The Shrine

Seems strange that they didn’t put them on PS5 and Xbox Series, but I’m guessing it’s because not many people in Japan have those consoles.



And then I just ramble on for like 8 minutes about what the game’s like:

In either case, these games are IMO, two of the greatest hidden gems in video games. Also the only games I still played using the actual PSX discs, since Xenogears is on Vita, and all other PSX games I still play from time to time are on Switch (and formerly Vita).

For those who haven’t played it and are still around on tows. It’s a game series that feels much like what I imagine an SNES CD RPG would have been like. Suikoden 2 is a direct sequel to 1, and you can transfer your save data. The second game is similar to the first (in that there are 108 playable characters, and you can build a town for them) but is better in just about all ways. So what games do they feel like?

1. Final Fantasy 6 - at least the beginning portions of the game feel a lot like the Suikoden games, although Suikoden is more medieval/renaissance and FF6 fuses steam punk and mechas. The world of the Suikoden games is much larger. Much like FF6, in Suikoden I an Empire controls many different lands and is fighting for others; in Suikoden II it’s the Highlands, which probably summons images of rural Scotland, but it’s more like a highly developed medieval Kingdom of Germany with the sort of military might of Frederick the Great or Bismarck. And much like other fantasy, there aren’t any guns (or at least not many) the technological development is closer to the 17th or 18th century with architecture being more reminiscent of post-1660s (Great Fire/Great Plague) England and Sun King Louis XIV era France; goods including things like modern beds, distilled liquors, and new world crops, and economic order basically being 19th century capitalism than mercantilism or manorialism… despite industrial centres not being a thing yet - this also happens in The Witcher 3 where the world has a substantially higher production in it than what the setting suggests… fairly typical of the RPG genre.

2. Dragons Quest 3, 4, 5 - in that the countries of the game feel like they have their own unique cultures. There’s always some kind of gimmick usually based on stereotypical versions of old world (Europe, Asia, Africa) cultures. In Dragon Quest, they’d split these cultures up across a massive worldwide map. In Suikoden, while the map is still huge, you get more of the opinion that this is just a small chunk of the overall world; so all these cultures are crunched into much smaller areas. There are also a few more unique cultures, such as the Kobolds (which I’ll get to). Also, much like the SNES era Dragon Quest games, there are a lot of towns, and they’re usually fairly decent in size and things to do; I’m playing Romancing Saga 2 right now, the game has a lot of towns (probably like 30-50, I haven’t explored a lot of the world), but the majority of them are villages that typically have 1-3 interesting things about them, if anything, some are just pit stops. Suikoden’s towns are almost always home to
Characters you can collect, there are stories in all of them.

3. Fire Emblem - but mostly because there are humanoid cultures. Also, the art style is kind of close to the Fire Emblem and Ogre Battle styles.

5. Ogre Battle/Fire Emblem - largely because the game has a lot of characters to collect in a kind of medieval setting.

6. Lunar - Lunar reminds me a lot of the same games as Suikoden 1 and 2 do, it’s also about the same time period as Suikoden.

Like many SNES/PSX era games, this music is brilliant.

A unique feature is that while you can take small parties of characters on adventures, you can also fight massive wars with characters leading large forces of thousands of troops. This almost certainly came from Romancing Saga 3 - which is the earliest game I can think of that does this.

So, anyway, I feel like Suikoden I and II are games for everyone on this forum. The creators didn’t follow the trends of most PSX RPGs, and instead the game feels like it draws heavily on SNES, but uses the space of the CD for larger scopes and more details in cosmetics and content. In a way, SNES RPGs were already doing that with the existing hardware, Chrono Trigger, Terranigma, Lufia 2, Earthbound, Mario RPG, and Tales of Phantasia, were larger and more detailed than FF4, Mystic Quest, Ys III, and Shadowrun.

I'm pretty excited about this, as they are two of my favorite games. They are also coming to Steam, which is a relief as I actually soon will not own any console any longer. The only one I still have is my Switch and I'm getting ready to sell it. If anyone here hasn't played these games before, I highly recommend them.

I'll be all over this.

I didn't like Suikoden because you get slapped if you didn't have a hint book or looked up GameFAQs to see where the 108 stars are, and it's even worse in Suikoden 2 because you actually lose someone that is important to the story and is a likeable character. It's a decent game but it's really annoying that you can end up permanently screwed if you didn't check every possible place to characters or keep multiple saved games, which is a pain in the PSX era because a memory card doesn't exactly save much.

Also Suikoden has one of the most hilarious power deflation as the new games come out. It's like all the cool powers are taken up by the early true Runes that you end up with people fighting over garbage True runes at the end and I'm thinking McDohl at the end of Suikoden 1 can probably solo everyone from Suikoden 2 and later by himself easily.

