Favorite Suikoden?

[BG-57]

I've recently bought a DS just to play Suikoden Tierkreis (and FFIII) and I've decided to replay the entire series from I through V. I've finished I with all 108 stars and am now going through II, attempting a perfect playthrough, including Clive's subquest. Here's my thoughts of the games:


Suikoden I
This is where it all started. My knowledge of the myth this game was based on was nonexistant, a lot like watching the Spaceketeers without knowing it was based on the Goku legend (in my defense, the English dub pretended it was a futuristic version of the Three Musketeers). I remember the story was original and interesting. I liked the full circle element where everything began and ended in Gregminster. I actually found Barbarossa and Windy's relationship suprisingly touching. They did a good job of giving every star a moment in the spotlight, although the story focused much more on some characters than others.


Suikoden II
My second favorite in the series. It marks the return of some of my favorite characters from the first game like Flik and Pesmerga. It has the best villain in Luca Blight who is absolutely pyscho and tough to beat. In many ways it feels like a second installment of the first Suikoden, especially when McDohl becomes recruitable. My gripes are minor: the hidden counter for Clive's scenes remind me of the Excalibur II race in FFIX. Games should allow you to savor the scenery and characters, not to rush breakneck through the action to get some bonus stuff. At least it's not necessary.


Suikoden III
My favorite game in the series. Not quite as a good a story as II, but a terrific storytelling system where the story follows four seprate groups of characters whose stories gradually interweave. They even allow you to play a scenario as the villains. Feels like the conclusion of trilogy, where several reoccuring characters have their stories concluded.

BTW, the manga adaptation makes no sense unless you've played the game. It's well written, but like Advent Children assumes you're already familiar with the background.


Suikoden IV
A lot of people hate the maritime angle of this game, but I generally liked it. Viki makes this much more maneagable. I liked the fact that it's actually feasable to max character stats. I liked the love-hate relationship between Snowe and Lazlo. The costume changing options were nice. The mouse chasing game was broken.


Suikoden Tactics
Sort of Suikoden IV-2. Play it if you like tactical games and/or Suikoden IV, but otherwise not. I love FFT, so it was neat to see familiar characters rendered in the same style. I also liked seeing the inside of the Kooluk Empire, who were sort of generic villains in IV.


Suikoden V
I liked this one. The matriarchal society was interesting to watch and I liked the secondary characters, especially Lun and Logg. Pitting the rival factions was interersting if a little predictable. Haud is one of the first times I've encountred BGM that's supposed to be annoying.


Suikoden Tierkreis
No stars of destiny, no True Runes, no ties to the other plots. I have to say I'm disappointed so far, but I'll give it a chance. The gameplay is fun so far.

[VeloZer0]

The only one I ever beat was Suikoden I. I found the battles to be very repetitive and shallow, and it lacked an in depth character set up system. However, I did love seeing my castle grow as I recruited new members, which kept me going through the entire thing.

I started playing Suikoden II, and while it seemed that they made an effort to try and increase the depth of the character set up aspect I was 12 hours in and I still didn't have any leeway to play around. I also had no castle, so I got bored and quit.

I have tried SIII and ST but neither of them grabbed my attention.

[Raistlin]

Suikoden II is the best game ever made, in my opinion. Amazing story, excellent characters, entertaining gameplay, plenty of side stuff to do (I love the ever-amusing cooking sidequest) -- it's just all-around a very well made game. Suikoden specializes in mature, intricate plots and II especially did a really good job. Jowy is arguably one of the best developed video game characters, and Luca Blight is definitely a great villain.

I go back-and-forth between Suikoden III and V for 2nd. Really, I think III had better characters, but V had better gameplay. SIII was overall a very good transition to 3D, but in some ways it was obviously a first step -- odd battle system, abbreviated skills system (everything was maxed out by chapter 4), and AoE spells being useless, it could've been better. SV was much more polished. They're pretty close in my mind, though, and SI is not far behind either.

Overall, those four are head-and-shoulders above most RPGs.

IV is the bottom of the barrel. Tactics is probably above it, but I never finished it.

[Vermachtnis]

I've only played III, IV, Tierkries, and Tactics. And III was my favorite out of them. I really like the beginning seeing the story from three different points. Plus you could have Viki and Little Viki in the same team at the same team. That doesn't happen in a lot of games. But Little Viki was a brat so I stuck with normal sized spacey Viki.

