Earlier than Remaining Fantasy VII took RPGs as an entire into the mainstream, Suikoden made its mark as one of many first high quality role-playing titles launched exterior of Japan on PlayStation. The sport’s important conceit was based mostly loosely on the Chinese language literary traditional The Water Margin: A younger outcast and his pals collect up companions to kind the 108 Stars of Future, constructing an impressive insurgent outpost and finally toppling a depraved empire. Suikoden’s success would encourage a number of sequels, together with fast follow-up Suikoden II, regarded by many as a shining gem within the PS1’s RPG library.
With fame and acclaim, nevertheless, comes a price ticket: Authentic copies of Suikoden II run within the a whole bunch of {dollars}, and that is even with a number of well-known, game-breaking bugs that had been inadvertently launched within the English model. This is the place Konami seemingly swoops in to the rescue, providing each Suikoden I and II collectively for a low worth and promising lovely new HD graphics and bonus options. This was introduced again in 2022, and now, two and a half years later as a result of delays, we lastly have Suikoden I&II HD Remaster–and I am left questioning simply how all that point this remaster spent cooking within the oven was spent.
First, let’s speak a bit in regards to the video games themselves. I first performed each of those titles again on the PS1 a few years in the past. The unique Suikoden was the sport I used to be most excited to revisit, because it had been nicely over twenty years since I might final performed it, and I might forgotten a lot about it. I used to be happy to rediscover a nice, breezy RPG with a fast-paced story, easy turn-based fight, and an enthralling humorousness. It is fairly brief, and with the dearth of load instances and addition of battle speed-up choices, you may simply end it in round 15-20 hours doing all the non-obligatory content material.
Despite the fact that Suikoden is a high-quality outing by itself, it nonetheless comes up brief in methods: The breakneck tempo of the plot leaves plenty of story and character improvement feeling rushed (and the shocking-twists nearly comically pre-choreographed), and the large rebel-versus-empire military clashes at huge story factors come off as half-baked. Suikoden II is a much bigger and higher sport in some ways, not least of which is the storytelling: Characters and plotlines usually get much more time to breathe and develop, making the stakes really feel larger and giving the twists far more impact–plus you get to see and be taught extra about many characters from the primary sport. With 108 characters to recruit in every title, there are some of us on the group who aren’t going to get as a lot display screen time, however Suikoden II does a significantly better job of creating everybody in your military really feel necessary. It is also an extended sport, as you may count on your play time to run roughly 30-40 hours from begin to end. It was one among my favorites on the PS1 again throughout its launch, and it stays wonderful to at the present time.
As with most HD remasters, the large upfront promoting level is HD visuals: high-res 2D graphics and widescreen environments. The environments and character portraits bought an enormous makeover, with the backgrounds trying extremely sharp and detailed, whereas the portraits had been redrawn and recolored by unique artists Junko Kawano and Fumi Ishikawa. That is the primary main stumbling level for this assortment, nevertheless, as some questionable selections had been made when redoing the graphics.
Whereas some components look implausible, the precise sprites did not get the identical remedy. They’re the identical as the unique, simply with a sharper for HD shows. There is no further effort or graphical trickery like in Sq.-Enix’s HD-2D titles to make these pixel sprites mix along with the detailed backgrounds, so that you wind up with characters manufactured from razor-sharp pixels continuously clashing with very finely detailed backgrounds in a means that constantly appears to be like awkward and distracting. The asset mismatch is particularly noticeable in battles the place digicam pans and zooms are frequent. I do know Suikoden has plenty of characters and that redrawing all of the sprites in HD could possibly be plenty of work, however the strategy used right here means the characters and backgrounds do not come collectively naturally.
Past the graphics, nevertheless, what kind of upgrades are you able to count on from these remasters? Sadly, not a lot of observe. A few of the additions–such because the in-game gallery and game-specific changes like sooner and freer motion in Suikoden I–were already current within the PSP re-releases that by no means made it out of Japan. The one huge adjustments to this model, past the visible replace, are a battle speed-up choice, a dialogue log going again as much as 100 textual content bins, fast-to-nonexistent load instances, and quite a few bug fixes throughout each video games.
These actually aren’t unhealthy additions, however they’re absolutely the bare-minimum inclusions you’d count on from a remaster. Some very apparent quality-of-life adjustments have gone fully unaddressed.
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For instance, Suikoden I’s merchandise administration is notoriously awful–you cannot see if an individual can equip gear when giving it to them or taking it out of storage, you may’t trade objects with a personality holding the utmost quantity, and you may’t deposit or withdraw a number of objects from storage directly. These are the form of conveniences you’re taking without any consideration in trendy RPGs however weren’t standardized in 1996. Once you’ve bought dozens of characters with separate inventories to handle, this will get very messy, in a short time. Was this modified in any significant means? Nicely, one necessary merchandise (the fast-travel Blinking Mirror) was moved from taking on a personality’s stock house to being in your plot objects bag–that’s it. There are different gripes in addition to that, too. Why do I’ve to re-adjust my battle pace from the default throughout each single combat? The place’s all the additional content material from the Suikoden I launch on the Japanese Sega Saturn? The entire bundle simply has an aura of missed alternative, which is particularly disappointing to me given its years of delay.
Because it stands, it is a bundle of two nice video games that’s serviceable. Exterior of some interface points which are principally artifacts of the video games’ age, there’s nothing fallacious with Suikoden I and II–in truth, they continue to be as wonderful as ever. Nevertheless it’s arduous to do away with the nagging feeling that this remaster feels uneven between the weirdly contrasting visuals and the overall lack of quality-of-life enhancements past the naked minimal. Suikoden is an exceptional sequence that deserves all of the adore it can get, and with how costly the unique titles have develop into, any solution to let folks get pleasure from them is welcome–but these two video games actually should be reintroduced with the crimson carpet, not the cheesy doormat.