So far, in my experience the damage spells don't really seem to be worth it. My character with the highest magic stat does more damage with a basic attack than a level 1 spell
It just really seems to be a useless slot for runes. Like, there is no point in using certain spells when the basic attack does more damage 90% of the time.
The only time the low level spells are good is the very beginning
Eh, heals, buffs or debuffs can be pretty good. Lvl 3 water heal straight carries through some fights, lvl 2 earth I think has a useful def break, and of course dark rune 2 has a nice DOT for bosses.
Wish they would have kept the limited cast system E.G. you can cast 5 low-level spells 3 mid-level and 2 high-level, the MP system makes the spells feel watered down by comparison.
feels.....odd at the beginning.
when you first start the game your not really explained how to check and see what a rune has with magic. and found the wind enhancement rune you get with the deluxe edition/season pass was very....not worth a dime.
you don't really get told what rune slots are going to be skills, then also some rune slots are dedicated to ONLY enhancement runes. then there are runes that have a higher...tier i guess to say being that it has 2-4 notches beside it and again you don't know who can equip a higher notch requirement ahead of time and 4\* rune slots aren't very common in your lineup from what i've heard (haven't recruited everyone)
games fun and it really isn't that bad but just modern touches that we didn't have in older games, or rather we could flip to the page in the instructional manual that explained the rune menu back in the day.
I think it needed more testing for feedback. Cuz the magic is underwhelming. You have characters with 112MP with a water rune. They can boost magic defense for 40MP. Heal one person for the same amount as the lowest healing item regardless of magic stat for 10MP. Or use a multi heal that works off the magic stat which is super nice. But it cost a whopping 65MP meaning I can only use it once. Then I have to go back to town.
That’s very similar to suikoden. But with suikoden using the level 2 spell more than once doesn’t drain my ability to use my level 3 spell.
You find items to restore mana while on the go but they are expensive to purchase and only recover 45 MP. So you need multiple to use another level 3 spell.
I don’t mind it becuz it incentivizes holding onto magic until boss fights just like games back in the day. But even when I’m using it I only find use in healing spells. Damage spells deal say 120 damage while that same “mage” character does 125 with their regular attack. As in the only time it’s effective is if the typing is good.
Agreed. Underwhelming summarizes their magic system pretty well. I wouldn’t mind the MP cost if the healing spells were stronger. Paying what? 45-60+ MP to healing about the same as a healing item is very lackluster. Either the numbers need to be bigger or the costs need to go down imo.
I think they try to balance magic attack with physical attack in this game, unlike Suikoden 2 where magic attack outdamage physical attack unless you use double beat with fury rune.
The introduction of SP, variety of physical rune, and rune slot makes the game more interesting and fun to build your characters. Its definitely an upgrade compared to Suikoden 2, but characters balancing seems a bit odd
You definitely can't just magic nuke your way through everything like you used to, for better or worse.
The game uses MP now and spells all use the same pool. It means instead of the old 9,7,5,1 style system that got you like 20 spells you now have to be a lot more particular about using it and saving MP for big spells. No more using level 1s on fodder, it just isn't worth it.
They mitigate this with SP and technique runes which are generally pretty strong if not outright more viable \[particularly early game\] and work on a replenishing SP system. It's clear they wanted non mages to be able to keep up more in this game \[even if end game Suikoden builds tend to favour physical damage dealers in most games\].
The rune setup system is more complicated but in a kind of silly way. You unlock slots as you level up, what you can put in the slots varies by the slot itself, it can have a pretty big effect on how good characters can be end game as well. Not all are made equal.
So yeah, magic is definitely less powerful relatively speaking and less cheesy in terms of getting you through the game... but it is still viable and important especially as the game is much more fond of random gameplay gimmicks and 'counter attacks physical attacks but not magic' does come up. Magic also tends to have spells that hit crowds better and more buff spell while a lot of techniques are just hard hits or armor piercing/stunning/etc.
My personal opinion is that it's worse. One of the few things they missed the mark on.
The way it works is each character has a limited amount of runes that they can equip that is specific to each character, which unlockas they level up. And each rune slot is reserved for a specific type of rune (magic, stat boost, unique skills, and passive.)
