Which has been published in the conference Sider 2012(today).
Anyway, it its basically a summary of what I have earlier presented link it on my portfolio page).
I am gaming with the Madcats one(to the left), Anton gaming with the Qanba 4Q and Ebbe playing with the drum set.
I brought my sticks(gonna write a rewivew of the qanba on soon), and unpsrungly my theories about what characters are harder to learn for new users where corect on this people to.
First I want to say that this game is amazingly great. It has such a unique and good battle gameplay. And the different ways the user can clear the game is a very nicely done. Also why this game is such an incredible hard game to have the real ending. You should play this game- and not read this as I will now spoil the narrative-
One of the most unique games to snes, a very strange strategy game.
Basically
any normal person will always get the bad ending of the game. This game
do actually have an tutorial. But still blatantly have no Usability
what so ever.
The game have several game mechanics important to completing the game that is never explained.
First of the game we have to answer question to determine our personality.
This is strange but actually a pretty cool start to a game, on the other
hand the user really has to answer the question in a non truthful way
to get an easier chance for the true ending. This is actually vastly important to the story progress, while never being explained. We get either Evil,Neutral, Neutral,Good.
Getting neutral 1 is funny to, is the suicidal samurai class for the main character, pretty nice first time playing the game, its instantly game over when the main character dies.
When
taking over cities in the game the leader of the group affects the
games “reputation” meter, Something that is never explained either
really(ok partly but not well enough). And its the alignment of the leader that affects if the meter
goes up and down.
First of there is never explained how alignment
works. And that is one classic problem with the game. For example to
upgrade a class to a paladin, we need a knight to be at 60+ alignment.
But often every character will be at 0 alignment and then they can only
become ninjas. Not even ninja master or evil ones because they are 10-20
alignment....Because a class called Evil One clearly is not pure evil.
To gain alignment the player needs to not kill good characters.
This means we are not allowed to attack healers in the enemy team, just
like in any other game, we would like to attack the healer first. We
cant kill angels and other races that are viewed as good even if they
try to kill us. And Its not OK to kill characters that are lower level
neither.
Basically playing this game if you have not read a guide you will run around with 100 ninjas.
And
this is only the ice berg of the game. That whole reputation meter, is
vastly important to trigger story mode scenes. Which of course are all
hidden. And the meter drops each time we lose a city in the game.
A
normal play trough of ogre battle is to use a gryphon leader fly around
and liberate all cities to get all power full tarot cards and then win
the battle. Its supposed to be that we have to send a unit per city and
defend it without ever losing a battle.
Of course the game have
several hidden stages(which you will never find) the game also have
hidden items, that are only find by walking around during the battles.
To
get items in the game we have to run around aimlessly at places,. to
get characters its often about flying to different towns 10 times.
This is the easiest character to unlock in the game.
this is how a normal play of this looks like roughly.(starts at 3.44)
There is of course also characters that shouldn't be allowed in to the army to make it more confusing.
To beat the game, the user has to constantly keep the repution meter at max, find all the secret hidden narrative parts(this is rideculles hard) find items, the user gets by just moving around at places. I mean really to get brunhilda which is a most to get the hidden stages the user has to run around on different islands. Etc there is no help in the game to know this. Keep playing hte gam the right way, always only kill leader and never good characters. And the main character cant be used. Never play with the main character, I mean it never use him/her(yeah one of the first game where user could pick gender).
And never, use the Tarot Cards that lowers reputiton,
At a good point is that the secret characters who is unlocked is a very very strong. So at least the last stages becomes very easy.
Suikoden 2, is revered by many as the best Role playing game to ps. Its also got one of the hardest true ending to ever find. Its one of my 3 top role playing games to ps. 10/10 nuff said
There is 4 endings.
1, where we just run away from everything letting our friend get eaten by zombies or/and vampires.
Or maybe those enemies where vampiric zombies. Anyway pretty cool ending actually when the user is to face Necrolord's army the user can simple go out of the town and that will be a bad end. I liked it because its not just good or evil pick, its more that the main character is afraid. And dont have what it takes to be a hero. For example in Suikoden 5, the game had a much more classic bad end, where the user could pick to try and assassinate their little sister to take the throne. Thats a typical evil choice.
