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.