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Suikoden strategic war battle5/19/2023 In Suikoden 5, you couldn't really pause the battles, aside from going to the map, moving over to another party, and quickly unpausing and selecting them. Much prefer the more deliberate turn-based strategy games. I find it too hard to do any sort of overall strategy since I'm constantly getting interrupted. Now, I'm not a fan whatsoever of RTS/MOBA games. The other issue I had with the game was the large-scale war battles. And it's a shame as it's something that could be easily tweaked. Yup, the high encounter rate is the biggest flaw that keeps the game from reaching superstar status. The game has pretty large dungeons and fields where the monsters will attack. Back to Fort Doraat, it seems every few steps you would get locked into a battle with enemy soldiers who took a long time to kill, and the game disables the Escape command in these parts! I was ready to take out the disk and bash it during these points. The large environments are made a bit worse by the encounter rate, which at points is abysmal. Massive areas and empty space that make traversal a bit tough (Fort Doraat especially). It's a shame since the variety of areas you go to is quite diverse (a town made up of floating boats, a beaver dam, a ghost ship, ancient temples, tropical islands in the Island Nations, arid cliffsides, royal palaces).Īnother complaint is that there is a LOT of dead space in the environments. Some environments look like they pasted a repetitive texture over a large wall, reminiscent of an N64 game. There's a lot of grey and things are low contrast. The game reverts to an overhead view after a more modern 'behind the character' 3D view of Suikoden 3 and 4, though the zoomed-out perspective doesn't allow for more detailed graphics. The environmental design and graphics are questionable, too. On all the other Suikoden games, I collected all 108, so I had lots of anxiety playing the game, worrying I missed something (I used a FAQ). One thing I liked about Suikoden 3 was that there were no missable characters, as long as you collected them all before the final war battle. and only then you need to re-sell a bunch of Salt and drop the price down somewhat. but only when the price of Salt skyrockets will you have any indication that he can be recruited. Another character requires experimenting with the Trade system that's been a characteristic part of the series since 2. Like, one character requires you to talk with him after several different story events, then when you go to see him, you have to have a party of mostly women (since he's a bit of a playboy, the game does hint at this, though), but he may arbitrarily decide not to join you if you've lost too many characters during the war battles (see below, I complain about these later ). This comes at a bit of a price, as some of the requirements to recruit these characters are arbitrary, and it's VERY easy to permanently miss a character. At times, you'll have to visit optional towns or large dungeons to recruit. They're more fleshed out in terms of personality and motivations, and lots of times, the sidequests to recruit them are detailed, too. One of the best parts of the game is how detailed the backstories of the 108 Stars of Destiny get. Only thing I didn't like about the story was how one character turned on you and I never felt the motivation for her turning on you was adequately explained. I played both branching paths whenever this emerged. In terms of the main story, there are a few optional decisions you can make that slightly change events - do you fight in the battle to defend Town A or Town B? One character won't join if you decide to tackle a sidequest dungeon and recruit the other. Pretty reminiscent of the rest of the series, but well-told. Once you think you're edging out the rebellion, underhanded strategies cause you to lose everything, but some clever maneuvering and tactics on your team's part allows you to overcome. You're on the lam for a bit, find someone to take you in, find that they are pretty unsavory too, then discover a castle and build an army. Once the big twists happen, the story kicks into gear, and it becomes more traditional in Suikoden structure. I've heard the Trails series get compared a lot to Suikoden, and this game (especially the opening chapters) is one of the few times that seems to be accurate. Lots of people complain that it takes a long while to get going, what with a whole intro where there was a tournament to determine who will marry the princess of Falena. To start with, I didn't mind the storyline and slow pace of the game at all. To the people who say this is comparable to, or better than, 2. A good game, but had a few flaws that kept it from reaching the stars. So over the last month or two I played through Suikoden 5, the only title (aside from the PSP game which I'm still waiting for a fan translation on) I had left to play.
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