Quote Originally Posted by Raistlin View Post
The Rune of Punishment sounds great in theory, but was absolutely worthless for most of the game, at least in IV (it did became badass in Tactics). SIV was so easy that it never mattered, but it's (lack of) usefulness is only rivaled by the V's Dawn Rune, where the first spell is... a group antidote.
The Punishment Rune wasn't so bad as a last resort rune, it got really useful when you collected all 108 Characters and removed it's negative effects. I mean Hero, Snowe, Ted, and Kika was a pretty unstoppable end game party and being able to double team the Final boss with the Rune of Punishment and Soul Eater was pretty fun.

I'll agree the Dawn Rune was pretty lame, but considering you also get the Dusk and Star True Runes kind of made up for it. It's reminiscent of how useless the True Water Rune is in Suikoden III if Chris gets it, since her magic ability is abysmal, you would only see the Level 4 Spell if you if you chose Chris as the hero and it was given to Hugo, or by hacking the game, or by exploiting the difficult Lv. 99 farming technique in her first chapter.

I also agree with WK's last post almost completely... but how is II's major battle system your LEAST favorite? It is better than I's and at least involves some strategy. I might even rank it ahead of IV's because it reminds me of having to sail around the world map for half of the game.
It's poorly explained, the unit building is limited, and once Harmonia/Grasslanders show up, the rules of engagement work like Tetra Master, where victory is based more on the "Will of the Random Number Generator Gods" than actual careful planning. It tries to be like Ogre Battle, but Ogre Battle itself is more like the Rock/Paper/Scissors mechanics that the first game had, whereas SII doesn't work that way and its about random number crunching. Let's not forget that a good chunk of them are scripted so strategy is not much of a factor, most of the time your strategy is simply "avoid Luca Blight". It's just the least fun element of the game and I feel it's descendents did a much better job of making this part more fun.