Everyone talks about "Luca Blight this" and "Luca Blight that" and yeah you know what that's fair, he's a really funny guy, one of the funniest antagonists in gaming even, we love baby eaters. But why is nobody talking about Neclord? This bum ass vampire shows up, you fight him once after a few lengthy sequences & two dungeons, and then he calls you gay and disappears for like half the game. Like 15 hours later, after one of the best sections of the game, this dumbass comes back forces you into what's basically a filler episode with no bearing on the plot whatsoever that goes on for a comedic amount of time. Eventually you trap him after he finishes talking about how he's going to groom a minor and then he starts shitting his pants because he realizes he's fucked. After this you fight him and he ends up being one of the easiest bosses in the game. And then you continue with the plot as if nothing happened. Now I'm aware he showed up in the first Suikoden, he also died in that game, it's explained he's back due to some stupid bullshit that barely makes sense. Now I must ask, why is he here? What purpose does he serve in the main plotline? Why does nobody talk about Neclord? The masses need to give this forgotten antagonist the respect he truly deserves.

Very few games are able to build a world the way Suikoden does, and Suikoden II manages to skirt the line of having it all, while losing nothing in the process. From emotional beats, to showcasing characters, connecting with the previous game, managing to make a great villain, and a battle system that keeps up the entertainment; Suikoden II isn't just a classic, it's a master piece.

Suikoden II starts out with a clear focus on three characters, Joey, Naomi, and the player. Throughout the course of the story their bonds with each other, the hopes they have, and will to fight are constantly pushed to the brink. In a lot of ways, Suikoden II is just about this trio, and it's what helps set a focal point for newcomers that only played this game. As the trio go along their village and witness their lands getting into war, they realize they have to flee, and end up becoming apart of a new band of revolutionaries. This new bunch of revolutionaries not only consistent of characters from the previous game, but help structure their growth from Suikoden 1 to 2. It really is amazing how subtle the story deals with Suikoden 1 references, but they are abundant yet never distracting.

Luca Blight, is easily one of the best villains ever to grace gaming, and his reign of tier is showcased throughout the game; never satisfied with just telling how much of a monster he is. As the game comes to a head, more interesting developments happen, and largely they are all because of him.

This is a Suikoden game after all, and on top of the story, we have a great cast of characters, roughly 108, as we build the army to defeat Luca Blight. Due to having a large cast, not everyone gets the chance to shine, but we do get plenty of chances to see a lot of characters have a moment. Heck, there is even an entire mini-game based on Iron Chef that cook for the army does, with a full plot. The main problem with a lot of these moments tho is how they are timed and limited. If you aren't falling along with a guide or don't know a thing or two before hand, you will likely miss a lot during your playthrough of Suikoden II. And even if you do everything right, there is still a whole other side story that is completely timed, although I'd suggest you be looking around alleyways as much as you can when you are in Muse.

From turn based combat, to war rock paper scissors, Suikoden II's combat is a nice way to showcase the armies might. Largely, like any Suikoden game, you are given roughly 6 slots to use for a party, and each character will often have a special weapon or magic they can help use. On top of this, Suikoden II gives you unity attacks that act as a special of sorts when you have 2 or more characters that work well together. Suikoden II's battles are a very basic and bare bones map turn based tactics game where you engage in a sort of rock paper scissors style match that lowers both teams amount of units, although sometimes nothing happens to either side. Either way, you are always given a nice scale of how the army is growing, and just where exactly you are at in this game.

Really Suikoden II just packs way too much content that it's hard to explain why it's as loved as it is, but I feel like everyone has different reasons for it. To building your army, to emotional story beats, to even the iron chef mini game; Suikoden II gives you a lot while never letting you down.

This has become my new tenth favorite game. There's definitely some messy things about it, but ultimately, a grand majority of my issues with the game pale in comparison to every positive thing I have to say about it.

I've already read far more cynical interpretations of the game that I can never find myself getting behind. Frankly, while I can definitely understand having some issues with the story, there's too many elements that I think are pitch perfect to the point that disliking them can only feel like blatant nihilism to me.

