Suikoden II is the Best Suikoden
Building off its predecessor’s foundation, Suikoden II ups the ante to become one of the most beloved PlayStation Japanese RPGs of all time
Okay, I know what you’re thinking: “Now you’re just fucking with us.” And yes, but also very much no. Yes, I did recently write a rationale for why Suikoden I is the best Suikoden. And I meant every word. Just as I mean every word of this post. And every word of the ones that will come after it. Because I’m not actually here to tell you definitively which game is The Best. I’m here to make the case for why each game is The Best. Devil’s Advocate? Hell no. It’s more that after far too many hours trying to figure out “the math” of what game might be the best, I kept coming back to the fact that everyone can have their own, and everyone can be right. But, you know, that said…
Suikoden II is the Best Suikoden!
This is actually probably the most popular sentiment among Suikoden fans, because, well, Suikoden II is a stunning game and represents, for me at least, the height of RPGs on the original Playstation (and all on a single disc!).
It Improves On Just About Everything
There aren’t many elements of Suikoden I that Suikoden II doesn’t take and make even better. The rune system is expanded from only one rune per character to up to three. Which might not seem like much at first, but it completely opens up the game in ways that it’s hard to understate. Things stack, and combining certain runes can make mediocre characters absolute beasts. The rune shards that could be embedded into weapons in the first game are made more complicated and more profound. Items are expanded, as is the party storage (thank glob!). From the ground up the story was rebuilt faster, stronger — better than before. And while the mechanics of combat is left pretty much exactly the same (two rows of three with characters mixing short, medium, and long range), the unite animations and complexity are improved and the game takes fuller advantage of being able to fight with so many characters (more on that in a bit).
More than that, though, so much is improved. The castle is more varied and more expansive. There are farm animals to collect, flying squirrels to recruit, special bath scenes to unlock. There are lots more mini-games, including a fishing game, a rope climbing game, and even whack-a-mole (I’m going to list that as a positive despite how FUCKING INFURIATING whack-a-mole is). There’s also a dancing game where you can strut your stuff and other bonuses like the detective investigations to learn more about each of the Stars of Destiny. You also get more options when it comes to recruiting people, as some of the Stars can be swapped around and some can even die only to be replaced by their hotter son. And it might seem petty but the art, too, sees a large improvement, with a lot cleaner feel and some really incredible sprite work (representing perhaps the last work with sprites before the more widespread era of cut scenes).
Perhaps the largest improvement, though, is in the large scale combat, where the rock-paper-scissors mechanic is dropped in favor of a much more robust strategy element where characters must be assigned to units by the player and moved about with an eye out for terrain, movement, and special abilities. It’s at times a bit frustrating trying to take out a powerful enemy unit without having a character die, but I found it to be a welcome complication to what had been a fairly simple process in the previous game.
Luka Freakin’ Blight
Rarely have I come across a villain that’s so easy to hate and so terrifying at the same time. A man driven by rage and ambition, he has no problem killing those who get in his way. Heck, he loves it! From the moment of his introduction butchering a town, he becomes the focal point of the reason why the hero and his best friend, Jowy, are fighting this war. And it might be easy to dismiss Luca as a much less complicated villain than Barbarossa even, but that doesn’t mean that he’s not effective as an antagonist. Because he truly is powerful and driven, a force of nature powered by his rage and lust. There are few moments of the game as staggering as when in a strategic battle Luca’s unit is surrounded and finally takes some damage…only for him to lash out and injure every single unit in the hero’s army at once and then escape. He’s a monster, pure and simple, but there’s a reason that people fear monsters.
He’s also the reason for perhaps the most satisfying and best choreographed battles in the entire series. The defeat of Luca Blight only marks the two-thirds point of the game, but it requires one hell of a fight. Or fights, really, requiring the player to build three different parties of six to take on Luca one after the other, hammering him again and again until it seems he must fall. Only he doesn’t. Not even when the other shoe drops and the army’s strategist traps him and hits him with a whole volley of arrows. Bleeding, his supporters slaughtered, he still laughs, and makes the hero take him on one-on-one in an epic confrontation that’s still considered one of the best boss fights among RPGs ever.
A Story Of Friendship, Family, And Love
But remember when I said that fight only takes place at the two-thirds mark? It’s because the real plot is much more complex, showing that war and power are messy things. From the beginning, Suikoden II is about family, about love, with the hero and his boyfriend — er, best friend, Jowy, being pulled into a conflict that quickly outgrows them. But through treachery and death the two end up on opposite sides of the conflict, the heads of state that could simply put their weapons down after the death of Luca. It would hardly be a tragedy if they got off that easy, though, and Jowy becomes the complicated villain that Luca never was, a compelling and wrenching foil to Luca’s raw aggression.
Like the first game, too, this one has its share of deaths and gutting moments. From that first betrayal by Jowy to the death of Nanami (I’m not giving spoiler warnings on a game this old, okay?), the plot goes to some dark and unsettling places. And at every turn the hero (and by extension the player) is confronted with the question: “why are you fighting?” Certainly it would be easier to just run away (and you’re even given that option at one point). But the piece looks very closely at complicity, at the decision to fight, recognizing that sometimes there is no way to back out, no way to avoid war that doesn’t open up even greater tragedies. The game doesn’t lose sight of the power of family, though, or forgiveness. The plot might pit the hero and Jowy against one another, but it also leaves room for them to come back together, and doesn’t condemn the hero for leaving the nation he helped create once it no longer needs him. It doesn’t cast that decision as selfish, and I normally am in tears as the last credits role.
