Thoughts on Suikoden IV after beating the game?(Spoilers)

[Adversary]

BEAT THE GAME FIRST BEFORE READING

before i start, i didnt like how the game eats your memory card :(, as i am one of the probable many that has more than 20 saves for each suikoden game and probably other RPG games, but who cares? moving on haha :x


the game did emphasize on learning more about the rune of punishment, but im kinda disappointed that S4 didnt include any other true runes besides the soul eater (im glad i got to learn just a "little more" about ted at least), which we all know already. i have a question though

SPOILER BELOW NOT HIGHLIGHTED LAST WARNING























































































I understand that cray cut off his hand to rid himself of the Rune of Punishment, which was what elenor was talking about; him getting a steel arm. but did anyone notice at the end, just before when you fight the last boss, he uses a rune on his right hand to activate the tree behind him? im sure this is a true rune, but what exactly was the true rune?


what i also found to be EXTREMELY odd was that at el-eal, whenever you used the Rune of Punishment, you never got damaged. even if you use eternal and double edged sword, you didnt get damaged at all. what the hell was that? looks to me punishment just got turned into a lesser-form of the soul eater.

once you beat the game with 108 stars, you gotta wait like 10 minutes for the credits to end. a scene will come with the hero. thenn the game asks you to save.

after you save, load it up again, and it seems that the game starts all over again...

but this will probably snowe's perspective. so you learn more about him i guess. (considering the loading screen has snowe running, instead of chiepoo or the hero running) also when you save, the letters are in green instead of white. i hope you people are cautious enough to NOT save over the save that asks you to save at the end of the game, because it could link to suikoden V. i could be wrong though.

but anyway yea, im still playing "Snowe's Perspective" right now. you can skip scense now but you have to do all those crummy missions and stuff. ill see how it goes as i play more of it.





also, this is the first suikoden in which ive seen so many "aftermath profiles" telling that they died or something. and again just like suikoden 3, im disappointed that they swap aftermath profiles to damn fast. they should really slow that down. i only have enough time to read what happened and barely glance at their name and picture.

and about the soul eater. iunno if its true or not, but the reason as many say it was "degraded" was probably because ted doesnt understand soul eater's capabilities yet? he DID just get it back from the monster. maybe in that 150 years, he meets leknaat or something and she gives him those instant death spells and hell.

[Adversary]

turns out its just a "new game" which is pretty much pointless then :x

[NeonMouko]

Ted doesn't meet Leknaat until he goes with Tir to meet her on his first mission for the Empire.

As for why it's weaker, I originally thought it might be because it's younger... but Tir had it for less time than Ted did. So maybe it matches his personality or the quality of the people who died?

As for the New Game+, I like having most of my items... I just wish they let me keep the good ones. My Champion Ruuuune... :(

[kagematsuri]

I didn't get the 108 ending, so I'm hoping I missed some stuff because I'm so confused. I thought the ending was slooooowwww, as usual. Wish you could press X or something to make it skip over the credits atleast.

No explanation or anything on the tree, but I doubt it was a True Rune that activated it. If Cray already had another, then why did he want the Rune of Punishment? Why didn't he ever use this other True Rune if he had it? Where did he find it? There wasn't any symbol when he waved his hand either, unlike nearly every other TR we've seen in the games.

IMO, Soul Eater is weaker for gameplay reasons. I don't know about in the normal battles, but in the final battle Hero still took damage from his rune. That level 4 spell was great though. Finally, a semi-decent looking spell in the game!

What I want to know is what the deal with Troy was. You have a duel, his ship sinks and he starts spouting crap about how it doesn't matter because he is from the sea and will be reborn. Um, please tell me I missed something, because that made no sense.

Also, I heard that if you don't get all 108, Hero dies? Sure didn't look dead to me, just like he isolated himself and was in a boat. Certainly wasn't just a pile of ashes like the previous bearers.
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[NeonMouko]

I hope this post is alright... the topic does say spoilers... XD;

Er, but just to be safe... SPOILERS!










Actually, I think that boat was supposed to be a funeral boat. You know, how people would put their dead in a boat and just let them drift off in a funeral procession? An example of this is what happened in the first Lord of the Rings movie. Atleast, this is what I was heard. So, honestly, I think he was supposed to be dead. It looked like what happened to that one guy in the grave at Obel Ruins. Essentially, he didn't disappear because the Rune didn't go to someone else... it stayed inside of him. And with his body floating around on the water, it'd be difficult for someone to come across his body and get bamboozled with the Rune. Hard to find a grave when it MOVES, you know?

