Same.
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108 HD Doodles in the Water Margin: They're Remastering Suikoden!
- Thread starter JBear
- Start date
ArugulaZ
Fearful asymmetry
But I played through the first two games years ago! Not the third or fourth, because the third one wasn't Suikoden really, and the fourth wasn't much of anything. I would have tried playing through Suikoden V, but those load times were a hassle. And don't even get me started on Suikoden Tactics...
Bro
If a ‘den lets me populate a cool castle with a hundred and so weirdos, dogs, and weirdo dogs then it’s alright in my book. I hope they all see remasters.
Still, I’m ecstatic 1 and 2 will be at hand, and in such a nice looking package too. It’s a cliche to say so, but 2 is an exemplary game. A real pinnacle of the form, up there with other “Best Evers” like Chrono Trigger and Sotton. To see it revived out of the blue? I’m floored.
I dunno what’s fueling this trend of rpg remasters but you won’t see me complaining. What crazy thing are they going to unearth yet? Personally, I’m looking forward to Guardian’s Crusade HD.
Still, I’m ecstatic 1 and 2 will be at hand, and in such a nice looking package too. It’s a cliche to say so, but 2 is an exemplary game. A real pinnacle of the form, up there with other “Best Evers” like Chrono Trigger and Sotton. To see it revived out of the blue? I’m floored.
I dunno what’s fueling this trend of rpg remasters but you won’t see me complaining. What crazy thing are they going to unearth yet? Personally, I’m looking forward to Guardian’s Crusade HD.
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As much as people stress the grand shared scope of the series as far as what makes it significant and dear to them, those estimations also all inevitably tend to revolve around II as the centerpiece, to a degree that it can feel like a black hole consuming all else through the gravity of its perceived virtuosity. Collecting the two most fundamental games together like this can be nothing but a good and necessary move in reintroducing the material, but the rhetoric of treating the first game as a stopgap one is obligated to play--or queries whether it should be played at all--on the way to the main course have already begun, based on the reputation II holds. The fan-cultivated hype across a couple of decades has honed far too much on that solitary game as the ideal form the series should only exist in for my tastes, and seems to be informing the shape Eiyuden will eventually take as a reactionary work on the creator end as well. Even in the agreed-to-matter Murayama-helmed stretch of the series, all three of the games are very distinct works and portray different strengths and weaknesses of the overarching concept and evolving writing voice.
Pajaro Pete
(He/Himbo)
Perched for Linda Cube HD
Saying Suikoden III isn’t really a Suikoden game is like saying MGS3 isn’t really a Metal Gear game.
ArugulaZ
Fearful asymmetry
Wow, lots of defenders of Suiko 3 here. To me, it feels like it strays too far from the core mechanics, putting you in the shoes of three different protagonists and changing the combat system. People were convinced from the images and early video that Suiko 4 would be a return to form for the series, but we all know how that turned out...
Johnny Unusual
(He/Him)
I played III and IV and I liked them both but I liked Suikoden III better. It good. You have a duck.
Lookit this guy.
You cannot say the other games are better without presenting me a duck of equal or greater value.
Lookit this guy.
You cannot say the other games are better without presenting me a duck of equal or greater value.
What is the name of said duck, that I may Google them and learn more?
However the new translation shakes out, there are some lines that had better be left untouched.
Johnny Unusual
(He/Him)
If you guess the obvious name, Sgt. Joe, you got it.
Sotton?
The battle system is still the same core with a couple of alterations. I'm not even the biggest fan of III here (it's still very, very good, just not as beloved by me), but this, to me, just a very strange take. Everything that makes a Suikoden a Suikoden is there.
4 is the only one I would say it bad, and there is still a lot there I like. (Worst part of Suiko 4: protagonist's run animation). I need to replay 3. I just completed a replay of 5 (actually, that was more than 2 years ago), and while I love it, 'load times' is a pretty fair criticism of every part of the game. I really liked 5's changes to the battle system with a good idea of a skill system and the formations giving the player a lot freedom as to which characters they wanted to bring.
I've heard a lot of hate for Suikoden Tactics, but I recall it being perfectly serviceable. Nothing to write home about, or remember in any detail more than a decade later, but I didn't hate playing it to the end.
I've heard a lot of hate for Suikoden Tactics, but I recall it being perfectly serviceable. Nothing to write home about, or remember in any detail more than a decade later, but I didn't hate playing it to the end.
III is probably the MOST Suikoden of Suikodens. Everything it does is a natural evolution of the themes and gameplay ethics of the previous games. The battle changes are almost all just early 3D era attempts at taking what was 2D and making a 3D transition. The multiple POVs is literally just taking the story complexity from the previous games and formalizing it into the physical form of the game itself. S2 gets most of the love and praise from fans, but S3 is the apex of the franchise and my favorite entry. The franchise also would only have a fraction of its success and following internationally if S3 never happened.