Anyway game had some other endings to, all 3 of them requires the user to beat the game.
2, Where we save the country(world) and get to rule over everything.
3.
To find the 3 one is already hard, when the game is beaten. Its
possible to sneak of before entering into the prologue of the game. Yep, this is strange, the user is prompted to walk into the meeting room of the castle and the ending scene will start. But the user can actually go out of the castle, leave the town, and
then
run over half the world map. To exactly where the game starts to duel
our best friend to death.
There is nothing indicating that
there is possible to actually not have the end game prologue starts.
There is never any mentioning that Joey(best friend, best Rival,Last
boss) will be at that place. When the game starts he talks about
retuning there after the war, this is 50 game hours earlier then the
game ends. And since then he have literally back stabbed the main
protagonist, tried to kill him several times, his friends, makes his
sister be killed etc, the list is long.
Nothing will make the player think to even considering that hes a friend anymore.
Oh
yeah the best part, If you ever find this extra last boss. Nothing
happens. That's right you will kill Joey, then automatically go back and
rule the country.
4. To get this ending. We have to
find all 108 stars. Which is the selling point of the franchise. This
takes a lot of work, as some of them have ridicules requirements.
This is just some of the harder characters to recruit.
The
elf archer Stallion. We have to run away from battle 50 times. This is
never explained he just out runs the player at a race and never
indicates how to beat him. And if you are anything like me, you never run from a battle. As then later battles will be really hard if characters lacking levels, kinda the basics of role playing games.
One character is called Mukumuku
Which is a super hero squirrel, more games should have characters like this.
After
liberating Greenhill . Along the path from Greenhill – Muse, we have to
walk around as stone path. With only the hero in the party(instead of
normal 6) and eventually Mukumuku will join the party, also we had to
talk to a girl before mentioning a squirrel with red cape or nothing
will happen.
Because other wise expecting a squirrel to just forcefully join your army of freedom fighters is crazy.
Its
actually possible to get more squirrels by facing them in a very rare
random encounter and having Mukumuku in the party with only the hero. And is the image the user can just face them at random to, which will probably not make anyone believe they can be recruited.
Another character Oulan.
Will only appear if the team only consist of females(excluding the hero) in this specific town in the specif spot the image shows.
Yep game is full of this nice unlock able characters requirements.
The game also features a strategy play. It looks something like chess with magic.
To recruit Gilbert, we have to fight him in a strategy battle
Spend
all of our time attacking Gilbert. The idea is to damage him , but not to kill him. (he has
two damage points in War Battle, we just need one). After this, he will
switch sides (and hope he doesn’t lose his unit / die in battle). If you
do not do damage to him, you cannot recruit Gilbert.
And
of course several characters demands other character to have joined. Or
in worst case high amount of characters. Making them be even harder to
understand how to acquire as what ever we do until we have that number
they don't really respond.
Gantetsu, is recruited only
after having a lot of characters and, the team needs to have a very
high total strength points or he wont join. Meaning the user needs high levels of the characters, and the right team picked. Its some kind of tug of war test. Not to complicated, just get all other strength oriented characters and level them up. its about the share amount of characters that has to be find.
Some late
game characters such as Mazus and Pesmerga are only recruited able
after getting over 100 characters. And they are to be found at odd
arbitrary places.
Suddenly he appears at this cave which we where at 30 hours earlier in the game.
Well
at least Pesmerga had a special place to stand. The highest place in a
mountain dungeon. Where earlier a talking sword was.
Mazus just appears in the middle of a random, 0% important dungeon.
Oh
and this cant be done whenever you want many of them can be missed
entirely, which you can only hope you have an extra save file going back
10 hours. And they can not be unlocked to late. Everyone have to be
unlocked before 1 of them dies(because the plot demands it) because you
get nothing to have all 108 afterwards. I really mean nothing.
Don't
forget just having every character is not enough. We still have to know
that there is a way to avoid the ending scene of the game. And where to
go to trigger the true ending.
