from the battle conditions, it was also the hit ratio (or whatever you call it) that bothered me in S2, it was too random. Loads of times I was firing at enemies and charging them and... nothing happens. That's another reason I would dread the army battles in S2.

I wasn't too crazy about the pokemonish elemental stuff in S4's battles, I think it should have been more about ship customization. There were those ocean rune pieces you give to Tov to increase the ship's defences, movement or firing range, but they were so bloody rare, I think there was only about 3 or 4 in the whole game. But I would have preferred more of that, and just had the rune cannon's damage strength determined by the caster's magical stats, regardless of elemental affinity BS.