Julius

Few more scattered impressions after a bit more time with the game: The lack of an easily accessible quick/manual save and only being able to save at inns/dungeon save points feels a bit on the archaic side. The bosses so far being these 3D models vs your party's 2D sprites is great for providing a sense of scale. I mentioned before that it was pretty snappy, but the game's presentation in battles really turns it up a notch with just how well your party's attacks flow into your opponent's and back again. I'm not really a fan of the party info placement during battles, especially when attacks start to shoot off and you can only see the chain of events. I think a nice workaround would've been some sort of colour coding of or depleting glass-looking health pool laid over the character circles in the chain – just feels a bit unnatural to look to the right when so much of the battle info is on the left/centred. Heck, could've just stuck some green bars under those there sprites and it would be fine. I'm sure I'll adjust but it's odd in a JRPG to not be fully aware of how your party's doing during attacks Y'all are going to probably love Francesca. Mellore is going to be the marmite of these early recruits, I'm sure. I found her charming but I'm sure some will be tearing their hair out! Big fan of completing the requirements for a recruitable character, such as slaying a certain number of a certain type of enemy, before meeting them and then just being like "oh, you've done that already? Nice, I'm all yours!" That's always a win in my book. Somehow didn't mention it before, but the sprites!! I highlighted Suikoden II specifically when I played it as having some of my favourite sprites with how many unique ones there are, and that thankfully carries on here. One of my favourites so far is from the opening 5 minutes where you see some village folk picking crops in the background, it's such a small thing but adds so much. So, Suikoden generally lacked the sound of footsteps when moving around, but it was often because music was blasting, and at the very least small dust clouds often followed your footsteps. Here there's a bit of a lack of connection to the world when the music gets a bit more ambient, there's no dust clouds, and no footsteps to be heard. Just seems an odd choice. No small jingle for a weapon upgrade - even just a single "da-dun!" - feels kind of criminal. As with seemingly every HD-2D styled game, the depth of field is cranked up maybe just a little bit too much at times. It's weird walking into a shop which is just a guy and a desk some 5m away from your character and him looking a bit out of focus. Unless maybe that's why so many of these early recruits have Rune of Blind Resistance equipped, because visual impairment is so common in Allraan... Feels like the first time in a minute I've played a new JRPG where NPCs are just talking about the mundane or silly things going on to provide a slight grin and quickly move on. Still very much enjoying my time with it! It's these I did pass on Rising myself in the end purely because I didn't want it to potentially hinder my desire to play Hundred Heroes after seeing just how mixed reactions to it were getting and how a select few started to worry about HH would turn out because of it, so I'm glad to see it's got some people here who got on with it!

Aye, saw this going around the other day. Based on my time with Suikoden I can't stress enough, if you're trying to get everyone, even if you track down a guide to do so: there are 20 save slots besides your auto-save slot; use them! Yeah, it looks mighty rough on Switch at the moment, and that feels like a massive understatement; definitely makes some sense why they originally had it labelled as gunning for the Switch successor until it decided to not turn up to the party. A few updates have dropped throughout the week as I've been chipping away at it, don't mind the locked 1080p at all on PS5. Important to remember that some people who have their hands on the game might have got them a bit earlier than the devs expected, but in the case of the Switch, physical copies obviously are being saved until next month, so what we're seeing on the Switch is people who likely got the game in the last day of so via their digital Kickstarter code. Very unlikely anyone (besides maybe press?) got that code early. Fingers crossed they've been plugging away and some of the early updates at it's official launch put the game in better shape, but man, this blows HARD for people who backed the game on Kickstarter and decided to pick up a Switch version of it in particular.

Totally missed this: a Reddit AMA held earlier this week in r/JRPG by Rabbit & Bear Studios revealed that Murayama had started planning the game's sequel and that R&B will be moving ahead with a sequel. Direct link to question. Very happy to hear this. The original Suikoden was positioned more as a setting up of Suikoden II mechanically, technically (in terms of development), and as a story; with Eiyuden being a Kickstarter project, it's hard to imagine Murayama would've approached this much differently. A real shame that he won't be able to spearhead whatever comes next, especially after being away from this particular type of JRPG for so long, but I'm happy R&B are planning to carry his legacy forward, and from what I've read about Murayama when researching Suikoden in the past, he seemed to me like the type who would be flattered by them doing so and be happy that the team he helped put together would get a chance to continue making games together.

