I hope your run isn’t completely runed now.
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PSA: I think the Default Rune Only Challenge has its first Killer Strat.
Summary
After liberating your castle from the Zombie Dragon, you can visit a checkpoint in the far west of the area containing Seika, Kaku, and the Great Forest.
Talking to a recruitable character there, Kai, who seems to be Protagonist’s master, will automatically recruit him.
He has a Unite ability with Protagonist called Master/Pupil Attack. It deals 100% normal attack damage to all available targets. Pretty powerful.
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PSA: If like me you are doing Default Equipment Only, do NOT use the Detach function in the Headquarters storeroom, at least not without noting whatever that character has equipped.
I thought that it would just place consumables in their inventory into the storeroom, but it also removes equipment… so now I don’t remember what a character had equipped.
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Truly the only thing funnier than the Kobolds living in giant dog houses…
Just got my steam deck set up for this challenge and I have to say that black dragon’s roar almost killed me.
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I haven’t nailed down my exact challenge level yet. Like, I haven’t decided on any party recruitment limitations for example. This is mostly because I don’t know what will come as I’ve never played the game before and I don’t want to overcommit and ruin my fun.
One thing I gladly started as soon as I could, was using “Let Go” whenever possible, though. It really makes for a breezy experience when you don’t have to battle every punk that jumps at your party on the way from A to B.
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I’m 3 - 4 hours in, and I still haven’t had the chance to choose my party. Not using runes is easy, as everything dies in 1-2 turns anyway.
Gremio, stop being my mom!
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Ok I gotta admit I am absolutely crushing this game. People elsewhere were not kidding, the game is very easy.
Shop talk…
Summary
Going to admit (also with zero shame) that I’ve been using a guide for a few things. Character recruitment mainly, just for my non clinical strength obsessive compulsively inflected sense of satisfaction, once or twice to get nudged in the right direction when the story and dialogue itself is unclear, and also a breakdown of how the War Battle and Duel system works (both of which are RPG-i-fied versions of rock paper scissors, basically). So there’s not a lot of strategy to them, just trial and error. Haven’t needed it for boss strats or anything like that.
I’ve cheated a bit with save states, too, mostly as an admission that, again, for my own obsessive compulsive tendencies, it’s preventing me from save scumming it the slow way. Mostly for War Battles and Duels, not real fights, and I haven’t been cheesing them, just reloading at the beginning of them.
I’ve cheated a tiny bit on my Default Equipment rule too, in two instances:
- To recruit one character, protagonist needs to talk to her wearing a particular piece of armor. I recruited her and then removed it. Seems fine to me since I didn’t get an advantage from the equipment in a real battle…
- Loaded one particular character up on armor for a duel that is… well, you don’t need to win the duel to progress through the game, let’s say. HP pools and both the damage you deal and take within duels are based on your character’s stats… so… let’s also say that this duel is basically unwinnable unless that character has their weapon sharpened, are a decent level, and they’ve got decent armor on. I could have leveled the character up more, but that would have given protagonist and others more XP than I would like, so I compromised on the Default Equipment challenge to keep levels low. You level SO fast in this game.
In any case, even with being strict about Default Runes Only, I haven’t encountered anything that a decent stockpile of Medicine and fastidiously healing both during battles to keep everyone >60% HP , and keeping everyone full or as close to full as possible without being too wasteful after battles, hasn’t been able to handle easily. Also got lucky in that weird roulette wheel thing in Lepant’s mansion and nabbed the Dragon Incense Urn without even trying. It’s a combat only but infinitely reusable item that heals the whole party for about 50HP, so it’s great for efficient spot healing.
A little disappointing to find as I play more that, well, most characters’ default Rune is the None Rune, so the cast is pretty interchangeable with each other, and pretty much anyone who comes with their own rune is almost automatically way better and more useful than anyone who doesn’t. A few characters I’ve gotten so far also come with absolutely killer Runes, like, turn their melee attack into something that seems to basically be unable for the enemy to dodge and counter it, and also boosts its damage, and also usable every turn with no downsides. Also found a few characters who came with their own Runes so they also become very powerful.
I decided on somewhat of a party restriction tactic which is to fill all available spots with cool ladies. Conveniently that includes four cool ladies who have some of those overpowered Runes. Still, my kingdom for someone who comes with their own Water Rune…
Long story short, Suikoden might have been too easy of a game, but in that way where piling on more challenge restrictions would just mean more tedium rather than more intricacy. No one needs to follow me on this one but if there isn’t much more to the end game, I might keep the momentum going and carry through the same restrictions straight onward to Suikoden II.
