Flaws With Suikoden Games?

[Crimson_Angel]

Was there ever, in your opinion, a Suikoden that just flat out sucked? Maybe there is just a certain thing that you thought could have been better, or there was something you would have done differently. What are things that you believe are flaws in the Suikoden games?

For example, I think that Lazlo in Suikoden IV should have been given an actual personality instead of just standing there like an idiot with the same expression on his face all the time. I loved the story, it was really good, but it could have been better if Lazlo had been given just a bit of personality. I don't care if he doesn't actually say anything as long as you know how he's feeling without him actually having to, like Freyjadour, the prince, in Suikoden V. Though he is only able to talk through the options you choose, you can usually get a clear reading on how he is feeling, unlike Lazlo.
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[Sialeeds]

Percentage of enemy encounters at sea and the speed of the ships in SUikoden 4 for one and also the stupid battle system in Suikoden 3, which made no common sence for second.

[BlackKnightYuber]

Good post. I could go on forever with a thread like this, though if I did, I'd never stop. You hit the nail on the head about Lazlo. Unfortunately, he was quite the cardboard character. The expressiveness they gave Freyjadour was a huge upgrade.

Since you brought up Suikoden IV, I'll focus on that game for now. I didn't dislike the game as much as some, but its flaws are well-known. The one that I'll point out is that there should never have been a need for Suikoden Tactics to tie up the loose ends. Had Konami combined aspects of both games into one, the experience would have been far more enjoyable.

[TruePerception]

Or the ability of characters in Suikoden IV to communicate across miles of water!
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[Thief]

I wouldn't equate what I didn't like about a game to the all-imposing "flaw" category, but here are my thoughts:

- I disliked Jowy and his manipulative nature. He made Suikoden II such a bore fest post-Luca. Whatever he intention was wrt to Jowston, he didn't make any advancement beyond what portion of Dunan that Luca left behind.

- Then the canon forced us to save him if we want to save Nanami in the best ending. What gives? He's totally not worth the effort. Despite his lack of characterisation, I'd take Troy's somewhat honourable death over this forgive-me-please "best" friend.

- For all intents and purposes, Nanami's fake death was an insult to Gremio's demise in the original game. That's a rip-off and a lame one at that.

- Recipe #34, Recipe #12 and those bloody squirrels. And I thought they learned their lesson after the pain that were the Nameless Urn and Opal!

- With all these complaints about Lazlo and his lack of personality in IV, did Riou even have any back then? Apart from those few portraits, his sprite face barely showed any expression whatsoever!

- This is my personal attachment to the original title, but Gaspar is still the ultimate gambler. Whereas Shilo made the once glorious Chinchirorin no fun at all.

For whatever it's worth, I enjoy the series for what it is worth. As long as I have fun with these games, I'd play them. Otherwise, why bother playing at all if I would only end up moaning and groaning for months to come?

[Sealot]

Combat system has never really been challenging. I could spend hours to make great party in Suikoden, but I could beat every boss easily with just casting random spells and attacks without ever putting much thought or training in my party. Storylines are the best part of the game, but sometimes they are just so predictable. It was funny when I told my friend about Suikoden 5 and how you get booted from your own castle, then he's like "oh and then you gather an army of good guys and beat take evil guys, take back the castle and save the princess" without ever playing or hearing about the game..... I'm like, um... yeah.

[KFCrispy]

what made Riou have more character than Lazlo? it's their situations and actions! you had sections in Suikoden II that really developed a sense that Riou cared about all peole, had a sense of justice, etc - waiting for Jowy in Muse, deciding to join the mercenaries at the Mercenary Fortress, attending Lady Annabelle. Running away with Nanami. the characters around Riou also helped develop his character and the entire game as well. Shu, Nanami..
what does Lazlo do? NOTHING. Glenn dies and he kinda just stands there. Snowe asks for forgiveness and he kinda just stands there. Lino talks about how he lost his son when his wife died.. how does Lazlo react and what develops from this revelation? NOTHING! Lazlo fights a tree while Riou fought Luca Blight. Suikoden IV lacked emotion, among other things.

