How is it that game reveiwers give Suikoden bad reveiws

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Sagiri
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Re: How is it that game reveiwers give Suikoden bad reveiws

Post by Sagiri »

Antimatzist wrote:
Some of those cities and buildings are unnecessarily large.
I remember being lost in Sol-Falena right at the beginning of the game...

And yes, I'd say Suikoden II aged a lot better than FFF VII oder even FF VIII (it doesn't look nice imo, except for the cut scenes), but on the PS 2 it's a whole different thing. So I can udnerstand why the PS 2 Suikoden's don't get top scores in the graphics section...
Hmmm.... I was lost in Vinay Del Zexay. Navigating is so hard when you can't adjust the screen.
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Blutiger Engel
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Re: How is it that game reveiwers give Suikoden bad reveiws

Post by Blutiger Engel »

Heh, I think the music in Vinay del Zexay is far worse than the design (though it was quite confusing for me at first, as well).
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Re: How is it that game reveiwers give Suikoden bad reveiws

Post by eldrasidar »

i think it's pretty easy to see why suikoden's don't rate as high as some other games(although for the most part, they tend to do better than average). They're trying to be objective. particularly on the playstation and playstation 2, Suikodens have always been competing with a lot of RPG's. between the ps1 and ps2, there's something like 800 rpg titles, whilst the n64 and gamecube combined have less than 100, likewise with the xbox, or the dreamcast. Compare Skies of Arcadia for the dreamcast(and rereleased on the Gamecube) it got up to a 9.0 ranking from reviewers, but it was competing with some 30 other titles, so it looked really good by comparison. Suikoden pops out onto a console with not just a lot more RPG's, but the Royal family of RPG's , Square-enix. In such an environment, suikoden gets judged more harshly, because it is trying to be different in well established order. I guarantee if suikoden had been for n64 and gamecube, it probably would have done significantly better reviews-wise.

the other thing to keep in mind is that a reviewers score isn't the be all and end all of what makes a game sell. In fact it is one of the least influential factors. Peer reviewing and word of mouth is far more important. And for every suikoden(except 3, which is amusing since it had the highest professional rating), the gamefaq's user reviews are higher, and that's more likely to matter. Keep in mind too that reviewers make mistakes, i mean, yes they generally beat the game, but they don't have have an extended play time like gamers do, so they don't become as familiar with games. Final Fantasy 12 is a good example of reviewers miscalculating. It got astounding professional reviews, getting 9's and 10's all over, but having played it, most gamers have found it to be significantly lacking enough to bring it down to an 8, making it the worst reviewed Final Fantasy basically since the Final Fantasy franchise moved to playstation from SNES.
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Re: How is it that game reveiwers give Suikoden bad reveiws

Post by thcrock »

eldrasidar wrote:the other thing to keep in mind is that a reviewers score isn't the be all and end all of what makes a game sell. In fact it is one of the least influential factors. Peer reviewing and word of mouth is far more important. And for every suikoden(except 3, which is amusing since it had the highest professional rating), the gamefaq's user reviews are higher, and that's more likely to matter. Keep in mind too that reviewers make mistakes, i mean, yes they generally beat the game, but they don't have have an extended play time like gamers do, so they don't become as familiar with games. Final Fantasy 12 is a good example of reviewers miscalculating. It got astounding professional reviews, getting 9's and 10's all over, but having played it, most gamers have found it to be significantly lacking enough to bring it down to an 8, making it the worst reviewed Final Fantasy basically since the Final Fantasy franchise moved to playstation from SNES.
While appreciation of a videogame is subjective, and I'm not going to say that professional critics are always right, the FFXII and Suikoden III discrepancies can also be explained by 'fanboys dont like change'. It happens in music and film, too. Hardcore fans of anything often get mad when the creator changes things, while critics are, like the creator, more mindful of avoiding stagnation. Suikoden III and FFXII were both real attempts to give gamers new experiences. This resonated with critics, but not so much with the some hardcore series fans.

The only thing that matters, in the end, is whether or not the changes 'worked'. Its far easier for reviewers to accept change, and so its easier for a change to 'work', in their eyes. Series fans are often suspicious of change, only accepting them if they very clearly improve things beyond any doubt and don't remove too much from the original.

You could argue back and forth about which approach is better - both reviewers and series fans have valid reasons for their preferences. But I certainly wouldn't chalk up a professional / user review discrepancy as the professionals 'sometimes making mistakes'.
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Re: How is it that game reveiwers give Suikoden bad reveiws

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The professionals vs regular people struggle. . .we should take in account that: ultimately, it's the consumer's opinion that matters most. Just because the head honcho says "This game is the BEST!" Doesn't mean we're gonna like it. But sometimes we as consumers nit pick at some of the most senseless things about a game. (refer to FF12's gambits) When they give us a choice (meaning we have the choice to use something, but we don't have to) we use it but complain about it.

I don't know why people complained about FFXII
I thought it was awesome. And i hated when my friends would complain about how gambits make it so you don't have to do anything so they were bored.
But. . . you didn't have to use gambits. You especially didn't have to use them for the person you're controlling. When I played I controlled Vaan the entire time (I'm so CDO and i hated when I was controlling Ashe or Balthier and then we step into a town I'd be controlling Vaan, so I just controlled Vaan) so I never turned gambits on for him. Instead I created these job classes for my other folk and it made the game that much greater.

But ultimately no one should ever allow someone's opinion on something be the deciding factor. No matter what. Because people have different opinions.

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Re: How is it that game reveiwers give Suikoden bad reveiws

Post by RangerDeon »

Also, people are turned off by the number of characters.
I don't know why, but all of my friends (and my older brother) have agreed that they didn't like the 108 characters.

