Maybe players new to Suikoden may have started playing FF7 and beyond, where single-pool MP is in use. IIRC, FF3j was the last one to use multi-pool MP.Antimatzist wrote: And that's my problem with "Like FF".
- The first game has the same MP system (even more divided and utterly compicated)
- every game has, inf act, a different magic system so you are in a lot of games even more restricted than in Suikoden.
- iirc most good revive spells come also really late in FF. And to compensate for that, dead characters are revived with 1 HP after battle (except for Suikoden, but iirc you can heal dead characters normally)
- the character-amount... well, how's that a problem with a system that is so grinding-free and player-friendly like Suikoden? I stopped playing FF VI because I had a main party and the rest was underleveled, but there are some dungeons where you have to split your group. I needed to grind, and that was a pain. in Suikoden, leveling up a second party takes, I don't know,5 minutes (and 20 minutes to gather enough money for max. equipping them. At least midgame,the blacksmith gets really expensive)
You know, I just think that FF is a bad choice to compare the games with since FF games are in itself too different from each other.
I hope future games give Suikoden more attention. I recently played the Epic Micky demo on 3DS and the HQ system looks fun, I think they even call it "The Fortress" or something.
One perceived disadvantage of multi-pool MP without MP restoring items is that your mages can't fight to save their lives but are forced to save their MP for the boss, so they can't do anything until you get to the final boss. Support runes like *Earth are particularly hit with this because more often than not, it's just a waste of time to cast Clay Guardian on an ally when fights last for only 1-2 turns at a time.
It brings awkward situations like this:
Flik: Can I just use Thor Shot, like, now?
Viktor: No, dude. Save it for the boss.
What I liked about Suikoden though is that only war battles and the plot can kill Suikoden characters. KO'd allies will be revived with 1 HP so you can heal them when the battle is over. FF fans should have loved how they have to explain to first time gamers why Cloud didn't just use Phoenix Down on Aeris when Sephiroth scored a plot-kill on her.
I really didn't have problems with money in FF games because they give it out like Halloween candy, but yes, level grinding is such a pain in the rear.
I didn't have to worry about level-grinding in Suikoden, but money was indeed a problem early on. Good thing Suikoden 1's dice game can be abused to death to obtain insane amounts of money. Succeeding Suikodens still have that feature with their mini-games, but it's much less broken than that in S1.
So yeah, I think the reasons why Suikoden got bad reviews is that they don't follow RPG conventions at the time they were released and that it was so unfortunate to have to compete with the greatest RPG of all time.