How You got into Suikoden

[freshmetal]

I got the first game for PS1 back in 95 or 96 as a gift. It was the version with the awful cover art, and as a result, the game sat on my shelf unopened for a few weeks while I played the hell out of Destruction Derby 2. Eventually I broke down and played it, and the rest is history.

[Lemmy Claypool]

When I was a kid my mam's friend had a son who was a couple of years older than me and also into video games, so I liked going round with her to hang out with him and play games.

On one such occasion he was playing Vandal Hearts and I was intrigued, I'd recently played Final Fantasy VII and decided RPGs were my new favourite games so asked him if I could borrow it when he finished, and he said I could straight up have it for keeps. So that was cool. Anyway, he also told me about Suikoden (although for some reason he thought it was a sequel to Vandal Hearts) and how he was getting hold of a shitty copy of it from a friend. So needless to say I spent much time watching him play it when he got hold and fell even more in love than I was with VH. He made me a shitty copy of his shitty copy which I pretty much played to death.

Luckily, this was around the time Suikoden II was coming out and I managed to get a brand new copy for Christmas that year, no idea as to how rare and sought-after it would become. I've been incredibly smug ever since.

[sticky-runes]

my bro bought the first suikoden a couple of weeks after buying a PS1. He got bored of it. I didn't.

[LadyCyclone]

When I was 13, I was sick with a bed-ridden cold. I hadn't played any RPGs before, in fact I'd hardly played any computer games apart from Sonic and Streets of Rage and the occasional Alundra; I saw this game that my brother had 'borrowed' from a friend and stuck it in the machine - I was HOOKED. Suikoden 1 was amazing, but Suikoden 2 actually changed my life, in fact it ruled my life at one point. I have only started to play the games again recently but I need to get my hands on a copy of Suikoden 2 (my one which I got for Christmas when I was 14 broke, I was devastated).

[Natsume]

My cousin showed me Suikoden 2 and he let me try it out. He's finished the game many times so he's gotten a little bored of it. But as for me, man... even after I finished it no matter how many times, I still kept playing. I desperately kept looking for the first game and tried a few minutes of it. It was good, but I was like meh... then I regret not finishing it when the PS1 broke. ;u;

[Twilight Sky]

I saw the back of Suikoden II's case one day and saw you can recruit up to 108 characters and wage war and stuff.

I didn't need to play long before I was already hooked.

[Aerolithe Lion]

I am an avid JRPG fan, but living in in the very center of the North American continent, if it wasn't big in American then I wouldn't have heard about it. I noticed a fantastic review of a game called Suikoden III by IGN, and it seemed to be right up my alley as a turn-based RPG, so I bought it on a whim.

I suppose this supports the 'Suikoden doesn't get the recognition it deserves' theory, as I'd played many Tales, Breath of Fire, Tactics Ogre, Squaresoft, Dragon Warrior, and Phantasy Star games before I had even heard of Suikoden in 2002.

[SolInvictus]

I had just started getting into RPG's when I was 10 or 11 and had just finished Final Fantasy 3 on SNES. My friend at school let me borrow his copy of Suikoden because I liked the idea of having a party vs something like Zelda where you only had one character to control and I loved the turn based fighting system. The selling point to me at the time was the fact that I was also a huge RTS fan and Suikoden had combined RPG and army battles so this had too much going for it to not play. This was easily the best gaming decision that I ever made.

[veriaqa]

Although I've been playing game since 1990, RPG was not my type of game (because of language barrier). When my English got better circa 2000, I started to play some RPG's for SNES and SEGA (the two console I had since childhood). Fire Emblem, FF, Lufia, etc. When I ran out good rpg to play rented a PS2 with a bunch of RPG games, one of them is Suikoden 3. But I don't like Suiko3 battle system, so I abandoned the game. Suiko 3 is the first Suiko game I played, that was in 2002. After that I try the RPG for PS1. I bought many RPG games two of them is Suiko1 and Suiko 2. I played Suiko 2 first, instant love with the story line and game mechanic. Then I played the first one. After finishing both of those Suiko games, I remembered that I played a Suiko game in PS2, so I rented back the game and manged to played it till the end.

My Suikoden chronology : Suiko3 (abandoned) -> Suiko2 -> Suiko1 -> Suiko3 -> Suiko4 ->Rhapsodia -> Suiko5 -> Suikogaiden 1&2

[Winterswhite]

I was introduced through it by Lucahjin, a let's player on Youtube. She said Suikoden II was her favorite JRPG ever. Instead of watching her playthrough, I decided to play it myself. I loved it, and played I which was good but I didn't quite enjoy it as much (Plus I had to adapt to no running and one rune slot). I moved on to III, skipped IV + Tactics and played V. One of the best RPG serie I played up there with the Mother trilogy (Or Earthbound, outside of Japan.)

As for how I played it, well my brother was a big Konami fan back in the day.

[Dragoramzi]

I got into this series when my dad bought my uncles PS1 because he was moving out of state and he wanted to get rid of it. one of the games that he had that we got with it was Suikoden, I liked the box art and put it in one day to play and before I knew it I was hooked on the game. It was my first serious video gaming addiction. I've played through the first game countless times. I haven't ever had the chance to play the second or third games, once while in GameStop I found Suikoden IV and bought it, I thought hey I know that series, I immediately went home and started playing it. I finished IV and then eventually found a copy of V, started playing it then it was stolen, so I never finished that one. The first game in the series was by far my best experience with the series, I started playing the second game when my parents rented it for me at a blockbuster but we had to take it back before I was able to finish it. I recently got my original copy of Suikoden back, my brother had taken it to Vintage stock to have the disk resurfaced, I was excited but when I opened the case it was in the disk had cracked across one side.

