Fellow Suikoden 2 enjoyer.
Cheers

I'm still playing it right now, im finding it good so far but not as good as i was hoping for, maybe it will get a lot better for me later on. I'm not a big fan of the flashy particle effects too, it comes in the way of establishing a dark fantasy atmosphere in my humble opinion, more grounded style fits me better, personally.

yeah, i absolutely agree and hope you enjoy it more than i could!

i'm glad i'm not alone with the particle effects being way too much, instead of actually designing cool moves they just slapped a million sparkles on everything

Performance optimization seems to be an increasingly lost art and it feels like every recent case where a studio attempted to use their own engine lead to a disaster, SQE maybe most of all. Gone are the days when you could expect major console releases to be optimized within an inch of their life.