This also goes for some of my favorite runes like Falcon & Boar.

So far, from what I've seen, the Unite attacks are very unflashy and boring compared to Suikoden IV, which really upsets me, since they added a ton of character uniqueness (IE Aldo trying to shake Ted's hand). Please bring back elemental weapon shards, they were fun. There are a lot of really awesome characters that make the battle system unique, however, some are VERY overpowered (Richard anyone? If not, perhaps Zerase?) and seem to completely destroy the challenge factor at times. I really don't want a level 15 guy mandatorily in my party who can't even put up a fight because he has a rank 1 weapon. who join your party in a Story based situation, should atleast be able to hold their own in battle. Okay, Konami, how hard is it to give me characters with half-decent equipment and a weapon leveled up to atleast rank 7 when I'm at the end of the game. not only are you worried about getting a Victory+, but now you're worried about running around and killing everyone before you achieve your Victory+ in case they drop rare one time only items. Rare items in war battles are by far the biggest annoyance. Also, there was a very nice usage of 'forced' characters, a lot of people pick a team of 6 people they ALWAYS use, however, like previous Suikodens, they gave us a lot of 'No, you need to take this guy & that guy, etc.' which was really cool, because you got to experience different characters and watch them develop, etc. I also enjoyed the 'rare enemies/mini-bosses' that would pop up. It was really cool building your runes from various pieces, made it a bit easier but challenging at the same time. A lot of really fun mini-games that while sometimes tiring in long bouts (Checkers anyone?), are extremely fun and rewarding!

Also, the alignments and stuff were back, like A Rank & S Rank, etc. Woohoo, Runes are back! HOORAH! I'm really excited that all those cool Runes (Pale Gate, Minotaur, Venom, Boar, etc.) are back, I was kind of upset when they vanished in Suikoden 4. Characters are great, you can really tell they took a lot of time to focus on how the characters move and fight, and all the things like that. Storyline, I'm 100+ hours into the game, and on the Queen's Campaign (around there atleast), and this game continues to surprise me, it's really got my RPG love burning for a genre that I felt was simply rehashing too many old ideas and turning into cliche anime trends. once again I'll be writing a review for this game, so, here's a basic outline of some things.

Hard checkers suikoden v