The later Suikodens, particularly IV, took a step back in other basic Suikoden / RPG mechanics. since Suikoden II, you could access other characters from your HQ shops. Suikoden IV completely discouraged this type of management, as you had to do it Suikoden I style: change party members. go to shops. go to weaponsmith. change party members. dude. i thought that kind of archaic-ness ended with the FIRST GAME. Suikoden IV's menu looked like an amateur's game menu, and they even took away stats for equipment (again, WHY???).
Suikoden V and maybe IV removed the soft-reset feature. what gives??
if anything, the Suikoden games need an IMPROVED management system. i've always advocated having a Narcissist character manage your "wardrobe" - you could configure equipment for all your members, withdraw from the vault, and see the stat changes while it happened. Suikoden III's vault allows you do this except for seeing stats.

Runes: there have been some ideas and then ones that are plain useless but still prevail in every game. Poison Rune, Silence Rune, Balloon Rune? these things either don't work on bosses when actually might benefit from them and/or they have have such minor effects you can't really do much with them. apparently "special attacks" are not the same as magic spells, so most enemies can continue to do their "special attacks" even if they are Silenced.
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[Thor McOdin]

I didn't like the main outfits of Lazlo and Freyadour in their respective games. Lazlo saved the world in short shorts while Frey walked around in...something colorful. It really would have been awesome if his main outfit was the McDohl-esque thing that he wore while undercover.

In any case, I don't hate Suikoden IV, but it definitely wasn't worth the expediated shipping price from Amazon (which I think was free after they lost my order). Among my complaints was the fact that I wasn't drawn to any of the characters. It was great playing as Jeane, but no one else seemed particularly appealing after that (save Kika and Viki). "Hey, look! It's Ted! Wow...Ted. Huh. Great," is what was going through my mind after the Fog Ship adventure. After all, a Suikoden selling point for me as a young 'en was that there were ninjas in the series. Although his curse is sad and everything, he was never one of my favorite characters.
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[Crimson_Angel]

[Crimson_Angel]

[Sophita]

Oh, I like the series a lot, but nothing is perfect.

Suikoden I
- Pacing. Game seems to end in about 15 hours (ok), yet canon-wise, is the longest war of them all?

- Awkward gameplay mechanics. One rune per character, no running without a "True Holy Rune" in your party, having to manually move people in and out of your party to change weapondry and armor (yes, it's more realistic, but it's so much more inconvenient).

-Lots of undimensional characters. I give Suikoden a pretty big berth on this, what with all the characters there are in the games, but without any detectives or any comment box in the game, Suikoden I's minor characters wind up being somewhat awkwardly one-dimensional in comparison to the rest of the minor cast from the other games. On the other hand, the major characters in Suikoden I probably have as much if not more info than their successors in the next games.

- Awkward Item System - Because there is no party items slot, you can only carry that which you have the characters who have room for. Not to mention, pity the poor souls who put their Blinking Mirror on Gremio.

Suikoden II -

- Translation (NA/EU only) - It was............how do you say..................terrible with punctuation!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

-Jowy. Yeah, a lot of people like him, but I retain that Jowy only did what he done for the sake of the plot. I didn't sense much sincerity in his choice to stay with Highland, and his prolonging of the war was just a way for the game to be longer. While I'm at it, while I found Nanami's "death" moving and her "ressurection" made me glad to see her alright, I don't really "get" the running away to Kyaro thing. I mean, how did she even get in?

- Lots of repeats. About half the Stars of Destiny from the Toran Liberation War seem to have wandered over to Dunan to fight in theirs. While some have an actual purpose to be in the land (Viktor, who is from there, or Clive, who chases Elza there), others seem quite random indeed (Meg just happened to wander over? Jeane quit her job as a runemistress and wandered over there? (I realize it became a runner, but when there were only two games, it was odder) Apple wound up in the region...how?) and even a large majority of characters from the second game have connections to parts of the first, which is odd given how icy the relationship between Jowston and Toran/the Scarlet Moon Empire was.

- Annalee's Song (NA only). Okay, it's a minor quibble at best. But still, making people listen to two minutes of solid silence should have been caught before the game was ever released!

