How is it that game reveiwers give Suikoden bad reveiws

[ninjaluc79]

And that's my problem with "Like FF".
- The first game has the same MP system (even more divided and utterly compicated)
- every game has, inf act, a different magic system so you are in a lot of games even more restricted than in Suikoden.
- iirc most good revive spells come also really late in FF. And to compensate for that, dead characters are revived with 1 HP after battle (except for Suikoden, but iirc you can heal dead characters normally)
- the character-amount... well, how's that a problem with a system that is so grinding-free and player-friendly like Suikoden? I stopped playing FF VI because I had a main party and the rest was underleveled, but there are some dungeons where you have to split your group. I needed to grind, and that was a pain. in Suikoden, leveling up a second party takes, I don't know,5 minutes (and 20 minutes to gather enough money for max. equipping them. At least midgame,the blacksmith gets really expensive)

You know, I just think that FF is a bad choice to compare the games with since FF games are in itself too different from each other.

I hope future games give Suikoden more attention. I recently played the Epic Micky demo on 3DS and the HQ system looks fun, I think they even call it "The Fortress" or something.

Maybe players new to Suikoden may have started playing FF7 and beyond, where single-pool MP is in use. IIRC, FF3j was the last one to use multi-pool MP.

One perceived disadvantage of multi-pool MP without MP restoring items is that your mages can't fight to save their lives but are forced to save their MP for the boss, so they can't do anything until you get to the final boss. Support runes like *Earth are particularly hit with this because more often than not, it's just a waste of time to cast Clay Guardian on an ally when fights last for only 1-2 turns at a time.

It brings awkward situations like this:

Flik: Can I just use Thor Shot, like, now?
Viktor: No, dude. Save it for the boss.

What I liked about Suikoden though is that only war battles and the plot can kill Suikoden characters. KO'd allies will be revived with 1 HP so you can heal them when the battle is over. FF fans should have loved how they have to explain to first time gamers why Cloud didn't just use Phoenix Down on Aeris when Sephiroth scored a plot-kill on her.

I really didn't have problems with money in FF games because they give it out like Halloween candy, but yes, level grinding is such a pain in the rear.

I didn't have to worry about level-grinding in Suikoden, but money was indeed a problem early on. Good thing Suikoden 1's dice game can be abused to death to obtain insane amounts of money. Succeeding Suikodens still have that feature with their mini-games, but it's much less broken than that in S1.

So yeah, I think the reasons why Suikoden got bad reviews is that they don't follow RPG conventions at the time they were released and that it was so unfortunate to have to compete with the greatest RPG of all time.

[Antimatzist]

I agree that Suikoden has issues, especially when it comes to fighting and magic (we had already some topics about both).

One thing is that even though Suikoden has a lot of unique features (which should be expanded on),at first glance it looks pretty regular with a really standard battle system etc. But I wonder if that can be a mainpoint, when Dragon Quest gets good reviews while the battle system is more or less the same since decades, too (and DQ offers even less innovation in other departments compared to Suikoden). Still, it's a main seller in Japan.

[Aerolithe Lion]

Well, but what's "like FF"? I think the games are very different from each other, and newer games have few to do with older games in gameplay...

- Multi-pool MP, which threw off some FF players.
- Mages don't get to use all the spells at the same time, and you have to equip a specific rune to get a specific type of spells.
- You can't use Phoenix Down, you have to equip something to be able to revive when killed, only two spells can revive dead allies: a Full-Revive that comes way too late into the game, and a 25% Revive spell from THE most useless rune in the game.
- Spell order sucks.
-- Lv1 spell = Useful early game, useless end-game
-- Lv2 spell = Useless for the entire game
-- Lv3 spell = VERY Useful
-- Lv4 spell = Some Useful (Thor Shot), Some Useless (Storm Warning from S2, Silent Lake)
-- Lv5 spell (Lv4 from high-tier rune) = OVERPOWERED
-- Rune Unite = GODLIKE
- A LOT OF CHARACTERS. Which isn't really a problem UNLESS you assume they have to be usable in random battles and you have to level up everyone. YOU DON'T. You only level up plot-critical characters + whoever you want and leave the rest alone. Non-combat characters are actually useful because they run the mini-games.