DK must've slipped on a banana or something, because the opening of the Donkey Kong Country section of the park at Universal Studios Japan has been delayed to "late 2024". As Miyamoto once totally and famously espoused:

Just to add some context from Suikoden to what @Glen-i said, there were a number of times in those games where temporary members would join your party for certain story beats; I think there were times that as many as 4 slots (including the main character) were essentially determined for you, other times you might need a certain trio in your party when talking to a recruitable character to recruit them, and so on. I'm not deep enough into Eiyuden to comment on how smoothly it's done it yet, but I'll be shocked if it doesn't use a heavy EXP multiplier like the early Suikoden games did, which made it a breeze to bring a new recruit joining you at, say, Lv 5, up to Lv 50 in just a few battles. This allowed for constant reconfiguring of your party and testing out new characters, which worked even better if you threw the new recruit in one of the back corners of your setup. This is also super important considering that mastering the game's battle mechanics is going to depend on having a setup which produces the most potential Hero Combos. For Suikoden and Suikoden II, outside of story beat-assigned characters, I would generally stick to a main trio based on how the story evolved (typically MC and childhood/family friends), fill the party in a little with Hero Combos in mind, and then in the last slot or two throw in some of the cooler looking or heavier hitting characters. I'm planning to do the same here Also just seen the full trophy list @Hero-of-Time, looks like it'll definitely take a bit of a grind (max out weapons for all characters). I'll be going for recruiting everyone but I think I'll pass on grinding that out especially with how long some of the other mini-game related trophies will probably take!

Couple of years ago: Days Gone sells millions of copies following an admittedly mixed reception at launch due to being bug-ridden, but it's certainly popular. Plans for a franchise totally scrapped. PlayStation care about Metacritic scores just as much as sales, apparently. But they're still making a TV show, mind you! No-one: Absolutely no-one: PlayStation: SO ANYWAYS I STARTED REMAKING EVERYTHING NICHE AND/OR UNPOPULAR AND/OR NOT-SO-GREATLY RECEIVED. YOU GOT YOUR GRAVITY RUSHING TWICE REMAKE, CREEPY HORROR HOUSE WITH WEIRD FACES KINDA FIXED REMAKE, AND MEDIEVALEVIL SKELETOR REMAKE. THAT'LL BE 70 SQUIDDEMS TA AND HUZZAH. I simply don't understand what they're doing these days. It's actually incomprehensible. This goes beyond not feeling like my own game preferences are being met as consistently last gen by PlayStation, it feels like they're actively tarnishing how everything but AAAA first-party games are received by pushing out everything and anything which can skip most of pre-production due to being remakes at lower levels of development. The same generally goes for their TV and movie plans. Feels like they're beyond being dangerously prideful at this point. Thank goodness the PS5 is backwards compatible and that third-parties seem to be having a decent gen, I guess?

Bayer Leverkusen have now gone unbeaten for a stretch of 44 games in all competitions – breaking the previous record (43, set by Juventus in 2012) for the longest unbeaten run by a team in one of Europe's top five leagues. Actual insanity; they're less than 10 games away from an invincible treble. (& I've totally just jinxed them, haven't I?)

Previews dropping next Thursday (on the 25th) and reviews are dropping two days ahead of release (on the 21st May): Reviews releasing just two days ahead of launch would normally be a bit of a yellow flag, I feel, but with this being a remake, makes total sense; feel it'd probably get lost in the shuffle otherwise. I feel like the previews might be more important than the actual reviews this time around, because anything worth flagging is likely to come up in those, and so long as there's nothing crazy, I can't wait

It's the first, absolutely one of my favourites I watch it every year or so and it never fails to blow me away. The story and characters and world are great, but that music? It's my favourite Ghibli and favourite animated film (sorry, Prince of Egypt), and is in the eternal showdown up against a couple of others for the position of my favourite film of all-time. One of the greats

The fact that they highlight 100+ playable characters certainly makes me think it'll be the case they're all useable, but honestly I've kept the Kickstarter campaign at arm's length to avoid being spoiled, so I'm not sure if that's going to be a weird wording thing when all is done and dusted. But the way they word it certainly makes it sound like yes, there will be 100+ characters capable of joining your party (though not all at once, because I guess that'd be more of a rave) Begin corrections music pleaseeeeee The Suikoden series did not, in fact, gives you access to 108 "playable" characters to collect and battle with – while those games task you with assembling the 108 Stars of Destiny, not all of these Stars were playable (i.e. able to join your party and go out into the field): some would stay back at your base/castle to serve a purpose as an NPC, whether it be small talk, or as a shop or mini-game facilitator; others would only join the party temporarily; and some were entirely optional recruits that while technically Stars of Destiny, wouldn't be required recruits to meet the quota of 108 Stars for the game's true ending. There are also one or two branching recruits from what I remember meaning choosing to recruit one Star might mean not getting another, and so on. Looking it up, both Suikoden and Suikoden II have ~80 playable characters, and this number tailed off in later games as the series went on. If I'm remembering right there were technically over 120 potentially recruitable Stars in Suikoden II. Alright you can stop the corrections music if it's still playing now Hopefully you and others here leap at the chance to play the first two when that remastered collection releases though their silence on the re-release is a bit deafening OR FACE THE WRATH OF BEING ADDED TO MY IGNORE LIST (I'm kidding) (maybe) Murayama never would've done it because of his good relations with Konami after leaving, but the thought of it saying "108+" instead of just "100+" gives me a good chuckle

