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 frank.). Unites are also exceedingly OP, which is both a plus and a minus. It makes certain party members much better than they should be (Frankly, 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 JRPG 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.

Played with the character control patch and used a code that unlocked all the Navis at the start to make the game more fun. I played as StarMan.EXE and had a blast. Then I learned that in order to get the credits, you have to complete the Official Tournament with EVERY Navi in the first two rows. As such, I've considered beating it with just StarMan.EXE to be "Finished" for now, and will reserve completing it with every other Navi to be "Mastered."

For whatever reason, I decided it would be a good idea for this to be my first Battle Network game, and quite frankly, I don't regret that decision. I enjoyed a grand majority of it.

Criminally underrated game, that often gets overtrashed due to being a directors cut of a significantly less good game. It functions differently from the usual 3D Platformer, but if you can get used to the rules of the game, it's actually incredibly intuitive, and 4 playable characters, mixed with all the changes that hard difficulty makes to the fixed drops results in an incredibly replayable short platformer, albeit with a steep learning curve, that I can imagine most players wouldn't be too keen on getting used to.

The story is ridiculously cheesy, but to pretend that isn't charming in its own right is silly, especially when Castlevania has always dived into campiness. The music is really good, but unlike most other games in the series, focuses more on ambient sounding tracks, more than high octane action, resulting in an appealing soundtrack in its own right.

Genuinely, give it a shot. It's my 2nd favorite N64 game, and while learning the mechanics is a far cry from most other 3D platformers, even at the time, it's still a really good game if you can get past that.