Hard Mode - too easy?

[NecessaryPain]

Do we have a more detailed breakdown of Hard Mode, yet?

Suikoden was never really too challenging apart from the odd boss fight. I am only a few hours into Suikoden 1 and so far it's been incredibly easy. Am I missing something here? I still love the games but was really looking forward to a challenge.

Does it get harder?

[MahouKurein]

We have some intel about it, people are starting to dig on the game code, basically HP is like 0.8x (Easy), 1x (Norma - like the original game) and 1.2x (Hard), a 20% difference for each mode, they're still trying to figure out if there's a difference on ATK and DEF, but even if there is, it should be around -10% up to +10%, a 0.1x ratio, there definitely ISN'T a buff/nerf to SPD stats, enemy has the same SPD on all difficulty modes.

So some slight differences across the 3 modes are actually there, but they could honestly do more, even just stats wise. I suspect since they made an achievement for it they didn't want to make things actually too hard, which is understandable, in a way!

Anyway, there are some minor mistranslation, and you can still proc the equip 3 boots bug on Suikoden, so the game hopefully is getting patched, maybe they're gonna tweak the modes or perhaps modders can have fun with it.

I'm appreciative the game had them in the first place, it means a lot for the future of the series. This is the first time they try to do something with it, even if it's slightest, it's still harder/easier than your original experience, there's a lot to enjoy with these remasters!

Be vocal with Konami if you want Hard Mode to actually be harder. they listen!

[NeonCrimsonSkye]

Hard Mode is BRUTAL. I'm having trouble with the enemies right outside at the very start of the game, getting TPK'd in a single round before even getting to attack. Honestly, I think they made it a bit TOO hard. In other games, it would be the next difficulty up from Hard; best comparison I can give is that it's like Lunatic difficulty in Touhou games.

[MahouKurein]

Publicado originalmente por NeonCrimsonSkye:

Hard Mode is BRUTAL. I'm having trouble with the enemies right outside at the very start of the game, getting TPK'd in a single round before even getting to attack. Honestly, I think they made it a bit TOO hard. In other games, it would be the next difficulty up from Hard; best comparison I can give is that it's like Lunatic difficulty in Touhou games.

Don't worry, that's only the beginning and only for Suikoden 1, it happened in the original too. If you select easy/normal, it's gonna happen the same! aha

[CLG]

As much as I love Suikoden I am not sure how they could make any of the games difficult when they have to balance 6 players in your party. Having access to 6 actions per turn easily lets you cover any kind of situation. They would have to severely nerf AOE skills and give the enemies more actions to introduce real difficulty, just bumping up raw stats isn't going to go very far.

[NeonCrimsonSkye]

Publicado originalmente por MahouKurein:

Don't worry, that's only the beginning and only for Suikoden 1, it happened in the original too. If you select easy/normal, it's gonna happen the same! aha

Did it? I must have forgotten that. Then again, it's been two decades, and my memory isn't that great, lol.

[Vex]

Just finished the first game on Hard Mode an hour or two ago.

All I noticed was that enemies had maybe a BIT more HP, and... maybe?... did more damage? To be honest, it didn't feel like anything was really different. The enemies that used to fall to the Tir+Kai unite attack still fell to it. Those that didn't still didn't. I feel like bosses MAYBE took an extra round or two to kill.

Assuming Suikoden II uses the same scaling, I don't imagine it'll be difficult to complete on hard-mode either. Three rune slots, double-beats (double-jabs now) and fury rune combinations, on top of the Bright Shield Rune's OP healing, will keep that game at a cake walk.

[MahouKurein]

Publicado originalmente por NeonCrimsonSkye:

Publicado originalmente por MahouKurein:

Don't worry, that's only the beginning and only for Suikoden 1, it happened in the original too. If you select easy/normal, it's gonna happen the same! aha

Did it? I must have forgotten that. Then again, it's been two decades, and my memory isn't that great, lol.

Yep, especially if it's a boar! :P

[MandingoSlayer]

Yeah, We're going to have to mod it to make it more challenging

[Blight]

I think it just increased the chance of of people dying in war battles i had to restart alot if i missed up on s1 on hard. but no same i didnt really notice a difference at all really

[Chii[FIN]]

I was looking for much more hard mode than what we got, lets hope for cheat engines

[Leckaine]

Publicado originalmente por NecessaryPain:

Do we have a more detailed breakdown of Hard Mode, yet?

Suikoden was never really too challenging apart from the odd boss fight. I am only a few hours into Suikoden 1 and so far it's been incredibly easy. Am I missing something here? I still love the games but was really looking forward to a challenge.

Does it get harder?

Hard mode is about equal, maybe even a bit lighter than the original release. Lighter because there's less battles in the overlord it seems.

[Quenlin]

Publicado originalmente por PopCornFlakes:

Also noticed there are less battle on map and dungeons

That's just 90s RPGs being 90s RPGs. At the time, most JRPGs determined random battles by a method of "Y% chance of a random battle every step". Symbol and pedometer-based encounters were not as widespread at the time.

It's just sheer luck. The speedrun relies heavily on exploiting the RNG to avoid as many encounters as possible.

[Pete]

These games have always been easy. I noticed hard mode castle zombie dragon was harder than I remember but the mechanics of the game are so simple that once you have one or two water runes in your party you are all set

[Elegnaim]

Does Suikoden even have enough going on mechanically to make harder balancing interesting, or does it just turn it into "grind more?"

[MahouKurein]

Publicado originalmente por Elegnaim:

Does Suikoden even have enough going on mechanically to make harder balancing interesting, or does it just turn it into "grind more?"

It does, for preparation and battle both. There are so many pieces of equipment, higher tier runes, team composition and sharpening of weapons; a harder difficulty could require one player to play with these system better. Currently you can finish the game without having to upgrade or use any of the above mentioned systems, doesn't have anything to do with "grinding", you almost can't grind in Suikoden games, when you've reached enough XP for where you are in the story, you almost get none. It's all the different elements around it that makes it interesting.