Given the quality of today's games, if the teams from 1 and 2 made 6 and put some serious advertisement behind the project, it would be a colossal success. Would definitely generate enough revenue to continue the series. Not to mention all the money to be made by remastering and re-releasing 1 and 2 after 6 for all the newbies to the series. Or before to produce revenue and to kick some life and hype back into the series first. Man I wish I was a video game producer.
Colossal success feels like a stretch. The RPG market still seems to get spurned a lot because it's not Sports, pure Action, or FPS. Nevermind the war between the W and J proponents and/or linearity vs. open-ended. I like a healthy mix of the two in a game, but when I usually look to the more open-ended types, story content usually seems to suffer. These types also seem to be the "popular" ones here right now, which generally hasn't been Suikoden.
If I'm remembering right in IV, there's some bald dude you recruit and can fight that'll match or exceed the highest level member of your party. Eventually, I think he'd be like a level 99 mob on demand, of which you could slap EXP runes on lowbie characters and cheese them up pretty quickly.
Anyway, for the shit IV gets, I think it spawned a semi-decent TRPG, too.
I enjoyed the Tactics game more than I did IV. So IV is still shit lol.
I wish we could really go out with a bang. Make Suikoden VI, place the game in Harmonia, and make a big part of the game the battle between Yuber and Pesmerga. Pesmerga always looked cool, let's give him a story to match. I was so disappointed when he didn't show up in Suikoden III.
^Keep in mind they also had a huge opportunity to do so in V since it takes place in the past.. but they fucking blew it. Unless they were already doing something in the time line at that certain time.
If I remember correctly, they did so because Murayama left after 3 and didn't know where the story was headed, so they decided going to the past, since they did know what happened
I laugh at people who hate Suikoden 4.
4 and 5 have aged waaaaaaaaaaaaay better than 2 and 3. I don't even know how people can go replay 2, that game is, like, embarrassing to sit through.
And 3 is still, by far, the worst game in that series. It's not even close. Even those boring text gaidens are better than 3.
Troll
2 holds up perfectly well. The only thing that's outdated is the movement, at least that I remember.
I don't defend the Random Evil Tree of Final Bossdom. That was mind-numbingly random and stupid. And Suikoden 2 still has the best boss fight in the series with Luca Blight. But I have not, since the first game, enjoyed a Suikoden as much as 4. There was a beauty in its simplicity, and an actual return to what made the first game so compelling (that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts), as opposed to relying on tropes to try and push something more than what the game is.
I find Suikoden 2's hero trio dumb and uncompelling, and considering that the entire game revolves around them, it really drags down the political-war aspect. Moreover, I don't need video games preaching to me. Moreover moreover, I don't want video games preaching to me that war is hell. It's incredibly condescending and insulting to the intelligence. As for the actual game itself, the mechanics don't expand to much more than what was developed in the first game (exponential EXP growth, magical charges, weapon forging, etc.).
The Luca Blight boss battle is still one of the greatest moments in all of videogamedom. It's enough of a reason in itself to play the second game. It's also it's downfall, since the game climaxes there and never actually recovers; it goes on for too long afterwards about nothing.
This is to say nothing of the giant bugs and glitches that the game has, as well as terrible translation.
So, yeah. Suikoden 4 is better than Suikoden 2. It's not even close, especially since 2 has only gotten worse with age; the things that stand out in that game stand out even more.
I dont bash 4 like others here but no, 2 > 4. 4's ending really sucked imo, it felt like nothing really happened. Gameplay wise and story, it was ok. 2 had story, 6 man parties, far more side quests and storylines, an actual 108 star ending, real villains, better wars (lolnaval battles were ok but not better than oldschool), used data from previous game, Neclord, better music, cooking battles, and more stuff I don't feel like listing or cant remember. Luca Blight was tough as hell until I found out I could use salamander runes to negate some of his damage.
4 has.....water.....like its watered down story. 4 man combat, team composition didnt matter much, and 3d Jeanne. Thats it.
Gotta be retarded or a troll to think 4 > 2
In terms of polish, yeah, I'd say 4 > 2, but that should be a given jumping from one console generation to the next. PS1 era was still marred by shoddy translations and censorship. But as a complete package, I'd still say 2 was better for reasons like the Neclord follow-up and even the save import easter egg. Otherwise, I'd say if 2 was remade with 5's engine and very little changed aside from a better translation and good voice work, it'd be a no-brainer. 3 still sucks. Luc fanboys don't help.
What was the save import easter egg? I forget x.x
Not even gonna bother to try to dispute asinine claims of 4 being better lol.
Being able to recruit S1's hero after a certain point.
Oh yeah! Shit, totally forgot about that. That was pretty awesome. Too bad you had to go back to the damn city out of the way to get him back into your party every time you removed him.