Suikoden III

- Translation/Localization. A lot of people don't have a problem with it, but Suikoden III wrecks havoc on continuity of terms in the game just from different translations...Sindar becomes Cyndar, Howling Voice Guild becomes Roaring Brotherhood, and the like. It becomes very confusing.

- War System. Felt like a card game on the main screen, and while I like card games, it doesn't feel appropriate for Suikoden. On top of that, the battles were just automated "normal" battles, completely failing to show the epic scope of the battles. And, as everyone can agree, it's very frustrating to see say, Piccolo choosing to bop someone on the head instead of casting lightning magic.

- Pacing. Because the first three chapters are spent being split between three protagonists, with Thomas' chapters sandwhiched in as well, Chapters 4 and 5 just seem to fly by. The war seems half-won before your army even officially gets a castle.

Odd Gameplay Bugs - Why do some characters naturally get skills that they can never use? Srgt. Joe gets a skill meant for Jongleur rune users, but can't equip it. Guillarme has a fire magic skill, but he isn't a usable character in battle!

Suikoden IV -

Pacing - By the time you really get a feel for the game, you realize you're just about to go take Cray on!

Lack of Interesting Mini-Games - With the exception of Rita-pon, which at least feels like a proper game, the other minigames lack luster. Spinning Tops? Guess the Coin? Neither are as good as the Cooking Minigame of SII or the Theatre game of SIII or even the numerous games in Suikoden III that stand out (Fishing, Egbert, etc). The Confession Room is an interesting experiment, but also awkward to visit: Lazlo has to be alone, which means you have to go back to Louise's bar, change your party to just Lazlo, then go back...It would have been easily solved by just giving Lazlo a dialogue box saying "Okay, you guys wait here" or Keene saying "Your friends have to wait outside" or something like that, in some fashion. Elenor's Training Battle is a nice idea, but because the battles are so easy and never deviate from "Defeat all the enemies", it quickly becomes plodding and un-fun.

Archiac Bits - It's odd that suddenly all but the most basic runes are gone, and now you have to remake your party every time you want to sharpen weapons, make armour, and give items or runes and the like. Annoying.

Suikoden V

- Graphics. They are terrible. Though I like the art, the way it's implimented means the characters are so far off in the distance you can't really see the art well at all. On top of that, if you do try to zoom in, you realize other oddities, like how your character are almost twice as big as NPCs!

- Lack of Subtley. Godwins and Barows alike are both pretty evil and there's never any real explanation for either. They just are. The game walks away with the moral that a gender-defined monarchy ruled by a child is better than any senate (yes, there's a parliament, but do they have any control over the Queen's decisions?).

Names - Lordlake, Estrise, Hatred Fortress, the Big Hole....It's all a bit uninspired.

- The End of the Game Makes No Sense. Okay, So Marschal flees to the Arshtwal Mountains...why? Oh, well, it doesn't matter, but then you vaporize Dolph...somehow...And then you see Marscal and he gives a five minute speech about how he was doing it all for Falena (which doesn't make sense in the first place since it seems from the first moment obvious he is doing it for his own glory, not the country's) then summons/transforms himself into the Sun Rune Incarnation (How can he do this despite it being proven the Godwin's can't use the Sun Rune? Who knows!) which your party promptly well and truly beats, then Lyon falls after...overexerting herself (I guess), and suddenly you're in the Sun Rune with Ferid and Arshtat (Ok, that makes sense) and Sialeeds (Uhh) and the Godwin faction (WHAT?), and everyone is happy to see you, even Alenia who never seemed to like you much in the first place when the game started but is now your biggest cheerleader. Oddly the Barows seem absent, who knows why. From then on, it does make some sort of sense, but the scene in Arshtwal is just...nonsensical and poorly explained.

Suikoden Tactics -

-Plot. The plot itself just seems to wander, without ever really going anywhere, and no one but Kyril, Seneca, Andarc, and the Kooluk kiddies seem to have their life changed in any meaningful way. On top of this, the game is meant to answer questions raised in Suikoden IV but...doesn't, really, other than "Who was Edgar?" and "What happened to Rune Cannons and why didn't we see them in any of the other games?".

