Annoying game-play related issues in each game

[Kobold]

I've recently played through all the main Suikoden games again purely out of nostalgia. As a long time fan of Suikoden, despite not being 'active' in terms of being on the forums or fighting for it's revival, I, like many others still harbour secret hopes that Suikoden would indeed be revived with a proper mainstream title.

In any case, due to my recent repeat playthroughs, I am suddenly impugned with the mood to discuss with some like-minded folks about Suikoden. So here's my attempt at starting a new topic.

Which aspect about each of the games were you especially annoyed with? Try and focus on gameplay related issues as opposed to plot or storyline related. Otherwise *coughsuikoden4cough* would probably get the most flak.

Suikoden 1: For me, one of the greatest annoyance would be the fact that you couldn't run unless you slap a holy rune on yourself. Of course, to make it even more annoying, each characters only had one rune slot.

Suikoden 2: S2 definitely fixed both annoyances in S1. I might be completely biased since S2 is my personal favourite, but I was honestly hard-pressed to think of something that particularly annoyed me in S2. I ended up with something that not really gameplay, but more of the ridiculous amount of mis-translations throughout the game, some of them so blatant that it made the whole dialogue senseless. Other than that, another small thing would probably be having to run through the stupid Banner past just to put McDohl in my party, although being an extra benefit, I guess I can't really complain about that.

Suikoden 3: The most annoying thing for me would DEFINITELY be the fact that every single friggin town had some entry path where you just had to run through before reaching the main town. God that was annoying. Especially Brass castle which had not one but two friggin screens to run past on BOTH FRIGGIN SIDES. This actually made Brass castle more annoying to get past than say Yaza plain, pre-Viki game play. The incessant amount of unnecessary running just to get into any town annoyed the shoot out of me.

Suikoden 4: Definitely the most glaring thing was the 4 member party. To be honest, the 4 member party probably pissed me off more than the terribly linear and inferior plot. To me, having a 6 member party was something especially unique about Suikoden that made it stand out from many other RPGs. 4 member parties were way too common in other classical JRPGs, and the fact that S4 fell to 4 member parties made me feel that it was 'conforming' of some sorts, and just destroyed the feel for me. Even without the stubborn nostalgia effect, I thought reducing the number of characters in a party for a game, where one of the unique points was the sheer number of playable characters was just dumb.

Suikoden 5: Level 1 weapons. What a way to mar an otherwise almost perfect successor to the Suikoden series and sadly maybe the finale (screw the spin offs). Seriously, having every character joining with level 1 weapon just does not make sense. Not only does it make it extremely annoying to bring up a character's usefulness considering how the blacksmith in your castle sucks the most money out of you, it simply does not make sense from a plot-centric point of view. I mean seriously, you mean to tell me having worked as a mercenary or knight or whatever, you NEVER saw fit to upgrade your own goddamn weapon??? It makes it even more annoying when there are parts where characters are forced into your party (i know you always have the option of putting them in the entourage, but still...), and you're stuck with a character that deals shoot damage because of the level 1 weapon. Damn you Roog and Rahal.

[wataru14]

Here are mine (and keep in mind that I love this series)...

Suikoden 1: The absurd number of locked characters in your battle party. Most missions force three or four people into your party, leaving you with only two or three open party slots for the more than 70 fighting characters you can choose from.

Suikoden 2: The randomness of the military battles. The RNG has much more of an effect on your attack rate than your unit stats. I've seen the Muse refugees (attack of 1) damage Luca (defense of 17) and I've seen Georg + Pesmerga (attack of 14) unable to damage Karayans (defense of 3) after multiple attack attempts. Not being able to see Rune affinities anywhere in game is also annoying. And the vault in your castle should not have limited storage space. If it can hold 20,000 troops, it can hold more than 8 screens of small items.

Suikoden 3: The buddy system is the most annoying gameplay element in all of Suikoden (by far). I want to control all my party members, thank you very much. Also, see Suikoden 2 for storage space issue.

Suikoden 4: You can get attacked inside towns. You get attacked every three seconds on the sea, so there doesn't have to be encounters inside what would be heavily traveled areas (like the Na-Na Town Square).

Suikoden 5: Not really a gameplay issue, but certain people who appear in the "super happy fun fun" ending cutscene should not be there. It was horrifying for me to see some of those faces smiling and cavorting around with my dead parents, especially when most of them are directly responsible for the deaths of those parents. Also, see Suikoden 2 and 3 for storage space issues.

