This area needs more life. So, inspired by my current playthrough of Suikoden V...

I know a lot of people love the game, but find themselves rather unchallenged. I mean, you have to admit, even many of the weakest characters in the game are unfairly powerful against most of the enemies in the game. =\ So I decided to play through the game, trying to intentionally make it more of a challenge. (Failing, somewhat. Lol.) I'm sure others here have done the same, so I'm curious to see what you've tried, and how much it affected the difficulty.

In my current file, aside from avoiding overly powerful characters (like, um, all of the main casters, haha), I've been working differently with the skills. At first, I tried not using any skills whatsoever, which seems to do a relatively decent job at making your characters not-so-powerful. Eventually, though, I started increasing only certain skills, like Technique, Agility, and Incantation. Y'know, avoiding ones such as Attack, Defense, Magic, and Magic Defense. The aim here is to be dealing less damage, and receiving more, so that's been doing... something for me. Also, I've been limiting the levels I allow myself to increase skills to. Right now, I'm limiting myself to a B rank for anything that affects stats, and that's only if the character really needs it. (Like slow characters needing speed.) Things like Treasure Hunt, I've allowed up to my current max (A-rank), though, since those skills don't directly affect combat statistics.

I'm trying to do a little more than that, since skills alone don't actually make as big of a difference as I had thought in the first place. I'd like to see what others have done first, though. I'll add other things later.

The casters? Try Richard, he'll god mod parry-counter your butt. I had a group of 6 enemies attack me and I have the tiger formation, which means 3 up front, shaped like this ^ and the same for the back.
Richard was at the top of ^ and all the enemies attack him and he killed them all by parry-countering their strikes. He even parries arrows O_o.
I do like Richard though, I can't see me not using him, as I simply like him.
Especially his character, saying he ain't good enough. NOT GOOD ENOUGH O_o!?!

To make things difficult, I have actually never tried, as I only played and finished the game once... so err yeah.

Yeah, I was only using the casters for examples. I already know how ridiculous Richard is, even without using him much. I put the upper tier casters in a whole different rank than the best physical characters, though, just because they can do so much more damage, and to multiple targets, which is why I usually refer to casters being overpowered before characters like Richard.

On that note, I've been finding casters are some of the hardest characters to tone down. My main casters right now have about 25% less magic than characters like Jeane, Viki, and Zerase, but even so, regardless of what I give them, they tend to do a pretty significant amount of damage. The Shredding (200+ to all) has been dealing around 400+ to all, for example, and that's only with a B rank wind affiliation. It's kind of hard to find many magic-oriented characters that don't have at least B ranks for almost every element, too. Recently, I've tried swapping some runes and equipment to have C-rank characters, so I'll see how that goes...

...You know something's wrong when it's actually a challenge to make the game more challenging. <.<; I seriously hope the next games bring the difficulty level up.

I avoided the top tier characters on my first playthrough anyway... I too tried to make my second play through more interesting but all I've really done so far is tried out more obscure characters. Sadly, whichever way you look at it, Suiko V is an easy game, and limiting yourself to a challenge such as a no rune challenge or something would probably only make the game really tedious and boring, but ultimately not really that much more difficult.

Yeah, it's beginning to seem that way, unfortunately.

The only way I've been able to think of to make it particularly challenging, rather than tedious/boring, is by, like, intentionally keeping cruddy armor on your characters. One of the biggest no-challenge details I've noticed so far is the fact that as long as you're keeping your equipment updated, you just don't seem to take any damage. You can throw a decent mage in the front with some good chainmail (yes, a few can equip chainmail) and such, and they'll still usually take no more than 25-50 damage or so per hit. And as for magic, a few characters do have especially low magic defense, but I've noticed that even many of the physical tanks seem to have an oddly high amount of magic defense. That said, it's kind of hard to tone down magic defense on many of the characters. That's the thing about magic in general, actually: you can't really lower it. It's all just there, based on characters' stats. You can't really do much to it by simply unequipping or refusing to upgrade things. =\

