I am the only Suikoden fan on this board

[Mochan]

as it seems nobody else is playing Suikoden 5!!!

This game has some major issues (slow load time and the incessant random encounters conspire for slow play) but it finally gets out of the rut Suikoden 4 and Suikoden Tactics threw this once magnificent series into.

So far not as good as Suikoden 2, but easily better than Suikoden 1 and at the moment, no par with Suikoden 3. Depending on how the plot goes it may actually surpass Suikoden 2, though this is not likely so far.

[T.Tashi]

as it seems nobody else is playing Suikoden 5!!!

This game has some major issues (slow load time and the incessant random encounters conspire for slow play) but it finally gets out of the rut Suikoden 4 and Suikoden Tactics threw this once magnificent series into.

So far not as good as Suikoden 2, but easily better than Suikoden 1 and at the moment, no par with Suikoden 3. Depending on how the plot goes it may actually surpass Suikoden 2, though this is not likely so far.

I'm 40 hours in and I've had it a week. It completely took me away from Grandia 3 and I was at the last boss. I dunno if it's better than 2. I'll probably have to beat it before I give that opinion but I do think it's the second best so far.

[Mochan]

Hehe, I force-finished Grandia 3 before I got this. But... this game did tear me away from Oblivion.

It's definitely at second best right now, I'm about 20 hours in and I just got my castle.Man, sweet Syndar ruins for a castle! It's like the castle in Suikoden 1, except less Phallic-Symbol-ly. But I don't know yet if it will surpass the castle in Suikoden 2, it'll have to grow and prove it's better than Suiko 2's castle but it's looking good so far.

*** some minor spoilers ***

The thing that's keeping it from being better than Suikoden 2 is the story: so far there have been no "WOW" moments in the plot which Suikoden 2 had in spades (like the knights throwing down their medals, Theresa giving her General McArthur speech, etc.). What it does have so far are a lot of great characters, so far the characters in this Suikoden might beat out even Suiko 2's, and the plot has some nice twists. I mean I really thought I'd be uprising against my mom! Just no wow moments so far.


Cracks me up how Lorelai *still* goes after stronger men. :)

[T.Tashi]

Hehe, I force-finished Grandia 3 before I got this. But... this game did tear me away from Oblivion.

It's definitely at second best right now, I'm about 20 hours in and I just got my castle.Man, sweet Syndar ruins for a castle! It's like the castle in Suikoden 1, except less Phallic-Symbol-ly. But I don't know yet if it will surpass the castle in Suikoden 2, it'll have to grow and prove it's better than Suiko 2's castle but it's looking good so far.

*** some minor spoilers ***

The thing that's keeping it from being better than Suikoden 2 is the story: so far there have been no "WOW" moments in the plot which Suikoden 2 had in spades (like the knights throwing down their medals, Theresa giving her General McArthur speech, etc.). What it does have so far are a lot of great characters, so far the characters in this Suikoden might beat out even Suiko 2's, and the plot has some nice twists. I mean I really thought I'd be uprising against my mom! Just no wow moments so far.


Cracks me up how Lorelai *still* goes after stronger men. :)

I agree about the characters. Unfortunately Suikoden sets up most its wow moments. You know something's coming you just don't know what, so it's not a total surprise when a twist happens. But there are some jaw dropping secrets that got exposed that I didn't see coming.
I really like the real time battles between the armies. It's a little frustrating when you have units all the way across the map since the cursor is so slow, but still I really enjoy it.

I got Xorn down to 40K and he killed me and I just haven't felt the urge to get Grandia 3 up again. If I never did I don't think I'd miss it, but I'll force myself to finish it this week. It's a good game but overall I was sorta let down.

[Aylmer]

I'm 40 hours in and I've had it a week. It completely took me away from Grandia 3 and I was at the last boss. I dunno if it's better than 2. I'll probably have to beat it before I give that opinion but I do think it's the second best so far.

I finished Grandia 3, the final boss was way easy. I liked the game. I went to the store to get either Suikoden or Shadow Hearts the New World, and the latter was all they had on the shelf. I am only about 7 hours into it, but so far it seems to be the best Shadow Hearts yet. A much, much deeper battle system, a bit more focus on 3d rendered babes (a lot more, actually) and the same sort of insane story line, tho with only a faint connection to the previous installment.

[Mochan]

Grandia III's ending was..... not so grand. Very underwhelming actually. And man Xorn is one of the lamest bosses I have ever seen. "I must destroy all Love because it is the root of all evil!"

Oh good grief give me a break.


