Suikoden I is the trollingest game
Suikoden (1995) likes to taunt the player in a lot of ways. Most of these can be forgiven as flaws in the first installment of a series, but given the game’s now legendary status, it’s more entertaining to complain instead.
Spoiler warning: Considerable spoilers for Suikoden ahead.
Shining armor
In the castle at the beginning of the game are two suits of armour that you can examine by pressing X, and one drops 100 money. This cleverly teaches the player to examine anything out of the ordinary.
Except those are the only suits of armour in the entire game that do this. For the rest of the game the player will mash X on every armour, furniture and odd-looking patch of wall, to no avail.
Lots of pots
The rare Celadon Urn is only dropped by a weak early enemy, the BonBon. This is a mighty troll for several reasons.
The BonBon can drop two other pots: the cheap Octopus Urn and the worthless Failure Urn. It’s impossible to know which you have until you have it appraised at an antique shop. Early in the game you are banished from the only town with an antique shop.
There’s another antique shop in the next kingdom over. You can’t reach it until you’re banished from the only kingdom that has BonBons in it. You can return much later, but all the BonBons are gone.
The drop rate is low (0.78% Failure Urn, 0.78% Octopus Urn, 0.26% Celadon Urn)1 2. Just as well, because your inventory limit is nine items per character, and your equipment (typically four items) counts against that limit. You may even throw off pieces of armour to smuggle more unidentified pottery, without knowing which ones are worthless.
The only thing you can do with pottery is to put it in your bathroom.
Drowning in water rune pieces
Suikoden lets you permanently attach up to nine of the same rune piece to a weapon to increase stats. An enemy called Killer Slime has a 1.31% chance of dropping Water Rune Piece1, an extremely useful rune that gives 5 health regeneration per piece.
But Killer Slime only appears in an early game area that becomes inaccessible for most of the game. After fully equipping your current party, you can only smuggle a dozen or so rune pieces out for your future recruits, and that’s competing for space with unidentified pots.
There are other rune pieces, but they’re less useful and in some cases extremely rare, with less than 9 total making it impossible to max out a weapon on them.
Before you meet Ted
A hazardous solo journey to Sarady at the very beginning of the game lets you acquire a Fortune Rune, which doubles XP gains.
If you bring Ted, the man who gives you the rune instead gives a Prosperity Rune, which doubles money gained.
You will probably equip this rune on the main character, since Ted already has a rune. Soon later, Ted gives the main character his rune and you will lose any rune you had equipped.
When you later visit Sarady through the normal plot, the man gives you nothing, so there’s no way to know any of this without reading a guide. He just says I HEAR ODESSA IS NINE FEET TALL
Where is everybody?
Characters temporarily leave for plot reasons at unpredictable moments, and take their equipment with them. Now you have to pick a replacement and outfit him with inferior equipment.
You have to equip the Holy Rune on someone to be able to run instead of walk everywhere. It’s possible for someone to leave with your last Holy Rune, forcing you to walk to the shop for a new one.
Most recruits can only be permanently killed in field battles, but these tend to coincide with plot events where people temporarily leave. Missing characters are even removed from the roster, making you think e.g. Stallion died in battle when actually he’s just being kept in reserve for a cutscene later on.
Missing recruits don’t count toward your total for the purpose of unlocking other characters. You go to recruit someone and get turned down because technically Viktor is off gallavanting with his pals.
I wanna play too
On several occasions you recruit an NPC who insists on joining your current party immediately, requiring you to kick out an existing party member to make room. When a short-range character like Lepant does this, and ends up in the back row, he immediately enters a fight where he can’t actually attack anything.
Missable characters
Two recruitable characters are enemy generals, who you can only acquire by forgiving them at their execution. There is no logical reason why you would do this, nor why they would betray the Emperor to join you. One of them killed the man who raised you.
Two characters can only be recruited by walking home from Moravia Castle through Northern Checkpoint. There’s no reason why would do this, because at this stage you have an item that lets you teleport home.
One of the recruitable chefs only appears in a mansion when you taste two pots of stew in unrelated nearby houses. No other pots of stew in the game can be tasted, and there’s no reason why the chef would know you’ve done this.