Suikoden II

"On a system with way to many RPGs, Suikoden II shines a little more than most of the others in any collection...."

While Namco was the company that got a lot of credit to be Sony's most important 3rd company on the Playstation, it's hard to think what the Playstation would have been if Konami decided to just avoid the system. I think that we all can agree that Metal Gear Solid is one of the most important games on the system, and that Castlevania Symphony of the Night also is one of the best games on the system. But since the Playstation turned out to be a system with a lot of RPGs, it would have been strange if Konami wouldn't have been there to bless the system with a Konami RPG. The Suikoden series and Vandal Hearts series were born..

The first Suikoden was along with Wild ARMs one of the first excellent RPGs on the Playstation and was two important titles for anyone who wanted to have a RPG friendly system in the middle 90's. Then Final Fantasy VII got released and RPGs suddenly became one of the most popular type of games, and advanced graphic cut-scenes almost became a must for an RPG if it should be considered as a great RPG. Personally I loved the first Suikoden and really looked forward to play the sequel, even if I thought that it wouldn't be as good as the first one.

If you got a Suikoden save file on your memory card, then you can load that one before you begin this game which unlock certain features. Except for one obvious that I'm not going to spoil here,I'm not sure what it does. Bit if you already didn't have a reason to play through the original Suikoden, then you have one now..

Just like in the previous game, Suikoden 2's main character is a young boy with no default name, instead you have to choose one. However since there have been a bunch of novels based on the Suikoden series have been released where the main character's name is Riou, I'm going to call him Riou from now on in this review. Riou is just like his friend Jowy in his early teenage years, and they have both just joined the Highlander army. I don't want to spoil all the story for you, so I'm just going to say that a couple of events takes and the two friends will fight for different armies, however will the war be able to kill the great friendship that our two heroes had?

The story is actually somewhat similar to the first Suikoden. You are a young boy who wants to fight for his country, but ends up creating an army against the country that he actually grew up in. Just like in Suikoden I, you will after a while get your own castle where you can start to build up your own army, and as you might have already guessed you can recruit a lot of characters in your army who will help you in many different ways just like in Suikoden I. It was one of the things that made Suikoden I an excellent game and it works just as well in Suikoden II.

Just like in the first Suikoden, your party can't have more characters then six, and three of them will be in the front row while the other three will be in the back row. A character can be one of three different types of character: Short range, Middle range or Long range. Short ranged characters have to be in the front row in order to do regular attacks, but they still can use Runes in the back row.

In the first Suikoden there where a few special battles where you either invaded different castles or kingdoms and had to choose if you wanted to attack the enemy with arrows, melee weapons or with magic from the runes. The boring thing with those battles was that when you had recruited three ninjas, then you could tell the enemies strategy until the battle was over and because of that those battles never had any challenge in them. This has however been changed in Suikoden II, because now the special battles are more like the battles in Fire Emblem, and actually it takes some strategy to win them.

Another kind of battle in Suikoden was the 1VS1 duels. In these kind of battles Riou has three different kind of commands: Wild Attack, Attack or Defend. Wild Attack makes as twice as much damage as a regular attack, but if your opponent have decided to defend, then he will counter and do a lot of damage on you. Attack is a regular attack and defend makes the enemy's attack do less damage. The trick to win these kind of duels is to figure out what the opponent's next move is by trying to figure it out by understand what he says before he does everything. For example if he says: "I'm going to give you all I got", then he's going to make a wild attack so defend is the best command to choose. Personally I think these battles are the best so it's shame that there aren't to many of them.

But the reason why the Suikoden series is so special is because you get to build uop your own army in a different way than in the strategi games. Here you have to search the whole world for every character you want to have in your army (Except for random soldiers which are only fighting for you because they believe in the cause you are fighting for.) For example it might pay of to visit a town that you have been in for a while since maybe a new character who wants to join your party have showed up. There's one character who you can recruit early in the game and he can then tell you where new recruits can be found and how you recruit them.

There are a total of 108 different characters that you can recruit, plus a few more if you want to do a few side quests. Most of them are useful but there are a few that you could call fillers, since the only thing they do is to join your army so you have another "star" on the big stone tablet. For example I doubt there are many who cares if you characters has a chance to take a bath, or who would actually want to use a character like Simone in their party?

But there are also many characters with great side quests. For example it's possible to challenge other chefs at cooking contests after that you have recruited a chef for your army. Another cool thing is that you can recruit a character and then play a fun mini game called "Whack a Mole" whiche is similar to those Arcade games with a hammer. Or you could choose to beat Clive's side quest, where you have to bring Clive to certain places in the game before you have played to many hours. If you want to beat his side quest then you have to reach a place in the final part of the game before you have played the game for over 20 hours, a challenge if you also want to recruit all the stars and a couple of other things. There is a lot that you can do in this game.

Anyone who enjoyed to first Suikoden will also love this one. There are a few favourites from the first Suikoden who also appear in this game, but this game also features a lot of new memorable characters. The story between the friendship of Riou and Jowy is excellent, the evil Luca Blight is perhaps the best villain in any video game, and the few things which was bad about Suikoden I has been removed. The game is hard to found at a cheap price these days, but if you think that you can spend that much on any game, then Suikoden II is one of those games that you should spend that kind of money on. Konami did it again!

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 09/24/07

Game Release: Suikoden II (US, 08/31/99)