Agreed, Suikoden 6 needs to happen!  I'll still be trying the DS one, though :)

I'm thinking as long as it has the same writers, it doesn't matter how short and cute the characters are (it's true for FFVI, after all).

Suikoden is pretty good.

Though it was kind of silly in some respects. I remember getting one character from like level 20 something to level 80 something thanks to one battle in Suikoden II. Slingshot leveling ftw.

Yeah, but you still have to level up their skills for them to be good, which don't slingshot at all... and think of how awful it would be to level up close to 100 people if low levels didn't get an experience bonus!

I agree though that they could fix some of the silliness of people going from level 1-20 in one battle (later on in the game) by putting in a simple cap, or something like that.

What makes a Suikoden great, though, is the quality of the story, the scope of the story, and how many characters are emotionally involved in the overall drama -- that's why when I first started playing III (my first suikoden, I played them totally out of order) I thought, "all these years I've been waiting for another game with a story like FFVI and it turns out my only problem was expecting Squaresoft to do it."

The series goes over the top with characters... it's a bit to dilluted for my taste.

That was... remarkably vague.  No mention of which games you're talking about in the series?   Come on, throw me a bone, I went to the trouble of creating this thread for people who like FFVI and haven't played Suikoden II, III, or V, because I've felt ever since I discovered the series (just two or three years ago) that it was inspired in some ways by FFVI.

The fact that the series has 108 characters who can join you by the end of the game, once you get your own castle or fort, makes it easy to prejudge the series, and think it must overextend itself by trying to include too many characters.  It's something that people who haven't played the games will logically agree with, because it seems only natural that one of the tradeoffs of having so many characters within one game is that none of them get much detail.

I would say that in the most great Suikoden games, they somehow manage the opposite -- they manage to focus intensely on a core group of characters within that huge cast, who come off as more human and mature than the main characters of almost any other JRPG.

Well it would be silly if you have to work every character, all 90-100ish, up the same way FF does it.
This system actually works pretty well.

I agree with Alic and want him to be my new bestest friend.

The world would be a much better place with more suikoden fans.
Do you guys want the world to be a better place?

I hear nothing but praise for the Suikoden series but I've never gotten to play them. Considering the almost uniformly possitive perception of Suikoden I'll have to try them out.

I believe Suikoden is down loadable on psn. It is one of the games I have been thinking about trying for years. I remember when it came out back in the day one of the reviews had mentioned the game had over a 100 playable characters which made me not play it since I enjoyed Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger type games that had 8 or so characters keeping it simple. Did you not enjoy Final Fantasy 9? I loved that game and thought it was as close as Square came to replicating what made FF 4 and 6 so much fun.

Suikoden is awesome! (Excluding # 5 with was horribly boring.)

IX is my favorite FF, followed by X.
I'm not a fan of IV though, I didn't finish it on my DS because it started to feel like work after awhile, and I just didn't care for the characters.

If you want to start with suikoden though I'd recommend II.
I is just above average though it sets the stage for Suiko II REALLY well.
So if you guys are determined to play the series, start with I then II because you'll enjoy II that much more.
But if you're not sure if it would hook you, then start with the big guns and head straight to II.
III has a lousy battlesystem, with a great story. V starts out REALLY slow(only the start though), so if you're not a fan you might not like the slow part.

FYI's, Suiko III is a 9 in IGN.
Suiko V won IGN's best story award for it's year.

What's good about the suikoden series is that it feels like you're actually part of the game, decisions you make affect the story and character conversations which is one of its biggest draw for me.
One example is the main character and his best friend tried to escape and you were caught by the leader and his guards.
Your best friend then asks you what you want to do.
Choices: Let's bust through.
              Let's surrender.
Choose "Let's bust through" and you try to escape but you get clonked and end up in jail.
"Let's surrender", sends you to jail. Same destination, but it's little things like these that make you feel like you're more involved. It also affects conversations between the characters. Some choices affect the story more heavily where it might actually branch out, but there's not too much of these so it isn't overwhelming. Most just affect conversations, recruitment of stars, battles, etc.