Any first time players? What do you guys think?
* Sprite animation is another level, and the beginning of the game is like one big "look at all these awesome sprites!" showcase. Love how individual each character feels in battle, how the sprites are shaded when you go under trees and such (although sometimes the shading seems overdone, or doesn't make sense, and a lot of NPCs are hard to see when they're standing in it).
* A lot of great scenes. Escaping from Kyaro, the Two River Battle, the Knights of Matilda dropping their badges (my favorite so far), it's really cinematic without being overblown. True, there's a bit too many cut-scenes though, compared to the first, but in JRPG terms its pretty tame. Plot's also really nice, although I hesitate to say its the best I've ever seen...although maybe it gets even better post-Luca.
* The dialogue is really good, even though there's a few typos and mistakes (like a few times the wrong portrait pops up), and I was surprised at how humorous both Suikoden 1 and 2 are. 2 sort of takes it up a notch with all the funny responses your character can say, and I appreciate that. I find Nanami to be grating, though, and she really slows down the pace in a lot of places with sort of weak "bonding scenes". I like using her in battle though.
* Characters are far more unique than Suikoden 1, and I feel the game this time around gives you reasons to switch your Party up, while in Suikoden 1 it felt like most of them time there was no incentive to use anyone else...I just stuck with whoever it gave me, and then Flik, Victor, Pahn, Cleo, Gremio, and Kirkis, and ignored everyone else. There's a lot of moments so far in Suikoden 2 where I felt like changing things up a bit, rather than sticking with the same folks.
* The Castle is awesome this time around. Tons of people living there, dialogue constantly changing to reflect current events, more stuff to do...it's really fun, although at the same time the layout is quite confusing, and I still find myself getting lost when I'm looking for a certain character. Suikoden 1 was a bit more serviceable since everything was more or less right next to each other.
* I wish the battle system was upgraded a bit more. It's a bit slower, and slightly more in-depth with more abilities and such, but it's kind of a drag and takes longer than Suikoden 1, where I could Auto-Battle everything with ease. Now that Suikoden 2 is a bit tougher, I can't Auto-Battle through most random encounters it seems, so they get on my nerves since it's usually just spamming a powerful Rune and watching through the animation. A lot of my problems with Suikoden 2 I think is simply because I played 1 right before, and am a bit burned out on the basic system. I wish there was a bit more strategy and real difficulty, I guess, although at the same time not to the point it interferes with enjoying the story.
* I HATE War Battles. In Suikoden 1, they were lame, but short and sweet. Here...well, they're just a drag, a weak Fire Emblem clone that most of the time is just you waiting for something to happen and most of them don't have any music playing. Like there's that one where the refuges are headed to Matilda, and you don't do anything...you have to wait for all them to die, and it took like twenty minutes for the cpu to kill them. Ugh.
seems you'd have to be pretty heavily unlucky to somehow miss him hehe