Yeah, I can understand how it would be annoying for completionist players. I’m the sort that enjoys replaying games and am the furthest thing from a completionist… I do attempt it from time to time, but I always have less fun playing that way than just replaying the game a couple of times. But, it’s true that games are generally geared toward completionism or replayability, and replayability games will branch a lot more. Then there are games like Breath of the Wild, where you can conceivably do all the potential branches, but it will get repetitive… it’s MUCH better as a replayable game, since the major dungeons are all optional… the game mostly takes place on the surface… similar to Witcher 3 which is definitely a game that is geared toward replayability despite being 100-300 hours long for the main game and expansions… my second playthrough of the game felt different from my first run… except Hearts of Stone expansion, which is linear plot based—and a brilliant post-main game story.

So, like Mac, the Suikoden games are among my favourites.

For the record, I found an area of FF8 I’d never been to before. Just a little area in Timber, but considering I’ve played that game about 10 times now, it’s something.

I'm not a completist player. It's okay in Suikoden 1 because Gremio isn't really that important and almost nobody cared about him, but Nanami is actually a pretty useful and likeable character. Losing Nanami is like losing 1/3 of the cast because there's about 3 characters that actually mattered in the story at any given point. It's okay to have important characters die, but obviously whether she survives or not depends on a tangent that you really have no expectation of knowing ahead of time.

Must get all 108.... Must get all 108.... /twitches

I simply love the stories in the Suikoden games, and exploring the world. But yeah, I’m not the biggest fan of cryptic “here’s a choice, you don’t know the consequences, but one pick is awesome, the other is ruinous later on.”

The unfortunate dilemma of RPGs is that if they’re simple enough to be without flaws, they’re usuallytoo simple to enjoy as more than a meditation… And this is more true of recent RPGS, from the PSX onward, as older RPGs tended to be much smaller games. It’s a shame that the market for smaller RPGs isn’t that lucrative these days unless charging under 15 bucks.

I think games like Crusader Kings and Victoria are a lot better at letting you know the consequences of the choices you pick. Witcher 3 doesn’t, but the consequences are mainly story… although there are a lot of gameplay elements too but, unless playing on the highest difficulty and aren’t very experienced, that stuff mostly doesn’t matter as any mistake you make is usually inconsequential after an hour (which is like 0.5% or less of the total game). Usually with The Witcher there are a lot of ways to get the stuff you need and (like all RPGs) if you get stuck, grind… grinding in Witcher is more of a pleasant experience since most of what you’re doing to get the extra goods has context and reveals a bit more about the world.

Problem with choices matter is that usually it's a choice between good choice or bad choice, or bad versus the worse choice. I actually like the choices in SWTOR to be meaningful, like you can force persuade or kill everyone, or backstab your own guys and kill them for good. But that's because it's a MMORPG and it basically makes no difference whether you force choked a guy or actually fought the guy that goes down in 30 seconds, and similarly if you saved a guy that's 1 out of 30 guys that you'll probably never talked to again that's in your crew so it doesn't matter if some of them dies for good.

The rumoured drop is for early March.

That's what I'm hoping for, the sooner the better. I've actually really been wanting to play these again so I'm super excited for it. I'll probably play them on stream when they come out. I wish they would just announce a date already.

Yeah, unfortunately, the rumours proved false. This game and the FF Pixel remasters are the main things I want to play this year, and right now I’m just sitting on my hands

I’ve been prepping a Witcher 3 Death March play by getting all the gear, but I wasn’t going to do that until much later.

Maybe, I’ll do Romancing Saga 3.

I think this wait has put me in favour of not announcing games until they’re close to launch.

Julius Seeker wrote: ↑

Fri Mar 17, 2023 6:04 pm

I’ve been prepping a Witcher 3 Death March play by getting all the gear, but I wasn’t going to do that until much later.

Did my first ever Witcher 3 playthrough after the next gen update was release. Played it on PS5. I put a loooooot of hours into it Will likely revisit for a NG+ playthrough.

I have also been waiting for Suikoden 1&2 to drop already. Occupying myself with Octopath Traveler 2 for now.

Did you do Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine?
While some people here don’t like them, I’m a big fan of both—vampires and wineries are a lot of fun. Not everyone likes Blood and Wine, but for me it’s the dessert of the whole experience.

One of the games I played while waiting was Earthbound. I finally grinded out the Sword of Kings in Earthbound. 7.5 hours, and Ness is level 92. I mean, I was multi-tasking, and spread it out over a few weekends. This Earthbound save us from last year, started in October for Halloween (doing Threed on Halloween is a bit of a tradition). This was on the SNES Mini. Now I’ll just crush it to the end of the game.

Yup, did both expansions. Blood and Wine was my favourite part of the game.

I beat both Earthbound and the Secret of Mana remake over the Feb break. This was the first Earthbound playthrough in years where I DIDNT get the sword of kings. After I hit level 90 I just reset it back to my last save and moved on with the game :p

Well, at least I’m glad I didn’t go through that torture alone in recent times.

