I borrowed Suikoden II from a friend back in the fall (since then, Magus has found his own copy), and I played it some. I was not blown away. Recently, after beating God of War, I decided to take another whack at it. I haven't put it down since.
For me, I fully realized how great the game is once I got the castle. It's so cool, and so big, and there's so much going on. You have to marvel at the way they personalize every character, with more than just an accent script. And also unlike Chrono Cross, only a few of the characters are gimmicky and repulsive! I'm having a hard time finding favorite characters; every time I need to make a party, I choose the lowest levelled characters or the ones that I haven't used in a while, and I keep cycling through them. Except for Tuta and Zamza. They're weiners.
I've been thinking about FFVI a lot lately - between the thread here, the Flash movie and my friend replaying it (the same friend who lent me Suikoden) - so in my mind, I've been comparing FFVI and Suikoden a lot. They actually have a really similar feel, especially in the flow of the game, but there is one thing that Suikoden really should have learned from FFVI - ERGONOMICS. For a game with so many characters and things to keep track of, Suikoden's menus and management system should be WAY more streamlined. I'm up to this really cool part where I have to make three seperate parties, FFVI-style, and it was such a pain. In FFVI, you could make each party all at once, and essentially just drag and drop the characters where you wanted them. In Suikoden, you have to go through a text list of character names, in seemingly no kind of order, and you couldn't check what equipment or runes they had (Which really sucked for me, 'cause I've pretty much been circulating the same batch of armor and stuff to conserve money), and if I wanted to change one of the parties, I had to do it all again.
One pervading frustration is the inventory size. In FFVI you had 14 total characters, 4 to a party, and unlimited inventory space. In Suikoden you have over 100 total characters (I'm up to 50 or 60 right now), 6 to a party, and only three pages worth of space for items. You CAN keep other items in storage at your base, but even then, it stores only SIX pages of items. This is a great challenge for me, 'cause I'm a freakin' pack rat when it comes to RPGs.
But I am lovin' this game. Especially all of the EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!!!! and.........ellipses they use in the dialogue. I also found a lot of typos, but they're forgiven.
Hero's name: Beavers
Army's name: XTREME!!
Castle's name: Elsinore
For me, I fully realized how great the game is once I got the castle. It's so cool, and so big, and there's so much going on. You have to marvel at the way they personalize every character, with more than just an accent script. And also unlike Chrono Cross, only a few of the characters are gimmicky and repulsive! I'm having a hard time finding favorite characters; every time I need to make a party, I choose the lowest levelled characters or the ones that I haven't used in a while, and I keep cycling through them. Except for Tuta and Zamza. They're weiners.
I've been thinking about FFVI a lot lately - between the thread here, the Flash movie and my friend replaying it (the same friend who lent me Suikoden) - so in my mind, I've been comparing FFVI and Suikoden a lot. They actually have a really similar feel, especially in the flow of the game, but there is one thing that Suikoden really should have learned from FFVI - ERGONOMICS. For a game with so many characters and things to keep track of, Suikoden's menus and management system should be WAY more streamlined. I'm up to this really cool part where I have to make three seperate parties, FFVI-style, and it was such a pain. In FFVI, you could make each party all at once, and essentially just drag and drop the characters where you wanted them. In Suikoden, you have to go through a text list of character names, in seemingly no kind of order, and you couldn't check what equipment or runes they had (Which really sucked for me, 'cause I've pretty much been circulating the same batch of armor and stuff to conserve money), and if I wanted to change one of the parties, I had to do it all again.
One pervading frustration is the inventory size. In FFVI you had 14 total characters, 4 to a party, and unlimited inventory space. In Suikoden you have over 100 total characters (I'm up to 50 or 60 right now), 6 to a party, and only three pages worth of space for items. You CAN keep other items in storage at your base, but even then, it stores only SIX pages of items. This is a great challenge for me, 'cause I'm a freakin' pack rat when it comes to RPGs.
But I am lovin' this game. Especially all of the EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!!!! and.........ellipses they use in the dialogue. I also found a lot of typos, but they're forgiven.
Hero's name: Beavers
Army's name: XTREME!!
Castle's name: Elsinore
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