[Madame Adequate]

Suikoden II is the best game ever made, in my opinion. Amazing story, excellent characters, entertaining gameplay, plenty of side stuff to do (I love the ever-amusing cooking sidequest) -- it's just all-around a very well made game. Suikoden specializes in mature, intricate plots and II especially did a really good job. Jowy is arguably one of the best developed video game characters, and Luca Blight is definitely a great villain.

I go back-and-forth between Suikoden III and V for 2nd. Really, I think III had better characters, but V had better gameplay. SIII was overall a very good transition to 3D, but in some ways it was obviously a first step -- odd battle system, abbreviated skills system (everything was maxed out by chapter 4), and AoE spells being useless, it could've been better. SV was much more polished. They're pretty close in my mind, though, and SI is not far behind either.

Overall, those four are head-and-shoulders above most RPGs.

IV is the bottom of the barrel. Tactics is probably above it, but I never finished it.

I really can't add anything to this. The Suikoden series is absolute gold.

I have Tactics now, I found it very cheap in the US, but I don't have my US PS2 to hand so I've not played it yet. I've not played Tierkries either. I do eagerly wait Suikoden VI, but I hope it's not PS3 exclusive.

[Araciel]

My favourite is 3... Still have to play through 4/5 and tactics.

[BG-57]

You really have to play IV first to fully understand Tactics. IV was a huge departure from the series, especially with a large ship taking the place of the standard castle and ship to ship broadsides replacing pitched battles. V was a return to form, with the standard castle and battles.

I agree that building the castle was one of the most inspired aspects of gameplay in every game, where you'd get whole new wings and services as you expanded your army. I'd always make it a point to roam around every time I recruited new characters to see what had opened up.

This time playing through II I'm struck by the similarities between the Hero and Jowy compared to Ramza and Delita in FFT. Both are sets of friends divided by war, one following an honorable path, the other working questionable schemes. But their friendship in both cases is a given. The major difference is Jowy shows a lot more remorse for his actions and his fate is left up to the player. So he comes across as a much more sympathetic anti-hero than Delita.

Speaking of similarities to FFT, another aspect I thought worked nicely was the limited world map. I'm not sure if it originally was intended this way, but it left plenty of rooms for sequels on the same planet and yet could show us new societies and locations in each game, while tying together storylines of characters and countries from previous installments. This created a rich multilayed continuity that couldn't have been covered in a single game.

Where do you think VI will be set? I'm betting on New Armes, although Harmonia is another possibility.

[Raistlin]

Has VI been confirmed? Last I heard was all rumors, though I haven't heard anything very recently. Harmonia has been thrown around a lot as a potential setting. I think the real question is: can Jeane show any more skin without getting naked?

IV wasn't so much of a gameplay departure (and was actually more standard than III) as just a dumbed-down game overall.

[BG-57]

I haven't heard anything for certain, though I've wondered which platform even it'll be on considering the last one is on the DS. I still think PS3 would be the most logical choice.

Jeane's attire is certainly inappropriate for combat, although not any worse than, say Lulu's.

[VeloZer0]

This time playing through II I'm struck by the similarities between the Hero and Jowy compared to Ramza and Delita in FFT. Both are sets of friends divided by war, one following an honorable path, the other working questionable schemes. But their friendship in both cases is a given. The major difference is Jowy shows a lot more remorse for his actions and his fate is left up to the player. So he comes across as a much more sympathetic anti-hero than Delita.

O'rly....

That sure makes me want to give it another go. Too bad it isn't on PSN yet.

[Bunny]

Suikoden II is the best game ever made, in my opinion. Amazing story, excellent characters, entertaining gameplay, plenty of side stuff to do (I love the ever-amusing cooking sidequest) -- it's just all-around a very well made game. Suikoden specializes in mature, intricate plots and II especially did a really good job. Jowy is arguably one of the best developed video game characters, and Luca Blight is definitely a great villain.

A thousand thousand times this. Jowy is my favorite character in a video game ever and everyone should share this opinion. Suikoden II is amazing.

As far as I know, Suikoden VI hasn't been confirmed. The last I heard, Murayama was accepting offers from a SUPER MYSTERIOUS COMPANY (Konami) but that was in late January. It has been fairly quiet over on SuikoSource though, admittedly, I spent less and less time over there.