I’m going to finish Earthbound soon (since the Pixel remasters are coming out in 2 weeks). Then I’ll probably play up to the end of Threed again this Halloween, as is my tradition. Speaking of FF games, I was already in the middle of FF6 since I did the Doom Train for last Halloween and continued onward a little further. I would do a clean FF1-X playthrough, but I just played through FF7 not too long ago, and I’m already in the middle of FF8; but I did make a save with a ridiculously stacked cast of characters very early on—pretty much maxed out my possible magic by carding and crafting…

When the f*** is this coming out already?

Yeah, no word yet. It makes me wonder why they even announced it when they did?
But luckily, the pixel remasters are (IMO) quite good, and it’s probably best to get them out of the way given the Suikoden games are bigger and more advanced.

Speaking of Suikoden, would have been years ago now (15-20?). I got the original pair of games on PSX at a garage sale for $35 Canadian. It felt like stealing, at the time, Suikoden 2 was worth about ten times that much. I forget all the games I got that day, but among them was Suikoden 3 and Breath of Fire 4 - both of which I have yet to play.

In the original two you could transfer your post-game save data from the first game to the second for various differences in the story and gameplay. The problem is it would change or remove a letter from your name, so it was in the player’s interest to write their name wrong in the first game to see it corrected in the second game—which is superior to the first one. It’s been a while, but if memory serves me, the second game is probably as much better than the first as FF6 is over FF4–although. Although, the games feel more similar in style to each other than FF4 and FF6.

And the future of the Suikoden series is interesting.

Suikoden 1 and 2 both had Junko Kawano and Murayama involved - 3 and 4 had only one of those two involved in each and are regarded as inferior games. Suikoden 5, had neither on the team—despite this, it’s counted among the best games. Although, a game called Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is coming out made by Kawano and Murayama, as well as other people from the dev team of the first two games, but this is being done outside of Konami, so it’s a spiritual continuation of the original series.

Suikoden 3 - good, played through a couple times. Likely the multiple main character approach.
Suikoden 4 - honestly... Pretty bad. Beginning is definitely a chore. Game feels empty and bland.
Suikoden 5 - I really warmed up to this one. I remember getting this when it came out after being disappointed in 4 and being very pleasantly surprised.

My ordering (noting that I didn't play #1 until after I played #3):

Suikoden 2

Suikoden 3
Suikoden 5
Suikoden 1




Suikoden 4



When the f*** is this being released?!?! I hear all this bullshit like "Suikoden remakes rated in Taiwan! Does this mean an impending release?!". No... no it doesn't.

Just take my money, damnit.....

I haven’t played 3, yet. I got as far as listening through the opening anime scene, which was one of those later 1990s “let’s make it look as epic as possible” type trailer that got popular in the later PSX era. And I might have watched that like…… 27 or 28 times but never played the game.

On this clearly early announcement: I think the fans of Suikoden should launch a class action lawsuit against Konami for the early announcement. We can cite health risks due to a prolonged period of hype, caused by their scheduling of the announcement so far in advanced leading to symptoms of depression, anxiety, and ideation of long rant form rage posts on the Internet. “Joey Schmichipo recently got banned on four major social media platforms, including Twitter by Captain Free Speech himself, for his violence inciting outbursts relating to the effects described in the lawsuit.”

Fuck!
https://www.ign.com/articles/suikoden-i ... rs-delayed

At least it’s not cancelled, as some were suggesting. But I think they expected the project would be a lot easier than it was and jumped the gun on the announcement by an entire year.

One half of the creative duo behind Suikoden 1 and 2, Yoshitaka Murayama, has died. He passed away earlier in the month.

His final game, Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes, releases later this year.

Junko Kawano is the other half, she is the designer of Suikoden 1 and 2, and Eiyuden Chronicle.

March 5, 2025. As per end of August Nintendo Direct.

Finally a date. Let's see if they push this one way out :p

Oracle wrote: ↑

Thu Sep 05, 2024 10:21 pm

March 5, 2025. As per end of August Nintendo Direct.

Finally a date. Let's see if they push this one way out :p

Konami: Did you hear "Twenty-twenty five?" I hear why you'd make that mistake to me it sounds like.... "fine....?" but we meant nine. Twenty-twenty-Nine!


Excuse me while I break out the whine and cheese:

I don't know, I have less and less tolerance for these far-out game announcement dates. There are a whole bunch of games coming out in the next two months, that came out over the last month, and they're mainly focused on stuff coming out in 2025 or later.

The other thing that kind of annoys me about game marketing is that they'll announce a game and say nothing about it except a few clips without context "It's.... uh.... got RPG battle mechanics.... action RPG!" and that's about all they'll say. If it's a game I'm familiar with, a bunch of people without the same point of reference will go "BORING! That looks like shit! Where are the real games!" - it's frustrating that it feels like the fans have to do the marketing for these companies as a purposeful marketing strategy.

Either way, I can't wait for these Suikoden games!
But Konami, if you're reading these forums like I know you do( ), don't leave it on me and other explain this shit to a bunch of 18 year olds