Why people say Suikoden IV is a short game?

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Sasarai10
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Re: Why people say Suikoden IV is a short game?

Post by Sasarai10 »

sticky-runes wrote:A quest where we team up with Bartholemew to take down some Kooluks would have been awesome. It could have been the mission we needed to gain support from Nay, instead of just going there to talk to the chief and recruit a couple of cake shop owners.

The Illuya tragedy should have had more of an impact on the story. As it is, Illuya's destruction really only serves as Kooluk's impending attack against Obel and the other islands.

The quest for Middleport was daft as well. Show up and kill a monster that turns out to be the lord's pet. Why would a fop who runs the most fancy looking city in the Island Nations even own a kraken that wants to sink ships approaching his island?
-Yeah it's pretty bizarre to make a couple of cake shop owners non-optional. How can they help actually apart from the fact making tasty buns to the soldiers? :lol:
Yet i didn't completely understand whether they join as representatives of Illuya or Nay.

But a quest with Bartholomew...well yeah but he should be non-optional in that case.

-Maybe he wanted to avoid visitors? Or he doesn't want anyone to learn the fact about his ties with the Cray Trading Company? But still this monster lurks around even after defeating it.

Basically SIV lacked of any real quests when making alliance with other islands unfortunately. There weren't no bosses unlike other Suikodens. Only Moving Isle was a real boss. The most you did in other islands was just fight against some Gaien Knights/Kooluk Soldiers.



Antimatzist wrote: And the only time rune cannons are in a story focus in IV is when you talk to Pablo after you recruit Warlock and Pablo says, that you should stay away from the muzzle, alluding to the dangers of them you see in Tactics. Wow.
Actually you became aware of Rune Canons existence as early as the game starts. During the First Engagement don't other Knights shout "Rune Cannon Fire!"?
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Re: Why people say Suikoden IV is a short game?

Post by Antimatzist »

But they don't say anything about the dangers of RCs, that was what I was talking about.
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sticky-runes
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Re: Why people say Suikoden IV is a short game?

Post by sticky-runes »

There is actually a trainee knight that you can speak to on the ship right at the beginning of the game, who says that standing near the muzzle of a rune cannon made them feel woozy...

This probably should have been brought to our attention more throughout the game. Its odd that in Tactics we find out the truth of how dangerous the rune cannons are, when in S4 we played from the perspective of a knight who was part of an order that specialized in naval warfare and trained to use Rune Cannons expertly.
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Re: Why people say Suikoden IV is a short game?

Post by Wolkendrache »

Sasarai10 wrote:
Antimatzist wrote:I never bothered to get these materials because it's a waste of time to get them. You don't measure the length of a game by the longest time you could play it; neither do you measure it by its shortest. In average, I'd say I and IV are the shortest of the entire series and III and V are the longest.
It is a waste, but sometimes I feel like an OCD perfectionist, I need to collect everything. Especially if I have to play a game for years. :|
It seems that S4 is similar to a Tactics game in that it’s very short if you just follow the story, but much longer if you try to get most stuff or doing all side-quests. I always spend more time on a Suikoden Tactics than any main game playthrough. And Suikoden Tactics isn’t particularly long for a Tactics game, I think Vandal Hearts 2 is longer.
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sticky-runes
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Re: Why people say Suikoden IV is a short game?

Post by sticky-runes »

Vandal Hearts 2 is huge compared to Tactics. It has tons more maps, loads of secret maps, and a lot of maps change when you revisit them as well.

The nice thing about Tactics' quest guild, though, is that it kind of expands on the game's storytelling. Some of the quests allow you to meet new recruits, you also get the opportunity to develop Chiepoo's business (or destroy it by helping his rivals) and it's kinda nice to dispatch individual characters on a mission and imagine them having their own little adventures training knights or defending villagers from bandits and pirates.
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Re: Why people say Suikoden IV is a short game?

Post by eldrasidar »

I definitely think the big reason that 4 is considered short is that they skimped a lot on plot, character development, and world building. You could spend hours and hours grinding through getting a bunch of materials and crafting some fancy armors and completing every mini game...but none of that does anything for the actual story.

One of the things that I like with many modern RPG's is that they've replaced grinding activities more with doing side-quests, so that you build narratively while going through often mundane tasks.
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