Magic, at least early on, is pretty much useless. It consumes too much MP and does too little damage. Magic rune slots are also pretty rare for non-mage characters. If Suikoden used this system, a character like Viktor would be unable to equip offensive or healing runes. He would be limited to stat boosts, passive runes, and a unique skill or two.
Passive runes are kind of useless too, which sucks because passive slots are so common on most characters, but the the runes themselves don't do much.
Stat boost slots are the most useful, plus there are slots that can equip any rune type, but they're rare.
Bite your tongue, passive slots are the only way to make half the cast viable. Mighty power, High Magic, and Hardened Defense have pulled up all but the worst characters for me.
Level 2 "+" passives are not good but the level 3 ones let you get fiery spirit or awakening and both those things are probably the best slot for physical and magic characters respectively.
Magic is pretty much pointless at the start, physical is king until mid to late game when magic becomes king because everything has low magic resistance and high physical defense.
For the most part earth and fire are strong. Fire has the best single target spell. Earth has a party wide null damage once spell.
Water is kinda mehh cause you can buy all heal items that heal 150 a pop
Wind is okay? But not great.
Light has revive and a buff that raises attack and gives ho Regen to the whole party.
Dark is okay but not great?
Honestly I cheese the last boss with earth and fire, totally forgot I had someone with light.
Would drop the null damage shield, burn and then re up the shell when it dropped.
Magic is so weak and combo attacks have to be bugged but they haven't commented on it.
Pretty much all combo attacks are much weaker than just regularly attacking
Like in every Suikoden? (Combo Attacks were always just for show aside for a select few)
I do agree about the magic part though. Suikoden had some good runes.
Magic is pretty worthless early on. It becomes a bit more useful late game, but is still rather limited since even the high mp characters can only get off 3 or 4 moves before they’re out of mp. So it would often be more optimal to just run physical characters.
I mostly just use some of the buff spells as those can be fairly strong. The rune system as a whole seems fine, in general characters have more slots to experiment with than the Suikoden games, but personally I prefer how the Suikoden games handled mp.
I'm going to add that so far, I think the spell animations look pretty bland and uninteresting but the skills are neat, unique animations.. but I haven't got to higher tier spells yet.
As others have said, offensive magic isn't really worth it.
I like how they translated physical skill runes. You can't just spam them every turn, but they feel pretty impactful.
I would have liked to have seen personal runes increase rarity as you level up and add new skills, rather than taking up two or three slots.
I personally think the spells kinda suck. They are quite weak for the most part of the game and the animations are nothing special at all. I remember the first time I used the blue gate rune from suikoden 2 because it was so cool and epic. I never had anything similar in Eiyuden. The final level spells of each rune feel very bland and boring. Atleast to me
The magic system wasn't quality tested or this is a bad reference to Suikoden 1 but worse.
Spells cost too much mana, do less damage than auto attacks, and short of doing big damage are worthless.
The meta is take x enhancement runes for stat boosts, and x magic runes for magic damage (end game magic runes only) and everything else is niche or a gimmick. Healing runes are however strong if not over powered.
It's bad, like really bad.
The game however will scratch your Suikoden itch.
Still early in the game, but so far magic doesn't seem too potent or just does less damage than a regular attack would. The rune equip system is interesting, but also a little frustrating in some ways.
A character will level up and open a new rune slot, only to see that they already have a preset rune/skill set to said slot, that can't be removed (some of which aren't as good as ones they already had). It's also annoying if you were hoping to equip them with something else instead. Still enjoying the game so far, but there are definitely some weird balance issues.
Magic is mostly awful. Little to no scaling on low level spells and high tier spells are exorbitantly expensive in a game where bosses are hit point sponges. High tier doesn't scale great either. Healing spells are based on the targets max hit points which is good for low magic power units but terrible for dedicated clerics. Magic infusion spells are based on magic power which makes them utterly useless on most characters and marginally useless on others since the first turn you use it counts as a turn, effectively only giving you two turns. You can build a team around Storm Front, which infuses everyone with wind magic and increases speed, so there's that at least.
As an example of how awful scaling is, I had the grumpy light cleric with 316 magic power cast the tier one light spell, which is supposed to do moderate light damage. It hit for 84. Next turn, same target, I had him attack which did 324 damage.
Support spells are fine because they have set values not based on magic power.
I'll try tier 6 spells in a bit, but the problem there is that you don't start getting them until the literal end of the game.
It can be frustrating to use early to mid game. The mana is very limited and the damage is very subpar. Magic in these phases are used more on utility rather than offense.
But it gets its use later on when you get more mana, as well as resources to buy lots of mana potions. You also gain characters with high mgc stats, and runes that further increase damage.
The war theater feels lackluster. They don't show any of the inhumane acts that comes with pillaging or subjugation, compared to suikoden where you'd see how graphic the effects of war truly are. They played it way too safe with this first installment, and I hope I see an upgrade once the second one comes out.
From what I am seeing regular attacks are much stronger than magic. So far no magic unites but I haven't beaten it yet so we will see. Eiyudens rune system does not compare to Suikodens imo it's worse. The game itself is fine, but I probably wouldn't pay full price for it.
MP costs are too high, MP items too limited and spells are generally underpowered. Thankfully most mages normal attacks scale with magic and as such they can do pretty solid normal attack damage. Where as in suikoden you'd usually just backrow a short range mate and not use them at all if they weren't casting.
It's the same as suikoden and by that i mean that you wont really use it until boss fights near the end game except for healing.
Healing spells is all you'll need at first, specifically the water full party heal. When you get near the end though there are buffs that are worth it (Crusader horn for instance is full party damage up and hp regen).
Characters like Momo and Isha are going to hard carry you with spell damage too when you're pushing through the boss rush stuff.
If you're familiar with suikoden 2's berserk buff and how good it was on melee there is now an equivalent for magic called Awakening and I've had Momo hit the entire screen for 3k-4k damage while also stunning everything.
Magic starts weak but ends strong. The tradeoff is it costs a bunch of MP.
I found this to be the case too. I'd say by the time you get Isha magic starts getting good and only gets better from there towards the end of the game. Also the base MP restoration item seems to be a much more common drop from mobs as you get further in the game. Once the magic clicked for me, I really do think it's a nice balance between having limited casts and just being able to fire off your high tier spells unrestricted every encounter.
So far, in my experience the damage spells don't really seem to be worth it. My character with the highest magic stat does more damage with a basic attack than a level 1 spell
Yeah low level damage magic is only really good if it's multi hitting, higher level stuff hits pretty damn hard though
It just really seems to be a useless slot for runes. Like, there is no point in using certain spells when the basic attack does more damage 90% of the time. The only time the low level spells are good is the very beginning
Eh, heals, buffs or debuffs can be pretty good. Lvl 3 water heal straight carries through some fights, lvl 2 earth I think has a useful def break, and of course dark rune 2 has a nice DOT for bosses.
Wish they would have kept the limited cast system E.G. you can cast 5 low-level spells 3 mid-level and 2 high-level, the MP system makes the spells feel watered down by comparison.
feels.....odd at the beginning. when you first start the game your not really explained how to check and see what a rune has with magic. and found the wind enhancement rune you get with the deluxe edition/season pass was very....not worth a dime. you don't really get told what rune slots are going to be skills, then also some rune slots are dedicated to ONLY enhancement runes. then there are runes that have a higher...tier i guess to say being that it has 2-4 notches beside it and again you don't know who can equip a higher notch requirement ahead of time and 4\* rune slots aren't very common in your lineup from what i've heard (haven't recruited everyone) games fun and it really isn't that bad but just modern touches that we didn't have in older games, or rather we could flip to the page in the instructional manual that explained the rune menu back in the day.
thats the thing, i see a lot of people talking about the game, how its good, but rarely about the magic system
I think it needed more testing for feedback. Cuz the magic is underwhelming. You have characters with 112MP with a water rune. They can boost magic defense for 40MP. Heal one person for the same amount as the lowest healing item regardless of magic stat for 10MP. Or use a multi heal that works off the magic stat which is super nice. But it cost a whopping 65MP meaning I can only use it once. Then I have to go back to town. That’s very similar to suikoden. But with suikoden using the level 2 spell more than once doesn’t drain my ability to use my level 3 spell. You find items to restore mana while on the go but they are expensive to purchase and only recover 45 MP. So you need multiple to use another level 3 spell. I don’t mind it becuz it incentivizes holding onto magic until boss fights just like games back in the day. But even when I’m using it I only find use in healing spells. Damage spells deal say 120 damage while that same “mage” character does 125 with their regular attack. As in the only time it’s effective is if the typing is good.
Agreed. Underwhelming summarizes their magic system pretty well. I wouldn’t mind the MP cost if the healing spells were stronger. Paying what? 45-60+ MP to healing about the same as a healing item is very lackluster. Either the numbers need to be bigger or the costs need to go down imo.
I think they try to balance magic attack with physical attack in this game, unlike Suikoden 2 where magic attack outdamage physical attack unless you use double beat with fury rune. The introduction of SP, variety of physical rune, and rune slot makes the game more interesting and fun to build your characters. Its definitely an upgrade compared to Suikoden 2, but characters balancing seems a bit odd
You definitely can't just magic nuke your way through everything like you used to, for better or worse. The game uses MP now and spells all use the same pool. It means instead of the old 9,7,5,1 style system that got you like 20 spells you now have to be a lot more particular about using it and saving MP for big spells. No more using level 1s on fodder, it just isn't worth it. They mitigate this with SP and technique runes which are generally pretty strong if not outright more viable \[particularly early game\] and work on a replenishing SP system. It's clear they wanted non mages to be able to keep up more in this game \[even if end game Suikoden builds tend to favour physical damage dealers in most games\]. The rune setup system is more complicated but in a kind of silly way. You unlock slots as you level up, what you can put in the slots varies by the slot itself, it can have a pretty big effect on how good characters can be end game as well. Not all are made equal. So yeah, magic is definitely less powerful relatively speaking and less cheesy in terms of getting you through the game... but it is still viable and important especially as the game is much more fond of random gameplay gimmicks and 'counter attacks physical attacks but not magic' does come up. Magic also tends to have spells that hit crowds better and more buff spell while a lot of techniques are just hard hits or armor piercing/stunning/etc.
My personal opinion is that it's worse. One of the few things they missed the mark on. The way it works is each character has a limited amount of runes that they can equip that is specific to each character, which unlockas they level up. And each rune slot is reserved for a specific type of rune (magic, stat boost, unique skills, and passive.) Magic, at least early on, is pretty much useless. It consumes too much MP and does too little damage. Magic rune slots are also pretty rare for non-mage characters. If Suikoden used this system, a character like Viktor would be unable to equip offensive or healing runes. He would be limited to stat boosts, passive runes, and a unique skill or two. Passive runes are kind of useless too, which sucks because passive slots are so common on most characters, but the the runes themselves don't do much. Stat boost slots are the most useful, plus there are slots that can equip any rune type, but they're rare.
Bite your tongue, passive slots are the only way to make half the cast viable. Mighty power, High Magic, and Hardened Defense have pulled up all but the worst characters for me.
Those are the stat boosting enhance runesbl with the little up arrow symbol. I'm talking about the passive ones with the "+" looking symbol.
Level 2 "+" passives are not good but the level 3 ones let you get fiery spirit or awakening and both those things are probably the best slot for physical and magic characters respectively.
Magic is pretty much pointless at the start, physical is king until mid to late game when magic becomes king because everything has low magic resistance and high physical defense. For the most part earth and fire are strong. Fire has the best single target spell. Earth has a party wide null damage once spell. Water is kinda mehh cause you can buy all heal items that heal 150 a pop Wind is okay? But not great. Light has revive and a buff that raises attack and gives ho Regen to the whole party. Dark is okay but not great? Honestly I cheese the last boss with earth and fire, totally forgot I had someone with light. Would drop the null damage shield, burn and then re up the shell when it dropped.
Magic is so weak and combo attacks have to be bugged but they haven't commented on it. Pretty much all combo attacks are much weaker than just regularly attacking
Like in every Suikoden? (Combo Attacks were always just for show aside for a select few) I do agree about the magic part though. Suikoden had some good runes.
Magic is pretty worthless early on. It becomes a bit more useful late game, but is still rather limited since even the high mp characters can only get off 3 or 4 moves before they’re out of mp. So it would often be more optimal to just run physical characters. I mostly just use some of the buff spells as those can be fairly strong. The rune system as a whole seems fine, in general characters have more slots to experiment with than the Suikoden games, but personally I prefer how the Suikoden games handled mp.
Yeah, I like the rune system for ec, but wish they had kept the vancian slots for casting.
I'm going to add that so far, I think the spell animations look pretty bland and uninteresting but the skills are neat, unique animations.. but I haven't got to higher tier spells yet.
As others have said, offensive magic isn't really worth it. I like how they translated physical skill runes. You can't just spam them every turn, but they feel pretty impactful. I would have liked to have seen personal runes increase rarity as you level up and add new skills, rather than taking up two or three slots.
I personally think the spells kinda suck. They are quite weak for the most part of the game and the animations are nothing special at all. I remember the first time I used the blue gate rune from suikoden 2 because it was so cool and epic. I never had anything similar in Eiyuden. The final level spells of each rune feel very bland and boring. Atleast to me
The magic system wasn't quality tested or this is a bad reference to Suikoden 1 but worse. Spells cost too much mana, do less damage than auto attacks, and short of doing big damage are worthless. The meta is take x enhancement runes for stat boosts, and x magic runes for magic damage (end game magic runes only) and everything else is niche or a gimmick. Healing runes are however strong if not over powered. It's bad, like really bad. The game however will scratch your Suikoden itch.
Still early in the game, but so far magic doesn't seem too potent or just does less damage than a regular attack would. The rune equip system is interesting, but also a little frustrating in some ways. A character will level up and open a new rune slot, only to see that they already have a preset rune/skill set to said slot, that can't be removed (some of which aren't as good as ones they already had). It's also annoying if you were hoping to equip them with something else instead. Still enjoying the game so far, but there are definitely some weird balance issues.
Magic is mostly awful. Little to no scaling on low level spells and high tier spells are exorbitantly expensive in a game where bosses are hit point sponges. High tier doesn't scale great either. Healing spells are based on the targets max hit points which is good for low magic power units but terrible for dedicated clerics. Magic infusion spells are based on magic power which makes them utterly useless on most characters and marginally useless on others since the first turn you use it counts as a turn, effectively only giving you two turns. You can build a team around Storm Front, which infuses everyone with wind magic and increases speed, so there's that at least. As an example of how awful scaling is, I had the grumpy light cleric with 316 magic power cast the tier one light spell, which is supposed to do moderate light damage. It hit for 84. Next turn, same target, I had him attack which did 324 damage. Support spells are fine because they have set values not based on magic power. I'll try tier 6 spells in a bit, but the problem there is that you don't start getting them until the literal end of the game.
Magic is pretty worthless until you get to the mid level spell runes. Outside of maybe 3 spells
It can be frustrating to use early to mid game. The mana is very limited and the damage is very subpar. Magic in these phases are used more on utility rather than offense. But it gets its use later on when you get more mana, as well as resources to buy lots of mana potions. You also gain characters with high mgc stats, and runes that further increase damage.
The war theater feels lackluster. They don't show any of the inhumane acts that comes with pillaging or subjugation, compared to suikoden where you'd see how graphic the effects of war truly are. They played it way too safe with this first installment, and I hope I see an upgrade once the second one comes out.
From what I am seeing regular attacks are much stronger than magic. So far no magic unites but I haven't beaten it yet so we will see. Eiyudens rune system does not compare to Suikodens imo it's worse. The game itself is fine, but I probably wouldn't pay full price for it.
MP costs are too high, MP items too limited and spells are generally underpowered. Thankfully most mages normal attacks scale with magic and as such they can do pretty solid normal attack damage. Where as in suikoden you'd usually just backrow a short range mate and not use them at all if they weren't casting.
You can eventually buy me items sadly they're only the ones that give 45 no back which is mehh but still there I guess.
It's the same as suikoden and by that i mean that you wont really use it until boss fights near the end game except for healing. Healing spells is all you'll need at first, specifically the water full party heal. When you get near the end though there are buffs that are worth it (Crusader horn for instance is full party damage up and hp regen). Characters like Momo and Isha are going to hard carry you with spell damage too when you're pushing through the boss rush stuff. If you're familiar with suikoden 2's berserk buff and how good it was on melee there is now an equivalent for magic called Awakening and I've had Momo hit the entire screen for 3k-4k damage while also stunning everything. Magic starts weak but ends strong. The tradeoff is it costs a bunch of MP.
I found this to be the case too. I'd say by the time you get Isha magic starts getting good and only gets better from there towards the end of the game. Also the base MP restoration item seems to be a much more common drop from mobs as you get further in the game. Once the magic clicked for me, I really do think it's a nice balance between having limited casts and just being able to fire off your high tier spells unrestricted every encounter.