Suikoden III Battle System

[Seraphym]

It is no secret that I do not have an instruction manual for Suikoden III. I'm one of those people that actually uses the booklets to tell me what I'm doing. So, if you can add 1+1, you can probably tell that I have no idea what I'm doing. The battle system especially confuzzles me.

I was wondering if anyone could explain to me about this system, because, needless to say, it is very unique. When attacking it seems very random and I just would like to know what's going on.
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[Benit149]

This would be better in the Gameplay Questions and Discussion thread.

Anyway, III deviates from I and II in that while you do have teams of six characters, they attack in column pairs. Let's take this set up for example.

Geddoe, Joker, Queen
Ace, Jacques, Aila

That's the formation I use during Geddoe's chapters. Attacking isn't complicated, but healing with items can be. In this formation, Geddoe/Ace can only heal each other if you use Medicines or other items. The same goes for Joker/Jacques and Queen/Aila. One character will heal, and the other one will attack, should the Item command be used. You can't just select anyone to heal like in I and II, making this system pretty choppy, IMHO. Fortunately, using runes like Shield and Water to heal everyone isn't affected by this.

With this kind of battle formation, Short/Medium/Long ranges don't really matter like they did in I and II because the characters actually take the effort to run up to the monster(s) and beat them up.

As you fight, your characters gain Skill Points, which can be put towards Skill Shops that help increase abilities like Sharpshoot, Double Strike, certain profeciencies of Rune magic, and so forth. The ranks range from E to S, with S being a hard-to-find superior skill level. Most characters reach up to Cs or Bs with their skills. Some skills are unlocked as you level up, but other skills can be purchased with Skill Points, given that you have enough slots to do this.

Hopefully that helps you out a bit.
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"Luca Blight, patron saint of population decrease." -- Benit, MST149

Benit149: First Lady of Addervon, Princess of Slight Fever, defender of the Nameless.

[Seraphym]

Yes, that helps quite a bit. I just have one small question: When you choose to attack with one pair, what determines who attacks the enemy you specify? Also, what determines who the other person attacks?

Okay, that was two questions. Thanks for moving the post BTW.
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[RedCydranth]

Okay, if you are familiar with the first two, this isnt THAT different. Intsead of giving orders to all six, you give orders to 3 sets of two. Also, they kinda got rid of the S/M/L range system, where if you are in the back, and told to attack, you attack. However to get a magician to attack physically they must be in the front row. Most likely you won't want that as their damage is weak and front row takes more damage. If you have a magician cast a spell, the person ion front, instead of attacking will defend the caster so that hopefully they wont stop chanting. If a person who is casting a spell is hit before the spell goes off, theres a chance he/she may lose concentration and the spell will not be cast. Some of the quicker characters can get off more than one attack in a round, this is seen early on with Hugo most likely, or Ace and Joker. Later on Emily becomes her own force because I got her to hit the enemies like 6 times per turn. If you look at the meny (not in battle) you will see a report card looking thing with stuff like Accuracy, Speed etc followed by a letter (FDCBAS i think is the order from worst to best) if you find someone called a Bujutsu teacher, you can upgrade these skills so that when in battle you can do more damage, act quicker than enemies, evade physical attacks, counter attack or parry an attack etc etc. If important to do this throughout the game to better yourself as you level up. The same goes with magic, the better the skill with a certain type of magic the quicker they can cast those spells in battle. If you notice, Joker for instance, starts out with the Fire skill. This means he's most apt to use that kind of magic the best. But if you want him to learn water magic or something else, you can, but he may not be as good with that as he is with fire. You learn magic from a magic teacher, not bujutsu. Ernie in Brass Castle is the one you can recruit once you get Budehuc as your base. And of course Budehuc comes with their own Bujutsu teacher (and one of the best fighters in the game) Juan.

The battle system takes a little experimenting and learning how it works. Some characyers can ride other beast characters to double attack power. If you palce Hugo in the same line with Fubar, he'll ride Fubar. Same with Futch with Bright and Franz with Ruby. Some characters ride horses into battle (this depends on the terrain in which they are on, if outside like on Yaza Plains or the Zexen Forest they'll be calvary, whereas inside like the Highway Caves or in Iksay Village they are on foot. These are the Zexen Knights with exception or Salome, who is their Magician and tactician.

All i can really say is experiment a bit. You'll learn it and early on when you control the various groups, you'll learn everything and how it works. It adds an element of difficulty. Before in II you could place three power fighters on the front lines and have three master magicians in the back and reel off 6 high damage hits per turn, III's system forces you to give up an attack for magic, or a weakened attack from a character in the back row. The only attackers who do well from the back row are the ones who are 'ranged' like Roland, Aila, Nash (to an extent), Watari, Toppo etc..