S4 suffers from a lack of vision and a guiding hand. It is, in many ways, a "return to form" but that form was S1 and not S2 that most fans would have preferred. S4 has some cool moments and ideas, and was a gorgeous game for its time, but its main problem is just simply logistical in nature. The xp/potch outcomes from battles aren't optimized to reduce grinding in the way the rest of the franchise is. The overworld traversal is tedious by nature of how sailing even works in that game. Limiting parties to 4 characters in order to accommodate the better battle graphics means you're spending less time with its wide cast, and the proposition of keeping your 108 Stars of Destiny battle-ready is harder. Replacing a static locale like a castle with a boat is novel but the execution feels underwhelming. And the setting being 100 years prior, far far away from the rest of the games reeks of cowardice. Most of the disappointment in this game though, is when you're holding it to the standards of the rest of the franchise. Judged on its own, it's a perfectly acceptable/entertaining, mid-PS2 era RPG.
Tactics is a perfectly fine game. But its entire nature as a tactics game means that a single battle will take the average player longer to get through than exploring an entire dungeon in past games, and that's kind of an unforgivable sin to many. I thought it was charming, but by that point in my life I had very little patience for the pacing of tactics style games, even though I still love them to bits in theory.
Suikoden V is the secret best game in the franchise. It's 100% engineered as a "return to form" of S2. But it does more than enough novel and interesting things, and has a mostly endearing cast that it manages to stand on its own. It's really a shame that the game is so poorly optimized on PS2. The loading times render it almost unplayable. I played it on a modded PS2, and going from the PS2's 4x DVD reader (that only streams data at a max of ~4MB/s!!!!) to an internal hdd turns the game into an almost sublime experience with almost zero load times. This was a game that would have benefited the most from either being delayed and retooled for nextgen systems, and/or a modern remaster. I find it almost shocking how many series fans have barely played this game because of its load time issues.
This remaster of SI&II is extraordinarily meh to me. But if it does well enough that Konami sees fit to continue and remaster III, IV, and V - it'll all be worth it. Especially when those three games are much much harder to come by legitimately, and playing them on their native console is tedious at best.
S4 suffers from a lack of vision and a guiding hand. It is, in many ways, a "return to form" but that form was S1 and not S2 that most fans would have preferred. S4 has some cool moments and ideas, and was a gorgeous game for its time, but its main problem is just simply logistical in nature. The xp/potch outcomes from battles aren't optimized to reduce grinding in the way the rest of the franchise is. The overworld traversal is tedious by nature of how sailing even works in that game. Limiting parties to 4 characters in order to accommodate the better battle graphics means you're spending less time with its wide cast, and the proposition of keeping your 108 Stars of Destiny battle-ready is harder. Replacing a static locale like a castle with a boat is novel but the execution feels underwhelming. And the setting being 100 years prior, far far away from the rest of the games reeks of cowardice. Most of the disappointment in this game though, is when you're holding it to the standards of the rest of the franchise. Judged on its own, it's a perfectly acceptable/entertaining, mid-PS2 era RPG.
Tactics is a perfectly fine game. But its entire nature as a tactics game means that a single battle will take the average player longer to get through than exploring an entire dungeon in past games, and that's kind of an unforgivable sin to many. I thought it was charming, but by that point in my life I had very little patience for the pacing of tactics style games, even though I still love them to bits in theory.
Suikoden V is the secret best game in the franchise. It's 100% engineered as a "return to form" of S2. But it does more than enough novel and interesting things, and has a mostly endearing cast that it manages to stand on its own. It's really a shame that the game is so poorly optimized on PS2. The loading times render it almost unplayable. I played it on a modded PS2, and going from the PS2's 4x DVD reader (that only streams data at a max of ~4MB/s!!!!) to an internal hdd turns the game into an almost sublime experience with almost zero load times. This was a game that would have benefited the most from either being delayed and retooled for nextgen systems, and/or a modern remaster. I find it almost shocking how many series fans have barely played this game because of its load time issues.
This remaster of SI&II is extraordinarily meh to me. But if it does well enough that Konami sees fit to continue and remaster III, IV, and V - it'll all be worth it. Especially when those three games are much much harder to come by legitimately, and playing them on their native console is tedious at best.
Tierkreis would have been best served by not having the title "Suikoden" and thus the associated expectations thrust upon it. It's a perfectly fine DS RPG that does the best it can with how limited it is by its hardware. As a "Suikoden" game it falls laughably short and makes games like S4 feel like a genuine masterpiece by comparison.
"The Woven Web of a Century" is essentially what killed the franchise, and by most accounts it's not really worth the time. But if you wanted to check it out, IIRC it finally got a fan translation patch a year or so back.