Suikoden V right now really needs only a little more push to top Suiko 2 in terms of characters. Just a few more things it will need:

Something like LC Chan and Wakaba. Good lord those two were hilarious. They showed us the martial artist already at the start of the game for S5 but I'm not too sure if I like her that much yet, she just seems to be a dufus and not much more but we'll see.

Lucretia needs to prove that she is the number one tactician. Currently Shu still holds this title and nobody's come close to dethroning him, Shu made Mathiu look like a child, and Cesar was a joke more than anything. I don't even remember who the tactician in 4 was.

We need something like Suiko 2's cooking saga to cement the story of one of the support characters.

Needs somebody as awesome and sexy as Sierra.

If Suiko 5 can get even just these then it's a shoe in for best 108 stars of destiny ever.

[T.Tashi]

Grandia III's ending was..... not so grand. Very underwhelming actually. And man Xorn is one of the lamest bosses I have ever seen. "I must destroy all Love because it is the root of all evil!"

Oh good grief give me a break.


Suikoden V right now really needs only a little more push to top Suiko 2 in terms of characters. Just a few more things it will need:

Something like LC Chan and Wakaba. Good lord those two were hilarious. They showed us the martial artist already at the start of the game for S5 but I'm not too sure if I like her that much yet, she just seems to be a dufus and not much more but we'll see.

Lucretia needs to prove that she is the number one tactician. Currently Shu still holds this title and nobody's come close to dethroning him, Shu made Mathiu look like a child, and Cesar was a joke more than anything. I don't even remember who the tactician in 4 was.

We need something like Suiko 2's cooking saga to cement the story of one of the support characters.

Needs somebody as awesome and sexy as Sierra.

If Suiko 5 can get even just these then it's a shoe in for best 108 stars of destiny ever.

Well I counted and I only have 42 characters so far. Yikes. I need to get cracking. I've been mainly just following the story since it's so good. I actually like the martial artist (Neika, I think). When she pops one of her 2 or 3 combo hits with critical or double critical, she's totally worth it. My restaurant is built but I haven't found my cook yet. There's a lot of characters I found but for whatever reason they're not joining yet. Jeanne the rune lady is almost nekkid. :D A friend of mine actually has a mint copy of Suikoden 1 and 2. When I told them what they were going for on ebay, he thought I was lying. Then I showed him and he ran around the apt. going "Oh sh!t!"

The Grandia series is a shell of its former self. G3 suffers from what I call the FF8 effect. That is you have no real idea about the villain of the game until the final fight. By then I don't really care. It's just another drawn out boss fight. But at least FF8 made up for it with a great ending.

[Mochan]

I agree, Grandia is a but a shell of its former glory. Fortunately, Suikoden is here to pick up the slack! Nothwithstanding the crappy technical aspects of the game (in terms of loading), Konami has finally managed to redeem this once-almost-dead franchise after the disastrious Suikoden 4.

I am loving it as well, the biggest problem I have is that I sometimes fall asleep in big dungeons because the random encounters are a real pain. When I wake back up after the nap I am rejuvenated for more Suiko play. ;)

I noticed lots of characters not joining up either. I remember back in Suiko2 I had to rack my brain to figure out how to get some stars to join. Remember how you would puzzle at what "practice" you needed to do to get Stallion to join?

Well Suiko 5 also seems to be a slow-going game. I mean wow it took me 12 hours before I finally recruited my first star of destiny. In Suiko 2 I remember recruiting someone like 2 hours into the game (Rikimaru I believe).

[T.Tashi]

I agree, Grandia is a but a shell of its former glory. Fortunately, Suikoden is here to pick up the slack! Nothwithstanding the crappy technical aspects of the game (in terms of loading), Konami has finally managed to redeem this once-almost-dead franchise after the disastrious Suikoden 4.

I am loving it as well, the biggest problem I have is that I sometimes fall asleep in big dungeons because the random encounters are a real pain. When I wake back up after the nap I am rejuvenated for more Suiko play. ;)

I noticed lots of characters not joining up either. I remember back in Suiko2 I had to rack my brain to figure out how to get some stars to join. Remember how you would puzzle at what "practice" you needed to do to get Stallion to join?

Well Suiko 5 also seems to be a slow-going game. I mean wow it took me 12 hours before I finally recruited my first star of destiny. In Suiko 2 I remember recruiting someone like 2 hours into the game (Rikimaru I believe).

I guess Suikoden 3 made me lazy because collecting all 108 characters wasn't really a chore. This time, damn. I knew I was getting close to the end so I counted my characters when I got my tablet of stars, and I only had 59! So I got busy, backtracking, switching party members and talking to characters I talked to half a dozen times already and I found about 25 more. I looked on gamefaqs and according to the character guide (which isn't totally accurate btw) I'm screwed. There's about 10-12 characters that are no longer available to me. When I picked up Tomb Raider I looked in the guide (briefly) and I didn't see any indication of missed opprotunities or last chances to get characters. So I'm just gonna finish it, start over with a +game and try it again.

