NEW SUIKODEN ANNOUNCED BY KONAMI!!! (9-17-2011)

A forum for questions and discussions about the PSP game roughly translated as "The Woven Web of a Century"
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Scar
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Re: NEW SUIKODEN ANNOUNCED BY KONAMI!!! (9-17-2011)

Post by Scar »

I mean honestly...

When you think or hear Suikoden you imagine what?

108 Stars of Destiny

Six party teams (screw S4)

True Runes

recruitment phases

Weapon upgrades

Unite and Team attacks (recently added, but still...)

Great stories

Great characters

A truly fun and memeorable gaming experience.

Why the .... WHY would you change this? All these things are what amkes a game, "Suikoden."

Anything else is just a cheap substitute.
RUM HAM!!!!
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Piisuke
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Re: NEW SUIKODEN ANNOUNCED BY KONAMI!!! (9-17-2011)

Post by Piisuke »

Rooks wrote:
Piisuke wrote:I find Star Ocean: The Second Story's OST to be one of the best ones ever. Till the End of Time and The Last Hope had a very solid OST as well, but The Second Story... man, how can anybody dislike that soundtrack? Granted, Motoi Sakuraba isn't what he used to be, but dear lord, he used to make some impressive stuff.
Well, for example the person who did BoF2's music was the same person who did Mega Man and Street Fighter, wonderful music for those games, but it does not work for an RPG, sadly. Same with Star Ocean, I just do not think it fits. It would be like having Harry Gregson-Williams (MGS2) doing the soundtrack for a Suikoden. Great composer, but not suited for RPG work.

Anyway, I think Konami certainly has had a record of great soundtracks, and there is no reason to doubt that this one will be good as well.
Oh man, Star Ocean: the Second Story has some of my all-time favourites. Pyroxene, Heraldic Emblem and KA.MI.KA.ZE for best dungeon themes, Field of Expel, one of my favourite overworld songs. Cuddle and Pure a Stream, some of my favourite town songs. Theme of Rena and the Music box version... just wow. There's the battle and boss battle themes of Stab the Sword of Justice and Dynamite. I also like The Fateful Moment, which reminds me a lot of Sephiroth and the Dim Light of Dusk, which reminds me of Daguerro (FF IX). We Form in Crystals, Beast of Prey, Lose One's Illusions, Endlessly, Sacred Song and Mission to Deep Space are another few.

My favourite, however, is Integral Body & Imperfect Soul, a.k.a. the final boss battle. It takes a while to kick in, but it is, by far, the best final boss battle I have ever heard, I think it is scarily good and easily the most fitting final boss fight that I have ever heard personally.

To sum up Star Ocean the Second Story's OST, listen to: Theme of RENA (Music Box), Cuddle, Pyroxene, Stab the Sword of Justice, KA.MI.KA.ZE, Dynamite and Integral Body & Imperfect Soul (song kicks in at around 1:30). Different styles of music, all quality.
There's only one other OST I can talk about this excited; Suikoden II.

Anyway, I agree with the rest of your post. Konami has always been a strong contender with OST's. I listened to Tierkreis' ost earlier today and I was pleasantly surprised. Very, very good.
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Rooks
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Re: NEW SUIKODEN ANNOUNCED BY KONAMI!!! (9-17-2011)

Post by Rooks »

lol OK we will agree to dissagree then, I have no problem with Star Ocean 2's music, but listening to it makes me want to play Gradius or something lol.

Anyway. We were also talking about systems and consoles too. Why do you guys think this was released for PSP? And do you think that a possible Suikoden VI would be for PS3? or would it be cross-platform?
Atma
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Re: NEW SUIKODEN ANNOUNCED BY KONAMI!!! (9-17-2011)

Post by Atma »

Not that this is really all too relevant, but I just thought I'd mention it because Scar brought it up. The thing about 6 party members being a thing that makes Suikoden... honestly, even though it's nice having bigger parties because of the great number of characters. I actually don't think the reduction to a 4 man party really significantly disturbs what Suikoden is. Outside of just the general desire to use as many of the characters you like at once, it's not a deal breaker for me...

All the other elements, the runes and continuation of the old world is certainly much higher on the list. I think that's part of why Suikoden IV was acceptable to me and not to many others.
Exophase
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Re: NEW SUIKODEN ANNOUNCED BY KONAMI!!! (9-17-2011)

Post by Exophase »

Atma; I can't tell you how often I wished I had a six player party in Suikoden IV. Outside of being Suikoden's "thing" that other RPG serieses don't really touch it makes the battles a lot faster and doesn't force out your preferred party members for fill-ins nearly as much. It also allows at least simple formations, which IV got rid of too..
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Scotts
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Re: NEW SUIKODEN ANNOUNCED BY KONAMI!!! (9-17-2011)

Post by Scotts »

Atma wrote:Not that this is really all too relevant, but I just thought I'd mention it because Scar brought it up. The thing about 6 party members being a thing that makes Suikoden... honestly, even though it's nice having bigger parties because of the great number of characters. I actually don't think the reduction to a 4 man party really significantly disturbs what Suikoden is. Outside of just the general desire to use as many of the characters you like at once, it's not a deal breaker for me...

All the other elements, the runes and continuation of the old world is certainly much higher on the list. I think that's part of why Suikoden IV was acceptable to me and not to many others.
A party of 4 forces the game into easier bosses. With 6 people, you can be much more punishing in terms of boss difficulty.

