The Wrong Star?

[Wataru]

While pouring over the lists of who-is-what-star-in-what-game, I discovered there are some common threads throughout the people the star has chosen. This is hardly a breakthrough, but I have also noticed some inconsistencies of star placement that puzzle me. Certain people, it seems to me, should have been placed in other stars.

The Guardian Star / The Star of Longevity
G: Gremio, Sierra, Yuiri, Aldo
L: Sonya, Nanami, Geddoe, Katarina

The Guardian Star seems to consistently be a star who is devoted to, or the protector of, another star. I am not going to mention who these stars are in S5 since this is not in that forum. The Star of Longevity tends to be a more serious, more classically-military-trained warrior who is known for being skilled in magic. It seems to me that Nanami and Sierra should have switched stars. Sierra is not a soldier by trade like the others, but she seems to fit the type more than Nanami does.

The Savage Star / The Wailing Star
S: Varkas, Freed, Scott, Jango
W: Sydonia, Yoshino, Ernie, Brec

These two stars always seem to be a couple, with one being the leader/more active half and the other being the follower/passive half. This is broken in SIII with Scott and Ernie. The two have absolutely no connection to each other other than that they are support stars recruited from the same town.

Star of Ambition
Moose, Sauke, Ayame, Mizuki

This star is known for being a star for ninja, except in S1, where it had nothing to do with ninja. Why the change?

Fierce Star
Ronnie Bell, Oulan, Emily, Karl

This star always seems to be a physically strong female warrior. Why Karl all of a sudden? Yeah, he's a fist fighter, but this one was always female.

Inferior Star / Brave Star / Helpful Star
I: Sansuke, Pico, Goro, Taisuke
B: Ivanov, Tetsu, Dominic, Gareth
H: Chapman, Hans, Samus, Lilen

What a mess!!!! The Inferior Star is always the bathmaker's star, so why is Tetsu the Brave Star? The Brave Star is a skilled craftsman, so Pico could fit there. WHy were they switched. Also, The Helpful Star is the Star-of-the-Guy-Who-Runs-Your-Armory, so why is Dominic not there? He is also the Brave star when he seems more appropraite as the Helpful Star. Granted Samus is not the best choice for the Brave Star, but it would be better the place him there and have the others consistent, no? Lilen doesn't exactly run your armory, but you don;t have a traditional armory in S4 and Chadli fills the "Merchant" star slot. Lilen is one of the five people who runs your accessory shop, so she fits in a way.

It seems to me that the designers are more interested in putting pairs of stars together next to each other on the table than they are about the stars' meanings.

Agree/disagree? Any other examples out there?
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[Aurelien]

I mostly agree with your points here, but at the same time, I think some of the stars just can't be "corrected" because each game have different characters, and the number of characters that could fit in the stars. However, some are indeed questionable (like why Tetsu is not Inferior Star when he could've been one).

[Thief]

Naturally, any analysis of Star of Destiny trends is flawed without taking into account those from Suikoden V.

[Captain Hero]

[Wataru]

[Aurelien]

And while I think some stars should belong to the characters doing the same role (e.g.: bathmakers, armor shopkeeper, blacksmith, etc), I hope that there wouldn't be too many stars being occupied by too similar roles between each game's characters. It would be very boring if we play the game and each game have the same role just different name/looks/etc. One of the things that makes me love Suikoden is the diversity. So while I do think that some consistency is good, I do hope that diversity would still play a part as well in the future.
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~City-States of Jowston and Tinto Republic~
06.06.2004 - 20.01.2008

[Scarlet Assassin]

However, Pes, different characters filling similar roles in different ways is one of the things I look forward to with each game. You have so many different people and so many different things being done that it's almost impossible for two characters to adapt and act the same way with the differing environment. Not to mention the fact that we see several stars changing their level of influence from game to game, and thus different roles and character traits are being given the spotlight in different ways. Even with the consistent roles, the games are still far from being repetitive.
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Chief of Beat-em-up Honeys Division, Devoted Protector of Lady Tifa Lockhart

[Parallax]

I do think that you're right about the Stars not quite fitting with the characters in some cases, whereas others (Chiyu!) hold consistent to their pattern all the way up through Suikoden IV and V.

However, I'm not sure that I'm all that concerned with it, to be quite honest. It makes it kind of a pain when you look through the Star list for a specific character and can't find them because of the random placement of some of the Stars, whereas others are straight lines.

[Aurelien]

Oh, I'm not saying that they are getting repetitive and boring now. I think they're still doing a good job for sure. But what I'm saying is that I simply don't want to have every game with too similar setup of characters.

Part of the good thing of having 108 SoDs is not knowing what they are like. While some stars are expected (like the bathmaker, shopkeepers, etc), I don't want to constantly have 2 buddies like Alen/Grenseal, Camus/Miklotov, Borus/Percival, Hervey/Sigurd all the time. Not because these characters are the same (they're not), but because their relationship between one another is very similar in which that 1 is always the hot-headed/wild while the other is the cool-minded/chill-out one. It might be okay since we're talking about 4-5 games here, but if Suikoden were to continue for quite some time, sooner or later we will lose a bit of interest in the characters filling these stars.

But having said all that, I don't expect Suikoden to be turned into a freak show either where every game becomes totally different from one another. I just think that some varieties would be nice, and that varieties could be in form of different kind of characters filling in the same star with slightly different role.

EDIT: My post is to reply to Scarlet's post and not to Parallax. Just would like to make it clear so that no confusion occurs ^^
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~City-States of Jowston and Tinto Republic~
06.06.2004 - 20.01.2008