Suikoden Tactics

I avoided picking up this game when it first came out because I couldn't find any reference to random battles. And I like to be able to level up my party in ways other than boss fights.

Well, eventually I just took the plunge because I'm a big fan of the Suikoden series. My impressions so far:

It's frustrating to do this without a guide. Expect to die in battles multiple times in several occasions. Part of the difficulty is saving a fragile character and other time it's respawning monsters. At least the respawning is predicatable so you can position the party to be prepared in the second playthrough.

Recruiting optional Suikoden IV characters is a lot of fun, but they are woefully unprepared for both regular combat and quests. They have to be seriously leveled up first. Plus, if an optional character dies, they're gone for good, but a plot-related character appears after a defeat no worse for wear.

Which brings me to the point about random battles, there's a Deep Dungeon type place called Obel Ruins which is a great place to level up weak characters. The first recruit is Rita, who's a pitiful level 1 (like Cloud in FFT). Level her up and send her on the early quests, since she's most likely to suceed in the early ones. Equip her with eight medicines and use as a nurse character.

I won't spoil the plot, but I like the way the pirates are fit into the story.

>>> The game is not great but is alright for die-hard suikoden 4 fans and thats why i was interested on it, i beat this long time ago so i barely remember all the details..
I think the game is very easy to beat even without a guide, but recruiting all the available characters without a guide is near impossible. I liked how you were able to play with the Suikoden 4 hero, and you also get to see Peck`s face before he turns into an uglymofo.
and I really liked Yohn..
From the very beginning i realized that (SPOILER)Kyril was Yohn`s baby, and in the end I was shocked to see that my assumptions were correct.

I've progressed to the point where you rescue the girl from the Kooluk laboratory. Already my character roster is becoming large and unweildy (about 30). Leveling up the whole lot of them is a royal pain.

Some recruitment subquests are about as annoying as saving Mustadio in FFT: the AI guest characters tend to wander mindlessly in the fray and get picked off, which leads to an automatic loss.

I do like the storyline so far, and it's neat to see inside the Kooluk Empire.

I bought this game off eBay, but the guy accidently sent me Suikoden V. I didn't swap it, and I'm somewhat glad I didn't, but I really want to give this game a shot. The Suikoden universe is pretty interesting, and I like this style of RPG.

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Originally Posted by Jiro

I bought this game off eBay, but the guy accidently sent me Suikoden V. I didn't swap it, and I'm somewhat glad I didn't, but I really want to give this game a shot. The Suikoden universe is pretty interesting, and I like this style of RPG.

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Bonus. Suikoden V is one of the best!

That's exactly what I thought. And I paid less for it than I would have if I had actually been bidding on it :p

IMO it's not really that fun.

I bought the game at Gamestop about three months ago for 10 bucks, and kinda regret picking it up. While some things about it are cool (the techniques for example and the individual characters) some of the gameplay mechanics are really boring but must be utilized in order to beat or even play through the game (such as changing the elements of panels).

I wouldn't really recommend the game unless you're a really die-hard fan of Suikoden IV and are looking for a spinoff game that's almost completely different.

Playing SuIV beforehand is almost mandatory, not just for recruiting (SPOILER)Hero and Snowe, but to understand a lot of the plot, especially the early scenes that foreshadow events in SuIV. I happen to like SuIV a lot, although it seems to be one of the less popular in the series. This game seems to suffer from some of the same problems as FFX-2 to FFX, it's not quite a stand alone game. Although recruiting (SPOILER)Hero is a big bonus, since he has techs with three other major characters, although I was shocked to see him speaking regular dialogue.

I agree that SuV is a great game. But play the early ones too. I started a new game of SuI and I had forgotten how fun it was (besides the tedium of leveling up all those characters).

Any hope of seeing them ported to PSP or something? Because I don't think it would be cheap to pick them up nowadays. Suikoden seems like one of those series that will be hard to find.

I know Suikoden 1 is on the PSN store for you to buy.

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Originally Posted by Jiro

Any hope of seeing them ported to PSP or something? Because I don't think it would be cheap to pick them up nowadays. Suikoden seems like one of those series that will be hard to find.

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They did port Suikoden 1 and 2 as a set for the PSP but for some ungodly reason Konami chose not to release it outside of Japan. The fact Capcom pulled the same bull with BoFIII still makes me mad. I would probably had owned a PSP by now if they had released the Suikoden set Stateside.

I still want to play Suikoden Tactics, I liked IV enough to try out a spinoff. Though I'm still not sure about the DS game that recently came out cause I hear they dropped the usual "warring kingdom" formula for crazy dimension jumping anime shenanigans :roll2

Also, BG-57, I agree that Suikoden 1 kick ass, Tir McDohl is still my favorite hero in the series.

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Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno

They did port Suikoden 1 and 2 as a set for the PSP but for some ungodly reason Konami chose not to release it outside of Japan. The fact Capcom pulled the same bull with BoFIII still makes me mad. I would probably had owned a PSP by now if they had released the Suikoden set Stateside.

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I wonder if Konami might have tried to propose releasing S1/2 here but got rejected by SCEA. After all it's the same thing that happened with BoFIII for PSP when Capcom tried to release it in the US (SCEA rejected it for not having enough new content). A shame really 'cause all Capcom would have had to do was port it straight over from the PAL game; there's not much difference between it and the US one other than speed.

But I'm sure if Konami wanted to release the game here they would have at least tried. They're not like Namco. :p

I've now progressed to the point where you try to save Simeon. Again, I lost in the first playthrough because guests characters don't play defensively, they wander into a fight and get picked off.

Which is fine for say the battle with Charlemane, since it makes no difference if he gets picked off in the battle. I was able to win handily by simply moving to a corner of the grid and slaying foes as they wandered toward my party.

Just recruited Noah, Champo, Nakul, Mitsuba and Reinhold. So I'm off gain skill points in Obel Ruins. There's one random encounter in level 1 where three skeletons respawn continuously so I can easily get tons of skill points.