What really is screwing gaming...

[Brushfire]

I love buying games on a whim. Like, as in completely random purchases, simply because you had a severe craving to buy a new game and made a trip to the local gaming store to hopefully find something worthwhile.

I did that once, and it didn't turn out so well. Wangan Midnight for the PS3 is the worst arcade port ever created.

[I-n-j-i-n]

The only times I 'buy on a whim' is when the games are $5 to $10 and have basically lost all market value. Suikoden 4 (the supposedly one of the worst Suikodens ever) and I'm having fun with it. Though I'm still bitter I paid full price for Suikoden 3, which has one of the most shallow and noneventful stories in RPG history. Then there's the cheapo Persona 3 edition that is coming out soon and Odin Sphere. Lots of cheap PS2 games without a lot of risk.

Also, some purchases like Godhand actually turned out to be one of the best games of the year and IMO it even trumped Clover's other effort: Okami.

[Sobou]

Suikoden 4 (the supposedly one of the worst Suikodens ever) and I'm having fun with it.

If you bought S4 for more than $5 ~ $10 then I pity you for wasting your money like that. I'm a huge fan of the Suikoden series, and I have to say that 4 was the absolute worst of the game, hands-down. The only redeeming quality about it was the return of Ted, but even that doesn't garner enough awesome to bring the game from "suck" to "decent".

3's story wasn't all that bad, but it was my least favorite (after 4). The three mains were just too generic, and even though Thomas is the Tenaki Star, he doesn't have any of their traits. But at least 3 had a good different combat system that relied more on strategy and what characters you had over any of the other game's pick 'n click. The individual skills and ranks actually made using different characters in 3 fun and useful, unlike 5's skill system where it just ended up being "find the strongest sob and abuse them to no end". There was no reason to use at least 1/4 of the roster, simply because of the skill system.

To actually post on topic, though, I very rarely buy on a whim. However, there are a few stores around here that sell their used games extremely cheap, so I usually luck out when looking for a new release. Got Final Fantasy XII for $10 a couple months after release, and the item was practically brand new, for example.

I won't delve into the unknown very often though, because of two reasons. One, because I'm very conservative about my money or two, because the game usually ends up being horrible (Ninety-Nine Nights, Lunar Legend, Mega Man Battle Network 4, Beyond the Beyond, ect.). Sucks to have only fifty bucks to your name, and go and drop twenty on it for something you're going to want to turn right back around and sell.

[TheSnowStorm]

A lack of-

And dammit! I mean the good Phantasy Star games, not the bullshit 3-D "OMG!!!! CARD GAME" Phatasy Star!

[I-n-j-i-n]

If you bought S4 for more than $5 ~ $10 then I pity you for wasting your money like that. I'm a huge fan of the Suikoden series, and I have to say that 4 was the absolute worst of the game, hands-down. The only redeeming quality about it was the return of Ted, but even that doesn't garner enough awesome to bring the game from "suck" to "decent".

It was around $9. I do know the thing is bad relative to truly great Suikoden versions, but it's passable. Then again, I have very low expectations of Konami to actually make good RPGs nowadays. Suikoden 5 was the exception, even if it had a whole slew of problems of its own.

3's story wasn't all that bad, but it was my least favorite (after 4). The three mains were just too generic, and even though Thomas is the Tenaki Star, he doesn't have any of their traits. But at least 3 had a good different combat system that relied more on strategy and what characters you had over any of the other game's pick 'n click. The individual skills and ranks actually made using different characters in 3 fun and useful, unlike 5's skill system where it just ended up being "find the strongest sob and abuse them to no end". There was no reason to use at least 1/4 of the roster, simply because of the skill system.

The plot was bad IMO because it teased at a lot, but in the end, it was a MAJOR disappointment. Maybe even bigger than the 'oops, your universe wasn't real!' in Star Ocean 3. Mainly because the three stars really never had any tension between them as it should have. If the game allowed me to choose sides and kill the other stars, then that would have been downright epic, but that never happened. It became the typical 'every good guys combine forces even if all logic says they should MURDER eachother'. That just irked me to no end. All the potential and logic wasted. I never saw another RPG drop the ball quite that way.