Anyway, one thing I've been trying is keeping my party's weapon level low. If it gets to the point that battles are just getting annoyingly tedious, then I upgrade them a couple times, but for the most part, I'm limiting myself. Powerhouses like Zegai don't even get any weapon upgrades. At all. Lol. Their brute strength alone makes them just about the same level as Frey and Lyon with a handful of upgrades. I've been trying to keep my weapon level cap at 7 or so, though recruiting Dongo kind of messed that up for Frey. (And being as picky as I am, I felt the need to keep Lyon up to level with him, heh.) I'm definitely not sharpening anyone's weapons beyond level 12, though. This seems to help a bit, without making battles terribly long. Beats one-hitting everything, that's for sure.

Oh, and let me just take this moment to point out possibly the cheapest thing in this game (and with only two words): True Men.
Seriously, that formation is ridiculous, especially when you get it have access to it so early in the game. I mean, sure, the -20 Defense penalty definitely makes a difference (not so much later in the game), but the +20 Attack bonus is going a little far, especially when the formation skill is what it is: 1x damage to all enemies. Quite seriously, True Men's +20 Attack bonus actually makes that 1x damage effect more powerful than any of the 1.2x damage formation skills, and those only target a column, while True Men targets ALL enemies. And, of course, to top it all off, True Men's formation skill has unlimited uses. I can't help but shake the feeling that that was a mistake when making the game.
All of that said, I've almost entirely ignored this formation through this playthrough. (I only used it a few times when fights were getting annoying.)

Edit: Oh yeah, I've also been avoiding increases to Attack/Magic by means of equipment as well. I think I have one Power Belt on a physically weak character, but that's it. This includes runes. Things like Boost (although the penalty is nice), Fury, Crazed, and similar runes are being completely ignored in this file. Anything with a damage multiplier is out of the question, haha.

why not just have caster's to do physical attack and tankers to do spells then?

Then no upgrades at all?

Just a question Lol.

Lance.

Actually, I've been doing something along those lines. For example, I eventually handed my Rage Rune over to Belcoot, since he could use the first three spells, but not the last (Final Flame: 1200+ dmg to all). Plus, that said, he's got a lower magic value than actual casters, so less damage. Eventually, I booted Belcoot altogether. Heavy armor-users just take way too little damage. After a recent party change altogether, I threw in Shigure: a very lightweight character (light helm, light armor, medium arms and legs), with not the best magic in the world. I gave him my Rage Rune, since he can use up to the third spell (Explosion: 700+ dmg to all), and his affinity with the fire element is only a C (average). So, with this kind of setup, he takes damage (but not too much), he can attack without dealing terribly high amounts of damage (but enough to have an effect -- by the way, his weapon's only level 7 right now), and he can cast a few fire spells for about the amount of damage said (rather than a percentage more).

I've actually booted everyone who can equip heavy armor, as well as pretty much everyone that I could who had 250+ Magic. My party right now (aside from Frey and Miakis at the moment) consists of Raven, Shigure, Sagiri, and Faylen. Most of the characters using any magic have low magic and/or low affinity with the element(s) I've chosen for them. I've recently decided to swap Raven out for Belcoot when I'm not indoors, at least until I get someone else to use in his place.

Anyway, so far, things are working out pretty well, actually.
- Most weapons only sharpened to level 7
- Avoiding heavy armor, and even settling for some light armor-using characters
- Using non-mage characters, and intentionally giving characters elemental runes with which they have low affinities
(By the way, my party is all around level 45-48 or so, at the moment, so keep that in mind.)

With those guidelines, as well as a few others I mentioned before, the game seems to be a bit harder, without being tedious/annoying. Give it a shot sometime, if you wanna play with a little more challenge. (Getting the "perfect level" would require way more experimenting than I'm willing to go through with. >.< My current setup makes a bit of difference where I am now, so just adjust my given guidelines according to your own reason for earlier and later parts of the game.)

