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?

[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 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.