As for the mechanics, Suikoden 3 had its share of game-breaking characters too, namely Juan and Emily just dishing out 10,000 points of pain not long after you get to obtain them and letting them hit on enemies a dozen times before they get a chance to even attack. I do think some parts of Suiko 3 were fun mainly the side missions and maybe even the bath-house/theater parts and other cute little aspects. Sometimes exploiting the game engine was fun at times too, mainly because some characters are so overpowered at what they do.

To actually post on topic, though, I very rarely buy on a whim. However, there are a few stores around here that sell their used games extremely cheap, so I usually luck out when looking for a new release. Got Final Fantasy XII for $10 a couple months after release, and the item was practically brand new, for example.

I won't delve into the unknown very often though, because of two reasons. One, because I'm very conservative about my money or two, because the game usually ends up being horrible (Ninety-Nine Nights, Lunar Legend, Mega Man Battle Network 4, Beyond the Beyond, ect.). Sucks to have only fifty bucks to your name, and go and drop twenty on it for something you're going to want to turn right back around and sell.

I wouldn't say I'm stingy with game-money, but I am on the same page as far as unknowns go. I usually don't buy games that have really bad reputations like Ninety Nine Nights or Battle Network games. I usually go for games that are said to be downright cliche but maybe decent in their own conventions. That or a lot of supposedly great games that happens to tout the $15 price tag.

Though nowadays, I do that a lot for Xbox Live Arcade games where it may be cheaper at times (like Puzzle Quest. Amazing game).

[OceansAndrew]

I love the hell out of first 2 suikodens, played maybe 40 hours of the third (pretty much forcing myself to do it through the last 37 hours), and decided to call it a day on the series. Slow battle system, shitty story, no thanks.

I wish they just had a Suikoden "build your castle" game.

That is what I would like to play.

[Brushfire]

Slow battle system, shitty story, no thanks.

Sounds kinda like Lost Odyssey

[Avatar of Justice]

I enjoyed the hell out of Suikoden III's story.

1. Luc is awesome. He's probably my favorite video game villain period. Killing millions of people to free humanity from being bound by destiny. I'm down with that. Although his actions would've been horrible, his intentions were noble. Good villain.

2. The trinity system or whatever it was called was cool. It was neat to see the same events through the eyes of different characters. I personally found this to be terribly clever.

3. The politics were pretty good.

I hope they make a Suikoden VI that takes place in the Holy Harmonia Empire since the Harmonians seem to be the bad guys of the series. The thing I really appreciate about Suikoden is that instead of like most RPG's where you travel to a castle town or something and are supposed to expect that to be the entire frigging nation, each Suikoden game takes place in a different country, making the world seem more realistic as far as the way the cities and nations are laid out.

I'm a sucker for stories that deal primarily with nations and politics, so that's why Suikoden's storylines really appeal to me.

[PhiJayy]

*hugs Megadrive*

I can't stand it when people say a game's terrible and never give reasons. Plus, not many games are actually bad; what really matters is what people think of them. Of course, there are the exceptions (*CoughKing's Knightcough*)

How people decide what a makes a game good or bad depends on their personal ideas of fun. For example, I love mario galaxy, prime 3 and Zelda TP because of the gameplay, atmosphere and story (respectively). If someone likes to hack people to bits and as such enjoys games like Gears of War or God of War, fine. Just don't go saying that mario games are bad because there's no violence in it.

So true. This post actually makes alot of sense, I personally like playing, all of the mascot games like Mario, Zelda, and Sonic, but when people say that these games suck just because Mario doesn't gush out blood when he's attacked, really makes no sense to me.

Mario gushing out blood would be pretty weird anyway.

[Sobou]

Slow battle system, shitty story, no thanks.

The reason it was slower than the other games is because they took a different direction when they made S3's battle system. Unless you were fighting a boss, the only thing you had to do in the other four games was just select the "Auto-Fight" feature and wait for battle to end. Random encounters in S1 and S2 took like what, half a minute max, on average? S4 took even less, but they took the S1 battle system and made it kid-friendly. It went from easy to goddamn dumb.

