Jazz Chicken

As a huge suikoden fan and a backer on kickstarter for this game, I was super excited to play it. I started the game loving it but the longer I play the less excited I am getting and heres why. 1) The game features frequent cinematics which I was hoping would subside the deeper I go but there seems to be no rest. Once a cinematic is over, you will often find yourself taking two steps forward before triggering another cinematic. And it begins to grate after awhile. Half the time the cinematic doesn't even seem worth it and would have been better cut out. 2) The over the top voice acting. Don't get me wrong, a lot of the voice overs are very well done, but many characters feel like they are trying too hard to be funny and its just annoying. The character Mellore I cannot stand at all. Pooby should also not exist. It's a pointless pokemon like creature that just randomly says its own name a lot which only serves to annoy. Francesca seemed funny at first but then you discover thats how she always talks and again it gets tiring after awhile. 3) You can turn the voices off but you must very slowly slide the volume down to zero. I feel this should just be a tick box to turn on or off 4) You will run into points of the game where the difficulty jumps up, so you have to run around in a circle for an hour or so to grind your characters xp and level up. Some people like it, but personally I find grinding very dull and it dampens the gameplay. 5) The maps are very empty. In suikoden 1 and 2 there are a lot of interactables, hidden items, lore etc. But in this there is next to nothing besides NPCs and many cats and dogs. 6) The army battles are pretty lame and uninteresting. I was hoping it would be more like Suikoden 2 where it becomes a tactical mini game, but it's not really. You can't even tell if you are winning the fight. You just watch the camera pan around a bit and then see whos life bar drops more. So far these are my main bad points that have made the game less enticing for me. I haven't completed it yet and it may take awhile as I have been distracted with more fun games. Good things I can say is sound and music quality, Graphics, Artwork, Special effects are all top notch. However graphics do not make a game for me. Its all down to the gameplay. The actors and actresses do a very good job and dont sound like they are reading from a script. But its VEEERRY anime in the way they talk, which id say is more a downside on the director rather than the actors. Suikoden 1 and 2 are still far superior in comparison and I look forward to the Suikoden 1 remaster