I'm actually trying to do the exact opposite. I am testing out the characters, to see who are the most damage dealing characters.
This is best done at lvl 99, as everyone will be at max, so I am using an Action Replay to boost everyone to lvl 99, as lvling all characters to 99 is simply way too much hassle.

You don't have the guide? That gives stats for every playable character at level 50, which I imagine would be plenty good enough for such an experiment. ...Well, then again, the BradyGames guide is all kinds of messed up. >_<

From my own observations in the guide, though, I think Nakula seems like the most promising for a beef-up character. He's a heavy-armor, medium-range spear-user, and he unlocks all three rune slots, I believe. I forget how his Strength stat compares to others, though I imagine it's fairly high, plus the power of his spear. (Weapons in that game aren't all that different from each other, unfortunately, but I'm pretty sure spears are one of the stronger ones.) For runes... Well, a number of possibilities in Suikoden V, really. Maybe Crazed (dmg x2, uncontrollable) + Boost (dmg x2 for three turns, then HP to 1) + Double-Strike (dmg x2, dealt and received). That would seem to have the best multiplier, I think. Other swap-ins would be Fury (1.5x dmg, lower accuracy) and Killer (1.5x critical rate, I think, and chance of instant-death).

I don't mean just battle stats, I mean compatibility in a group. I mean, I figured out the some of the most devastating groups in all the Suikoden games I currently own, so I am just looking for the best setup in this game as well.
Obviously I will make a lvl 50 file as well, see if it still has the same effect.

Examples in previous Suikoden games were:

SI

Alen Grenseal Viktor
Flik Tir Crowley

The Pretty Boy attack dealing 3000 dmg comes well handy, as well as Viktor having the Killer Rune, giving him the chance of dealing 1k dmg and Tir's Soul Eater Rune with the powerful Judgment spell. Crowley is a mage that has no boundaries and outclasses all mages, including Zerase in Suikoden V. Sure, she has a stronger Rune, but Crowley has better stats. Come on, 5 times the lvl 4 spell at 60.

SII

Killey Pesmerga Sierra
Mazus Riou Tir

Just one of the possibilities. Mazus being the powerful mage here. Killey having the Double Strike + Double Edge combo, as well as the Fury Rune and Fire Emblems equipped to beef up his attack power, it'll cause him to deal 2k a turn.

SIV

Ted Lazlo Snowe Kika

Obvious, though Mizuki could be used for Ted instead as well.


So yeah, in Suikoden V several characters could be used, Richard being a prime example here, as well as Viki, Jeane and Zerase. Cathari is also an extremely powerful character and long range, which makes her even better. One slot is used for the Godspeed Rune, which is a shame, because it could be used for something else instead.

So yeah, I am also planning on doing a full character synopsis on all characters, to see who's most useful and most useless.

Have you thought about just using hte Beavers? that'd be challenge... just terf the Prince and everyone else to the Entourage, and fight just using the Beavers.

Hm. I think I get what you mean, Pes, though ultimately, not including unite attacks, individual statistics are still pretty much what you're looking for. I mean, if a character's good, then a character's good, and should be used alongside other good characters, to make a good party.

As far as unite attacks go, though, hrm... Suikoden V made it difficult to even want to use many of them, just due to the characters used for them. Some were just weird combos that I'd probably never use together, personally. The first one to stand out in my memory, though, would be Isabel + Mathias. Both are pretty good characters, and it's got the highest multiplier of the 2-person unites: 1.5x dmg to single target. A pretty good 3-person unite is Belcoot + Shoon + Zegai: 1.3x dmg to single target, and two of those three are pretty good characters. (Not sure about Shoon. Never liked him much, especially for how late you get him.)

