Suikoden II
Game » consists of 6 releases. Released Dec 17, 1998
Suikoden II is set three years after the events of Suikoden and tells the story of how young friends Riou and Jowy become caught up in the conflict between the Highland Empire and the City States of Jowston. Can you recruit all 108 Stars of Destiny and unite a nation?
allisonbyproxy's Genso Suikoden II (PlayStation) review
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Story
This is one of the places that Suikoden II excels. It weaves a complicated tale of conflict and betrayal that other games in the genre can only dream to live up to. There are more twists and turns than your average mystery novel. Suikoden II tosses aside the typical "save the world" story of most jrpgs in favor of a more focused, down to earth tale about political upheaval and rebellion in a single nation. You won't be circumnavigating the globe in this game but instead traveling between a small collection of well fleshed out locations. It's a refreshing change of pace if you're used to games like the Final Fantasy series. Gameplay
Suikoden II plays like a standard rpg for the most part. Go from town A to dungeon B, recruiting new allies along the way. Fight monsters. Level up. But what sets this game apart from the rest is the large cast of characters. All told there are 108 different characters to collect. Not all of them are battle party members though as some will simply tend shops and so forth in the castle that serves as your army's base of operations. Trying to collect them all adds a very fun element to the game that fans of pokemon may be familiar with. Another thing this game has on it's competition are the battles. While at it's heart the battle system is a fairly standard turn based affair, the battles of Suikoden II are very fun and fast paced. No battle ever lasts more than a few turns. Graphics
Suikoden II was released fairly late in the PS1's life cycle but instead of opting for the sub-par 3D that other games of the time used Konami chose to go the 2D route. And it's a good thing they did. Suikoden II has some of the nicest sprite work I've seen in any game. The characters are all very detailed and animate well. There are also an absolute ton of small one time custom animations the characters do that really help tell the story. Overall
The graphics are beautiful. The gameplay is fun and rewarding. The story is superb. The music is amazing. I cannot recommend this game highly enough. If you can get your hands on a copy do so and play this game. You'll be glad you did.
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Other reviews for Genso Suikoden II (PlayStation)
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Suikoden II improved on the original, but not nearly enough. 0
Suikoden II improved on most of the things the first game laid out on the table, but it still fell in a few traps that I hated about the original. I'll start with the good side of things. For one, the graphics are alot sharper, more detailed characters, better looking towns and world map. The story has alot more depth to it, although I really hated the wooden main character. This is very story driven game, and I don't think Silent Protagonists really work that well overall. Although, this is a d...
2 out of 2 found this review helpful. -
A Vast Improvement Over the Original 0
To preface this, I will say that I first played this game a year or two after its sequel Suikoden III, which was my first trip to the Suikoden universe. I then of course played the first Suikoden before jumping into II. So this review is from the point of view of not having played it when it first came out and it not being the second game in the series I played.I will start with the bad so that we can end on a good note. The Suikoden series is, somewhat deservedly, notorious for shoddy translati...
0 out of 0 found this review helpful.