Princess Mononoke >>>>>

Just got the first couple of hours tonight and am creeping up to the inciting incident – taking much, much longer than both Suikoden and Suikoden II to get there, but we're certainly getting there. So, anyways, to cover the obvious: the game looks gorgeous. New areas/dungeons also get a bit of a feature, reminding me a bit of some of the special art we'd get to see entering a new spot in some of the older Pokémon games: With that out of the way, I'm enjoying it so far. Having first played and written at length about Suikoden and Suikoden II on here back in 2021 for the Gaming Diary thread, and coming away from those games a very big fan of them, I'll admit, I'm going into this game with very high expectations, and so far I'd say - time taken to get to the *actual* inciting incident aside - it's meeting those expectations. My biggest hope is that once it's done and dusted, I'd like for it to fall somewhere between the two. So it looks gorgeous (it's worth repeating, I mean just look at it!), the addition of voice work is a welcome one in a game with this much dialogue, there are little tweaks which aren't at all going over my head like having access to the inventory as a whole during battle rather than needing to assign items to individual party members that only they can access during battle, your protag has an actual voice and isn't just a blank slate which I'm a big fan of, there's a lot of silliness to go around, I'm not the biggest fan of 2.5D and HD-2D games because they can feel a bit floaty but this feels great to move around in, and heck, there's even a wonderful world map to look at and a handy list of objectives with some super clean UI to boot: Also worth highlighting is the wonderful character art you get to see when a new character joins your party, such as with Mio here: Combat is just as snappy as it was during my time with Suikoden and Suikoden II, and works in a very similar way, but there are some very welcome additions which seems like they'll keep things fresh, namely in the form of special boss gimmicks, seeing the full order of a round of combat adding another layer to your strategy, and something I'm still figuring out where you can use one character to defend another who is nearly downed. The way SP charges work and function for Rune-Lens use by filling up with a charge as they go a round of battle unused should add a nice element of risk-reward. The Rune Attacks of Suikoden return rebranded as Rune-Lens attacks, while the Unite Attacks return rebranded as Hero Combos, and they both look suitably awesome: Sword Rain is 100% the coolest move available from the start of the game. But Friendship Combo looks great too! As for nitpicks at this early stage, I've seen the loading screen in brief flashes a lot more than I honestly expected to when joining and leaving battles (maybe it'll get patched, who knows?), but there is an upside - and that's a lovely Suikoden carryover in the form of the protag running while things load up! It's the simple things connecting the two which are really making me smile this goes the other way too, though, such as Dux Aldric looking like an older Luca Blight with a bit of facial hair... ...and of course there's Cassandra, the innkeeper with a portrait (almost certainly meaning she's recruitable and will be managing the inn when we get a base) being a huge step down from Leona from Suikoden II Anyways, final little nitpick: 'Enter' being the text that shows up to enter and exit a building, so I've just been viewing it as entering the outdoors but it feels WEIRD... The music so far is also just...kind of fine, so far? We'll see how it turns out but I won't lie, that's where my expectations were probably lowest going into this game, given the crazy quality of the first two Suikoden OSTs. Anyways, not wanting to go out on a low but instead on a high, one last thing I want to though: the geopolitics of a fictional JRPG world, as was front and centre in Suikoden and Suikoden II, just feels great. Even after Final Fantasy XVI built a great world and political intrigue, the first two Suikoden games are the absolute height of this for me in JRPGs, and I already feel the tension creeping up over the smallest of things, just with how certain characters say ambiguous things, carry themselves, or correct people in a petty way. It hasn't quite made up for the lack of an inciting incident in the first 30 minutes, but I'm sure it could do by the time credits roll around. Been in a proper gaming rut of late, so I can't help but feel this has arrived at the perfect time – super excited to get back to it already!

Ooooo! I watched the Digital Foundry interview about this with the fine developer folk over at Redemption Road last month and they seem a lovely and earnest bunch, well worth a watch Looks like it'll be a brilliant time hope it comes to console at some point! Think they've mentioned Xbox before but hopefully it comes to other platforms too