[Mochan]

I know what you mean, recruiting in Suiko 3 was a cakewalk, and I don't think you could actually miss any stars. This time around I consulted a FAQ (normally don't do this) to make sure I don't miss any characters.

I was really careful trying to get Murad and Oboro to join, right now I'm carefully making sure I get that snake in the lake and I think there are 2 other missables.

Damn I just hope I don't miss any characters; I'm enjoying the game and all but I'm already 54 hours in and I feel like I'm only halfway through the game! Just got passed the "Luca Blight" part (won't spoil it for you incase you aren't there yet but I feel you are passed me already) so I'm expecting to get like 30-40 more hours of play out of this, going at my current pace. And dang I'm enjoying it but Newgame+ for another 80 hours to get the best ending? Guddam!!!

And yeah the game really got into its own after the flashback where the truth about the night in the castle was made known. The plot and politics of this game are probably the best of all the Suikodens so far, although the game is still missing a bit of the "wow" that Suikoden 2 had all throughout with its short stories.

The story perspective wasn't as great as Suiko 3's but the actual plot and politics seem better. Overall a very good Suikoden so far, finally making up for the crapfest that was S4 and STactics. I plan to play this all Holy Weekend.

Still left up in the air whether this is the best Suikoden so far, right now it's still not tipping over 2, and it has some flaws that really get to me -- mainly the load times : especially in Random battles, and the cutscenes which show some scripted cut-scene quality for like 3 seconds after 10 seconds of loading ¬_¬ ; and the strategic battles are really annoying with the real time thing (and I play RTS games on the PC!!!)

Suiko 2 still seems the better game overall but that could change if the story of Suiko5 really takes me for a twirl! Lucretia at least is showing that she is finally making up for the crap tacticians we had in Suiko3 (I'm sorry but Cesar wasn't much of a tactician) and hell I don't even remember who the tactician was in Suiko 4.

She's not quite as good as Shu yet (and her introduction sucked compared to Shu's godly entrance into the game) but she's getting there, and it seems there's still half the game for her to pull out some really good stuff.


*** Minor Spoiler ***

Well we all knew Lyon was going to bite it sooner or later, seeing as how she is Gremio and Nanami's counterpart. I thought I'd miss her but to be honest I like having Miakis around a lot more! This game just has so many hot babes I don't know who to chose. I'm so bad.

[Zilla Man]

as it seems nobody else is playing Suikoden 5!!!

This game has some major issues (slow load time and the incessant random encounters conspire for slow play) but it finally gets out of the rut Suikoden 4 and Suikoden Tactics threw this once magnificent series into.

So far not as good as Suikoden 2, but easily better than Suikoden 1 and at the moment, no par with Suikoden 3. Depending on how the plot goes it may actually surpass Suikoden 2, though this is not likely so far.

Hi, Mochan. Actually you're NOT the only Suikoden fan on this board. I'm a huge one. I have been since playing the first one. I think that Suikoden 1 and 2 piss all over FF VII in terms of story and character as well as replayablility. I cried more at the death of the main character's sister in Suikoden 2 than I did with Aeris. Plus it's great to see familiar chracters from other games show up as enemies or allies.

BTW, I love the score from S 1. It rocks!

Right now I'm one hundred hours into Suikooden 3 and loving it! The reviews I've read on Suikoden 4 make it sound like it's a huge waste of time. As soon as I finish KOTOR and Drakan (which is totally underrated), I'll pick up S 5. That'll probably be later in the year.

[Mochan]

S1 had a great music score. But I wasn't impressed with the rest of the game *that* much. But Suiko2 is just a god game. It basically took everything that was good with Suikoden 1, and made a game sooo good that I still haven't played an RPG to this day that tops it.

How can you not feel more for Nanami? Nanami stuck with you through thick and thin, all your life, and your drama with Jowy would tear hearts. Aeris? What did she do? Give you flowers? Whoopee.

And we all know the baddest bad-ass in all the videogameverse is LUCA BLIGHT. They tried to make a homage to him in Suikoden 5 but it somehow just wasn't the same. DIE PIG!!!!

Suikoden 3 is great! A lot of people hate it for some reason, but I think they were just comparing it too much to the godly Suikoden 2. I thought the Trinity system in 3 was very creative and made good use of the series' strengths (108 characters). And you gotta love a game that makes character that looks like Donald Duck uber cool.

