[General Discussion] Regarding Suikoden...

The first two Suikodens are two of the greatest games ever made in my opinion. In fact, I'm planning on replaying II once I finsh Rogue Galaxy and figure out how ePSXe works (I own a PS copy but I want to take screenshots to make a quiz for the theme week). I never played III as it never got a European release and my PS2 isn't chipped.

IV wasn't as bad as a lot of people make out. The story is far less epic, sailing around in the boat is gay as you like and a lot of the characters are carbon copies of each other with no real story to them. You don't get the sense you have different characters in your party the same way you do with other Suikodens. Also, they're all way too easy to recruit. I got all 108 on my first play through without using a guide and without really struggling to find any. It's an enjoyable game though and worth playing.

V is awesome, I really enjoyed it. Again I got all 108 on my first run but you really have to go hunting for some characters and give it some thought as to how to recruit others. I think if you use a guide on your first play through you're really missing the point of the game. The challenge comes not from winning the fights and setting up your characters as it does in something like SMT:Nocturne but rather from paying attention to what people say to you and figuring out how to recruit them. The strategy battles are a bit crap, I prefer the turnbased ones in SII but they're still enjoyable enough. V's main problem is a couple of seriously over powered characters who can pretty much break the game with the right combination of runes but you don't have to use them, there's plenty of others to choose from after all...

Tactics is fucking bollocks. I had high hopes for it, being a big fan of Konami's Vandal Hearts games but Tactics is basically a terrible srpg. The characters are all pretty much vanilla, the story is obvious, the voice acting makes we want to kill people (Who the fuck pronounces "Rune cannons" with the emphasis on the word "cannon" anyway?), several of the recruitable characters are entirely luck to get hold of and basic features of srpgs such as being higher up giving your ranged weapons longer reach are left out, removing pretty much all tactical interest in the battles. I never even bothered to finish it, it really is that bad.

Jam it back in, in the dark.