By all means! I hadn't known about the Water Margin connection at all, and I'm sure others are in the same boat. I'd be happy to hear more about it.

Very interesting, so does this mean we give the original creator of Suikoden a bit too much credit? I mean, he did convert a lot of the elements into an amazing game, but that just makes it sounds like he wasn't quite as ingenious as we thought. Still, I'd really like to read the book to see all these connections.

See I did not expect that, and it makes me wish I had read Romance of the Three Kingdoms like I had wanted to many years ago. Anyway this means that this novel has influenced an absurd number of games. I'm going to have to track down a copy of that. Based on the price of the complete set of books I've seen on Amazon I may start with the abridged version. With this in mind, is Suikoden III influenced by any classic novels? I'm going to have to investigate this.

I would have to agree. An amazing and somewhat underrated series, given the tepid critical reception the first two games received on their initial release. We can only hope that more happy days await in the future. I'd love to see an HD collection of the PS2 games! I hope many readers will check out these novels, sounds like they are classics worth reading.

I'm going to have to give the translation a try, and I'll ask at the same time, any plans on translating the second Gaiden game?

So long as you liked the battle system in SaGa Frontier I would give Romancing SaGa a try. It's a bit more clear about were to go in most of the characters' stories. It also adds some nice touches to the SaGa battle system and has a graphical style that looks like a 16-bit game morphed into 3D. The soundtrack rivals the best of Square Enix's long and storied musical history. I can't say the story has a great translation or anything, but it certainly is better than sub-par translation that you suffered with in SaGa Frontier. It's still available for pretty cheap, so trying it out is a low-risk, high reward proposition. It's a much more complete and better structured RPG on the whole. If you try it out, please write in and let me know what you think!

A fair point I suppose. Explains why most JRPG series don't try to do the whole connected world thing. Gives their developers more freedom. Still, I love a world with many games taking place in it, using a shared history and mythology. Can't developers suffer for our enjoyment (I kid, I kid!) ?

That's a real shame. I suppose complicating the lack of good writers is the increased number of JRPG released over there compared to years past. So there isn't much Konami can do for the Suikoden series then if they can't even afford to get some great writers to work on it?

I wonder, did they just overreact to the sales issues with Suikoden V? Suikoden IV obviously wasn't a critical or fan darling, even if it wasn't hated by all, so shouldn't they have expected a drop after that? Seems like it still sold well enough to be popular, did they ever really analyze why the fifth game couldn't match the sales of the previous game?

I'm going to go with the short-sighted bit. If anything it has just increased awareness of why the original games are so awesome and how the portable games just can't hold up. I'm not sure what Konami will do next with the series, but clearly they need to rethink their approach. Perhaps stall with some HD re-releases?

I'm not so sure that it would have done better under a different publisher. Heck, I'm not so sure Square would have taken the chance on Suikoden, and may have even done a worse job localizing the first two games. Square does a good job pushing their big titles, but sometimes not so for the smaller ones. I think Nier could have done better for them for example. Also, being the only RPG series from a famous developer like Konami gives it a bit more allure, rather than getting lost in the crowded catalog of an RPG heavy publisher like Square. Then again Konami didn't exactly do a great job advertising the early games here in the West, so I could be very wrong.

I agree wholeheartedly. They didn't seem to have much of a plan to continue the series beyond this one game. This isn't a series like Final Fantasy with a history of massive changes between games. Like I described in the previous letter, I think they greatly overreacted to Suikoden V not doing as well as the previous games. It isn't like V completely bombed after all. I dunno, I still don't understand what Konami is doing.

I'd like to see a complete Shin Megami Tensei arena game where you could play as a slew of different demons and characters from the series. I think that would be a cool way to expand from Persona 4 Arena. Other than that, I'd enjoy some kind of zany Disgaea arena game. That could be a lot of fun if done right!