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I don't feel nearly as compelled to write a full review for this game, so I'll just jot down a number of bullet points instead:
Positives:
- Best war gameplay in the series
- Still good music (worse than the first two, but better than 3 in this regard. Still a good OST overall)
- Ted
- Being able to access your base from anywhere is extremely convenient especially when compared to the other games in the series.
- the run button is funny
- Ritapon is a fun minigame (though I'm pretty sure it's just Mahjong and I gaslit myself into learning how to play Mahjong)
Negatives:
- Worst overworld exploration in the series
- game reeks of time constraints
- visually insanely ugly
- normal gameplay is some of the worst in the series.
- lowering the party count from 6 to 4 was a crime
- The story was just nothing, and felt more like a pretense for gameplay than an actually interesting and deep story, a far cry from earlier games
- Lazlo is the worst protagonist in the series by a wide margin. His unique Rune just isn't useful in the late game and he doesn't have a single character trait, interesting or otherwise. If Suikoden 1 and 2 are how to do a good silent protagonist, Suikoden 4 is a case study on what to NOT do.
- some of the most obtuse recruitment requirements in the series on top of characters just generally not being interesting and more than ever feeling like a checklist more than anything.
Positives:
- Best war gameplay in the series
- Still good music (worse than the first two, but better than 3 in this regard. Still a good OST overall)
- Ted
- Being able to access your base from anywhere is extremely convenient especially when compared to the other games in the series.
- the run button is funny
- Ritapon is a fun minigame (though I'm pretty sure it's just Mahjong and I gaslit myself into learning how to play Mahjong)
Negatives:
- Worst overworld exploration in the series
- game reeks of time constraints
- visually insanely ugly
- normal gameplay is some of the worst in the series.
- lowering the party count from 6 to 4 was a crime
- The story was just nothing, and felt more like a pretense for gameplay than an actually interesting and deep story, a far cry from earlier games
- Lazlo is the worst protagonist in the series by a wide margin. His unique Rune just isn't useful in the late game and he doesn't have a single character trait, interesting or otherwise. If Suikoden 1 and 2 are how to do a good silent protagonist, Suikoden 4 is a case study on what to NOT do.
- some of the most obtuse recruitment requirements in the series on top of characters just generally not being interesting and more than ever feeling like a checklist more than anything.
This review contains spoilers
This is likely the most mixed I've ever been on an RPG in my life. This review will largely be disorganized garble since I have a lot to say, but here goes.
Starting with the positives, I thought the story was pretty good? Funnily enough, I think people overreact heavily to the twist of the game, and I still don't really understand how it could possibly contradict the events of the other Star Oceans (Unless proper Gods come into play in future games.). I don't think the twist diminishes the previous games in any sense of the word either, because the story makes it INCREDIBLY evident that the characters in Star Ocean's world are completely sentient without any compromise to that idea. Hell, I think Flad being the one to explain the Eternal Sphere made me enjoy the twist more just because of how much a fucking weirdo he was. With that all said, much of the ending is very incomprehensible, when it basically just boils down to "The Eternal Sphere is now legitimately its own universe now."
I found myself enjoying the characters quite a bit as well, with 2 core exceptions, and not being big on those characters does hurt the game a lot due to their importance. Star Ocean's track record with male protagonists have been very half and half for me so far. You're either Roddick and you're the most generic character I've ever seen, or you're Claude C. Kenny who I've grown to respect as a character a fair bit over time. Fayt lies somewhere in the middle. I don't think he's generic like Roddick, but he never quite gained his footing in the way I felt that Claude did. I don't dislike Fayt, but he really didn't do it for me as a protag. Meanwhile, Sophia as a female lead just kind of annoys me? She felt very absent of character, and it felt like the very much substituted character importance for character growth.
Everyone else I really did like though. Cliff basically carried the story for me all the way until Albel joins. Maria is cool. I get the appeal of Nel even though I'm not as big on her as other people are. Mirage is cool, but should've joined the party earlier. Peppita is wonderful. I expected myself to DESPISE Roger, but he ended up one of my favorites. Adray is a psy-op of a party member and you can't tell me other wise, but I love him for that.
This is probably the best Star Ocean OST I've heard so far. Star Ocean 2 still has my favorite tracks in the series, but as far as consistently good songs go, this one has a definitive edge.
And now we get to the negatives, and hoooooo boy. I'm gonna be frank, the battle system was too much for me. Lategame enemies scale too quickly. Party member levels don't scale at ALL. Party AI is just blatantly bad unless your name is Roger for some reason?????? Boss fights were painfully easy until the difficulty spike right at the end of disc 1. Normal encounters were often harder than the actual bosses in a very not fun way. It got to the point where I legitimately had to use an EXP boost cheat to make the lategame more fun.
