Suikoden II

"Easily one of the best games for the system."

The game begins in Tengan Pass where the Highland Unicorn Brigade are camped out. You and your childhood friend Jowy can't sleep, so you walk around the area for a bit. When you come back, the camp is on fire, and you have to escape before a traitor kills you. Your only way to escape is for you Jowy to jump down a waterfall and hope for the best. You wake up some time later separated from your friend, will you ever meet him again, or are you destined to stay apart forever?

Graphics: 9/10

For 2-D Graphics, it isn't going to get much better than this. The character models are very colorful and very vibrant, and good enough that you can usually tell what people will join you simply by looking at them. On that same note, due to the 108+ characters in the game, there are a lot of separate character models, which shows that Konami put some effort into the game. The only thing is, was they kinda got lax with the townspeople characters, but I can let that slide.

The backgrounds are nice too. Much like the characters, they are vibrant and busy. Can't really complain about the backgrounds either.

Sound Effects/Music: 9/10

The Sound Effects are nice in this as well. During the battles though, basically all the weapons sound the same for some reason, which seems kinda lazy to me, after the effort put into the graphics. The rest of the sound effects are good though. Clear, and you know what's happening.

The music in this game is hit or miss for the most part. If the music is good, it's really good. If the music is bad, it's really bad. Fortunately, bad music isn't in the game very often, and mostly has an excellent score. It's all quite suiting for the areas your in, or what you're doing at the moment.

Controls: 10/10

It's a breeze to control anything at any time. The menu's are easy to navigate, the battle commands are easy to pull off, and any other action is simple. You'd be hard pressed to find a problem with this game's control. The only thing I can think of off hand, is that the dancing mini-game can be hard, but it's the exact timing problems more than the controls.

Gameplay: 10/10

This game is amazing, plain and simple. It's innovative in a few ways, which is nice in a genre of rip-offs.

The main selling point of the game, to recruit 108 characters, is fun to do. Sure most of the characters you will find as the story unfolds, but there are plenty to find, and it's interesting to find out how they will contribute to your group.

Not to mention there are several mini-games to play, such as a cook-offs, dancing, and rope climbing mini-games, all of with are rather enjoyable, and can give decent prizes. Also there are little side quests, like finding recipes for you to make better foods, and to trade items to make a large profit.

One other unique thing about this game is you can load of data from the first Suikoden if you have beaten it, and it unlocks things in Suikoden II which you can't get otherwise!
This was a good idea, since it may encourage people to play the original, so you can understand this one better.

Another nice feature in the game is the battle system. It is very fast paced and actually feels like a fight is going on since everyone usually doesn't wait their turn to attack. I haven't seen one like it outside of the series, and it's a shame because it's a good system.

Also certain times in the game you go into a one on one rock-paper-scissors type duel where you must use one of three choices to knock your opponents health down, and try to keep yours high up. (Which kind of goes without saying.)

Finally there is war strategy battles, where you control armies to protect a base usually. These battles are straight forward, and not terribly hard. Which is a shame, but they are a nice change from the normal battles. It's nice how there is different types of battles on occasion to keep the battles from getting too stale.

One problem I do have with the game is the translation. Sometimes it has very blatant simple errors that you wonder how they got through the testing. It doesn't bother me any, but it does make the game's story seem kind of sloppy if the characters can't speak like they should. That can be a turn off for some people.

The game does have quite a bit of re-playability though, since it has multiple endings, and all the stuff to find, which is pretty much impossible with one play through, so you will most likely want to play through it more than once.

Graphics 9/10
Sound Effects/Music 9/10
Control 10/10
Gameplay 10/10
Overall 9.5/10 (rounded up to 10 due to the gameplay)

Rent or Buy?

I would have to say buy it definitely. Unless you aren't a very big fan of RPG, then I say. Why did you read this review in the first place? So regardless, you should buy this game, I guarantee you won't be disappointed.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 05/19/03, Updated 05/19/03