Suikoden II

Suikoden is a very important game to me. It was the first RPG that really hooked me, that really made me see how computer games could be a way of telling a good story rather than just being an adrenaline rush. It’s the game that steered me away from beat-em-ups, then my genre of choice, and to RPGs. Yes, I had loved adventure games with RPG elements as early as playing Dizzy on my Commodore 64, but the plotlines there were nothing close to the fully-involving environment Suikoden offered. It was my introduction to the world, and it was only after playing Suikoden that I discovered older classics like Chrono Trigger, and came to wait in anticipation for Final Fantasy VII.

So even before Suikoden II came out, I was excited, downloading the artwork and hearing reports that it was even better than its predecessor. I snapped it up as a US import, and should have played it through years ago.
So what happened?

Well, firstly, I’d sold my Playstation and got a Japanese Playstation 2, expecting to be able to get a mod chip easily, which would have played US and UK games. I never did get that mod chip. I had a Playstation emulator on my PC, but it crashed several times while I was playing Suikoden 2, and finally, various other pursuits just pushed it to the back of my mind.

Well, finally, I’ve played it through. It’s still often heralded as the best of the series (and I have little interest in the ugly-looking 3 and 4), and it was certainly a lot of fun. However, for me at least, it doesn’t come close to the first game.

Yes, perhaps to a degree it’s because I was a lot younger then, and more accepting of cheesy plotlines. But Suikoden 2 is weak in a way Suikoden never was. The original game was a simple story, based on the old Water Margin tales – the son of a general discovers the corruption of the empire he is a part of, becomes part of the Liberation Army and fights against the evil emperor. It was very basic, but it worked, and the characters made it a gripping and moving story, with all sorts of mini-adventures. The second game works similarly – two childhood friends are fighting in the Highland army when the camp is ambushed and wiped out…except of course for our young heroes. It turns out that the brigade was attacked by its own side disguised as the enemy in order to foil a peace treaty (seems clever until you think…why didn’t they just break the peace treaty by attacking the enemy in the first place?). Once again, there is the classic opposition between a young hero who gradually rises up to be a great leader, and a ‘bad guy’. Only this time, the bad guy isn’t a weak figure being manipulated, and doesn’t have much of a story of his own. He’s just a nut. But he’ll do nicely as an antagonist. The problem comes when he gets killed and the hero’s childhood friend becomes the main opposition.

There is just never a satisfactory reason for his continued bad guy status. The writers never seem to be able to make it sound like he really wants to do anything he’s doing, even though he does it anyway. There are a whole bunch of half-hearted reasons why he must keep fighting with the hero, but they all seem so contrived that the suspension of disbelief vanishes, and disbelief comes crashing down on top of your head.

Still, plot aside, there are a plethora of little extras. I played the original for weeks, getting every little extra. Here, I didn’t really bother – not only do I not really want to spend that much time on each game any more, but once I found out that I had already lost my chance to see the scenes with Clive in, I kinda lost interest in being a completist. Nonetheless, I did the vast majority of what’s available in the game, with a guide (because there are 108 recruitable characters, and some of them will only come with you after some VERY obscure conditions are met, like the one who needed an item that only appeared very rarely in one shop), and saw all the different endings, none of which had the sense of drama or closure the original had. Plus some glitch in the game gave me four powerhouse characters at level 99 automatically, so none of the fights were any real challenge at all. And for the most part, the story of the hero’s rise, the little sub-plots, the humorous moments, the way the castle grows and changes as more people join and the fun of the big epic battles made it a very enjoyable experience. And while the translation was really terrible, that provided some unintentionally humorous moments, and I could often tell what the original Japanese was behind some of the odder moments (for example, Jowy randomly says ‘Sorry’, which was probably ‘Warui’, in the context meaning something closer to ‘Thanks, and I’m sorry to be a bother to you’).

There’s nothing inherently wrong with the idea of the two heroes ending up on opposing sides. Indeed, it can work really well. It just needs to have a good reason, and be believable.

Probably the best thing about the game, though, is the great character design. The three central characters are all great, and look very pretty. Not sure why, though, but the ones I thought were cutest were the boys that look like girls (Tuta) and girls that look like boys (Wakaba). I just can’t resist androgyny!