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Himuro
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Sami
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Posted: Thu Sep 18, 2008 5:47 am Post subject: |
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Duels and army battles confirmed, nice. |
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Hawk Thanatos
Radical Dreamers
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Posted: Thu Sep 18, 2008 6:06 am Post subject: |
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Also confirms four person parties, which is not so nice.
Looks like the castle expands and moves around. |
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Gremio
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Posted: Thu Sep 18, 2008 6:35 pm Post subject: |
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Background art so far is the most accomplished element. Truly astounding! _________________ my Suikoden collection |
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Milan Fiori
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Posted: Thu Sep 18, 2008 6:42 pm Post subject: |
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So can we call this a confirmed main series game despite it's handheld origins? _________________ Be awed by our prowess!
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shaolin_swordsman
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Posted: Thu Sep 18, 2008 7:01 pm Post subject: |
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I was reluctant to do so before. Howver the confirmation of a full recruitable 108 stars, a HQ, large scale war battles and duels confirms it for me.
Looking amazing. |
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Crono
Something Wicked
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Posted: Thu Sep 18, 2008 7:41 pm Post subject: |
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Yeah I'm loving the background and environment art. Very nice. It's truly a shame about the chibi characters though. _________________ "Into battle we ride
With gods by our side
We are strong, and not afraid to die
We have an urge to kill
And our lust for blood has to be fulfilled
We'll fight 'till the end, and send our enemies straight to hell!" |
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bbsting120
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Posted: Fri Sep 19, 2008 1:25 am Post subject: |
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Wait, has a HQ been confirmed? I saw everything else mentioned, but somehow missed any reference to having an HQ. |
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Kikito
Order of the Absolute
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Posted: Fri Sep 19, 2008 2:01 am Post subject: |
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I think people are referring to the scans in Hawk Thanatos' post, which show a castle-like structure that seems to grow over time, and even has a farm, a staple in all HQ's so far. |
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Darkbeat
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Posted: Fri Sep 19, 2008 4:58 am Post subject: |
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Could someone post the article for those of us stuck behind work firewall? :mrgreen: |
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Ujitsuna
Red Shoes Dance
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Posted: Fri Sep 19, 2008 5:00 am Post subject: |
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Darkbeat wrote: |
Could someone post the article for those of us stuck behind work firewall? :mrgreen: |
1up.com wrote: |
Suikoden, Konami's flagship role-playing franchise, inhabits a Japanese RPG "comfort zone," in a sense. Unburdened by the weighty expectations of, say, Square Enix's juggernauts, this decade-old series is free to take advantage of a little more creative freedom. Suikoden's developers are trying to apply that creativity to a new platform, by taking Suikoden to the Nintendo DS with Suikoden: Tierkreis (the subtitle means "zodiac" in German and is pronounced "tear-crice" in its native tongue, though Konami seems to be going with a "tear-kreez" pronunciation in English).
Tierkreis, the first handheld Suikoden title to ever head Stateside, retains many of the series' familiar features and settings, but it also takes advantage of the DS hardware to introduce some new twists. If you've played a Suikoden game before, you'll feel right at home, but any JRPG vet should be in familiar territory. You trek from village to village and dungeon to dungeon, with random battles interspersed between -- unlike most of the series' five main console entries, though, Tierkreis features a Final Fantasy Tactics -style point-by-point map instead of an expansive overworld. Battles still come in the traditional three Suikoden flavors, though: turn-based random battles, 1-on-1 duels, and full-on army-versus-army confrontations.
Four images of the game here.
Turn-based combat makes up the lion's share of the fighting, though; while nothing's terribly revolutionary about Suikoden battles, the sheer number of recruited characters creates some interesting tactical quandaries. While you can mix and match to create four-person parties (two less than the standard Suikoden sextet, actually), your comrades' skill sets are so diverse that unlike most games in the genre, you might not have room for all the necessary skills and abilities at your disposal, which can make for some tough choices. Want healing magic? You might then have to make due with one less tank. Complicating matters further are combination attacks -- devastating blows that only become available with certain character combinations. More than almost any RPG series, battle preparations affect your chances as much as the decisions you make during actual combat. Still, the strategy never overwhelms; there's no right or wrong way to build a party, just personal preference.
Like previous games in the series, the primary task is to recruit the fated 108 Stars of Destiny into your army -- some of these characters serve as party members in combat, while others work as merchants, trainers, informants, and so on. Unlike the other Suikoden games, though, you actually begin the game with the final four surviving members of the 108 (with the other 104 taken out during a key battle at the game's start) and must resurrect the rest of your compadres before going after the big bad. Starting the game in medias res, with the characters already familiar with each other, is just different enough from the normal "fated one gathers allies as he goes to meet his destiny" method that it feels like a breath of fresh air. You're no longer just accruing teammates as you go; the quest itself is getting the band back together. Your starter team (peppy Marcia, stoic Jael, impulsive Riu, headstrong Dirk as they're named in the version I played, and your self-named main character) is an entertaining -- if occasionally sitcom-ish -- group, and players should fall in love with the cast pretty quickly.
When it comes to presentation, Tierkreis makes the most of the DS hardware, featuring bright, visually distinct characters and vibrant backgrounds with a nice depth-of-field effect. The voice acting (yes, I said voice acting!) is better than most Japanese RPGs, eschewing the usual brooding pathos for more lighthearted interplay between characters. Oddly, the game makes little to no use of the touch panel, while the upper screen's reserved for info boxes and the like. Where Tierkreis really takes advantage of the DS hardware, though, is with Wi-Fi connectivity: You can "send" a character on a quest with other players via a special in-game door; the receiving player uses your character for the duration of the quest, then returns him to you -- complete with added experience and shiny new gear. While Tierkreis doesn't feature direct online play (cooperative or otherwise), this is probably the next best thing, and it's a welcome, intriguing addition to the Suikoden experience -- proving, once again, that aforementioned creative freedom. |
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Gil-galad
Flame of the West
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Posted: Fri Sep 19, 2008 2:38 pm Post subject: |
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If you look closely at the two scans of the castle like structures in the first post, you'll notice that despite the fact that the second image has water, it's still the same place. The environment is exactly the same, except it somehow gets flooded as the game progresses. Interesting. _________________
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Milan Fiori
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Posted: Fri Sep 19, 2008 4:14 pm Post subject: |
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Or they're possibly two castles in two different dimensions! _________________ Be awed by our prowess!
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Gil-galad
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Posted: Fri Sep 19, 2008 5:06 pm Post subject: |
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Yeah, the would make sense. They both feature the same ruin in the lower right hand corner. _________________
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TruePerception
Blind Eye
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Posted: Sat Sep 20, 2008 4:26 am Post subject: |
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If you look closely, you can see that the castle (and everything else to the lower right) is on raised land, so flooding would bring about the same effect. So it is not necessarily two different dimensions. I, for one, like the idea of the environment changing as the castle upgrades, or perhaps, as the story progresses. We did see a little of this in Suikoden V. _________________
Daily Funny Award for May 1st, 2008 |
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