LogFAQs > #885084515

Raganork posted...

Cross has, what, 50-some characters, of which maybe 5 have any sort of meaningful impact to the story. That's fine-ish because most characters are optional, but even then, they largely feel present simply because woo, the more the merrier.

I dunno. It just feels like, with Suikoden, yeah there were more characters, but they were developed better.

I feel like you're not remembering Suikoden as well as you think you are.

I absolutely love the series (obviously! http://www.gamefaqs.com/ps2/929668-suikoden-v/reviews/99721 ), but even I'll admit that it has its fair share of palette-swapped filler characters, pointless unfunny joke characters, and other useless cruft thrown in for a one-note use or utility who you talk to once and then never think about again. A LOT of the 108 characters exist solely to pad the number up to 108 for symbolic purposes (Suikoden (III might be the only game that bypasses that for the most part, but mainly by having separate storylines).

Cross probably has a slightly lower signal-to-noise ratio than the average Suikoden game (though nowhere near as bad as you're implying), but it also has about half as many characters join (and you can't recruit all of them in a single playthrough, so you don't get the full 45 or so in one playthrough anyway). Maybe about half of them have significant personalities, backstories, and purpose in the plot (even if you don't actually like those personalities or appreciate that narrative).

Cross' main problem might be that it evolved out of Radical Dreamers, which means sometimes you can see the narrative seams, and plot holes or implications are created which are never really explored because they related to earlier versions of the story. Like Gil supposedly secretly being Magus in disguise before they dropped that plot, but with hints in-game apparently still hinting at it.


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