Just completed Suikoden 1-5 and Tactics

[LarpWarrior]

I have had a ton of free time lately and used much of it on this great series...I've basically been playing suikoden non stop since late May. Here's my brief thoughts on each game, I'd like to know what you guys thought about the series overall as well! (spoilers)

Suikoden Tactics: I replayed this one to start off the series as its still my favorites, also wouldn't suikoden tactics technically be the first game in the suikoden time line? Anyway I absolutely love this game and have posted a few times on here about why I think it's great so I'll move onto the main series.

Suikoden: I played this a couple times around the time it came out and thankfully I didn't remember much of it so it felt like playing a new game for the most part. it's obviously dated and rather short and cliche but I like old school fantasy rpg clichés and also like the fact that it's a short game because the story moves along at a fluid pace. Suikoden 1 really didn't have much needless filler and the random encounter rate was pleasantly infrequent, both of which were positive aspects of the game that contributed to the shorter game length for rpg standards. And even though the game is full of fantasy rpg clichés suikoden 1 manages to put it's own touch on all of them in keeping with the theme of war. The music was good but a little underwhelming and predictable with the exception of a few really quality tracks. Overall the game is very good and is the go to recommendation for anyone wanting an old school rpg experience that doesn't require a lot of time. On a scale of 1 to 10 this game was an 8.5 for me.

Suikoden 2: Yes this game is as good as everyone makes it out to be and is worth the unfortunately high price although luckily the price seems to be dropping slowly. suikoden 2 improves on its predecessor in practically every way, I especially liked the war battle system which is somewhat similar to fire emblem. Seeing so many of the characters return from suikoden 1 as playable characters in this game was awesome!! I can't think of any other game I played where the feeling of nostalgia and excitement at seeing returning characters was so great. The character development in suikoden 2 was truly remarkable and they were the best characters of the entire series imo, the music was a big step up from the previous game and the total game length overall was about twice that of the first one while maintaining a well paced random encounter rate; Suikoden 2 is a fantastic game but it's even better having played suikoden 1 right before it, playing those 2 games back to back is one of my favorite rpg experiences ever. Overall I'd give the game a 9.5. I would've given it a perfect 10 if the major war battle system was expanded on and made more in depth, something that would give the player more control over customizing units and statistics so the battles played out a little less randomly.

Suikoden 3: I played suikoden 3 when it first came out but only got a couple hours into it before I quit because it was such a big departure from the first two games. Replaying it now I loved it and see it as a great transition for the series on what was then the next generation console the ps2. I think it was a smart move for Konami to switch up the gameplay for suikoden 3 since it was so different from the ps1 games with the graphics and controls, the gameplay mechanics were a great way to show how the series had evolved up to that point. At first I thought the normal and war battle systems were overly simplistic but as the game progressed I came to appreciate the battle systems a lot as the strategy involved in some fights can be pretty deep. My favorite part of the game was seeing returning characters looking and acting older and how some of the new characters were related to characters in the first 2 suikodens. Something I didn't like about this game though was how awful the controls were at some points and also how the music would randomly stop throughout the game. I also didn't like how Luc turned out to be the villain just because it didn't seem to suit his character from suikoden 1 and 2, in those games he seemed like an obnoxious bratty child that happened to have great magical abilities but in suikoden 3 he was a long winded, brooding evil wizard and I just don't think it fit. Overall I'd give suikoden 3 an 8.9 out of 10. This game also has the most replayability imo.

Suikoden 4: I have very little thoughts on this game because I played very little of it but what I did manage to play I thought was horrible. I knew this game was not well received but I was still looking forward to playing it because I love suikoden tactics which shares parts of the story and characters and I'd just beaten suikoden 3 but every time I.tried playing suikoden 4 it felt like a chore, this game was a massive disappointment for me.

Suikoden 5: this game was refreshing after how bad suikoden 4 was. It was most similar to the first two games with a great story and characters. A lot of people complain that suikoden 5 starts off slow but I actually enjoyed the rather un-exciting beginning because it really set the tone for the story and character development. I do agree with most people that the random encounters were way too frequent though and the excessive loading times made it so much worse. The music was excellent on this game and and contained some of my favorite tracks from the entire series. I also thought this was the saddest game in the series and really liked how you could tell how some of the characters cared deeply for one another. Overall I'd give this game an 8.7

So there it is, what's your guy's thoughts on the series as a whole and if were lucky enough for another installment of the series what would you like the next suikoden to be like? Personally I would love to see the story for High East Rebellion in a new suikoden game. I'd also love another strategy offshoot like suikoden tactics. I also think some kind of mix between suikoden 3 and 5's battle systems would be awesome and much more big war battles and much less random encounters.