The Ending -Corselia's decision to dissolve Kooluk doesn't make that much sense (if anything, they seemed to need a more centralized government, not less) and the plot twist about Kyril being the result of a relationship between Walter and Yohn is just insane, given how little personal interaction Walter has with Yohn in the beginning of the game, not to mention the bit about Kyril being born from an egg.

- Repetitive Battles. I like strategy RPGs as much as the next person, but with no variation in goals, Suikoden Tactics quickly becomes a very plodding affair to play through. The elemental mages are a nice idea, the imbalance of them are not (only one earth mage, Pablo, and two of the three unkillable mages are water.

- Discouragement in party members. Despite having 70+ characters available for combat, only 20 or so are unkillable, and with just about every hit killing a non-storyline protected character , your party choices quickly solidify into unkillable characters.
Too Much Obel Ruins. - Just about half the subquests in the game seem to take place in the Obel ruins. Why? Surely there much be other areas that were suitable to use for this - what about Rene's treasure hunting campaign places in Suikoden IV? Surely mixing things up a bit would have helped, rather than lead people back to the Obel Ruins again and again, as you can't get most of it on one trip through. I don't mind one trip, maybe not even two, but it seems like there are over 20 at least!
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[Ryu]

While Suikoden 1 did have several mechanical issues, i have always excused them because it is the first game in the series, a PS1 game and an old one too, and over all you still get a sense of accomplishment when your finished with it.

Suikoden 2 is probably the suikoden series at it's best. I can't really think of anything major about the game that bugged me. Maybe there are a couple of minor issues but nothing comes to mind off hand.

Suikoden 3 had a great story, it just completely PHALED at telling it. The Trinity System was completely pointless. It would have been much better to just do a "pick your hero" system. Or better yet just make Hugo the true fire rune bearer i mean Geddeo already has the lightning and Chris got the water. Sadly, the Suikoden 3 manga did a better job of telling the story then the game did.

Suikoden 4 was just a painful game. It might have been good but i just could get past it's major in-your-face flaws to see it's goodness. The boring characters, the slow pace on the world map, the retarded major battle system that even a child could win blindfolded and the pointless changes to the basic mechanics (i.e. the four person party) was just stupid and did i mention pointless. Oh and lets not forget the fact that it's the ONLY video game i have beaten without actually playing it. While traveling on the world map i actually watched TV and just hit the x button until i got to my destination.

Suikoden 5 was a major step the a good direction with the suikoden series. the graphics were a bit blurred but that might just be my TV i couldn't tell. and the storyline was a bit simple but it reminded me of the first suikoden and so i kind of forgive some of the games flaws in hopes that is the first game that will bring us to another Suikoden 2.
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[Sydnee]

Umm....I dunno why people can't see why Suikoden IV have a simpler battle/menu system.
For me it corresponds to the timeline which is 100 years before Suikoden I.

I agree on Lazlo's (painfully) boring face.
Suikoden IV has emotions BUT we can't see it (except for major events). The horrible camera view...ugh....the reason why I stopped playing it. It's pretty annoying!

Tactics....It's good....but yeah, over half of the playable characters can die! >.<
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[Blackjack]

Suikoden V was terrible.

Bad graphics, a bad story, boring characters, terrible voice acting, horribly long loading times, sucky RTS war system, the list goes on and on.
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[Tonberry]

I'm pretty frustrated with the silent hero. I want a character with a personality. I'll admit that Kyril wasn't too interesting, but at least he had thoughts and feelings. In Suikoden , Gremio dies and it seems like the hero might care ... kind of ... for a few seconds. Riou wasn't much better. He seemed to just go along with whatever everyone else was saying and never really had any opinions. Lazlo had less character than the governor. That's just pathetic. The hero in Suikoden V had some facial expressions, at least, but he was dumb or something. Facial expressions mean very little when they aren't accompanied by voices that contain emotion, or at least a gasp here and there.

I don't like how there are bath items in Suikoden III. I seem to accumulate tons of them and I can't get rid of them. I just put them in my warehouse until they fill up space and start to make me angry. Now I reset when I win that stuff.

Oh, and one major flaw with the whole series is the willingness of random people to abandon their current lifestyles for some crazy adventure, for as little as a little food, or a little money, which would be easy for such a strong fighter to accumulate in about 30 minutes of their own time.