Exhibit A: Luca Blight V the Giant Tree
Exophase
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Re: NEW SUIKODEN ANNOUNCED BY KONAMI!!! (9-17-2011)

Post by Exophase »

Rooks wrote:lol OK we will agree to dissagree then, I have no problem with Star Ocean 2's music, but listening to it makes me want to play Gradius or something lol.
This is kind of ironic since the main composer for Suikoden I/II's soundtrack was the composer for Gradius.
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lungfish
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Re: NEW SUIKODEN ANNOUNCED BY KONAMI!!! (9-17-2011)

Post by lungfish »

4 party members instead of 6 is irrelevant really, considering that IV felt more (to me) like a Suikoden game than say III did, regardless of the fact that it's clearly not the best.
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caspiancomic
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Re: NEW SUIKODEN ANNOUNCED BY KONAMI!!! (9-17-2011)

Post by caspiancomic »

Whew, this thread's gone in a lot of directions!

Re: music, while II is certainly my favourite (would it be fair to say it's the best? Like, objectively? I think so.), I'm surprised to see III getting so little love. I thought III had a superb soundtrack, and it's probably my favourite in the series after II. It was weirdly, I dunno, synthy sounding for sure, relative to the other games' more natural/instrumental sounding music, but I thought the actual arrangements were some of the best in the series (apologies if none of this makes all that much sense, I don't have a very strong musical vocabulary). Has anyone here heard the Suikoden III Music Collection Rustling of the Wind? Really, really great stuff. Some wonderfully bizarre reimaginings of some of the best tracks in the game.

Re: 4 man parties versus 6. For me, a four character party isn't necessarily a deal breaker, but I do much prefer having six characters. The biggest problem I have with a four member party is that it really homogenizes your party if you're going to be using unite attacks. If you're using a three-person unite, that's your entire party, and even using a two-person unite eats up half your available spaces unless one of them is the hero. Like, I dig bringing Hervey and Sigurd, or Reinbach and Charlemagne, but if I want to bring those unite attacks along I only get one free space. With a six person party you could have two, three, four unite attack possibilities in a single party, or bring along a strong pair for their unite and still have enough space in your party to form a well balanced group. Still, I'm prepared to humour a party of four if the other foundations of the series are handled relatively well.

Re: PSP. I thought it was odd as well that this was being released for the PSP. I mean obviously it's strange that Konami made the decision to move away from the DS, where the series already has a temporary home, and presumably they have some staff still around who know how to work with the device. Plus, with the Vita just around the corner, it's odd they wouldn't want to develop for that. But I suppose it kind of makes sense. Isn't this Frontier Gate business I've heard so much about being developed for PSP? I suspect there's some overlap in the staff, and they're hoping to strike while the iron's hot and apply everything they learned about the system working on Frontier Gate to this new project. Or maybe not, maybe I'm just completely making things up. Still, if this gets released in North America, it looks like it's time for me to bite the bullet and get a used, smudgy, cheeto-dust covered PSP off craigslist. I've been meaning to for a while, there are a bunch of PSP games I've been anxious to try, but for me there's not yet been a killer app for the system yet. Now that we're getting a PSPkoden, I can finally play Kingdom Hearts: BBS, Dissidia, Crisis Core... man, I want to play a lot of Square PSP games apparently.
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Luke
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Re: NEW SUIKODEN ANNOUNCED BY KONAMI!!! (9-17-2011)

Post by Luke »

Rooks wrote:Anyway. We were also talking about systems and consoles too. Why do you guys think this was released for PSP? And do you think that a possible Suikoden VI would be for PS3? or would it be cross-platform?
Well, a Suikoden spin off on ps3/360 was too risky. Too high costs and no certain investment.
And an hypothetic Suikoden VI imo will be on Vita, ps3 or both. I think that the most of fanbase would buy it on these consoles in case of cross-platform with 360/wiiU (besides, theorically we should be able to use Suikoden V savefile to unlock something). But in any case Suikoden VI is one of those games for which I'd buy a console xd
Atma
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Re: NEW SUIKODEN ANNOUNCED BY KONAMI!!! (9-17-2011)

Post by Atma »

Just in response to the idea that a 6 player party would somehow lend itself to being more difficult than 4... while I certainly think any boss can be tuned to be more or less difficult no matter how many party members there are - I do find that in all the Suikoden's that feature 6 party members there were mostly very easy fights.
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Scotts
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Re: NEW SUIKODEN ANNOUNCED BY KONAMI!!! (9-17-2011)

Post by Scotts »

Suikoden is very easy in general, but Suikoden IV was easier still. The only legitimately hard bosses in the history of Suikoden were the Abomination and Luca, and even then, they're not that hard.
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Rooks
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Re: NEW SUIKODEN ANNOUNCED BY KONAMI!!! (9-17-2011)

Post by Rooks »

My main problem with a 4-person party is that with Suikoden, you have about 75 battle characters. It fallows that only having 4 in your party makes it more difficult to try and experience all those characters. I think that the number of characters can effect difficulty, but that is a secondary issue, as I don't think any of us love Suikoden for its difficulty level.

I mean, Suikoden V was about as hard as "Barney the Purple Dinosaur goes to the Supermarket" for the SNES.

On the other hand, I would like to see a higher difficulty level in new Suikodens. I think it would really add to the game experience.
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Luke
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Re: NEW SUIKODEN ANNOUNCED BY KONAMI!!! (9-17-2011)

Post by Luke »

^ But for example Suikoden IV allowed to switch party (in this way you could train 12 character together) in ship battles, that was however a good solution.
Maybe the best is 6 char in battle with switching (Suikoden IV like) option. This probably would be also a good incentive to raise the difficulty.
Though, of course, this is a secondary concern.
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Piisuke
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Re: NEW SUIKODEN ANNOUNCED BY KONAMI!!! (9-17-2011)

Post by Piisuke »

Suikoden V allowed for extra party members to bring along with you, aside from the usual 6. Plus you had characters like Egbert, who'd increase the potch earned after battles.
I thought V added a lot of functionality, which I'd like to see in further Suikoden games.
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