S3 slowed it down, but it was both their first foray into PS2-land and an adjustment to a more strategy-based system. Stuff like adjusting where the runes hit and when they hit, the pair-system and how units depend on one another, ect, caused you to think for two seconds before you spammed Lv. 4 Rage/Thunder Rune spells and accidentally hurt your party as much as your own.

However, I've got to agree. There have been more than enough times in S3 when all I need to do is Auto-Fight and it still takes awhile for the battle to end. I stopped at like, the beginning of Chapter 2 - Hugo in my second playthrough and I haven't touched it since.

The plot on the other hand... Well, it didn't make sense that Hugo didn't want to shank Chris after what happened, and Geddoe just didn't seem to matter to anyone. He was just there with no purpose other than "lol true rune". However, throwing Luc in there as the main villian with motivation like he had was an awesome move.

I wish they just had a Suikoden "build your castle" game.

That is what I would like to play.

This is an awesome idea and I fully support it. If there's anything the Suikoden series has down, it's the concept of a home base and they've done incredible in this for four of the five games (the boat was different, but not all that innovative. They just compartmentalized everything.) One of the drives for playing the games for me was to find all 108 so I had a complete castle that had all those little things to discover in it.

[I-n-j-i-n]

I love the hell out of first 2 suikodens, played maybe 40 hours of the third (pretty much forcing myself to do it through the last 37 hours), and decided to call it a day on the series. Slow battle system, shitty story, no thanks.

I wish they just had a Suikoden "build your castle" game.

That is what I would like to play.

I still tolerate playing them except Suikoden 5 was genuinely good. It's actually my favorite behind Suikoden 2.

Sounds kinda like Lost Odyssey

Lost Odyssey was great. Suikoden 3 and 4... weren't. Also, the slowness of Lost Odyssey at least was attributable to its overall difficulty. Suikoden games were never 'difficult' IMO.

I enjoyed the hell out of Suikoden III's story.

1. Luc is awesome. He's probably my favorite video game villain period. Killing millions of people to free humanity from being bound by destiny. I'm down with that. Although his actions would've been horrible, his intentions were noble. Good villain.

Yeah, Luc was great, except it made Sephiroth seem like a main cast of a TV sitcom in comparison to how often Luc showed up, which was about never.

2. The trinity system or whatever it was called was cool. It was neat to see the same events through the eyes of different characters. I personally found this to be terribly clever.

I actually agree. It's just that the great big battle and conflict between the Trinity characters never went anywhere. They allied themselves in a snap of a finger which just seemed silly to me. With such politics involved, you'd think it'd go three different ways, but it didn't.

3. The politics were pretty good.

For first half, I would agree. Second half, it's the usual 'big bad enemy! KILL HIM'.

I hope they make a Suikoden VI that takes place in the Holy Harmonia Empire since the Harmonians seem to be the bad guys of the series. The thing I really appreciate about Suikoden is that instead of like most RPG's where you travel to a castle town or something and are supposed to expect that to be the entire frigging nation, each Suikoden game takes place in a different country, making the world seem more realistic as far as the way the cities and nations are laid out.

I'm a sucker for stories that deal primarily with nations and politics, so that's why Suikoden's storylines really appeal to me.

Maybe they should make another trinity system but with more conflict and maybe even different endings. With so many characters, you'd think there would be different outcomes every damn time you finish with certain characters. The baby-paste story of Chrono Trigger gets 20 endings and Suikoden can't? That's illogical.

[Triad Orion]

The baby-paste story of Chrono Trigger gets 20 endings and Suikoden can't? That's illogical.

Granted, most of the endings are humorous and ultimately nonsensical, but the point remains valid nonetheless.

[Citris]

Actually it was my friends' stepmother's total ignorance of gaming that introduced us to Armored Core (we wanted her to get one of the Ace Combat games...don't ask me :/ ). Maybe I'm just lucky.