Edit:
Conceit (Cathari + Isabel + Zerase) is naaaaasty. If you throw in Mathias, you can opt to use the Maximillian unite attack instead of Conceit, too. (By the way, Conceit is 1.3x dmg to one target.)
And on the note of Nakula: Fully set up, he is indeed nasty. I managed to get him to dish out around 4000-4500 with a single hit (and that was the second of two hits, with the first doing around 1000-1500) against an enemy in the last area of the Big Hole dungeon. (The area you need Eresh to access, which is full of strong enemies.)
Gavaya is probably equally as promising. Another heavy armor character with all three runes slots. He has slightly higher strength than Nakula, though he's short-range. He can also hit up to three times (rather than Nakula's two hit max).



The beavers actually aren't all that bad of characters. Most of them are decent mages, even.
Pretty sure the prince can't be swapped into the entourage, though. I've checked before.
Besides, the beavers only amount to five, specifically because the prince fills the other slot.

It'd be more of a challenge to fill the party with the DoReMi elves (with or without Cornelio), though that would probably be more on the side of tedious/annoying. I doubt the beavers would make a huge difference, though, especially with most of them being decent spellcasters and all. Their low defense would probably be the only factor that would make things much more difficult.

Yeah, several characters come to mind with a lot of potential. I know for sure that Hazuki is underestimated, which I found out last night. She's quote powerful and with a Fury/Double-Edge/Multi-Strike/Killer she becomes quite deadly.

Cathari is one, as many people already now, I have her crit for 4k damage. That is not too shabby either. The downside is that she has 1 rune slot for the Godspeed Rune and can't be removed.

In my second play through I've been trying to find underdogs and I have a beaver in the party, the one who always says "nouh" or something. She has decent attack and magic and her M range weapon means she's useful towards the back row still.

My favourite character of that party has got to be Bernadette... she is amazing. Stick her in the back row with a rage rune and that rune that absorbs magic with a physical attack ahd she is a beast. Her magic stat isn't the greatest but it's still more then you'll ever really need, but what really makes her useful is that she has an 'L' range weapon and that her attack is still half-decent. It means that anytime she is low on magic she can physically attack (do somewhat decent damage) and she has her magic back, best of all she always hits while characters like Viki and Jeane will miss while at the back row.

The same can be done with Zerese, but I hate that overpowered witch.

i liked Bernadette too. her Mother Ocean Rune came in handy, especially the amounts of Healing Rains she had.

Nelis has the Rage rune and is also a long range attacker, how does she compare to Bernadette?
or Sharmista, for that matter?

Sharmista ain't that good, I have her at 99 and I can't say she is great in anything, just an average mage.
Bernadette is good, but again, she doesn't excel in anything. Nelis is again alright, nothing too great, or crap.

However, I was surprised by Lu just a few moments ago. She has low stats, but she can rack some great damage.
She has high chance on multiple hits and she has 2 rune slots at lvl 99, which I filled with a Multi-Strike Rune, as the other one was already filled. She has SS rank in Fleet Footed or whatever that skill is called, meaning she ups her chance on multi-strikes even more. Low HP and DEF, but she is backrow and they usually don't get a lot of damage. So yeah, Lu is a surprising character.

Stay away from tiger formation.. don't use ANY of the two handed swordsman, don't use Zerese(she can get up to 600+ magic attack -.-), use condemnation rune, etc. Basically the runes that are known to give drawbacks will be of great benefit to you.

Pes:
I don't quite understand complaints of Cathari having only two open rune slots. Haha. Sure, she can't be brought that extra step forward, but why would you ever need to? Even just with her two open slots, she'll still be made one of the most powerful characters in the game, as far as single-hit physical attacks go.
(More for you later in this post.)

Flame:
Out of the beavers, Maroon (the first recruited) is pretty much useless compared to the others. Meroon (the one you mentioned) is a decent mage, though compared to other beavers, her compatibility with elements is her main strength. Otherwise, Miroon and Muroon both have better magic, while maintaining about the same amount of physical strength as Meroon, and still being medium-range. Moroon is the only physical-based beaver, with extremely low magic and higher strength than the others.

