/vr/ - Retro Games

I have to agree with you OP. It's one of my favorite games of all time but fuck if I will replay it. The later sections are some bullshit.

Pic related is pretty good too, but I'll only replay 2.

hey /vr/, do you guys recommend skipping the first suikoden game or not? if i've never played any of them before and this will be my first time.

I put a few hours into Suikoden and at the moment trying to get the alchemist so he can create potions so my characters can resist the pollen that is emitting from the flowers at one of the forts.

I keep hearing great things about this series, but so far I haven't seen anything that really wowed me. A lot of the mechanics are bare bones, standard leveling and experience point system with auto-allocation of stats when your characters level up. The battles I mostly just end up mashing X to accept commands due to the fact you only seem to gain skills from equipped runes and even then the magic pool is very small for them while doing standard attacks seems to suffice most of the time anyway. There is very little customization so far outside of shard and rune equips, I can't even switch out weapons and I am on the path of only upgrading their single weapon.

Does anything open up mechanically later on that makes it interesting? It isn't a terrible game or anything, it is just solid. Not very offensive but not very gripping to me due to that.

Is it actually good or just another tropefest?

why are PAL PSX JRPG's so expensive ?
pic somewhat related

Just found pic related (PAL). Wut do?

I've just finished Suikoden recently, which I am very happy with and kind of surprised at. As much as I love RPGs, I am pretty bad at finishing games in general, and wasn't sure how far I'd be able to go though something... with "outdated design sensibilities".
But somehow, I was in the right mood and finished it in 20 hours over a couple of weeks. I think having it on my Vita helped a bit too. I liked how you would go back and talk to characters to find out where to go, and it was pretty clear from them most of the time with a bit of exploration. The characters themselves were cool. I loved story and the idea of recruiting an army to go overthrow the corrupted king. I enjoyed the combat and the various systems felt nice, like a natural evolution from the previous era of RPGs. I need to see if there is an English translation of Water Margin too.
I am really looking forward to playing 2 now, but I've decided to do Chrono Trigger first, which I put a few hours into some weeks ago and haven't gotten back to yet.
Slowly but surely I shall play every "worthwhile" video game in existence.

I've never been able to get very far into Suikoden, it just takes too long to get interesting. I never liked any of the characters, Ted and Gremio both are obnoxiously annoying - though at least Ted leaves your party early on, and Gremio does later apparently. Also the fights are mindlessly easy, all you have to do is select "Free Will" to autobattle. Even the early boss fights are like that. Maybe it improves later on, but I just can't sit through it.

I should just read a plot summary somewhere and then try 2. I've had a number of people tell me 2 is much more of an improvement over the first game.

So what does /vr/ think of this series? Suikoden 1 and 2 were by far my favorite PS1 RPGs ever. I loved them so much that I actually bothered to replay them multiple times. Too bad the series is practically dead now. At least Suikoden V was a good swan song.