Sad thing is though, I still have the broken disk.

[Jocky]

Here's how I came to be a Suikoden fan for life!
I picked up a used version of Vandal Hearts 1 in a game store I used to visit near my hometown. It was not long after I had gotten into RPG's. My first RPG was Final Fantasy VII which, to this day, is still 1 of my all time favourite games EVER! I loved the turn based game-play, and the collection of party members and the storyline, so naturally Suikoden was going to be a winner. Anyway I played VH1 (?lol) to death and I absolutely loved it and I was adamant that as soon as VH2 came out that I was going to get it. And sure enough, the week that VH2 was released I picked up a copy, and low and behold it came with a demo of a sequel to this obscure J-RPG that I'd never heard of.
Anyway I dismissed it at first for the joy of playing VH2, but I was kinda disappointed with it, because it wasn't as good as 1 so I tired of playing with it rather quickly. Anyway 1 day when I was bored of VH2, I ejected the disk from my PS2 in order to put something else in to play, and as I opened the case to put it in, there was this black disk with "Suikoden II" staring back at me. I looked at my vast shelf of games and then I paused for a moment, and something in the back of my mind went, go on, stick it in, you never know, it might be good! So I thought, hell, why not.
So booting up my PlayStation with the disk inserted I must admit, I wasn't expecting much from a demo. The title popped up and I entered my name into it, and off the story went. I remember thinking that the graphics weren't as good as FFVII cause they were only 2D, but looking back I realize now that the graphics of FFVII are HORRIBLE!! But never mind, times were simpler back then, and we didn't know any better. Anyway it wasn't until I'd gotten into the first battle that I really noticed anything special, and having a nosy through the battle menu to see what everything did I stumbled upon the Unite command, and from then on I was hooked! The demo only played up to the point where you take on the Mist demon in North Sparrow Pass but I loved every second of it. I think at that point Luca Blight jumps out and tells you that that's as far as you can go, and Rina confirms that that's the demo finished.
I've got to say though, it may have been 1 of the shortest gaming experiences of my life, but it was AMAZING!! I must've replayed the demo 40, 50, 60 times and every time I finished it I wanted more! So naturally I kept a look out for it and when it finally came out I snapped up a copy and have never parted with it since. It also led me to buying the first instalment, AND unscrewing my PS2, and leaving it in bits so I could purchase and play S3 which never came out in Europe, so I had to purchase an NTSC copy from ebay which set me back a fair bit of cash, but was worth every penny in my eyes. So as of today I own S1 to 5, tactics and tierkris. But not the newsest 1 on PSP Tsumugareshi hyakunen no toki or whatever it's called. But I might get it just cause it has the Suikoden name, even if it ISN'T a true game, because I love everything Suikoden THAT much!!

[SuikoAddicted]

My friend bought the 2nd. without knowing anything else exept it was an Rpg.!!! He didn`t play for long because he had over 75 other Ps1 Rpg. games...!!! I saw him played & saw the potential of this game. He let me borrowed it so i can start a game....& after 32 hours of gameplay he told me i had to start over my game if i wanted the best ending...!!!! I was gonna play frisbee with the disk, but my friend told me there was 108 characters to recruit, many well-hidden unique items, fun mini games & all of the fortress advantages & things to do!!! I finally spent over 90 hours on my 2nd game, enjoying all it had to offers!!!! Since then i played all the others & nearly forgot the existence of Final Fantasy!!!!

[ItsDaveyJ]

I don't remember when or how I got the first game (I was only 6 when it was released!) but I remember not being able to defeat the zombie dragon. A couple years later I managed to beat it and that's when I really got into the game. I remember going over to my neighbor's house and my friend there had Suikoden 2 that I played once or twice. It wasn't for another year or two until I happened to find a used copy of Suikoden 2 at Gamestop for only $30. I bought it right away. Since then I remember every Suikoden game I bought was a happy discovery when I was browsing through Gamestop. Of course now that I am old enough and care enough about the series to buy a Suikoden game on release date for full price... it seems unlikely that a sequel is being made. Figures

[ChannelF]

In the early days of the fifth generation consoles, back when it was still unclear if Final Fantasy VII was going to be released for the PS1 or N64, I picked up an issue of Game Players magazine that featured a "Here Come the RPGs!" cover story. At the time the PS1 and Saturn were devoid of RPGs here in the States and I was excited about finally getting some real news about upcoming RPGs.

Beyond the Beyond and Suikoden were among the games previewed for the PS1 while the Saturn coverage included Magic Knight Rayearth and Shining Wisdom. Suikoden in particular caught my interest as the article mentioned you would have your own castle to maintain and would engage in army vs army battles. The article was part of what convinced me to get a PS1 over a Saturn, and I bought Beyond the Beyond (first PS1 RPG available in the US) the day it came out. While BtB was lackluster, I rented Suikoden from Blockbuster not long after it came out and have been a fan ever since.