With that said, I think your enjoyment of the game's story can vary greatly depending on how you feel about Riou (The Hero), Nanami, and Jowy. Although the game is largely a political drama, the game is focused on these 3, they are the main protagonists.

As for me, I love all 3 to the point that they are my 3 favorite characters in the game, especially Nanami in particular. In a genre filled with wierd tropey nonsense (especially with sister characters), it was genuinely refreshing to have a big sister character who genuinely felt like she was a real sister to Riou. Riou is one of the best written silent protagonists I've seen in an RPG setting. It's really easy to make these characters come off as just a generic blank slate with zero qualities that are unique to them, but I think Riou was very well communicated. I can't really get into Jowy without talking spoilers, but after a couple playthroughs, I think I fully understand his motivations and absolutely love him as a character.

It's not uncommon for someone to call Luca Blight one of the best villains in any media. Frankly, I'm going to parrot that here. There's something to be said about how well this game handles a pure evil villain, right down to even his boss fight being mechanically really cool. He's such an active character as well, which really helps him.

I suppose we can talk about gameplay now. The Rune mechanic is very cool. Characters having multiple slots as well as fixed rune slots in tandem with the fact that a number of the less generally good characters get unique unite attacks that can substantially increase their usefulness is really cool. I thought it was a really smart decision to nerf unites from the first game. Diving into light spoilers, I thought it was very smart design to make the best unite in the game limited in its availability, never giving you a true replacement for it, as it forces you to think outside the box from that point forward.

With all that said, I do have a couple issues. There definitely are some party members that are just bad, and it generally ends up being the ones with exceedingly limited rune slots on top of a lack of unites. This ends up not being a big deal though, because every character is viable due to another problem: the game's difficulty. There isn't really a single point in the game where the game really truly asks you to understand its mechanics to win. The final boss can absolutely be beaten with very little strategy and appropriate levelling. The game is very newcomer friendly, which actually can be a massive plus for first time players, though does lend to replaying the game being a bit way too on the easy side.

Regarding party experimentation though, I wanna give a big shoutout to the way Riou (and this partially extends to Tir from the first Suikoden, too.) is structured as a party member. Giving the player a main character who's medium range and can fulfill a healing, support, physical damage, or magic damage role of any kind lends itself exceedingly well to player freedom, and that makes party creation in Suikoden II extremely accessible.

Forced deployment is another, relatively minor issue though. There's numerous moments in the game where Viktor, Flik, Nanami or somebody else are forced into the party. The game has a mechanic where you can put characters in a convoy where they're in your party, but not in battle. The game unfortunately likes to play fast and loose with this and is very inconsistent on when it utilizes it. Party recruitment can also have a similar issue like this, where sometimes when you recruit a party member, they are forced into your party without an opportunity to send them back to your base, but then other times, it will allow that. Frankly, both of these situations are something I'd like to see resolved in a quality of life romhack of the game of some kind.

Unfortunately, I also need to speak negatively about another mechanic: Wars. They are, conceptually, incredibly cool. It gives a use for recruitable characters outside of just being party members, that's awesome. Mechanically though, about 80% of the war segments are completely scripted events with very little control over the outcome of the battle. It's not until the final hours of the game that the game gives you war segments where you actually have to participate with the mechanics of it, which, also unfortunately, are incredibly shallow, confusing, and quite frankly, kind of bad. You have exceedingly little control over how battles go, and it often feels like stats just mean nothing. This is in direct contrast to Suikoden I, where war segments function entirely differently, are very fun, and there's only one scripted war in the entire game. If there's one argument that I've seen people make about Suikoden I over II, this is the one I explicitly agree with the most.

Speaking of Suikoden I, I recently played it as well, as I had heard people who actually prefer that game over II, a sentiment that I don't share, but definitely understand. I think Suikoden I has a much weaker story (Ted, Gremio, and everything revolving around the Soul Eater Rune are highlights though.), and I think suffers even worse from the easy difficulty (The Final Boss of that game is probably the most disappointing fight in the whole game if I could be honest.). Unites are also exceedingly OP, which is both a plus and a minus. It makes certain party members much better than they should be (Lepant and Eileen became two of my favorite characters in the game through their unite), but also it makes putting Kai in the party one of the most braindead RPG experiences I've had in a while. I'll just leave it at that though, Suikoden I is still a good game, but I think II's positives outweigh the first by a wide margin.

The OST is so damn good (this applies to both games, I think they're pretty equal.), with a couple of specific exceptions. I think the normal battle theme gets pretty droll, and man, piss to the boss theme. I don't think the boss music is as bad as Dragon Quest 11's as far as removing weight from key moments go, but it's still pretty repetitive. The biggest highlights for me though are "Imprisoned Town", "The Chase", and "Gothic Neclord". The OST is very good.

All in all, I love this game. I love its story, characters, the world, most of the gameplay (although I really only talked about what I DIDN'T like here, I pretty much loved everything else about the gameplay.), the music. It's just a really damn good game, and while I certainly understand certain takes about the game, I don't really see eye to eye with most of those opinions, and that's not a bad thing. Play both the first and this game, frankly, they're a wonderful time.

Taking the hint from the previous game, Suikoden II portrays an darker side to the original's theme of wartime cruelty. Here, the tragedy of war is pronounced to terrible extremes, with cutscenes that are almost uncomfortable to sit through, due to in large part the actions of Luca Blight, one of the most effective RPG villains of all time.

Besides presenting the horrors of a genocidal madman in all its twisted glory, Suikoden II is in many ways the emotional journey of two soldiers. The two major characters experience lives full of incredible hardship, one that brutally and unfairly tests their resolve, courage, and ultimately their friendship as their ideals slowly drift apart. The moments between the player character, Jowy, and Nanami constitute some of the most emotionally excruciating scenes in video game history. The maturity found within its morbid vision of war allows the game to confidently implement some more disturbing themes in its narrative, without fully engorging in its own bloodlust, that once again revolutionizes JRPG story. The game also succeeds in the narrative details, with 'microstories' revolving around the various towns and cities in the world effectively turning each one into meaningful locations of their own, not just spaces to buy equipment and restore HP. All-in-all, it was a crucial point in the evolution of political JRPG story. Whereas Yasumi Matsuno's brand always held a chilling, detached (yet paradoxically in-your-face) philosophy, Yoshitaka Murayama presented a humane, warmer, ideal outlook. However - unlike the naive enthusiasm of their peers, this was idealism tempered and fueled by sheer grief, remaining hopeful despite all the trauma.

While the combat system remains lacking, the base building of the original is expanded to include several more minigames and more inventive means of recruiting allies. While being a strong visual and mechanical upgrade over their predecessor. the gameplay of Suikoden II remains cast in the shadow of its plot, lost in the story's gripping emotional wasteland.

Suikoden II is a grand achievement, one that - in its cascades of tragedy, effectively represents a hyper-realist take on human conflict.

I still have vivid memories of the summer in '00. Being alone for a month and a half, my parents away for the summer, my days boiled down to a simple routine; Wake up around 10-11, eat breakfast while playing Suikoden II and continue playing; spending the afternoons at a questionable telemarketing firm, no really giving two shits; go home and squeeze in an hour or so of Suikoden II; meet up with my friends and go for a swim or out drinking in the balmy Swedish summer night; come home late and play some more Suikoden II until I started nodding off. Rinse and repeat. And on some days I skipped the middle part entirely and just stayed at home. Playing Suikoden II, naturally.

So my impression of Suikoden II is biased, to say the least, being a cornerstone in The Best Summer EVER™.

Forever having lived under Final Fantasy VII's and its 3D-contemporaries shadows, Suikoden II was something of the last hurrah for big-budget sprite-based jRPGs. At least for a couple of years, until pop culture's obsession with all things '80s kicked in. If you didn’t play it the first time around – which not many people did, to be honest – you probably know it as “that game my RPG-playing friend won’t shut the f--k up about”. I'm pretty sure I was one of those people, myself.