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Suikoden II is a much better game, but I don’t remember it being any harder.
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I’ll hope, I suppose, that the XP curve is more of a slope and less of a trampoline, and that more characters will come with Runes on 'em, so I can make some at least slightly more meaningful decisions with regards to party comp, rather than most characters just being somewhat interchangeable sacks of slightly differently dangerous meat.
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Oh okay it’s not just me. I’ve been "Free Will"ing bosses over here. It’s kinda nice in a way.
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I haven’t been able to do that but that’s more because of my Default Equipment restrictions. Pretty much anyone who was recruited too long ago to come with anything but armor called things like Hat or Boots or Clothes gets damage spiked quite easily.
But, still, yeah. And, by the way @FishHead, yeah, making Let Go mandatory is something I think I’d do even if I wasn’t doing a Challenge Run lol. I can’t really get a sense of how the calculation is being made… average level of enemies vs. average level of party, maybe? In any case it seems to be around a level where I’m already too strong to not steamroll most things.
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I got to the first blacksmith and used my modest fortune to get the protagonist and Cleo’s weapons up to level 5.
If the game stays this breezy by the time I can recruit party members, I think I might throw in the “everybody wearing the same color” challenge as well, just to add a little spice.
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I need a second (or more) opinion:
If Cleo is wearing red in her portrait, and in her official art, but you don’t see it most of the time, does she count as a character wearing red?
Another way to pose this question: Should the spirit of the challenge be technicality or having a matching party on the battle screen?
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Battle screen coordination has got to be the priority.
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Yeah, you’re right.
If the game was harder I’d say getting through a loophole on a technicality would be part of the fun
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Whoa, okay, another actually pretty hard boss!
Spoiler Alert: Noncelord, uh, I mean, Neclord
I mean, I still won, but one party member was dead for most of the fight, 2 more died near the end, and the fourth died on the turn just before last. So, really by the skin of my teeth! Wouldn’t have had the damage output if not for Protagonist and Hellion unloading all of their damage spells, and Kasumi doing her Suplex-no-jutsu on any turn she wasn’t slinging someone a healing consumable.
Seems that this was balanced that I would have had a method to do a whole party heal for more than 50 HP, but that’s all I got from the dragon incense urn. Not everyone had too Mega Medicines either… so wombo combos with party wide damage hit hard, and this boss had two of them, even.
Probably would have had an easier time if everyone had their inventory filled with Mega Medicines and could have healed themselves up as needed. Or, you know, a single character in this damn game came with a Water or Flowing Rune… there is probably also a consumable that does a party heal but I haven’t seen any yet.
Fun thing I am just now learning about Hellion’s True Rune, the Mother Earth Rune–its capstone spell, which is supposed to raise the whole party’s defense, is bugged and does nothing lol. I figured that’s what it was supposed to do, but I thought I was just getting rocked because no one was wearing armor. But yeah. I guess it’s just bugged. Apparently the second spell, Copper Skin, also locks in someone’s HP for 3 Turns, meaning they can’t take damage or be healed. Wish I’d known that, too…
Crushed it.
My Results:
Summary
Default Runes: 100% Strict Adherence. Didn’t even equip a Holy Rune for run speed! Funnily enough, I did find one character with a Water Rune and healing spells… she’s the last character you are able to recruit in the entire game, and as such you can basically only use her for the final dungeon and boss. But even with that, there are enough characters who come with good Runes equipped that you can just pull together a killer party that way.
Default Equipment: Equipped one piece of armor on Protagonist, to recruit one character, and gave one character a few pieces of armor specifically to win a Duel. Otherwise, everything real was done all with Default Equipment.
Mandatory Let Go Usage: Suikoden is so generous with XP and you can level anyone so fast that this barely even matters, but yeah, other than a few things here and there where I got some enemy drops to recruit characters, this was easy.
My thoughts on the game as a challenge run game: WAY too easy. Default Runes ended up being way less interesting than I thought it would be, I guess because I had assumed more characters would come with Runes, and as well that those Runes wouldn’t necessarily just be strictly good, which was true in most cases. I’m starting Suikoden II for sure!!
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FYI, If you have a save file with a save point after the Gregminster army battle, and before the final boss fight, you can load it into Suikoden 2 for a bonus (that makes the game even easier).
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