I can't say if the Non-108 stars ending is different than the 108 stars ending, as I'm too much of a perfectionist NOT to get 108 stars, but that was the scene I got before it blackened out... and then moved to another scene. Did you get a scene after that as well (I won't spoil it if you didn't XD;)? If not, that's what the 108 stars did. ;)

[Thief]

Good, I'm not the only one who actually realise that the boat is indeed a funeral boat, which explains the normal ending.

Not sure how everything fits into the best ending though.

[Vextor]

As for why yhe Rune of Punishment didn't hurt you at el-eal fortress, this is because you have 108 stars. If you paid attention to what Leknaat said, she told you that the Rune of Punishment has ended it's atonement phase, and entered it's forgiveness phase. This means the rune no longer robs your life when you use it.

This is why the hero is no longer damged every time he uses the rune, and also why he doesn't die in the good ending.

[Adversary]

oooo ok. i completely missed that thanks.

[Meruhesae]

[Vextor]

Nope, true runes only grant agelessness, not immortality. Immortality means a person won't die even if you stab them, or chop them into little bits. True runes won't protect you from being chopped into little bits. It only stops you from aging.

The Rune of Punishment, in it's atonement phase, will kill you if you use it too much. But if you don'y use it, it's not gonna kill you. In it's forgiveness stage, it wont' kill you even if you use it.

[Meruhesae]

[NeonMouko]

Hehehe, I'm actually pretty happy with this news. I know it's awful that the True Rune owners will most likely live to see their best friends die of old age, but I'm rather hoping that one of the Suikodens (if not the final one) will be a collection of all the True Runes under one banner, maybe to fight against a massive evil. :) 'course, this is wishful thinking. I've liked all the heroes this far and I just think it'd be neat to fight with them all at once. :lol:

Spoilers!













Regardless, the ending did scare me at first... I thought he was dead. I was hoping I'd see him twitch. When he did, I was immensely relieved! 'course, I'm curious what that one boat was... which kingdom did it belong to, and who was at the helm? I wonder if the others know he's alive or if he just disappeared like Tir and Riou did?

[Carabbit]

My first thoughts upon beating this game is: "DAMN Troy is hot!"

(Spoilers)

It's almost a requirement to replay through these Suikoden games. They give you so much to think about. I've been chewing on IV's ending all morning. Here's some of my random musings:

The fire-breathing, fanged tree monster was neat.

Snowe was an idiot ("I see you've turned to piracy!" "I see YOU'VE turned to IDIOCY!" Hee hee. My Hero (McLeod) was such a smart@$& punk.)

Troy was hot.

When Cray started talking about "we" and "our" with no one in the room but McLeod's party and himself is about the time that I realized he wasn't just evil, he was also quite a bit mad. Really, Elenor's question is kind of self-explanatory.
"Why'd you go insane and kill a bunch of people?"
"Um...because I'm insane?"

The ship/strategic battles were so much fun. The only semi-hard one was the last one. (Troy sank two ships in one turn, that jerk. But he only had like 10 hp at that point....)

I thought the duels were well done, if a bit too easy. I don't think I took a single hit in the last duel. Really, they should forget giving you hints. 2/3 chance of getting a counter or a stalemate is too good a percentage.

I'm sure I'll have more thoughts later, but right now I'm still trying to reconcile it all.
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Jack Bauer doesn't miss. If he didn't hit you it's because he was shooting at another terrorist twelve miles away.

[RubiRubi]

First Cray did not have a True rune he used his wilpower to make the tree come alive. Also Aldo ran after Ted because he wanted to be friends but died and I think that would raise the power of "Deadly Fingertips". In 150 years someone else around Ted probaly died and raised the power of "Hell"

[Masked Bishop]

When I first saw the ending, I thought that Lino (RENO, DAMN IT!) had put Hero off to sea, thinking him to be dead. When Hero woke up, I thought he was waving for the boat to come back and get him, as he was NOT dead, and I was saddened. Immensely.

I seem to be the only one who thinks this way, though, so yeah...
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"Simplicity is the last step of art." - Bruce Lee