Both Suikogaiden chapters are fan translated too, if you're going the completionist path, but they exist primarily for superfans of the wider setting and those willing to hang with a different genre through which those stories are told. I would say never expect to see them unearthed, but we just had Radical Dreamers localized and released officially a couple of months back, so who even knows anymore. They're narratively a sidestory, as stated, to II, and the second part serves as a bridge going into III, further reinforcing the long-term worldbuilding that the series engaged in.
Count me in the "Suikoden 3 is good, actually" camp.
Suikoden 4 and Tactics complement each other well enough that I was able to appreciate S4 more, despite its many issues, but I suppose that also means S4 would have been better served by having all that there in the first place.
Suikoden 4 and Tactics complement each other well enough that I was able to appreciate S4 more, despite its many issues, but I suppose that also means S4 would have been better served by having all that there in the first place.
Suiko3 is rad .. but! It's slow af. And it's a change from 1-2's zippy combat. Also that one mountain path has these moth enemies. They shake some powder or something at you in an attack with a lengthy animation. There is something like 9 shakes of powder in each attack. And you can fight enemy groups with many of them. It's agonizing to wait through.
I know this is par for course of 2002, but certainly has stopped me from a replay.
I know this is par for course of 2002, but certainly has stopped me from a replay.
Ludendorkk
(he/him)
My experience is that digitial rereleases do hurt prices, at least in the short to mid terms, unless you have a CIB copy, those never go down
When Suikoden I & II came out on PSN back in the PS3 days, I was waiting for prices to go down on physical copies. They didn't. Even now after the announcement of this new remaster, S2 is still selling for well over $300 for a copy on ebay. The most recent sells have been even higher than when I last priced them a month or so ago. People want to horde collector's items. The only way the price of these would ever go down is if someone flooded the market with fakes/reprints. (Which has happened, but won't happen with this.)
Tierkreis did an admirable job of trying to squeeze in an expansive game/story/world within the confines of a teeny tiny DS cartridge. IIRC to this day, it stands as the largest DS cart ever printed. Most of its problems related to its system limitations I could look past. For example, the hyperactive vocal dialog I got used to pretty fast and became charming/funny after a while. It had a pretty decent story that I thought was fairly interesting at the time. The main characters were all pretty charming, and I liked the fact that the MC had his own personality and voice.
The biggest problem with the game was the burden of expectations of the Suikoden name. Without all of the expectations that comes with that name:
- The game's increased prevalence of grinding wouldn't have been as annoying.
- The game's large stable of recruitable characters wouldn't have felt as tedious/mandatory to find and wouldn't have been as annoying that they were mostly cruft.
- The game's setting/story could have been evaluated on its own merits rather than people being upset we weren't returning to the world of the 27 True Runes.
- The game missing other franchise staples wouldn't have even been noticed.
In the end, the game invited these comparisons itself by naming itself Suikoden to begin with, so that's the game's cross to bare. But I still think it's a shame. Because if it didn't saddle itself with that baggage, people might have been more prone to giving it a fair shot based on the game that it was, versus holding it to task for being the game that it wasn't.
Edit: Admirable, not Admiral lol
The biggest problem with the game was the burden of expectations of the Suikoden name. Without all of the expectations that comes with that name:
- The game's increased prevalence of grinding wouldn't have been as annoying.
- The game's large stable of recruitable characters wouldn't have felt as tedious/mandatory to find and wouldn't have been as annoying that they were mostly cruft.
- The game's setting/story could have been evaluated on its own merits rather than people being upset we weren't returning to the world of the 27 True Runes.
- The game missing other franchise staples wouldn't have even been noticed.
In the end, the game invited these comparisons itself by naming itself Suikoden to begin with, so that's the game's cross to bare. But I still think it's a shame. Because if it didn't saddle itself with that baggage, people might have been more prone to giving it a fair shot based on the game that it was, versus holding it to task for being the game that it wasn't.
Edit: Admirable, not Admiral lol
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Yeah, I’d go on record as saying Tierkreis is one of the better rpgs on a system with no shortage of great rpgs. But calling it Suikoden was a mistake
I have no familiarity with this series. The twitter trailer shows a very good looking game. The background art is great.
However, there was another video I saw where a party was fighting a vampire looking guy in a church. The combat seemed super slow to me, which is a negative. Maybe it was purposely slow to show menu choices to players.
On balance I'm mildly interested in this.
The real question I have: Who is making this? Is this Konami's in house team?
***
Movement / news on games of any kind from Konami is welcome news in my book. It surely means the series I care about, Castlevania and Silent Hill, are in the works. Right? Right?
However, there was another video I saw where a party was fighting a vampire looking guy in a church. The combat seemed super slow to me, which is a negative. Maybe it was purposely slow to show menu choices to players.
On balance I'm mildly interested in this.
The real question I have: Who is making this? Is this Konami's in house team?
***
Movement / news on games of any kind from Konami is welcome news in my book. It surely means the series I care about, Castlevania and Silent Hill, are in the works. Right? Right?
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