They gave a few reasons:

-They BELIEVE that you have to level up all of your characters and get annoyed and bored
But you don't have to level up all of them. You use the ones you want and move on.

-They get annoyed when there's a character in your castle that doesn't fight in battle.
People irrationally believe that support characters are useless. Characters who aren't physically strong or only helps you like offering mini games to give you access to money are considered 'useless' to them.

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Re: How is it that game reveiwers give Suikoden bad reveiws

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RangerDeon wrote:The professionals vs regular people struggle. . .we should take in account that: ultimately, it's the consumer's opinion that matters most. Just because the head honcho says "This game is the BEST!" Doesn't mean we're gonna like it. But sometimes we as consumers nit pick at some of the most senseless things about a game. (refer to FF12's gambits) When they give us a choice (meaning we have the choice to use something, but we don't have to) we use it but complain about it.
Thats true, but often, a small vocal minority of fans can be mistaken for 'fans' in general. For instance, the Metacritic user review scores of Gears of War 2 and Resistance 2 were pummeled by console fanboys. So there's two great games which had user review averages of 1 or 2. There were plenty of valid grievances about FFXII and Suikoden III, but the effect of the 'World of FF-Craft LOL' and 'No Flik and Viktor I HATE YOU KONAMI' crowd who knee-jerk rate the game a 1 can't be ignored, either.
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Re: How is it that game reveiwers give Suikoden bad reveiws

Post by Blutiger Engel »

RangerDeon wrote:Also, people are turned off by the number of characters.
I don't know why, but all of my friends (and my older brother) have agreed that they didn't like the 108 characters.

I really like the 108 characters. I understand that it may be intimidating to a first time player, but hunting and recruiting all of them is half the fun for me. Plus, it gives the player variety. If the player doesn't like some of the main characters in a standard RPG, s/he's stuck with them anyway, but if a player doesn't like certain Suikoden characters, s/he can probably avoid using them unless they're main story characters. I would rate Suikoden higher because of this variety.
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Re: How is it that game reveiwers give Suikoden bad reveiws

Post by RangerDeon »

KoRnholio wrote:
Thats true, but often, a small vocal minority of fans can be mistaken for 'fans' in general. For instance, the Metacritic user review scores of Gears of War 2 and Resistance 2 were pummeled by console fanboys. So there's two great games which had user review averages of 1 or 2. There were plenty of valid grievances about FFXII and Suikoden III, but the effect of the 'World of FF-Craft LOL' and 'No Flik and Viktor I HATE YOU KONAMI' crowd who knee-jerk rate the game a 1 can't be ignored, either.
That's very true. Especially the last part.
Which is why I generally don't allow user review to influence whether or not I buy a game. Hell, I don't even look at the review. I'm sure they could be useful, but it's hard to find an unbiased review these days.

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Re: How is it that game reveiwers give Suikoden bad reveiws

Post by RangerDeon »

Blutiger Engel wrote: I really like the 108 characters. I understand that it may be intimidating to a first time player, but hunting and recruiting all of them is half the fun for me. Plus, it gives the player variety. If the player doesn't like some of the main characters in a standard RPG, s/he's stuck with them anyway, but if a player doesn't like certain Suikoden characters, s/he can probably avoid using them unless they're main story characters. I would rate Suikoden higher because of this variety.
Very true. When I first heard about Suikoden back in 2006 I asked my friend and he said that I could get 'a hundred and something characters' and I said "WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!?!?"

I was excited! Then he told me that you get a cool castle and I was sold. But some people are turned off that fact because they think you'd have to level all of them up. They fail to realize that you don't. BUT i will say that in Suikoden III you do have to level up a lot of people because their major war battle-thingies aren't like the others. Their abilities and their health are all tied to their given abilities and their current HP stat.

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Sagiri
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Re: How is it that game reveiwers give Suikoden bad reveiws

Post by Sagiri »

Oh god that is so annoying. Fighting Yuber in battles is a pain in your ass. So naturally its a good thing to have a lot of people.
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Re: How is it that game reveiwers give Suikoden bad reveiws

Post by Noraibah »

Maybe cuz the game is too time consuming......
but that's just me!
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Re: How is it that game reveiwers give Suikoden bad reveiws

Post by Excelsior.Geois »

well.. suikoden 4 is rated nasty because the story is primarily short. But, I do like it myself, for me, its not because of the difficulty or the game time that matters it is just merely underrated and konami stopped promoting it after suikoden 5, there's a new installment but it doesn't concern the series for it is not suikoden 6. :)
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Re: How is it that game reveiwers give Suikoden bad reveiws

Post by Belle »

I'm not sure it's the length of the story itself. Suikoden 1 was fairly short, but had just as many memorable moments as other RPGs with stories 2-3 times its length, if not more. Suikoden 4 played like some quickly passing event... a routine chore or a dream... it felt like a Suikoden, had elements of a Suikoden... but when it was all over, you weren't even sure what happened, or if whatever did happen even happened at all. (And then they threw out Tactics almost like an afterthought, and tried to make some huuuuge deal about Ferid being from the Island Nations. Which doesn't really bother me half as much as Konami pimping a game where they weren't even putting in half the effort into the game as previous games.)

But no, Suikoden 4 by itself isn't awful. It introduced a lot of good ideas (being able to choose runic unite, dojo at your HQ, creating equipment) and was the first to get into voice acting for the series. I blame Konami for not handling it as well as they could have.
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Re: How is it that game reveiwers give Suikoden bad reveiws

Post by Noraibah »

I totally agree with you,Belle........!
And too many useless random encounters if you ask me!!!(SIV)
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