I think these are what make a great game. If you feel it's poorly thought out, that's one thing, but learning curves and effort are what really get you into it. Obviously we're not talking high brow stuff, but the worst games are the ones where everything is given to you with minimal effort.

I think this is sometimes prevalent in Suikoden games where you don't ever need to level. Level 1 characters can be caught up in 3-5 levels. Removing EXP altogether wouldn't change a whole lot when it functions like that. So aside from Suikoden III and V, money is really the only driving factor to advance your party through random battles. Another is acquiring runes like Double Beat and Fury an hour into the game, just totally kills the balance and drive.

It's everyone's personal subjectiveness, but struggling with that carrot on a stick brings out a lot in games. It's the bread and butter of many genres. So if someone were to say they find Suikoden's difficulty level or depth in combat as detractors, you may not have to agree, but it's understandable.

[Antimatzist]

I think this is sometimes prevalent in Suikoden games where you don't ever need to level. Level 1 characters can be caught up in 3-5 levels. Removing EXP altogether wouldn't change a whole lot when it functions like that. So aside from Suikoden III and V, money is really the only driving factor to advance your party through random battles. Or acquiring runes like Double Beat and Fury an hour into the game.

You know, this would be a move with balls - skip EXP in a classical sense. Maybe random encounters would give you "Army EXP" which could go into upgrading your castle/army etc, so they would still have a reason to be here.
Character stats can only be upgraded via equipment (non-permanently, of course) or via side-quests/recruiting different characters etc. Maybe this would be a great way to distinguish characters even more. That's something I feel is missing from Suikoden - even though you have 80+ playable characters, most feel like rehashed versions of other characters (an extreme example is IV with its many 1H fighters)

[LanceHeart]

Valkyria Chronicles did the army EXP thing already. While it was great for raising an entire class of soldiers, it still allowed/required grinding in order to access higher levels of purchasable upgrades. Didn't stop the game from having a ton of rehashed characters, regardless of what skills they had.

As for ninjaluc79's mention of there being no Phoenix Downs in Suikoden, chances are if your team can survive the random battles in an area without anyone getting killed you can survive the dungeon boss. The Suikoden games are surprisingly well balanced when it comes to this kind of game progression.

[Piisuke]

I sometimes use metacritic for reviews. They have a user score to show what the people thought of the game, in comparison to those of reviewers.

But it also gives a breakdown, i.e. Final Fantasy XIII:


Positive:150 out of 264
Mixed:39 out of 264
Negative:75

This shows that more than half of the reviews of FF XIII were mixed, or negative, yet the user score is still 8.0, suggesting that those that did give a highscore gave it unusually high scores, as opposed to those who gave the game a more balanced rating, because let's face it, XIII wasn't a good game in the end, now was it.
As much as I like to say user ratings > review ratings, they're both as unreliable as one another. Check the user ratings on the same website for FF VII; it's either a 10, or it's a 1.

Fun fact, IX is still the highest rated Final Fantasy game out there, implying that people seem to like this game the most, yet when speaking about best ever RPGs, it's VII that seems to hit the list almost every time.

[Aerolithe Lion]

let's face it, XIII wasn't a good game in the end, now was it.

That's extraordinarily subjective, I personally found it to stack up well to even the best of Suikoden games.

[freshmetal]

let's face it, XIII wasn't a good game in the end, now was it.

That's extraordinarily subjective, I personally found it to stack up well to even the best of Suikoden games.

BLASPHEMY!!!!!

[Piisuke]

That's extraordinarily subjective, I personally found it to stack up well to even the best of Suikoden games.

Which is equally as subjective.

But if you consider a game where the first three chapters are literally a straight path forward (an image has been released with the maps of the first three chapters displayed), a plot that was convoluted at best and just plain messy at worst and a gameplay that is one button short of auto-pilot is "stacking up well to even the best of Suikoden games", I must question your experience in RPGs.

Then there's various glaring issues, i.e. game over when the main character dies, the AI not understanding the principle of AoE and likes to cuddle up, the lack of exploration, towns, shops, or NPC's that you can talk to. Instead, you walk past an npc and they mumble something. XIII is nothing more than: walk north, fighting random mobs pressing X, cutscene, walk north, fighting random mobs, boss battle, cutscene, repeat. This goes on for the first 10, or so, chapters until the game opens up, but only a little.

