I'm not sure where to post this, since there isn't a General Suikoden Discussion Board, but this seems about as general as you can get.

Let's say Konami has decided to re-release all the games and has employed you to fix the games, each one, with whatever you deem appropriate as 'fixing'. What do you do?

Mine-

In General
Not vital, but a New Game+ option that allows you to start from the beginning with every character that can be chosen for combat selectable whenever character changing characters is available. Enemy difficulty increased.
Tactician Room added to each game that works like IV's, allowing you to play through practice war map battles, giving the war battle system a proper chance to be fully explored.

Suikoden I

Renamed to Stars of Destiny - Soulbound, because Suikoden is a nonsense word to anyone outside of Japan. 'Stars of Destiny' is an attention grabbing, obvious RPG title and accurately describes what the games are about. It's easier to get people into a game when there's a title that isn't gibberish to anyone who hears it and has clear fantasy roots.
New cover art.
Complete, proper retranslation.
Derpy elephant sound for Black fixed.
Characters upon leaving party permanently / for a long period of time have their equipment and items stripped and placed in the vault, even if Rock is not yet recruited.
Convoy system from II added, so you at least have the choice not to use Viktor and Flik in your final party if you don't want to.
The arena from the Dreamcast version is put in, so people at least have something to test their characters with that is an actual threat.

Suikoden II

Renamed to Stars of Destiny - Sword and Shield, for the above reasons.
Complete, proper retranslation. Even more thorough than the first game, given how botched it was in this one.
Numerous bugs fixed. Sheep/recipe/Annalee/gate/final dungeon area/etc.
Characters can be added to the party at the end of the game. They just leave after you approach the final screen with Jowy.
Why not toss an arena into this one like the Dreamcast version of I had too? Give people something to challenge their characters with at the end of the game.
It would be nice if war battles weren't auto-win or auto-lose, but I can't think of how to fix this.
Chef battles may be taken even after the cooking quest has been completed, for potch and prizes.

Suikoden III

Renamed to Stars of Destiny - Firebringer, for the above reasons.
Retranslation.
Areas on the world map that have already been walked through, unless they have a plot event tying to them, can be simply passed over.

Suikoden IV

Renamed to Stars of Destiny - Tides of Fate, for the above reasons.
Random encounters reduced.
Ship speed increased.
If you set a destination to sail towards instead of manual sailing, the ship will automatically move in that direction and no random encounters will occur.
The second party of 4 that is present on the ship becomes available everywhere, if for no other reason than there is no good reason not to. It would help to atone for the reduced party size.

Suikoden V

Renamed to Stars of Destiny - Dawn of Rebellion, for the above reasons.

Suikoden Tierkreis

Either A) Renamed to 'Zodiac Story', 'The Infinity' or something similar.
or B) Burned in a fire.

just show the scene of your character passing through and running into whoever if you tried to navigate PAST the dungeon/plains areas. if you chose to manually enter the area then it would behave like the current way.

for Suikoden II i'd want to see a bit of integration with scenes from the Gaiden games. like speaking with Nash when he's pretending to be a soldier would have a funny line...

for Suikoden IV and Tierkreis i would have to revamp the whole party system and many HQ features to behave like the rest of the games. adding a real skills system would be great for both game as well.


the general game features - i would have to make some archives system (like what Chrono Trigger DS added) to keep track of stuff, and New Game+ shouldn't make you have to repeat all of the character investigations and "suggestion letters". add a hard mode or some new optional quests and bosses (besides the arena) that might add tidbits about the Suikoverse (like the Eresh quest in V).

Suiko 1

Improve the char portrait and implement some of Suiko 2 stuff, like war battle.

Suiko 2

What can I do to improve this masterpiece? Put aside the bug fixing : Make Luca battle even harder

Suiko 3

First attempt to 3D, so maybe the char animation and the war battle


Suiko 4

Make it 6 people party


Suiko 5

Scale up the difficulty. Fix the camera. So many good character but a zoom out eye bird view. What a disaster

Suikoden I needs to have it's gameplay updated to at least Suikoden II's standard with running without a rune and 3 rune slots. Translation needs to be redone.

Suikoden II retranslation. Remove at least one of the damn forest segments when recruiting Teresa, you have to run through the same section something like 4-5 times.

Suikoden III, probably the only time a translation has gotten progressively worse for each installment. Retranslated by someone that's at least heard of the series before.

Suikoden IV needs a plot overhaul more than anything. Certain holes need to be filled in. Particulary some sort of interaction between Cray and the hero, cause by the end of the game when you confront him at the gargantuan tree that's actually the first time they meet and they both act nothing like it. The proper response to Cray's questions really should have been "And you are?"

Suikoden V, the skills system could be brought more to Suikoden III territory. Retranslated in some parts.

Tierkreis I would destroy and remove from canon and never have mentioned again.

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Doctorum Non Urina Singulus.

Suikoden III. Released in New Zealand :p

Seriously sucks having a giant gap in one's collection.

Suikoden IV. Faster ship travel, more forgiving encounter rate. Less retarded Running from Lazlo, maybe a couple more islands. The island nations really felt empty.

Suikoden V. Improved loading times. Other than that, i'm happy with it.

Suikoden IV - More islands or bigger islands. Especially an island like Middleport which is supposed to be one of the biggest ones - there is so little to do (except Warlock recruiting). You can visit Iluya before it is being destroyed so maybe you want to give a sh*t what happened there.