Suikoden 4, though, I'll have to agree with whatever reviews you read, it's a HUGE disappointment. I think Konami took the criticisms of Suikoden 3 a little too much to heart, and playing reactionary in this way they created Suikoden 4 which gave up all of Suikoden 3's gains, and tried to create a game that was more like Suikoden 1 and 2... but unfortunately I have no idea how they got it so terribly wrong, it wasn't even as good as Suikoden 1 (which it was obviously trying to emulate). And that's just sad.

Suikoden 5 though totally redeems the series! It's not quite on the level of Suikoden 2, but I would say it managed to edge out S3, and the only real flaws it has are technical. It's also pretty much the longest Suikoden... it took me 80 hours to finish it. =_= This may be a drawback to some people but for a Suiko lover it's heaven. Good thing, because of the pacing of this game you need to take your time.

All in all, highly recommended. And hey, it has Georg Prime!! As your starting party!!! At Level 20!!!! That alone is awesomeness exemplified.

[BaneNWN]

Hi, Mochan. Actually you're NOT the only Suikoden fan on this board. I'm a huge one. I have been since playing the first one. I think that Suikoden 1 and 2 piss all over FF VII in terms of story and character as well as replayablility. I cried more at the death of the main character's sister in Suikoden 2 than I did with Aeris. Plus it's great to see familiar chracters from other games show up as enemies or allies.

BTW, I love the score from S 1. It rocks!

Right now I'm one hundred hours into Suikooden 3 and loving it! The reviews I've read on Suikoden 4 make it sound like it's a huge waste of time. As soon as I finish KOTOR and Drakan (which is totally underrated), I'll pick up S 5. That'll probably be later in the year.

Suikoden 1 and 2 stories better then ff7??pffft. Im a big suikoden fan to but the only thing suikoden 1,2 had on FF 7 is replayability and even thats questionable.Storyline FF 7 wins no contest not even close.I liked suikoden 1, but 2 i loved.3 sucked IMO just felt to damn bare just wasnt enough meat to it.I got tired of the camera in suik 3 as well every 10 seconds of running you get a stupid loading screen.I passed on 4 since mochan told me it sucked back then.5 seems to be getting 6-7 scores mostley i think ill pass on that to.Game informer gave it a 7 and thats a pretty low score for them considering they give average games 8/10's.I think you seen the best suikoden game when you played 2 i have my doubts they will comeout with anything better.

[BaneNWN]

S1 had a great music score. But I wasn't impressed with the rest of the game *that* much. But Suiko2 is just a god game. It basically took everything that was good with Suikoden 1, and made a game sooo good that I still haven't played an RPG to this day that tops it.

How can you not feel more for Nanami? Nanami stuck with you through thick and thin, all your life, and your drama with Jowy would tear hearts. Aeris? What did she do? Give you flowers? Whoopee.

And we all know the baddest bad-ass in all the videogameverse is LUCA BLIGHT. They tried to make a homage to him in Suikoden 5 but it somehow just wasn't the same. DIE PIG!!!!

Suikoden 3 is great! A lot of people hate it for some reason, but I think they were just comparing it too much to the godly Suikoden 2. I thought the Trinity system in 3 was very creative and made good use of the series' strengths (108 characters). And you gotta love a game that makes character that looks like Donald Duck uber cool.

Suikoden 4, though, I'll have to agree with whatever reviews you read, it's a HUGE disappointment. I think Konami took the criticisms of Suikoden 3 a little too much to heart, and playing reactionary in this way they created Suikoden 4 which gave up all of Suikoden 3's gains, and tried to create a game that was more like Suikoden 1 and 2... but unfortunately I have no idea how they got it so terribly wrong, it wasn't even as good as Suikoden 1 (which it was obviously trying to emulate). And that's just sad.

Suikoden 5 though totally redeems the series! It's not quite on the level of Suikoden 2, but I would say it managed to edge out S3, and the only real flaws it has are technical. It's also pretty much the longest Suikoden... it took me 80 hours to finish it. =_= This may be a drawback to some people but for a Suiko lover it's heaven. Good thing, because of the pacing of this game you need to take your time.

All in all, highly recommended. And hey, it has Georg Prime!! As your starting party!!! At Level 20!!!! That alone is awesomeness exemplified.
I remember yo saying back when it cameout you werent very impressed with 3 either lol

[Mochan]

Not impressed compared to 2, but it was still a great game! It's one of the few PS2 games I actually have an original of.

[BaneNWN]

Not impressed compared to 2, but it was still a great game! It's one of the few PS2 games I actually have an original of.

Ya i still got suik 3 as well maybe one day down the road ill finish it