Bernadette = <3. I found her to be a pretty surprising character in my second file. Her magic isn't the best, but it's damn well up there. (I think she already has somewhere around 300 -- or not far from it -- when you first recruit her.) Her physical attack is understandably low since she's a magic-based character, but it's a bit higher than some. (Also, like I said earlier, the weapons don't vary from one another all that much in this game, so as long as you keep it sharpened, she'll have pretty nice attack power.) Pretty decent long-range character, as well as a great mage, with all three rune slots changeable, and to top it all off: Her armor selection is amazing, considering the type of character she is. She can equip medium-weight helmets, as well as hand and leg protection. And her body armor?: chain mail. None of the other mages with as good of magic as her can equip chain mail (Nelis being the exception there), and most can't equip medium-weight helmets. (Some can still equip medium-weight hand/leg protection, though.) Oh yeah, not to mention she can equip two skills, rather than having Tutor or Rune Sage wasting a slot. (A couple other decent mages have this quality as well.)

Sigs:
Bernadette and Nelis are very similar characters, though Bernadette has more HP and a higher magic stat. Otherwise, Nelis has a bit more physical strength and skill/technique, and is a bit faster. Other than those minor differences, they're pretty much identical. (Nelis can be used in the Kiss Goodbye/Goodnight unite attacks, though, while Bernadette's only unite attack is with Nelis and Yahr: Island Storm.)

Sharmista, as Pes said, is nothing really special. She's a good candidate for the type of file I'm playing right now, but if you're looking for really good characters, she's nothing special. She's similar to Sialeeds, albeit a few differences: more HP, more physical strength, less magic and magic defense, and she can't equip the medium-weight hand protection that Sialeeds can. But hey, at least she can equip more than one rune. (Three total. Comes with a Mother Earth Rune.) Oh, yes, and she has a unite with Nifsara, as well as Kiss Goodnight with Nelis and Jeane.

Pes 2:
Yeah, Lu is one of the only two long-range characters that can hit more than once. (The other is Sagiri. Both can hit up to four times.) Lu seems to have an oddly higher chance of multiple hits, though. Her second rune slot is already unlocked at level 1, by the way. (Same goes for Sagiri.)

Shion:
Yeah, I've been doing a few of those things. The only two-handed sword user I've been using is Belcoot, and only occasionally. (Also, I've been keeping Belcoot's weapon sharpened only to level 3. Might've sharpened it to 7 recently, but that's as far as it's going, to keep his physical attack power down.) Pretty much all of the main mages have been ignored in this file. Zerase, Viki, Jeane, Eresh, and even weaker ones like Bernadette and Alhazred. As for magic runes, I've basically been setting them up so that I can't use more powerful spells too often. (Like I said earlier, I intentionally gave Rage to a character who doesn't have the fourth spell.) I've been trying to get things like Condemnation into the party, though my current setup won't quite allow it the way I want it. Planning on squeezing that and Resurrection in at some point.

_{Long post is looooooooooooooooooooong~!}

Why not just form a team of hero and 5 caster? xD Don't sharpen weapons at all. No runes embedded or given to the casters! Avoid all forms of grinding xD Just fight the boss with your lowest level =p Don't upgrade any stats at all =p Keep everything as low as possible. Knock your monsters through out the game Lol.

This should give the difficulty a new level Lol.

Doesn't hurt to try =p

Lance.

I'm not really complaining about Cathari at all, I love her. She is one of my favourites, especially with her amazing attack power.
I just find the Godspeed Rune blocking me into making her as powerful as I want. Sure, she don't need, but that is not the issue =P.

Yeah, Lu did surprise me, as well as Sagiri. Sagiri has a very high chance on multiple hits as well though, but Lu just outclasses her without any difficulty. She hits 3 almost every time, if not 4 and usually a crit is somewhere in there as well.
That aside, Sagiri is quite good as well, as well as her partner, forgot the name. He usually gets replaced towards the end, but he remains a very powerful ally.