Have fun and experiment with various people. Oh, and a little hint of advice, don't recruit all the people as early as you can. Let Thomas do as much recruiting as possible because he needs all the manpower he can get for his scenario. Kenji, Twaikin, Augustine, That girl with Branky, The girl with Gadget Z should all wait until Thomas's scenario. I'm not sure if Thomas can get Nei, Toppo and Shabon, but try. I found his scenario VERY hard because I used Hugo to recruit all the people before I played Thomas's scenario. Its tough to take on all those battles with just Thomas, Juan (who at that time is always sleeping in battle) Cecile and Piccolo. I thought that Kobold in the item depository would fight, but he doesn't ....:( My suggestion is when you get Twaikin, Buff his skills out to the max. ESPECIALLY his sheilding skill. Its a life saver. I wish more dwarves fought.
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[Thief]

[MMan9000]

I didn't really like the buddy system, but it was a good idea. They could've done better with it, though.

I never really thought that those ranks had much to do with anything. I thought that they were mainly a title or something like that.

I never really understood why people wouldn't attack certain enemies. Does the speed stat have something to do with it?
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[Thief]

They need to reach their target before the end of turn, or they simply won't attack. That's where the Holy Dash skill comes in. In fact, you'll see this a lot in Chris' chapters, because Leo is simply that slow. Often, he won't manage to deal damage on the first turn. But once he gets there, his axe is pretty deadly.

I like the buddy system a lot though. Easily one of the highlights of Suikoden III.

[RedCydranth]

If suikoden III had the same system as the first two the game would have been far easier. I like the way it was done.
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[Benit149]

Utilizing S1 or S2's battle system sure would've made things a lot easier in the war system.

Ah, speaking of the war system, that's another thing I'd like to describe. You have a map with pre-set paths that you can take your men across. Imagine them as 'roads', if you would. Each 'unit' is really a party of four instead of six. A unit is lost when the leader goes down, though they usually go down last. Some battles have generic soldiers that you can't level up, but later battles utilize your party members, whether they're leveled up or not. You can ONLY attack during these fights. No healing, no defending, nothing. If your characters are nicely leveled up (and I mean a LOT of your fighters), you'll be laughing. It's not a game of chance like in S2, so you can control how powerful your fighters are.

[Tonberry]

[Benit149]

No prob, it's been a long time since I played S3.
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"Luca Blight, patron saint of population decrease." -- Benit, MST149

Benit149: First Lady of Addervon, Princess of Slight Fever, defender of the Nameless.

[KFCrispy]

some things i'd like to point.. partner behavior is based on *some* personal factor when you are commanding your mage to chant. some will merely defend, some will attack. the only real way to show that there exists some type of "personal factor" for each character is that you should notice Landis never defends - if he's commanded to defend he'll attack.
i had a hunch this was based on class, another mysterious attribute, such as Knight, Slasher, Commander.... it is obviously based on what skills are trained; maxing armor protect and nothing else almost always yields Knight, maxing Swing and nothing else usually gets Slasher.... magic elements are obvious. i figured Knight or Armored Knight will always defend when paired with someone who's chanting, and Slashers always attack when partner is chanting.. but i believe it did not work out when i was testing. and then Landis totally breaks this idea.

and for attack speed, there are several factors with no definite formula or whatever. MOV, Speed, swinging speed, distance all play a role in this. also, there is always some "default" target based on your enemy formation. if there is a center enemy, your leftmost and center buddies will automatically target the center, and the right pair would go for the right... this doesn't apply to "free will", it's just so you can figure out and plan what your buddy will do when you have someone casting a spell. enemies also behave similarly!



as for the Thomas stuff, if you had finished a chapter 3 with a character and got the hammer (level 12 one) from Caleria, you can make them a lot stronger in Thomas' chapters. just win the lottery a lot. you can also take advantage of the powerful Piccolo and Cecile as long as you concentrate your hard-earned skill points on the right skills! Juan is also a powerhouse, but you should get him that Turtle armor that protects status.

in Thomas' map battles, i noticed some but not all characters you can recruit do participate in the battle. however, if you worked on your 4 main characters enough, you should be fine.
the one big challenge in Thomas' chapters is the knights with supposedly 8000 or 20000 HP or something. i tried this for a long time and am sure i dealt enough dmg to kill at least one, but never has one fallen. it could be unbeatable.. (*whines about wasting so much time for nothing*)
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[Wataru]

I never liked the pairs system. I'm a big magic player. I rely heavily on spellslinging, especially against bosses. The fact that I couldn't have all sox of my fighters cast a spell at the same time really irked me. And I mean REALLY irked me. Having four to six spells go off a round was part of my main strategy in both S1 and S2. Beating the S1 Neclord physically?????? Pshaw!
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[Neclord]

[Justice Johnny]

They can't be defeated. I spent hours getting Juan's Heavy Damage and Augustine's Parry up to S, Thomas' Parry and Repel, Cecile's Shield Protect and Damage, and Piccolo's Lightning Magic to A+, and I still couldn't nail it. I was like "kill me already", then I remember putting a Firefly rune on Twaikin, so everyone attacked him, but only for like 1-10 damage each. It took too long to advance that story because the battle wouldn't end.
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