[sticky-runes]

Suikoden 2 had the worst war battles in the whole series, even if it is (arguably) the best game in the series over all. The hit ratio was way too random, to this day I haven't figured out how I'm supposed to get a successful hit (I don't know if that's just an issue with the PAL version, or if I've just been doing it wrong all these years) we get loads of recruits who don't even take part in war battles. And aside from all of that, most of the major battles end in withdrawal, there are only a few times we fight until victory, and we rarely get to wipe out all enemy units on the whole map, which takes the fun out of it, so they might as well have just made most of the battles into cut scenes instead of playable battle maps.

3 is my least favorite game in the series. Mainly because I'm still sore about the fact we never got a PAL release, and while I did enjoy it, it had some clunky menus, music sounded like it was from a 16 bit console game, the 108 star lineup was weird (it included villains that we don't even recruit) I didn't like the overworld map, and overall it didn't feel like a war story. I loved the cultures of all the different clans and factions that we meet, but by the end of the game we were trying to avert a magical apocalypse instead of overthrowing a corrupt government or enemy nation like we do in most other Suikoden games. Obviously Suikoden is a fantasy, but the magic and monsters usually take a back seat to the politicking and human drama, and in 3 it seemed like it was the other way around.

[Wolkendrache]

Suikoden 1 is the most "genso" in my opinion, it is what you called cliche. All the evil is due to magic (Windy deluding imperials) and love (Barbarossa for Windy).
Suikoden 2 is actually less fantasy, it's more about power and politics, themes we can see in real life as well. Even Luca's evilness is not caused by magic. S5 is similar to this.
In my opinion S1 likewise had the most fantasy-like songs, and the arrangements are better than in the S2 tracks. Although S2 has the f#cking best intro I've ever heard and many beautiful compositions as well, many songs sound too keyboardish. S5 has the worst soundtrack of all the 5 main games. So many pieces, but too few are catchy.

I totally agree, there should be another Suikoden Tactics game. I've recently shared some ideas about it for discussion in the Fanwork section.

[wataru14]

I adore 3's Trinity Sight and the differing perspectives of the main events. I can accept Luc as a villain. I can accept the villains as Stars (except Yuber, that is). But it gets low marks for me because of clunky mechanics and controls. I hate hate HATE the buddy system. If I want to use six mages, then I should be able to use six mages without three of them not being able to access their Runes. If I use six fighters I should be able to tell them all which enemies to fight and not gave the computer decide for half of them. If I tell a character to attack (Estella) or defend (Fred) I want them to do it and not ignore my commands. On the military battles, I want to be able to select who my fighters attack. If the enemy general is standing directly in front if Dupa (and hit him twice) I want Dupa to attack him back and not clumsily run around the perimeter of the battle in circles and not attacking anyone. I want to select how my characters attack. I want Roland to attack the enemies one at a time, doing heavy damage and potentially killing one as opposed to spamming that stupid Great Hawk Rune and doing negligible damage. I want Chris to not use her Phoenix Rune on an enemy in the critical HP range and unbalance herself when a regular attack would have sufficed. RPGs need to learn that anything where the computer makes decisions for you is bad.

And Wolendracke, I thought Luca was being warped by proximity to the Beast Rune. And The Rune if Beginning was pushing Riou and Jowy to fight each other. Nagical influence was there, just more subtly.

[Wolkendrache]

I didn't mean it in a black/white sense. Magic seemed more prominent to me in S1, politics a little less. In S2 it was the other way around.
And Luca's evilness comes from the event in which his mother was murdered akaik. I don't think proximity to a True Rune has an influence.

[sticky-runes]

I didn't mean it in a black/white sense. Magic seemed more prominent to me in S1, politics a little less. In S2 it was the other way around.
And Luca's evilness comes from the event in which his mother was murdered akaik. I don't think proximity to a True Rune has an influence.

Raped, not murdered. Sara died giving birth to Jillia, which likely would have been 9 months after the incident.

And while a lot of stuff in S1 was influenced by Windy's sorcery, the story still revolved around the crumbling empire. We didn't get a crumbling empire in S3. Luc's plot felt much like a revisit to what Windy was trying to achieve, but on a larger scale, as his monsters did get to terrorize parts of the world and we ended up fighting the final battle against his monsters, whereas the monsters conjured up by Windy got immediately banished by Leknaat and Joshua, so we ended up dealing with the remnants of Barbarossa's human army.

