Good quality remaster of two essential top tier RPGs from the PS1 era. Rest in Peace, Yoshitaka Murayama.

And hey KONAMI, give us a Bloody Roar remaster / collection while you're at it, it has been too long...

Tons of dialogue options that repeat infinitely until you pick the one the dev approves of (Why tf did you make a dialogue option system if the choice are all fake?). Especially when the characters make the dumbest decisions known to man, you are given a dialogue option to prevent it, but all that does it make you stuck forever unless you pick the dumb option (one is literally to drink poison...wtf?)
Auto combat.
108 characters that you NEED to keep equipped at all times and leveled because your party is CONSTANTLY randomly made up 5/6 of forced characters with no choice even if they're underleveled, or effectively naked.
The WORST inventory management system I have ever seen.
Bro you ported this to PC and didn't give it mouse support? Do you have any idea why anyone games on a PC? It's to use a friggen mouse.
Didn't even bother giving an option to exit the game on the main menu ffs.

It's still a Legend.

Amazing

Suikoden 1:

For context, I have never played this or Suikoden 2 before so I don’t have any nostalgia to smooth my feelings over how dated this game is in particular. That’s not to say it’s bad or that I hated my time with it. It’s a very simple game by today’s standard, that is to say, it isn't all that interesting. It’s fairly short, has a surprisingly low random encounter rate for a PS1 RPG and is laughably easy. The UI is frustrating to navigate and the story never gets any more complex than you building a massive army to fight the big bad at the end, outside of a few shocking deaths, the story is predictable and simple. The music is pretty good though.

I also have to mention Suikoden's inventory system limit threatens to bog the game down and turn it into a tedious micromanagement simulation every time you equip party members or pick up literally anything. It's a constant issue throughout the game that eases slightly once you get access to the storeroom, but is just annoying enough to be worth mentioning.

As a result, the game is a real slog to play at times. Not a bad game by any means but I don’t think it holds up all that well.

Playing both games side-by-side really highlights that Suikoden 1 feels like the blueprint for what 2 is…


Suikoden 2:

And that is because Suikoden 2 is an improvement in almost every regard. It’s an ambitious sequel that presents a compelling war plot with memorable scenes and a large cast of characters. That’s not to say the game has aged well in every aspect, but it is a more engaging and fun game if you can tolerate its quirks and rough edges.

The story is more personal and heartfelt. There’s a real tension and weight to scenes in this game that was completely absent in the first. The writing isn’t exactly nuanced or subtle, but the script flows well and is kind of captivating, despite how quick some scenes fly by. The game opens with a betrayal only to then spiral into a frenzy of violence a few hours later. As the story opens up, personal motivations, cruelty and petty politics complicate a border war into something far grander and bloody. Bad people do bad things in this game purely out of cruelty and power. I don't think Luca is a particularly well written character, but he is a great villain. He's a terrifying combination of violence and unpredictability, the sort of guy who'd chop a man's head off if he looked at him the wrong way. This leads to him being a much stronger antagonist than anything the first game cooked up.

There’s a seriousness to the writing in Suikoden 2 that makes each scene feel tense. That something could go wrong at any moment and you simply have to live with the consequences. The story and writing are some of the best parts of this game and that's good because the gameplay itself is mostly underwhelming.

The main issue with playing Suikoden 2 is the absurd task of recruiting all 108 Stars of Destiny. Each star is a recruitable character in the game and just like the first one, you have to recruit all of them if you want the ‘best’ ending. If you want the true ending, you must either stare at a guide the entire time or spend hours upon hours thoroughly investigating every background and NPC in the game as to not miss a single one.

To make matters worse, there are a number of hidden gotchas that will lock you out of this ending even if you happen to collect all 108 Stars. The prospect of missing out or losing permanent progress in a game that’s as long as Suikoden 2 is a daunting and ever frustrating presence the game never shakes. While I do appreciate that the developers wanted to make the ending special, I don’t think the ending is genuinely worth the effort involved. Frankly, I don’t even think the 108 Stars ending is integrated into the game all that well.

Why is that? Well, there's a real sense that you're being forced to perform busywork for the sake of seeing the true end. The protagonist's mercenary band expands as a consequence of the railroaded main story, so there's not much of a sense that the player is responsible for its growth even if they take the time and effort to recruit every character. If every character felt meaningful and special, maybe this could work, but this would be hard to achieve in any game. 108 is just too large of a number to turn into a cast of fully fleshed out characters, each with their own motivations and personal reasons to join your cause. Of course some of them do, but just as many have no reason to join you other than they kinda feel like it or because you picked up a window frame or some random musical sheet. Once the novelty wears off, you realise the characters you’ve picked up aren’t really all that unique or interesting outside of their visual design.

And the combat, just like in the first game, is disappointingly easy. So easy in fact, that it diminishes the excitement of recruiting new characters. because they have no impact in combat when everything dies in two hits. Which inevitably means recruiting new party members is mostly about hitting that 108 tally, and not enjoying a party combination to play around with.

The stuff you unlock at your base is also fairly uninteresting outside of a few conveniences like fast travel and shops. The minigames are complete time wasters that never really amount to much outside of the cooking substory. While it is cool to watch the base get bigger and more populated as you progress through the 108 recruitment checklist, I didn’t personally feel any emotional attachment for 80% of the characters running around my base. They exist as props to satisfy one of several requirements to unlock that aforementioned true end. And the true ending is very sweet, but Suikoden 2’s way of achieving it isn’t very elegant or fun.

This was a big sticking point for me as it felt like the 108 Stars system would be a cool concept if it were handled differently. As it is, it feels more like a chore to help extend the length of the game. Something that was definitely more accepted and even expected with RPGs from this era.

If you include this and a few other minor annoyances that add up between both games like the aggressive absence of signposting, which normally I wouldn’t care for but playing Suikoden often translates to aimless wandering across the world map with no indication of where to progress the story. The lack of clear direction elevates the act of playing from engaging to needlessly frustrating. I generally avoid using guides but Suikoden stands as one of the rare exceptions where external assistance felt less like an option and more like a necessity to mitigate boredom. To its credit, at least the random encounters are easy to pass on and the battle speed up function is a very welcome one.

Ultimately, these complaints aren’t a deal breaker for returning players and I just wanted to give my thoughts as a total newcomer to the franchise. Despite my complaints, I think the core scenario of Suikoden 2 was worth seeing and I’d still like to play more of the franchise if Konami ever bothers to remaster more of them.