Suikoden I was a good game, a great introduction to a wonderful series. It is not, however, one of the greatest games ever made. It does the job of a first entry into a series very well though.

Suikoden III is hit-or-miss in my eyes. When I first played it, I disliked it for the sheer fact that it was far different than the previous two installments. As I continued to play the game, I enjoyed it more and more. Now I appreciate the differences enough to enjoy it thoroughly.

I am in the minority of those who enjoyed Suikoden IV. It was not the best game (indeed, it is perhaps the worst of the main series) but it was not a bad game by any means. The storyline was decent, the characters were developed in some of the correct places and the setting was amazing. There were some things they could have done different, sure enough, but as it stands it was a pretty good game itself. Barring the entire ship monstrosity.

My PS2 broke mid-Suikoden V and I haven't been able to fix it yet. I don't bother with Playstation emulators either, because I have yet to find one that works without jumping through an immense amount of hoops. The first half (or third, I'm not entirely sure how far I got) was very good though.

Suikoden Tactics and Tierkreis are mere distractions in my eyes. Tactics was good, for a tactics game, but served as nothing more than a sleight-of-hand trick while they worked on Suikoden V. Tierkreis is, well, I am not entirely sure what it is. It is a decent game but fails in most of the major departments of being a Suikoden game.

[BG-57]

O'rly....

That sure makes me want to give it another go. Too bad it isn't on PSN yet.

You really won't regret it. Not playing through II is like watching all the Star Trek movies except for Wrath of Khan. Why deprive yourself of awesomeness? :D

[Bunny]

That is the nerdiest analogy ever.

[Raistlin]

That sure makes me want to give it another go. Too bad it isn't on PSN yet.

You definitely should. It's only ~30 hours long, and there is so much plot and development packed into it. Basically, SII is everything SI is, but managed to improve on it in basically every way possible.

[Madame Adequate]

If my post caused confusion, apologies! I know of no confirmation for VI, I am merely working on conjecture, as the series is over a decade old now and had its most recent release just a year or so ago in NA, I'm not seeing any real reason to doubt it.

As for setting, my best guess would be Kooluk. If it's not, I'd say it'll be somewhere pretty left-field and unlikely; either somewhere we've not heard of before, or somewhere oddball that we know almost nothing about, like Kanakan or Zelant. I don't think it'll be New Armes mainly because they obviously weren't reformed before V, and after the events of V they're said to have become more moderate and friendlier. Though obviously later on there could be a reaction against this :p But I think Kooluk is the most likely setting 'cause it's pretty well established to be in a pretty poor state. I'm not sure Harmonia will ever be the subject of a Suikoden; if it is then I'd say not until very late in the series.

Edit: And oh god yes you must play Suikoden II.

[VeloZer0]

One question. How long until I get my castle? Because I was like 12 hours in before I stopped playing and there was no castle in sight.

[Raistlin]

You must have been close; as I said, the game is only ~30 hours long, and you have the castle for much of that. Where were you in the game?

[Madame Adequate]

One question. How long until I get my castle? Because I was like 12 hours in before I stopped playing and there was no castle in sight.

Getting the castle comes pretty much out of nowhere. IIRC your characters do a quest and then in the aftermath of it realize "Hey this place is pretty neat let's establish ourselves here" xD You were almost certainly on the cusp of getting your castle at 12 hours in.

[BG-57]

That is the nerdiest analogy ever.

Does that make it untrue? :D


As for setting, my best guess would be Kooluk. If it's not, I'd say it'll be somewhere pretty left-field and unlikely; either somewhere we've not heard of before, or somewhere oddball that we know almost nothing about, like Kanakan or Zelant. I don't think it'll be New Armes mainly because they obviously weren't reformed before V, and after the events of V they're said to have become more moderate and friendlier. Though obviously later on there could be a reaction against this :p But I think Kooluk is the most likely setting 'cause it's pretty well established to be in a pretty poor state. I'm not sure Harmonia will ever be the subject of a Suikoden; if it is then I'd say not until very late in the series.

Much of Tactics takes place in Kooluk, to the point where the political situation there is drastically altered by the game's events.

There are hard line factions in New Armes, they could always have a civil war.

I agree Harmonia is less likely for now.


Getting the castle comes pretty much out of nowhere. IIRC your characters do a quest and then in the aftermath of it realize "Hey this place is pretty neat let's establish ourselves here" xD You were almost certainly on the cusp of getting your castle at 12 hours in.