[Antimatzist]

Suikoden: Yeah no Dash is annoying, and the locked characters in your party and the battles where others force their way in your party. Yeah, cool Kuromimi, I'd like to use you, but please, don't autoforce yourself into the back row! And it's annoying that you can only chose 3 characters for the final dungeon... and only 1 S Fighter!

Suikoden II: Not much, but I came to heavily dislike the war battles. 80% of them are scripted, or even more. It's not really possible to lose them, is it? After three rounds, somebody says "Ok, let's retreat now and that's it. And the small vault is also annoying, yes.

Suikoden III: Buddy system, Fire Rune, you have to go through every dungeon on the world map (even if they are only two screens big)...

Suikoden V: Not much except the Level 1 weapons.

Suikoden IV: I don't mind the four party members so much, but that they dropped the S-M-L ranking. That was something unique! Aswell as the skill system. And the support characters - they are so randomly distributed. With Yu get from the very beginning the best healer, why would you use Carrie or the other healers?

[Kobold]

Thanks for reminding me a few more...

S1: I was quite alright with forced characters to be honest for some weird reason. Of course, Kuromimi in back row was just ridiculous. Definitely annoyed the hell out of me.

S2: Strangely, I liked S2's war battles, but I do agree that the RNG is quite annoying. I especially hate the RNG with abilities. I remember I had one play through where Luc almost always failed to damage ANYONE with all uses of his wind magic.

S3: One more thing I was suddenly reminded of. It's not entirely gameplay more like gameplay-plot mashed. I hate how Chris as the official true water rune bearer is just so shoot with magic. I've always preferred to stick to the traditional Hugo fire, Geddoe lightning and Chris water assignment, and I simply refused to change that. As a result, I've had to spam magic stones on one of my playthroughs just so I could get Chris to use the damned final spell. I mean seriously, for a game that featured 5 playable true runes, and making it near impossible on a normal playthrough to witness the final spell was a little annoying for me.

S4: Oh yes random encounters were a bitch in S4

[sticky-runes]

S1: Most of the first game's issues were fixed in later games. however... Fixed character positions (when Lepant/Kuromimi jump in the back row) and no separate inventory page, so you can possibly lose rare items when a character is forced out of your party for storyline reasons. Also, those parts in dungeons where you walk through a wall to find a hidden room.

S2: Absolutely everything about the war battles, including the fact that we lose most of them for storyline reasons, so they might as well not be playable sections at all. And this doesn't really count as a gameplay issue, but those 3d cutscenes were weird and unnecessary.

S3: Clunky awkward menus. All those different quality armors and medicines, and food items that spoil and become useless. I often found my inventory getting cluttered. characters auto-attacking when surely it makes more sense to auto-defend if you haven't been given a command.

S4: High encounter rate, and enemy encounters in "passive" areas, like coastal trading posts and the Na Nal town square and the cliff path on Obel. Lack of a back row to position mages and long range fighters. And the weapon elemental runes were weird.

S5: yeah, level 1 weapons on everyone. And the fixed camera angle where it's trying to resemble a classic RPG, it just looked bad.

[Wolkendrache]

Most has been mentioned, but...
S5: Unite sequences are too long (and/or boring). If you don't have cool ideas, then just make them short like in S2, I'm fine with that. Moreover, iirc there was no option to skip cutscenes, so if you realize you forgot something and load, you have to watch it again, can be annoying.

[sticky-runes]

These are things I've mentioned before on other threads, but I found it annoying that in suikoden 5 they overcomplicated a lot of the character recruitment requirements. I understand they likely wanted to make up for Suikoden 4, which took a step back in the series by having loads of characters that just speak a sentence and join you and that's it, but in Suikoden 5 I think they overstepped to the point it became frustrating trying to get all the characters (and I don't even like the happy ending of Suikoden 5 so that makes the effort seem pointless)

And any game where you can't recruit a key member of staff, such as a blacksmith, until much later in the game, is just taking the piss.

Suikoden 1 let you recruit blacksmiths of varying skills, and I always thought that was cool. So in the early days of your rebellion, you start off recruiting the apprentice blacksmith with the least amount of experience, and if you get all his buddies, then you can finally recruit the master blacksmith who sharpens your weapons to the highest level.