Suikoden II is easily one of the best entries in the genre (at least during its 16-bit era; I can’t speak for more modern games since I haven’t played newer jRPGs) and a huge improvement over the ‘95 original. It definitely reinforced my delusion of jRPGs as a favorite genre, when in reality I actually just liked 5-6 games with Suikoden II sharing first place with Chrono Trigger (something I discovered later, though).

Better and more engaging writing with more fleshed-out characters, broader scope, and more varied gameplay, crispier graphics, and sprites. Where Suikoden felt like a quaint change of space with its USP of a 108-person character rooster, Suikoden II is like a Tolstoy epic about war, peace, friendship, and betrayal.

That’s not to say it doesn’t struggle with localization issues and some of the characters really being one-note stereotypical RPG cliches. I wouldn't go as far as calling them outright offensive but definitely dated. Overall, though, it’s a more mature game that has aged quite a lot better than its predecessor.

I REALLY liked Suikoden I, much more than I expected. When I started Suikoden II and saw it had helpful features like An Inventory and the ability to remove items from inactive party members, I thought this game was gonna be GREAT. I was sorely mistaken. The plot, writing, gameplay, dungeon design, pacing, characters, interface, and even the actual code are all so incredibly disappointingly bad by comparison. The whole experience was like pulling teeth. I played S1+2 because I was advised I should before playing Eiyuden Chronicles, and I have now decided I'm not gonna be playing that actually

Solid JRPG experience with some emotional highs, but not THE gReAtEsT RPG on the Playstation. I played around 35 hours to do all that I needed to do to get the best ending, recruit 180 Stars, etc. I'm glad I got a filled out file from the first Suikoden to do this, as the rewards and cameo as well as the depth of the returning main cast made for a really satisfying experience here that wouldn't have been as strong otherwise. It really is the returning characters as well as the main trio who drive this experience to stand on it's own. With that said, I encountered a lot of bugs and freezes, partly because I played this on OG hardware but pirated through POPS which is buggy as hell on its own, but I've heard of others encountering this too now matter how they play. Just some audio stuff and setbacks that happened a few time. The one thing I won't forgive though is to have a "timed-out" sidequest such as the Clive thing when the whole selling point of this game is so expansive and broad. So while I didn't do that minor sidequest I completed the whole thing at my own pace and had fun with it. The war combat was cool to be in a more strat RPG style but it was still noticably shallow overall with how much of what happens relies on plot, making your input feel somewhat pointless.

Still, HOW expansive this game is does manage to impress to this day. Although many of the "108 Stars of Destiny" characters don't develop outside of their recruitment quests and become somwhat of collectable items, it is interesting to touch upon each of them as well as the NPCs inhabiting both your castle and the towns as the plot progresses and the world changes around them. If I was younger and had the time I could easily see myself wandering around for at least 10 more hours doing nothing but exploring and talking to the locals, tracking how they move along with the world. And yes, the main points of the story that involve the twists and friendship fallout do make this game's story stand out from other traditional JRPG fare. For me, I'd put it up with Chrono Trigger for pushing the envelope in terms of what this sort of presentation and storytelling medium could do at the time, even if it doesn't particularly hit me with the full effect now.

I also don't think I'll ever get around to "complete" another Suikoden with it's many many characters and tales of war across the 5 entries, but I do plan to mess around on the ps2 entries a bit if I ever happen to cross their paths.

A huge improvement to the first one, the overall plot is way better and less simplistic, the plot was almost consistently really engaging, two of the antagonists are really excellent. Some flaws regardless, the fights and battles were not really exciting except some of them, and some little parts of the game felt a bit like filler. The casting was overall very charming since the chara design is top-notch, and they all had their distictive personnality, even though it was also frustrating since I wanted to see more of a lot of them. The continuity with the first game was also a very nice touch, it was a pleasure to see again some characters of the first game and to see the prolonging of their stories. The last quarter of the game was less exciting but the endings managed to wrap-up the game in a very beautiful way emotionnally and thematically. It's a flawed game but it was really excellent and my current favorite JRPG if we don't count From Software games.