It's a neat castle too.

[Madame Adequate]

Much of Tactics takes place in Kooluk, to the point where the political situation there is drastically altered by the game's events.

Well then :shobon: I'll shut up about Kooluk!

[BG-57]

Although the events of IV happen before all the other games, and Tactics soon after, so the Kooluk may be reorganized into some new polical entity later in the timeline. Nothing canonical though.

[black orb]

>>> Suikoden 1 is my fav..:luca:
here is my ranking.
1- Suikoden 1
2- Suikoden 2
3- Suikoden 4
4- Suikoden 5
5- Suikoden 3
6- Suikoden Tactics.

Its about time we have Suikoden 6, and they better dont forget the Kobolds, Nay-Kobolds and a new true rune..

[Masamunemaster]

I havent got to play 2 yet so I cant really say anything about it...I hear its the best, but I like the original alot. I bought it off the PSN and I cant wait for them to put the second one on it...

[Bunny]

To me, the most likely place for a Suikoden VI setting would be Harmonia. They have already given us a history of the country, not to mention several characters throughout the game with direct connections to the country and government itself. On top of that, it is, from what I remember, the oldest nation according to the current timeline and has been mentioned to some degree in every Suikoden game to date (conjecture, but I recall a small mention in each game at least). It would bring an immense amount of information to the forefront regarding the entire Suikoden universe regardless of whether or not it was a prequel to IV or a sequel to III.

I would play any Suikoden game released regardless of setting, but a Harmonia-fueled game would have me incredibly excited.

[Laddy]

I really enjoyed III. And I thought I'd be alone in that thought. :/

[Raistlin]

The only person I know who doesn't like SIII is Bleys, and that's only because he got hit on the head a few too many times as a child.

[Mikeneko Rocker -- Tim]

I voted for II, because of Luca Blight.

http://www.icybrian.com/fanart/nishi/pigkiller.jpg

http://firsthour.net/screenshots/suikoden-2/suikoden-2-luca-blight.JPG

Tierkreis is the first full-on AU Suikoden game.

[BG-57]

I'm 14 hours into my speed run of Suikoden II, just got all 108 stars of destiny (I picked Kasumi instead of Valeria and went with Feather and Aziboah as the monsters). Just barely defeated Luca with two characters left standing and no healing ability left.

I've been surprised by the number of characters in this game that show up in later ones, especially V: Killey, Lorelei and even Georg Prime! Of course, I'm not counting characters that show up in every installment like Viki and Jeane.

I've played III out of order with the rest of the series, so it's making a little more sense now that I've been playing them in sequence.

[Wolf Kanno]

Oh god... its hard choosing my favorite in this series. I love the cast and Rune from Suikoden 1 but 2,3, and 5 are much better written with equally awesome casts... I have a conundrum.

I own the whole series except 2 and Tiekries. 2 cause its horribly overpriced thanks to its rarity (though I may end up buying it off my friend who has owned it for years and still never finished it :roll2 ) and the DS game which I've kinda snubbed once I learned it was set in an alternate universe and was filled with more JRPG cliches than the series has ever had. I still have yet to play through all of Tactics but I really should...

Suikoden - Great cast a really good plot once you get past some of the sillier parts such as building giant mirrors to be death beams and a General who wins battles with his poisonous roses... The Rune of Life and Death is still my favorite True Rune and Tir McDohl is easily my favorite main character. The core cast was awesome and its surprising how much of the cast of lesser characters eventually become more important in later installments.

Suikoden II - A much more involved battle system way better spell effects that make even weak spells feel utterly awesome and having almost a third of the cast from S1 return makes for some nostalgic fun. The plot is much better and far more politically driven and as has been mentioned, Jowy and Riou's story is very reminiscent of Ramza and Delita while the overall politics reminds me of Battletech/Mechwarrior during the Clan invasion. The Iron Chef cooking tournaments were awesome... My fave moment was being able to recruit Tir into your party and being able to utterly destroy everything in the game cause him and Riou are an evil combo.

Suikoden III - I love the story telling aspect of this game, being able to see a conflict from three different sides not to mention, like Suikoden 2, you get the added benefit of seeing recurring characters and even people who were kids in the previous installments all grown up (Hello Futch and Lily). The villain was also a bit of a surprise for those who had played the first two games and I liked Yuber's redesign. The battle system was a bit odd but the camera work for some of the dungeon's and maps were breathtaking. Thomas is easily one of my favorite characters in the series thanks to this game and I would love to see him as an adult.