[LarpWarrior]

One more thing that bugged me about the series was that there was never any closure regarding Pesmerga and Yuber, I know Yuber ends up with pesmergas sword but I'd love to know why

[patapi]

Suikoden 2 had the worst war battles in the whole series, even if it is (arguably) the best game in the series over all. The hit ratio was way too random, to this day I haven't figured out how I'm supposed to get a successful hit (I don't know if that's just an issue with the PAL version, or if I've just been doing it wrong all these years) we get loads of recruits who don't even take part in war battles. And aside from all of that, most of the major battles end in withdrawal, there are only a few times we fight until victory, and we rarely get to wipe out all enemy units on the whole map, which takes the fun out of it, so they might as well have just made most of the battles into cut scenes instead of playable battle maps.

This. So much this. Sure, the look-and-feel of the system was decent, but the mechanics was out of whack. Whereas Rhapsodia/Tactics finally got the grid-based battle system right, but hopefully if they ever make a follow-up, they might want to tone down the over-dependence on controlling tile elements.

I also find Suikoden II rather underwhelming once Luca is out of the way, and given how his exit was merely two-third or so into the game, that's quite unfortunate. As if his successor achieved anything of importance by prolonging the war with the City-States.

They tried their best to improve the physical-magic balance via Suikoden III's battle system with varying results. The Skills system was at its best then, which unfortunately only reappeared in Rhapsodia/Tactics. Reverting to encouraging spamming auto/spells didn't do newer entries any favour.

[sticky-runes]

I also find Suikoden II rather underwhelming once Luca is out of the way, and given how his exit was merely two-third or so into the game, that's quite unfortunate. As if his successor achieved anything of importance by prolonging the war with the City-States.

Good point. It's kind of weird that we got such a great villain and boss in Luca which we spend a lot of time and energy building up to, but once he's out of the way it feels kind of like we spend the rest of the game dealing with the aftermath, with a recycled Neclord drama tossed in. Maybe they could have played with the idea of the Harmonian troops a bit more. It worked quite well in S5 when we feel like we're gaining the upper hand against Godwin, then suddenly Armes comes into play and it all goes tits up.

[Calvin]

I actually replayed the Suikodens recently as well, and surprisingly I came away with a better opinion of Suikoden IV than when I first played it. There is no question that it is a flawed game, but I appreciated what the developers were trying to do: evolve the series. Murayama of course did the same thing with SIII, and after he left my impression is the game developers wished to continue that spirit of evolution. The massive backlash I think caused them to go back to the tried and true formula with Suikoden V, which by then had gotten a little stale. I truly enjoyed Suikoden V, but the entire time I played it I couldn't help but have this feeling that the developers were too afraid to take chances with the story and gameplay. Story concepts, especially, were rehashed from earlier games. Childerich in particular comes to mind as essentially a generic Luca Blight remake. The whole thing just seemed a little too safe for my liking.

[Kobold]

On the contrary to how many people seem to dislike post-Luca in Suikoden 2, I actually thought the story progression made perfect sense.

With Luca's sheer power, it was near impossible to defeat him. If it weren't for that sneak attack, I don't think the allied army would ever be able to outrightly defeat Luca. Essentially, that's what Luca was. A very powerful dictator of sorts. His madness caused his own people to betray him, and it wasn't just Jowy. Culgan and Seed themselves said that they couldn't watch Luca's madness potentially destroy Highland.

Wars don't end just because the maniacal dictator dies. Even after the biggest enemy is dead, war will take awhile to be properly concluded. By the time Luca was killed, Highland occupied the majority of the City-States. That's what the rest of the game was about. Regaining the other territories. Jowy could very well have won the war there and then thanks to Leon's strategy, but not even Leon could predict Shu's attack on humanity and emotions by bringing Pilika to Jowston hill. The strategy Shu chose was spot on, and the allied army was given a chance to fight back.

Neclord's drama was excellent as well I thought. It made perfect sense. After Luca death, the allied forces were STILL not quite up to strength to take back the other cities. Tinto was the extra bit of boost they needed. Being able to put Neclord down once and for all made it all even better. How could ANYONE not enjoy the scene where Sierra, Kahn and Viktor each played their role in sealing Neclord's powers and killing him?

On top of that, that entire arc was also very important in terms of character development. Remember the option to run away? That option along with the alternate storyline came at a perfect timing I thought. Right after the drama of Luca's defeat, thinking that everything would finally be over. If there was a time for Riou to be tired, that'd have been it.

After gaining Tinto's alliance, the rest of the game was about retaking the City-States. Highland of course wasn't going to just give up without a fight, and fought they did to the bitter end, which I thought was really important as well. If you tie in the higheast rebellion plotline, I really thought the Dunan unification war was the single most epic storyline in the entire Suikoden war and probably in RPG history as well. Nothing boring about post-Luca plot at all I thought.