Favorite Suikoden?

[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.