In regards to cheating, I don't know what madman thought the creation system in the game was even adjacent to a good idea, but I hope that they learned their lesson, because it's baaaaaaaad. It should not cost more to forge an item than to buy it in any rpg with a crafting system. Cooking becomes worthless as a result, because the whole point of cooking in previous games was to be able to stock up on a ton of healing items in a cost efficient manner. It was to make dungeon exploration more fun and allow for the harder encounters to exist, as there becomes little punishment for struggling in a random encounter. I cheated max creation stats onto Fayt and disabled item costs for this reason, because this mechanic is so unfun, that I just said screw it, and chose to bypass what I felt was the least fun part of the entire game.
That long rant over, aside from my issues with getting turned around and feeling like the game is pretty terrible with directions (something I think a lot of PS2 and PS1 era RPGs have issue with), that's really the gist of my problems with the game. It unfortunately means I have it rated lowest out of the Star Ocean games, but I do still like the game. Its characters, story and music do a lot of heavy lifting for it, and sometimes the gameplay can be fun when you do actually figure it out. I can definitely understand people who love this game to death and people who despise it as well. Ultimately, I'm somewhere in the middle, leaning towards liking, obviously. It did burn me out though, so I doubt I'll be touching the post-game of this one.
Starting with the positives, I thought the story was pretty good? Funnily enough, I think people overreact heavily to the twist of the game, and I still don't really understand how it could possibly contradict the events of the other Star Oceans (Unless proper Gods come into play in future games.). I don't think the twist diminishes the previous games in any sense of the word either, because the story makes it INCREDIBLY evident that the characters in Star Ocean's world are completely sentient without any compromise to that idea. Hell, I think Flad being the one to explain the Eternal Sphere made me enjoy the twist more just because of how much a fucking weirdo he was. With that all said, much of the ending is very incomprehensible, when it basically just boils down to "The Eternal Sphere is now legitimately its own universe now."
I found myself enjoying the characters quite a bit as well, with 2 core exceptions, and not being big on those characters does hurt the game a lot due to their importance. Star Ocean's track record with male protagonists have been very half and half for me so far. You're either Roddick and you're the most generic character I've ever seen, or you're Claude C. Kenny who I've grown to respect as a character a fair bit over time. Fayt lies somewhere in the middle. I don't think he's generic like Roddick, but he never quite gained his footing in the way I felt that Claude did. I don't dislike Fayt, but he really didn't do it for me as a protag. Meanwhile, Sophia as a female lead just kind of annoys me? She felt very absent of character, and it felt like the very much substituted character importance for character growth.
Everyone else I really did like though. Cliff basically carried the story for me all the way until Albel joins. Maria is cool. I get the appeal of Nel even though I'm not as big on her as other people are. Mirage is cool, but should've joined the party earlier. Peppita is wonderful. I expected myself to DESPISE Roger, but he ended up one of my favorites. Adray is a psy-op of a party member and you can't tell me other wise, but I love him for that.
This is probably the best Star Ocean OST I've heard so far. Star Ocean 2 still has my favorite tracks in the series, but as far as consistently good songs go, this one has a definitive edge.
And now we get to the negatives, and hoooooo boy. I'm gonna be frank, the battle system was too much for me. Lategame enemies scale too quickly. Party member levels don't scale at ALL. Party AI is just blatantly bad unless your name is Roger for some reason?????? Boss fights were painfully easy until the difficulty spike right at the end of disc 1. Normal encounters were often harder than the actual bosses in a very not fun way. It got to the point where I legitimately had to use an EXP boost cheat to make the lategame more fun.
In regards to cheating, I don't know what madman thought the creation system in the game was even adjacent to a good idea, but I hope that they learned their lesson, because it's baaaaaaaad. It should not cost more to forge an item than to buy it in any rpg with a crafting system. Cooking becomes worthless as a result, because the whole point of cooking in previous games was to be able to stock up on a ton of healing items in a cost efficient manner. It was to make dungeon exploration more fun and allow for the harder encounters to exist, as there becomes little punishment for struggling in a random encounter. I cheated max creation stats onto Fayt and disabled item costs for this reason, because this mechanic is so unfun, that I just said screw it, and chose to bypass what I felt was the least fun part of the entire game.
That long rant over, aside from my issues with getting turned around and feeling like the game is pretty terrible with directions (something I think a lot of PS2 and PS1 era RPGs have issue with), that's really the gist of my problems with the game. It unfortunately means I have it rated lowest out of the Star Ocean games, but I do still like the game. Its characters, story and music do a lot of heavy lifting for it, and sometimes the gameplay can be fun when you do actually figure it out. I can definitely understand people who love this game to death and people who despise it as well. Ultimately, I'm somewhere in the middle, leaning towards liking, obviously. It did burn me out though, so I doubt I'll be touching the post-game of this one.
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.
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.