What are you playing?

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

It's a prequel.

[rabidtictac]

I finished Suikoden 1 and I loved it. Pure old-school rpg. About 18 hours long for my playthrough, and that was with an hour or two of fucking around. I didn't do 108 stars, but I was only missing about six or eight at the end of the game.

Everything about the game was fantastic. Visuals, sound, combat, even the story was surprisingly mature at times.

And then it capped off a short coda to every recruit, with an amazing song sung by the Konami employees back when they gave a fuck:

[Bobito]

You can also put the disc in a CD player and listen to the soundtrack.

[da PAC Nigguh]

A lot of PSX games were like that. I think I used to do it with Twisted Metal 2.

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

PC-Engine games were more hardcore. Put them into a CD player, and the first track will warn you to stop this madness because the rest of the tracks are just data which the player will translate into static noise that may or may not be loud af enough to damage your speakers.

Rondo of Blood had one of the best warnings.

[Old Black Man]

A lot of PSX games were like that. I think I used to do it with Twisted Metal 2.

Now I’m thinking about Monster Rancher, the game where you could put CDs and other PS1 games in unlock new monsters.

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

That's really just a gimmick-y way for the game to get a seed for its RNG. The GBA entries just let you type in a password to accomplish the same thing.

[Old Black Man]

Oh definitely gimmicky to no end, but very novel at the time. I didn’t learn this till now but it even recognized Sega CD and Saturn discs according to this one list.

[Guest]

>tfw no kasoomi monster

[rabidtictac]

I'm a ways into Suikoden II now. I dunno. The combat is better, but I prefer everything else about the first game. You gain access to teleportation (fast travel) much earlier in Suikoden 1, along with your castle and freedom to recruit guys. Recruitment in Suikoden II features a lot more hoop-jumping than the first game. Most recruits in Suikoden 1 were just, "speak to this guy after you get your castle" or "speak to this guy with another character in your party." Seems a lot of the recruits in the sequel have some super-specific task or requirement before they'll join. Shit like that just makes the game more tedious, especially combined with no early fast travel.

The war battle system is better than the first game, but it's now almost entirely scripted and impossible to lose. They don't even take the training wheels off until around 10+ hours into the fucking game. By contrast, I think I failed the first war battle (that I could control) in Suikoden 1 immediately.

Duels are the same and piss-easy unless the opponent is stat-hacked like your pappa from Suikoden 1 was.

The story has more anime bullshit in it than Suikoden 1. More annoying minigames too. You only had to win Cee Lo once in Suikoden 1. Twice if you wanted to recruit an optional star. You need to win Cee Lo at least 3 times in Suikoden 2 and you need to win specific amounts rather than merely winning "a hand." Beating Tai Ho once is annoying. Beating Tai Ho 5 FUCKING times in a row so you can win 5000 off him is unbearable. And yeah, you can bet 3k at a time if you like. But if he throws trips in the first toss them you lose 9k and have to reload a save. Hope you remembered to save, because you can still only save at inns and save points.

Suikoden 2 has fewer clear parallels to the water margin, imo. Fewer of the stars of destiny are actual bandits or based on a character from that novel. Characters like Varkas, Fu Su Lu, Pahn, Tir and Ronnie look unique compared to the casts of other jrpgs. ThingsOnlyICareAbout.jpg

I dunno mane. The combat is a little better. It's nice to have a run button and it's nice you can equip more than one rune. But that's all I feel like I can say is "better" and many things about the game are worse. The story in Suikoden 1 moves a lot faster and that makes it eminently replayable as well. The inventory rework is still bad, since you can only hold a limited amount of items, now shared globally. The amount you can hold is about the same as S1, or maybe a bit more. Prices for everything are more expensive than S1 and runemasters now charge to put runes in and out of slots. So you'll be punished for experimenting. S2 is probably the better game if you either know everything already or have a guide in front of your lap. But you know how a guest was complaining about running around, trying to hit story triggers? That definitely happens in Suikoden 2. I would argue it wasn't an issue in S1 because that game was short and told you where to go and what direction.