I wish I can get my hands on the SMT stuff. Do you have it, eriol? Or the scripts? I could also never even get through the first dungeon in Saga Frontier. How do you guys do it?

Agreement on Suikoden III > Suikoden IV. In actuality, Suikoden IV belongs in the dumpster (with those annoying talking CATS!), so there really doesn't deserve a comparison there. I thought III was good, but after II, definitely not good enough. It's really the emotional climax of the plot that makes Suikoden shine. I thought III should've developed their characters a little more. III's story was decent

At the rate (so far) that I'm playing V, seems like V deserves to be in my best RPG plots in recent games.

Dee, I think you could find the patch and the rom easily by googling. but here's it to save your time.

SMT Rom
http://www.rom-world.com/dl.php?name...tendo&letter=S

Patch
http://agtp.romhack.net/smt.html

Script SMT I
http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/snes/game/564896.html
Script SMT II
http://www.gamefaqs.com/search/go.ph...1299&tp=2.html

btw, which character you chose on saga frontier? if you talk about 1st dungeon... every characters have different 1st dungeon you know ^^;

Well right now i'm going through Suikoden 5. (decided to pick it up after all the praise I hear for it over here) There's something not right though. After the first forest area, I didn't do 1 battle for 6 hours. A WHOLE lot of filler. PLEASE tell me that's the only point in the game where that happens!

To stay on topic, I can't really think of any RPGs I played this generation, that really got me VERY interested with the story. Tales of Legendia did have some AMAZING character development though. The story was good, but not great. There was some really satisfying moments though. ( like the end of chapter 4) I really haven't played too many RPGs this gen though, so once I do, I hope my opinion changes.

Everyone agrees that the beginning parts are slow, and it certainly gets better, but to be honest, I felt it dragged a bit throughout the whole 33 hours that I played of it. (which is nearly the equivalent of two playthroughs of Suikoden and one playthrough of Suikoden II) I had to put it down because I got tired of running errands back and forth between towns. I'd like to go back and complete it sometime when I have a little more tolerance built up for the slow and steady formulaic nature of it.

I wouldn't call the time spent after Stormfist filler...It sets up an important meeting with several of the characters you're going to spend the rest of the game with. Plus, both Stormfist and the events right after that are intended to offer recruitment hints for various characters later on. But yeah, they could be trimmed down considerably. After that though...(good stuff happens)

Suikoden manages to do something a ton of RPG's fail at and that is to have good character interaction and really get a feel for the various perspectives about the events that are going on, which tends to make the overall story more realistic to me. IV utterly failed at this and that's why I could care less about it (and I have yet to play 3). 1,2 and 5 all stand out for that reason though...If I go back and flip through a guide, I can recall what events each character was involved in and what side they were on. And it's been over 5 years since I finished S2.

Megavolt: Are you going for the full 108? It can seem pretty daunting, but I thought the ranks filled out pretty fast everything considered. It's slower than S2 (and I don't know how I got 108 on S1 in 20-21 hours), but that's probably because there's more dialogue overall. Once I knew what I was doing, it didn't add too much to my playtime. Key thing is to keep checking the inns, which I rarely do in RPG's...Especially Raftfleet's (9-10 characters come from Raftfleet's inn, plus Gavaya and Subala right outside) Worst thing is waiting for the castle to get to the second level, since a lot of characters are inaccessible until then.

I printed out quite a few pages just for that purpose. I must admit that I've always found the 108 character thing in Suikoden slightly irksome (I had some bad luck in my efforts to get the best ending in both Suikoden and Suikoden II; reloading save files and even starting the whole game over because you barely missed the time slot for a character or something is downright infuriating), but I'd be more upset getting less than the best ending, so I do it anyways. And yes, it's definitely a bit daunting, and after struggling to get that turtle guy, I won't deny that it factored in my putting the game down and moving to something a little less tedious. I might've continued if I could've gotten Sorensen like the guys at GameFAQs claim I should've already been able to. Walking to the bridge and then back to Sorensen's town over and over without ever getting a different response from him does try your patience.

People complain about how difficult it is to get the best ending in Valkyrie Profile and Suikoden can be even worse since there are 108 chances (much less when you consider those who join you by default, but you get the idea) to fail. I just wish that character recruitment could be less of a hassle and that there would never be a chance to permanently miss a character. It'd be different if it didn't affect the ending, but it does. The concern over possibly missing a character here or there hangs over the entire experience. :/

It is. The game goes into an exciting overdrive after that point. The game guaranteed will run you about 60-70 hours(87 for me).

Oh christ, Genoh was a pain the in the ass to get. I had to pull out the classic, "kill 4 characters so the two remaining ones get more experience" bit. Good thing is once you get him, you can get the lake monster and Richard (if you have Mueller and Wilhelm) real easily afterwards.

It's possible you may be in the middle of an event that's about to happen...This hinders your ability to recruit. You have to talk to the guard at the bridge and he'll tell you about the bridge and Dr. Babbage. Then the whole Sorensen thing plays out. It worked for me...I forget if I had to talk to an NPC to trigger that conversation with the guard.

But yeah...Suikoden has that whole paranoia thing going for it. That's why I always play through twice: once to see how many characters I can get on my own (I managed 57 on my own), the second time is all guide/FAQ. First time is actually more fun for me, since the recruiting becomes like a giant minigame.

/End thread derailment. Gomen ne!

I will also add Suikoden V to my list of best plot RPGs of recent time, after unsuccessfully completing it without 108 stars. However, I'm already nearing the end (Sol-Falena) with four characters missing so I'm on the safe side for now. I think this game was relatively easy in terms of getting characters (with a walkthrough!) since when I recall SI and SII had those annoying last characters that you absolutely needed to get in a certain time slot. And with the fast running option with new game +, replay is a breeze.

I believe what really made Suikoden V's plot shine above other recent RPGs is that it actually had a decent plot. Playing this game right after I played Wild Arms 4 was like comparing a penny to gold. This game's plot was mature and sensical without the typical "bad guy doing evil for no reason" type plot. And almost every character had decent development that made you feel attached. In a way, everything fell into place except I can't quite put my finger on .

GoldfishX, I would suggest for you to play III. It is better then IV by far, and it does have a compelling plot. You even get to see Luc, Sasarai, Futch, Yuber, and I know I'm forgetting some others, again.

Skies of Arcadia and Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door repeatedly shoved down our throats the fact that it isn't the plot itself that governs its quality, but the way it is told. Two very different games, but I'll be damned if they didn't suck you in and refuse to let go for the entirety of their tales. Brilliance.

Dee:

Enkidu: