Suikoden II

Despite RPGs being my favorite genre for nearly 30 years now, I had never played any of the Suikoden games. I had watched my friend play the first one a little bit, but my experience ended there and all I knew about the series is that there was a ton of characters to recruit. Suikoden II appears to be the most acclaimed title of the 5 main games, and generally considered one of the best JRPG's not named Final Fantasy on the PS1. So did it live up to the hype? For the most part yes.

Suikoden II is a very standard JRPG with random encounters and turn based battles, not so far from the Dragon Quest series. Even for its time, it wasn't particularly innovative in that aspect but this has always been a favorite style of mine, so I really don't mind it. One of the most awesome things that struck me at first is that you get to put 6 characters in your party, giving you much more battle options than the standard 3 that Final Fantasy VII gives you. I like options in battles and this definitely gives you more which is great. As with all games in the series there is 108 characters to recruit, something that is not really possible to achieve without following a guide to the letter. I did not play for completion in that aspect, I just went on a normal route and if I find or miss companions so be it. You certainly don't need all of them (75% of them you will never put in your party anyway), but it's a nice touch for completists as there is quite a few that are not so easy to recruit.

The game has a great story that I really enjoyed. You start with your partner Jowy and end up in this big war of empires, the world map isn't that huge but each kingdom has its impact on things and it definitely feels like a grandiose story on the whole. I think it's one of the biggest draws for the game is to get to experience the storyline, not that gameplay is lackluster in anyway. As you progress in the game you will also get "Kingdom" battles where the game turns into a Fire Emblem-ish type of battles, this is a really a nice touch to the game but after a few of those you do realize that the system isn't fully fleshed out. The game has a good pace of fights, exploration, storyline, and kingdom battles, it does feel like the game is always making you doing something different to keep things fresh. Overall it's a great experience.

The game isn't without its flaws however, my biggest annoyance are "trigger" events that are required to make the story move forward, you need to go talk to a specific person or be at a specific location which half the time they do not tell you which. So you might be wandering what to do, until you randomly hit the right trigger. There is no Quest menu so it's highly important to pay attention to each conversation and the NPCs might not repeat where you need to go next. The game also has a very restrictive item space, you'll often be throwing out items as you don't have any more space for them. You do get access to a storage in some parts of the game, but going back and forth to it is not always a possibility (fast travel is only introduced in the later half of the game). Then there is the blacksmith/armor/rune shops that are not so common in each area, so if you want to re-arrange your party you might have to manually travel to other cities to get the necessary upgrades for your other members. But all in all this was the 90s, you can't expect those games to have all QOL elements that we do have in modern ones.

There's also quite a high level of mystery to the game, so many things are not explained and you just have to figure out by yourself, not only for the trigger evens but also for character recruitment, or just what runes exactly do. Lots of trial and error in those, I tried my best to play the game without a guide but I caved in a little at the end. I guess this can be a positive for some players, as it's definitely not an easy task becoming a Suikoden expert.

It took me about 37 hours to complete the game, and I wasn't even going for the extra stuff. It's definitely a long experience and might have completed it quicker if there were more save points available (some parts won't allow you to save for 30-60 minutes) so it was always hard for me to judge if I had more time to play the game as I wouldn't want to hit one of those long stretches and force to quit in the middle. But all in all, all these flaws are minor and I had an overall great time playing the game. Great classic turn based battles, great storyline, challenging bosses and a lot of flexibility in your party selection. It's really nice that each character has a deep backstory, and there is definitely a lot of lore in the game. High recommendation for vintage JRPG fans, this is an excellent one.

Taking the hint from the previous game, Suikoden II portrays an darker side to the original's theme of wartime cruelty. Here, the tragedy of war is pronounced to terrible extremes, with cutscenes that are almost uncomfortable to sit through, due to in large part the actions of Luca Blight, one of the most effective RPG villains of all time.

Besides presenting the horrors of a genocidal madman in all its twisted glory, Suikoden II is in many ways the emotional journey of two soldiers. The two major characters experience lives full of incredible hardship, one that brutally and unfairly tests their resolve, courage, and ultimately their friendship as their ideals slowly drift apart. The moments between the player character, Jowy, and Nanami constitute some of the most emotionally excruciating scenes in video game history. The maturity found within its morbid vision of war allows the game to confidently implement some more disturbing themes in its narrative, without fully engorging in its own bloodlust, that once again revolutionizes JRPG story. The game also succeeds in the narrative details, with 'microstories' revolving around the various towns and cities in the world effectively turning each one into meaningful locations of their own, not just spaces to buy equipment and restore HP. All-in-all, it was a crucial point in the evolution of political JRPG story. Whereas Yasumi Matsuno's brand always held a chilling, detached (yet paradoxically in-your-face) philosophy, Yoshitaka Murayama presented a humane, warmer, ideal outlook. However - unlike the naive enthusiasm of their peers, this was idealism tempered and fueled by sheer grief, remaining hopeful despite all the trauma.

While the combat system remains lacking, the base building of the original is expanded to include several more minigames and more inventive means of recruiting allies. While being a strong visual and mechanical upgrade over their predecessor. the gameplay of Suikoden II remains cast in the shadow of its plot, lost in the story's gripping emotional wasteland.

Suikoden II is a grand achievement, one that - in its cascades of tragedy, effectively represents a hyper-realist take on human conflict.

War and politics were ultimately the common themes that directed Suikoden's initial two releases, themes that disposed of the previous era's epic sense of adventure but nonetheless fashioned some of the most tragic, touching, poignant, and brutal concepts of its genre. Suikoden II in particular almost completely jettisoned the fantasy stereotypes of their ancestors, and stretched the 'medieval' aspect of JRPGs to its horrific terminal point.

This might have been something really special, if the strategy battles didn't kill any desire I have to replay this. Imagine a poor man's Fire emblem, except worse. What's worse is that everything else is really well done. Literally, if those strategy battles didn't exist, this might have been on par with Chrono Trigger.

Immediately after beating Suikoden 1 I was excited to finally go to the second game, I heard this one was so much better and improved so much on the formula. Immediately starting this I already saw a graphical improvement, and the game felt and controlled more smooth, and for the first few hours I actually felt the game was building up something big and exciting, Luca actually felt like a unique villain and he was a huge improvement over the generic ones in the first game. The game starts off a number of years after the first game and you run into many of the characters from the first game who you end up recruiting and some even become a crucial part to the story of this game. I actually like the nods this makes to the first game and how the characters are all still around to be recruited to fight again, along with plenty of new characters as well.

Now my problems with this game come once the game hits about the 1/4 point in. The game makes you think you are building up to fight Luca and you are with your sister and best friend on a quest visiting the different towns and seeing the destruction and evil going on, while running into characters from the previous Suikoden and new ones. But then out of nowhere your best friend betrays you and joins the bad guys and the game gets kind of weird after that. I mean I felt the betrayal just came out of nowhere and didn't feel natural, and after that point Luca doesn't really play a big role and sort of just does things behind the scene. Around 2/3 into the game you have a big fight in which you kill Luca, the big bad guy the game was building up and you kill him 2/3 into the game in a battle, not even part of a huge dungeon end or anything. After that the game just has an even bigger drop off and feels tedious and has you going against the same generic empire bad guys like the first game. I really wanted to like Suikoden 2, it plays and looks better than the 1st game and is longer with a bigger World, but it just has so many cool ideas that it doesn't utilize enough.

Luca was a great villain who after the first 1/4 of the game takes a back seat and then goes out in a basic fight and his death doesn't even feel significant. Your friend just betrays you for no good reason and he sort of goes behind the scenes until near the end as well. Due to there being so many characters most characters just feel insignificant and only 4 or 5 characters in this actually feel like they are important or contribute anything to the story. Also its cool going and seeing the different characters from the previous games, but at the same time I feel like it is a bit heavy handed and the references to the first game just become too much. In fact this game doesn't add a whole lot of new things, the most is the Fire Emblem battle system where you move units to battle each other during the war fights and those hardly are that fun or interesting. The World and locations to this didn't feel as memorable as the first game outside maybe 1 or 2 areas. The end game to this just felt generic and disappointing and the final boss wasn't that good. There are a few different endings you can get but at that point I just lost interest in the story that even the best ending in this didn't satisfy me. I think the biggest thing for me is this game had me so hooked for the first 1/4 where I was really enjoying the direction the game was going, the characters, the setting and villains, but then the tone of the game shifts, the story shifts, the focus shifts, the pacing shifts. But then after the first 1/4 the game just had a huge drop off in quality for me and the game failed to keep me interested after that. In fact I remember playing this game at the same time as Persona 4 and I just stopped playing this for a week to play through Persona 4 because this game interested me a lot less.

This still isn't a bad game, it plays alright and plays almost exactly like the first game with a few small improvements. The story of this is a slight better than the generic first game's story and this game has slightly better boss fights too. But I just felt the story to this wasn't consistent and didn't fully use its strong points, and the final 1/3 to this game just felt incredibly generic and bland and none of the locations after the beginning really stood out to me. Plus the references to the first game at times just becomes too much. Compared to the Final Fantasy games I just really didn't care much for this at all.

It's about as good as Suikoden 1, which is to say it's a fun RPG, but plagued by aging problems, especially insane encounter rates. Like Suikoden 1, I enjoyed recruiting new characters and building up my castle, even if the rest of the gameplay wasn't up to snuff. The game looks as bland as the original, and the story was pretty average, though it started out exciting when the first villain, Luca Blight, was still wrecking villages and being a jerk. I feel like the game thought I was more attached to the characters than I actually was--there were several moments that seemed to be trying to tug at heartstrings, but I didn't care much about Jowy, Namami, or Ridley. I'm sure Suikoden 2 was a lot better back when it was a new game.