Are you referring to US-Cover? I don't really like the art style of Suikoden I, but wouldn't say they'd change it, it's kinda unique. Older FF games also had very unique artworks and not this 0815-anime-guys crap.

I wouldn't want to give the series a new name - at least it sounds original to western audiences.

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||Suikoversum.de - The German Suikoden-portal||

Get Swap Magic, mate. That's what I did.

Suikoden 1:
Tir running without a rune
A party item bag/equipment system more like 2

Suikoden 2:
The game should be harder/have different difficulty levels
Agree about the cook offs after the main ones are finished

Suikoden 3:
Get rid of the buddy system
Being able to skip plains and stuff on the world map

Suikoden 4:
LAZLO'S RUN OMG
General Ship/world map speed/encounter rate
A mute button for Rita's voice (I just muted the TV but still)
6 person party

Suikoden 5:
Condense the beginning a little bit
Make Lyon less annoying/more believable
curb a few stats like Richard's
make the magic absorb rune only work for level 1 and maybe 2 spells
Even out the hot chick to hot men ratio. I was disappointed with the men.
The camera angle was weird. Dunno how I'd fix it though.

Suikoden Tierkreis:
Switch Sieg to decaf.

Overall:
I think 1 and 2 could be more challenging, and have a few more side quests.
That's about it really. I've warmed to the translation errors actually.
"All this killing, in front of a children" - Mathiu, Military Surgeon XD

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The only thing Suikoden lacks...is dinosaurs.

Ah, yes, for Suikoden IV I would have put in something in the plot that Razro actually needs to atone for. Like him being more indirectly responsible for the destruction of Iluya or something. You know, cause he has the rune governing atonement and forgiveness but I have no clue what exactly it is he gets forgiven for by the end when it stops hurting him.

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Doctorum Non Urina Singulus.

I thought it was the power of the Stars of Destiny / His forgiving snow that influenced the rune to shift to that stage, i could be wrong.

But it should be more along the lines that Razro is forgiven. But really, he did nothing wrong, actually, he did everything right and has to forgive everyone else (The knights who exiled him, Snowe... well that's it). Good point Raww, never really thought about it.

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||Suikoversum.de - The German Suikoden-portal||

In general - Difficulty settings.
Add optional qiucktime-events in the duel-system that determine the strength of your actions.
Give the heroes official canon names but allow the player to change it if they feel like it.
More hidden passages and rooms to encourage the player to explore more.
Give the minor characters longer recruitment-stories. Ayda and Futch are good examples of minor characters who got at least one quest where they were put in the spotlight. You could for example add a small quest where you help Oulan hunt down the robbers in Kuskus, or a quest where you help Genshu find a fake sword-salesman.

SI - Add what was missing from the Japanese version like the arena and Gremio's dream-sequence.
A better inventory-system.
Running-button.
Mention Barbarossa's late wife in the main story so you can't miss it before the last battle.
Give a reason for why Windy doesn't just teleport into Tir's room and kill him in his sleep.
Make Gremio a much stronger character so you feel like you actually lose someone strong and important.

SII - Fix glitches, except the Matilda glitch, I just found it so fun when I stumbled across it.
Keep the names of Mazus and Jillia as part of the english canon.
Change the spelling of Gorudo to something like Gordo or Gordeau.
After you've gone through the Banner forest the first time, let Varkas or some kind of Toran emissary show up at Banner village that escorts you to the end of the forest.

Tierkries - Set Tierkries in the World of Wings and Scales and skip the part about the Infinity. A set number of alternate dimensions should be enough, but not a freaking infinite number.

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- I've got a warrior's sword with your name on it.

- Of Course I Know Chinchirorin!

This was done on purpose, Murayama sait it in the interview.

For me, it worked, in my first Suikoden I playthrough I used Gremio in the last dungeon and final battle...

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||Suikoversum.de - The German Suikoden-portal||

@Antimatzist
I know it was done on purpose, I just think it would be even better if the pathos came from actually liking him, not from feeling ashamed for disliking him.

Imagine if Georg Lucas killed off Jar Jar Binks and said he purposly made his character annoying just so the audience would feel like dicks for hating him. Would people suddenly like Jar Jar in that case?
I'm not saying you're wrong, it's just how I personally feel a story should be told.

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- I've got a warrior's sword with your name on it.

- Of Course I Know Chinchirorin!

oh yeah i forgot the part where Suikoden IV's story (and dialogues) need to be completely overhauled. the story events in the game feel so lackluster. oh, and the loading. god, the loading..... Suikoden V's is a little painful but IV had so many scenes where the game would spend 10 seconds to load a 2-second line and then go back into loading the next 2-second scene.

Yeah, but the thing about forgiving Snowe is that it's like being sent to prison for something you didn't do and only getting parole because you forgive the guy that killed your parents not being released cause you're innocent.

It could work as a final step, bu you can forgive Snowe pretty much from the get-go, he's the one who refuses to join you, so it doesn't really work. If you had only been able to retaliate against him in the earlier scenes it might have worked better, as in the only choice was executing him or setting him adrift on the ocean like he did to you and then finally manage to forgive him I could buy it as a part of Razro's atonement.

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Doctorum Non Urina Singulus.