Not only do I not think it doesn't even come close to wearing Suikoden's boots, I don't think it comes close to being a good RPG at all. When I think of Final Fantasy, I think of IX, IV, VI, or X. XIII is nowhere near that, at least not for me. I'm used to games like Chrono Trigger, Valkyrie Profile, Suikoden II, Final Fantasy IV, Final Fantasy VI, Final Fantasy IX, Star Ocean the Second Story to name but a few. That's my benchmark of how I rate games. I'm fully aware of how high the benchmark is.

To remain ontopic; in order to rate a game, you need to compare it to titles in the same genre. You cannot objectively comment on a game when you haven't tried other games in the same genre. Problem is, a lot of reviewers do not compare games objectively. They benchmark and give a biased opinion, i.e. it's not as good as FF VII, because there's no materia. A lot of reviewers also get a lot of money from developers for adverts and whatnot, so giving a game a few extra points is very common. As a matter of fact, Famitsu is one of the biggest culprits.

I tend to look for websites that are fairly indepedent. Small websites, not like 1UP, etc where people write for free, because they love games. They'll often give you an honest answer on whether or not they liked a game.

[Aerolithe Lion]

I must question your experience in RPGs.

All those things you mentioned can also be subjected, I would have preferred a more complicated map system, but I didnt find it detracting, it's a battle-oriented game. I found needing to keep the party leader alive at all costs an interesting mechanic, I thought it was fun. I understand you didn't, and that's okay.

But I didn't find Suikoden 1, 2, 4, and 5's Easy mode battle as very fun. What really is the point of having combat if it's just autoattacking and killing in one turn, even the hardest of bosses? It's all subjective. I preferred Final Fantasy XIII's story over Suikoden II's. Some parts were very convoluted, some parts where even stupid, but overall it was enjoyable.

FFXIII metacritic score: 83
Suikoden II metacritic score: 82

It's not as if this is some ridiculous thing I'm coming up with. You like a game better than FFXIII, totally respect that. FFXIII is by no means the end-all video game. LOTS of poor stuff in that game. But my RPG opinion is questionable because I prefer it? Not quite seeing what you're getting at there....

[Piisuke]

FFXIII user score: 7.9
Suikoden II user score: 9.7
Suikoden IV user score: 8.9
Suikoden IV meta score: 63

I tend to look at user scores more often than not, due to reviewers often getting paid, or being generous towards developers to stay in their good books. Still, I brought in Suikoden IV in the equation to show you how warped the numbers are and the reason I tend to only read reviews, but ignore ratings.

Either way, whether something is subjective is irrelevant. One cannot argue about red paint not being red. One can argue about mechanics and opinions and I questioned how you could consider FFXIII a game that is "stacking up well to even the best of Suikoden games".

I found Suikoden I and II's battle system fun. I agree that V was way too easy, especially with certain characters. However, it was easy, but it worked. XIII didn't work. The AI was terrible and like I mentioned before, the leader dies and you're game over. That's how dumb the AI is. Hopeless without you.

I just cannot believe you consider XIII to have a better plot than II. Suikoden II goes down as one of the highest rated stories in JRPGs by those who've managed to play it and if there's one thing a lot of reviewers agree upon is that the story of XIII was a mess. I guess there's always one. I might sound agressive and I do not mean to come across that way. I'm just baffled.

The thing I do like about XIII is the graphics. They're just wonderful.

[Hirathien]

I like the characters from Final Fantasy XIII, yet the plot around them is laughable.

I dislike the characters from Final Fantasy XII yet the plot seems really good. Can't bring myself to complete it though.

[Noraibah]

Suikoden V received generally mixed to negative reviews due to poor graphics, dungeon crawling, redundant battle load times, and mediocre pacing especially at the beginning. Although the story and characters;and probably had elements ( political intrigue and intricate skirmishes and battlefields) in common to the Lord of the Rings Trilogy.

[gildedtalon]

If you like the war/strategy battle in Suikoden V, consider playing Kessen III, it's one of my all time favourites because of how everything is played out in the game

You're ranked based on your performance, the highest rank is always S for every battle

Getting S rank on a battle gives you two unique items, second highest rank only gives one unique item so it's worth pursuing, to S rank all the battles hahaha

[Noraibah]

Um.....beat it. It's even easier on Hard mode,seriously.