Large Scale Battles Vs. Suikoden 4's Ship Battle

[LouisDude98]

Okay in every suikoden game there are large scale battles that involve the many people in your army. When I bought Suikoden 4 I was looking forward to that. But then I found this .......... this .......... this ship battle. I understand it's a naval thing but they could of made it much more massive they sucked the fun out of large scale battles. What do ya'll think?

[Adrian Magicent]

Actually, I liked the naval battles. Except that they were so easy, which has its appeal, but not what I wanted. However, either way, it makes a lot more sense for the setting. And, I think there was a little Rhapsodia influence in there....

[Tonberry]

It would be difficult to have the same style battles in a water world unless they had...rowboats maybe? It's just a whole lot easier to make ship battles. I rather enjoyed them, but as Adrian said, they were a bit on the easy side. There should have been some difficult side quest with some tough battles or something. I also prefer the army battles, but there wasn't much that could be done in place of those in this story. I think they took the appropriate action.

[Leb]

The ship battles are somewhat similar to Suikoden II's war battle system (in the sense that it's grid-based, and members of each unit contribute skills and overall strength), except the system relies less on luck and more on the paper-scissors-rock formula that's extremely common in the series.

The system found in each game is exclusionary to some degree, so you shouldn't have come in expecting it to use every Star or be absolutely massive in scale.

[Beecham]

The ship battles sucked alright... It is like a more complecated version of 1's battle system... It is far too easy!! There is absolutely no challenge!! You don't even need that many ships for the final battle!!

The system in 2 and 3 are much better!! Though the system in 2 relies more on luck than numbers (Imagine seeing Att1 Def0 Refugees damaging Att18 Def17 Luca Blight, MORE THAN ONCE!!), and the system in 3 relies too much on the stars of destiny, where are the soldiers??

PS I kind of remember a similar thread on the site somewhere...

[Acheron]

I enjoyed the ship battles alot. I thought that it involved some strategy and other things that made it seem like a board game, a battle of wits. Anticipating where your opposition would move, getting in a position so you can attack them at a "T" and not have to be fired back upon. Although it was very easy, it was a good though and fitting for the game. A good captain needs strategy and thats what you were basically in this game. Becoming a captain. Most prevalent when you start as a trainee and try being a captain with Snowe. Anywho, I liked this.

I enjoyed 3's battles somewhat but I felt kind of distant for some reason. They were good, but not my favorite ever.

[Beecham]

Well, I do agree that it fits the theme of the game. Certainly wouldn't want to see warriors fighting on rowboats... Oh wait, didn't that happen in 1, when the liberation army attacked Shara-something... Er the sea fortress that Sonya was in...

[Thief]

The combination of heavily randomized outcomes and purely scripted battles made Suikoden II's battle system the poorest of them all. It was a good plot device, but otherwise it was far from "fun".

While the original system was rather simple, I don't really mind it much. Because it's a fair balance between numbers and luck. (Or, you could take the easy way out with ninja or whatever.) Seeing even your services people go fight a war with you was priceless.

III's system was, well, the most difficult. I'm not too interested in massive character training, so it gets very tricky at times. But, it could have been better if the size of individual groups were bigger like an actual war company. The 4-person entourage doesn't make much sense, heh.

I saw the IV's naval battles as an effort to combine the above three systems, but with ships. It expanded the rock-scissors-paper formula from I, the grid from II and the restricted close combats of III. Unfortunately it didn't go well, because there were far too few ships on both sides of the war, and the opponent was such a poor strategist. The naval choice made sense though, given the setting of the game.

If I could get my way, I'd base the next game's war battles based on IV's mould but add in the huge scale of III's skirmishes. And, of course, make the rock-scissors-paper formula not so clear cut. i.e. similar to the original (or this site's) war system, where even the unit with advantage stilll suffer some loss from battle.

That said, we should probably expect to get another brand new system again in V (and onwards) anyway. It's tradition, correct?

[Beecham]

[Leb]

That was worded oddly. He meant that we should see a system where the units with the advantage still take damage; not that this system has it set up that way.

[Beecham]

It sounded to me as though he was describing this site's system as one where the unit with the advantage still took damage, which I was explaining isn't the case. Rereading his post, I still think that's what he meant, so I was just trying to be helpful in pointing out a minor mistake.

[Benit149]

To me, the naval war system wasn't too, too shabby since it worked with the Island Nations setting, but it could've added a degree of challenge, like actual enemy reinforcements coming in at an unexpected time. What annoyed me is that the ships in the field are the only combatants. No unexpected twists, no reinforcements, nothing. Characters like Jeane and Viki made the Rune Cannon firing a cake walk, but intentionally using weaker Rune Cannon characters may help add some challenge.
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Benit149: First Lady of Addervon, Princess of Slight Fever, defender of the Nameless.

[Leb]

[RedCydranth]

But the fact that you have to use weaker characters to up the challenge is a huge sign that the system is too easy. I played only a few hours of IV and I remember doing a ship battle or two. at first it was confusing, but then one I learned it, it became way too easy. But I threw that to the whole "im just starting, these will get really hard" thought and didn't put a second thought into it.

I would like to say that I was amused with the battles of IV that I did play. None of the Suikoden Major Battle systems were overly difficult, especially once you got better units. I lijed Suiko III's because if you are the type to power up and use one team, your major battle teams will suffer. That system basically made you use some of the weaker/unpopular characters like Kenji, Twaikin, Rico etc. You might not ever want to use them in actual battle, but in the major battles sometimes you had little choice. Suikoden II's battles were cool and they DID have challenge sometimes. Liker the battle where you have to choose if Ridley dies or not. Those battles I actually found more difficult that the ones in I where it was rock, paper, scissors, ninja.


The major battle system/boat battle is something that sets Suikoden apart from most other RPGs. It throws a bit of Strategy into the normal mix. I wouldn't give that up for anything, in a game. It makes Siukoden even more unique than all those other RPGs that clone FF/DQ.
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[Beecham]

Leb, I don't know why you're arguing this, but thank you for proving my point. If he's saying he wants a not so clear RPS system where even the unit with the advantage still suffers some loss, and compares that to this site - which doesn't work that way - then there was a mistake. Which I corrected. There was no reason to argue this point, at all.