Suikoden 2, you can't recruit a blacksmith until long after defeating Luca Blight - WTF??? You get most of the hammers before that point, so they end up being useless. We've got our shopkeeper and innkeeper, we've got our armorer and rune mistress, we've even got our tradesman and bath maker, and we've just kicked Luca Blight's ass! Oh, I suppose we could probably use a blacksmith?

Suikoden 3's blacksmith was fairly early, i think?

Suikoden 4 let us recruit a blacksmith just as we were loading up the ship (Great time to book a holiday to Obel, Adrienne!)

Suikoden 5 had that bloody dwarf who becomes unavailable if you make the wrong dialogue choice, then you have to sporadically go back and check if he's changed his mind yet or got permission from his tutor or whatever, it was a pain in the ass.

[Neclord X]

Suikoden 1: Too much obligatory members on the party, thanks god they fixed it in the second game.

Suikoden 2: The abyssal differennce between different clases/characters, there were some characters/classes you want to have in your party but even after imbuing your weapon and expending in your weapon a castle worth budget you do a sadly damage also is not as if they compensated it by having lot more HP or something, they died as fast as any other characters. For example in the gametroughs I used Clive as part of the main team I thought I was wasting an slot, in the gametroughs I was using Luc I rolfstomped enemies with tornados.

Suikoden 3: Probably it has the best combat system, the only thing I didn't like was the non-open world map.

Suikoden 4: This game gameplay was a focking nightmare, it had so much issues I don't know how to start, you have to unlock unite attacks as if you could waste slots when you can only have 4 party members, runes visually awful and mostly useless in combat to deal damage, the random encounter ratio in the ship stills disturbs me...

Suikoden 5: Didn't find anything annoying when it comes to gameplay. If something it happened a bit like S2, there were some characters really overpowered while others were a waste of slot game could be really easy or really hard depending who was in your party. And some zones (the lake ruins) needed some save points.


What really annoyed me through the series was:

1.Price of sharpening weapons. It substantly increased the damage but OMG you could fully equip your mages with 3 different "mother" runes for less than 1 level of sharpening costs.

2.Randomness of tactical battles (2-5) you could make every single perfect move and lose an ally or you could do stupid things and still win.

[sticky-runes]

Suikoden 5: Didn't find anything annoying when it comes to gameplay. If something it happened a bit like S2, there were some characters really overpowered while others were a waste of slot game could be really easy or really hard depending who was in your party. And some zones (the lake ruins) needed some save points.

Now that you mention, it some places in Suikoden 5 had a crazy number of save points. The mines had a save point in practically every screen, or something like that? And they even placed save points inside towns, where you can simply use an inn.

[suiken]

I:

- Lack of dash function and formation change. Like some of you mentioned, Kuromimi and Lepant are positioned in the back row. How the hell are they supposed to attack?
- Very risky war battles. Unless you scout your enemy, you simply have to guess what is the enemy's move. But if you messed up, one of the stars will die. I tried using Luc's magic attack and the enemy countered with bow and I lost Luc.
- Too many obligatory characters. I can't even set up my desired party, even in the final battle. I have only 3 remaining slots to do so.

II:

- Bugs. Recipe #34 and the A-ZcDohl naming comes to mind.
- Why do you have to go to Gregminster to pick up McDohl? Too much time consumed travelling back and forth.

III:

- War Battles. It isn't very much different to the basic team battle.
- Awkward battle stance. Characters look stiff like they are dumbfounded or something until they commence the attack.
- Magic Range. It's annoying that your ally can also be affected by the magics you cast. Fire Rune comes to mind.

IV:

- High Encounter Rate. Enough said
- Lack of explorable locations.
- Nerfed Soul Eater and other runes.
- Very awkward character animation.
- 4 man party.
- Locked unite attacks

V:

- High encounter rate. Looks like they didn't fix it from IV.
- Bird's eye view. Looks like they are trying too hard make it feel like a 2d game.
- Lack of map support in towns and dungeons. I get lost even in towns.
- Graphics is downgrade from IV.

[sticky-runes]

Speaking of characters in S1 placing themselves in the back row when they have s-range attacks, S2 asked us if we wanted to arrange our party every two minutes, even when all you were required to do was walk over to Annabell's office or something without getting into any fights, so that got kind of annoying.