A Cast of Lovable Losers
More than the first game, Suikoden II gives most of the characters you recruit a fairly compelling reason to fight, and a lot more in the way of history to learn about each of them. It’s more rare for characters to be recruitable with only a single conversation (though it happens). For certain characters, like Clive and Futch, there are whole side quests to get into, a lot of interesting things to discover and experience. Plot threads from the first game are explored, like the fates of Flik and Viktor, and even Neklord makes a curtain call that manages to give him a place within the mythology of the game rather than just as a random vampire lord. More than that, the characters have a much more vibrant feel to them. They interact on the eves of battle, and they reveal a lot in their suggestion box letters. They also move around the castle, so that sometimes they’ll be spotted in the restaurant, sometimes wandering the halls. And there’s a greater range of interactions, and the chance for deeper relationships. Ellie’s crush on the hero, Nina’s stalking of Flik, the rivalry between Anita and Valeria, the bitchiness of Sasuke towards everyone, the — there are too many to list. The characters are memorable and endearing, and most of them useful in their own ways.
This might not be the hardened cast of the first game, but there’s a lot of fan favorites back in the mix plus a lot of new characters that inject their own charm and energy into things (Wakaba is one of my favorites, fwiw). Recruitment paths are, as said, more complicated, but because of that they’re also more satisfying. And they give more opportunities for the personalities of the characters to come through. Unlike the first game, where your party was normally largely decided by the plot, Suikoden II more often gives the player more freedom to build, and to experiment with different combinations. The result is an experience that first, lasts a lot longer, offering more reasons to spend a longer time training and exploring; and second, is just a lot of fun. You can even (if you loaded save data from the first game) recruit the hero from Suikoden I, which can be a little overpowering but also is a great reward for those who played through that game (to say nothing of the other perks like increased levels and weapons of certain characters).
The Cooking Mini-Game
Yes, this is its own section, because the Hai Yo cooking experience is delightful and could be its own game as far as I’m concerned and it would be awesome. Really, I would play a game that was just traveling around collecting recipes and cooking ingredients and then having cooking battles that’s paired with a hilarious, soap opera-y plot. It’s wonderful, and it has a surprising amount of depth for being a side thing in this larger experience. The restaurant portion of the game is actually fairly deep, seeing as how it ties together a lot of different areas of the castle. The fishing mini-game, Yuzu and the farm animals, the garden are all part of it, supplying the kitchen with ingredients. The hero then has to gather up recipes from all over the game (with a great bonus one from Gremio if you loaded save data from the Suikoden I), as well as spices that change the recipes into different variants. They all come together when the player sets the menu in the restaurant, which in turn makes food items available for purchase (they provide healing and status effects/relief) as well as earning the player profits.
The mini-game of the cook-offs makes things a bit simpler, not requiring the ingredients to use a recipe, but then complicates things by adding a panel of judges (made up of recruited characters). Each of these has their own tastes, which then impact how they’ll rate each of the player’s and challenger’s three meals. It’s intense, hilarious, and amazing. Each victory in the kitchen progresses the story and nets the player a new recipe. And the whole thing has a great pay-off — a back-to-back boss kitchen cook-off that, okay, might not be Luca Blight, but is still just heckin’ great.
And Okay, It’s Not Perfect
It’s not like even this game doesn’t have its share of complaints. There are elements that are a bit arbitrary and annoying. Having to hit a button in a certain amount of time or else losing out on the “best” ending of the game and maybe having to start the whole thing over again is…no one’s idea of a good time. Neither is spending hours walking around the same stretch of world map trying to recruit the flying squirrels. Neither is having to play dice games until you can gamble enough money to recruit certain characters. Neither is…well, you get the general idea. More systemically, as much as the added customization gives the player a much greater range of strategy, it’s also a lot easier to break. The overall difficulty of the game isn’t easy, really, but neither is it incredibly difficult. And while the strategic battles make up for that a little, they too are plagued with an element of randomness that can quickly turn a fun time into a string of cursing and resetting.
But It’s Still Awesome
After Suikoden I set a high bar for the series, it might have been easy for its sequel to stumble, or even just recreate the same thing. But it doesn’t. It brings back the elements that made the first game good and makes them great. The story is epic and gets dark and unsettling. The characters are vivid and most have very good reasons for being there. Things flow around unification, from the way the runes have been broken apart and need to be brought back together to the way the City States have been shattered and need to be knit back into a cohesive whole. The heart of the story is the hero and Jowy and Nanami, a family ripped apart by war, and the ways that they try to save each other, even when that leads to some of the worst violence in the game. Ultimately, it feels like a game about the reasons for fighting, and reasons for, when fighting isn’t necessary, walking away. It’s beautiful and holds up so well even decades later, and from a series of amazing games, it might just be the best.