Anyway, I am hijacking this topic, so I will make a different topic for this kind of talk =P.

From what I remember, for some reason, Lu seemed like she always hit at least twice, but at the cost of attack power. And I mean that beyond simple stats. Like... It seemed like each hit did less than they should've based on stats. I dunno, I could've just been imagining things, or other factors could've been affecting it. One way or another, though, Lu's got a pretty ridiculous multi-strike rate, haha. More than Sagiri, from what I can tell.

Shigure is Sagiri's partner. Both can hit up to four times, though have otherwise weak stats, besides agility. I've been using both of them lately, for that exact reason.

With weapons sharpened to level 7, they both still deal decent damage -- not too high, not too low. Both equip mostly light-weight armor, which makes them take more damage, which also helps in my current experiments. More characters in the game like them would've balanced the game out pretty well.

Who raises characters to Level 99? Unless there is a super boss I don't know of, I thought you could basically defeat anything with your characters just at level 60...

He's using codes, and only doing so to measure characters' final stats.
Though, personally, I'm curious if the codes really work to their full effect, because in Suikoden games, stat increases per level vary from level to level. (For example, strength will increase by 1-3 from level x to level x+y, and then from 2-5 between other levels.) So I'm curious if the codes automatically use the highest values per level or not. If not, then final stats that way would be a bit inaccurate.

Back on-topic, sorta: I imagine y'all know of the Shepcesska fight, right? The optional boss to recruit Eresh.
Well, here's a decent challenge: When you first have the ability to go into that area, go in with a Champion's Rune equipped. Normally, by the time you reach Shepcesska, you'd probably be around level 60 from leveling on the way down, but apparently, being a little under level 50 with a Champion's Rune will avoid all/most random encounters on the way down there, so you'll be about 10 levels lower when you fight him. I did this by accident, and Shepcesska was actually a fun fight, since he posed a threat to me.

i did that once... when invading Lelcar though. had the Champion's Rune equipped and running though an area i'd fight very frequently through, but without fighting any was surprising...

have you thought about using third-teir characters? ones that joined as the story progressed by you paid little attention to? like Logg, Kisara, and Goesch?

Uhh, Flame.... come on. What do you take me for xD.
You really think I will "manually"lvl all characters to 99?
So yeah, Action Replay is doing that for me.

I don't know if the stats are inaccurate, all I know is that it simply levels me up. As in, I get say 9999 exp (for example, I don't even know how much) and the characters lvl up after each fight, according to the exp needed.
Works for me.

In Suikoden IV there also existed one, but only raised your lvl, the stats remained the same

Oh yeah, plenty. I've kinda been suggesting that sort of thing this whole time, haha. As I said before, I've been using characters like Shigure and Sagiri, who are definitely some of the weaker (weakest, even?) characters in the game. I'm sure I'll be changing it up at least once before the end of the game, too, to include other low-tier characters.
By the way, Kisara is actually quite useful. She's a pretty decent mage, albeit being short-range, and she can do relatively decent damage (though low accuracy). I've never used Goesch, as he simply never appealed to me in any way, shape, or form, but according to the strategy guide, "you won't find a harder hitter among mid-range characters." ...Then again, the strategy guide is on crack, so who knows how accurate that statement is.

That is one true statement from the OSG regarding Goesch.

For someone that has a similar set of skills compared to characters such as Mathias and Galleon, including Mow Down, he can outpace them both by endgame if you're looking for a solid tank. The real drawbacks are of course, that you don't really need a tank to begin with, and that you recruit him so late in the game.

I won't get into the Haud Village-esque outfit with crazy color schemes nor the giant piece of wood that he's wielding. Best to leave some apples on the tree and walk right the hell out of the orchard when the wind begins to blow.