Suikoden IV - Despite some of the game's sinful changes (four member parties instead of six? I have to now learn combo attacks forcing me to have to use a guide so I don't waste time and even then I need to level it up? Horribly underwhelming spell animations?) the story was pretty good and I did quite enjoy the whole Naval angle this game took. Ship battles were simplistic but fun and up until this point, I felt they were one of the better War battle systems in the series. The game at many times, feels like a retread to Suikoden 1 but I did like how they really made the Trading system much more involved if you ever wanted to make use of that Blacksmith. The cast wasn't as memorable but I got a chance to play as Ted from Suikoden 1 and that for me was pretty damn awesome. Though its the weakest of the numbered entries, its still good and should be a testament to the quality of the series as a whole.

Suikoden V - If IV was trying to emulate S1 then V is trying to emulate S2, even bringing back some of the system's from Suikoden 2 and combining it with III's skill system although much more simplified and far more customizable. The plot is pretty damn awesome and this game really does a good job bringing back the classic Suikoden feel of the first two installments. Georg Prime was a great character in Suikoden 2 if you used him but he reached god-like status with this entry. Lorelie also got some great development though I do miss her scythe from S2... I also love the more cinematic duels in this title and this game has my favorite war system out of all the series cause its easy to pick up but still lends itself well to coming up with a bit of strategy as opposed to some of the more luck based versions like SI and S3. It was a really well polished game.

Suikoden Tactics - I have not gotten very far at all in this game thanks to school and my policy of avoiding of starting new games in a semester. Still, I was quite pleased with what I saw, even if the plot did feel a bit too reminiscent of FFVI at certain times.

Suikoden Tiekries - Once I learned it was set in an alternate universe and actually dealt with multi-verse nonsense instead of good old political shenanigans, I pretty much lost all interest for this title. Suikoden thrives on the politics and the story of the True Runes so ditching both for me makes the game a Suikoden title in name only.


Prospect of Suikoden VI - The creator has been talking to some powerful people in his life (Konami) according to his blog so I would be a bit excited for him to come back seeing as how Yuber and Pesmerga both dropped out of the story with his departure. Although IV and V are great games, I get the feeling the staff working on the titles are afraid to go on with it out of respect for the series creator if Tiekries is any indication. Where will it take place? I feel if Harmonia was chosen, it would signal the end of the story of the True Runes cause all the games have pointed to the fact that the major conflict of the True Runes is going to end up with a battle against Harmonia.

I'd personally like a few more entries before then so New Armes is a good choice, the Outlands that Thomas came from could be interesting as well. There's been a few other nations where people have been mentioned to be from that would fun to explore. I just want them to bring back the save file system from the original 3 entries. :colbert:

[BG-57]

Carryover data was great. Tir McDohl's appearance in II was awsome.

I've finished the main storyline in II, so now I'm just tuning up my party.

Suikoden I Stats:
Stars Recruited: 108/108
108 Completion Bonus: Yes Gremio ressurected
Weapon Level: Level 16 for all combat characters.
Character Level: Level 60 for all combat characters.

Suikoden II Stats:
Stars recruited: 108/108
108 Completion Bonus: Yes Level 4 Spell for Bright Shield Rune
Weapon Level: Level 16 for all combat characters.
Character Level: Level 60 for main combat characters, still working on the rest.
Recipes Collected: 40/40 (avoided #34 glitch).
Clive Subquest: Completed (in 15 hours).
Cooking Contest: Completed.
Good Ending: Conditions Not Met.

I have to say the cooking contest was not as hard as I remembered. I only lost twice, once when the rival chef stole most of my recipes and the other loss was scripted. I found that I consistently scored around 45 with Tomato Soup/Salad, Spicy Curry, and Pudding/Cake. Whenever a judge was introduced with a personal preference I included at least one menu item that matched it.

Next up: III

[Raistlin]

Probably the only Suikoden thing I've never done is S2's Clive sidequest. I just love the game too much to try to rush through it like that.

[BG-57]

It's on Youtube if you just want to see the scenes.

EDIT: Started posting some fanart here (http://forums.eyesonff.com/artists-forum/132823-suikoden-fanart.html#post2869207).