We're playing Suikoden II? Hooray!

Tired and excited to return to the physical agony that is Nanami Hiro tries to get to sleep…


…only to be woken up by a surprise attack.


Outside the Candy Crew’s captain Rowd informs them that there’s been a surprise attack from the City-States, and that Hiro and Jowy should escape through the forest to the east.



Trying to escape we see all the soldiers we’ve spoken to earlier, now bloodied and trying to carry their wounded friends to safety.

Before reaching the forest Jowy has a thought: the only way to escape is through the woods, so the enemy may be using it to set up an ambush. Hiro agrees and they rush back to inform Captain Rowd.


As soon as they return to camp Hiro and Jowy (now on referred to as Hirowy) find Rowd talking with a mysterious man. Apparently the ambush had been staged to make it seem that the City-States had broken the treaty to attack. This is one of the areas that really sets Suikoden II apart. If you’re playing the original game for the first time, you’d have no reason to think it’s anything but a generic fantasy RPG for the first several hours. It deals with questions of ambiguous morality and the conflict of ideals instead of good versus evil, but it is for the most part a pretty straight forward, us-versus-them kind of game. Here we are, five minutes into Suikoden II, and we see the Unicorn Youth Brigade being slaughtered by their own country, all to justify going to war with a nation they’d just signed a peace agreement with. Welcome to Suikoden!


Of course, the man behind this plan is the Highland Prince Luca Blight. Stronger than a thousand men, he’s the absolute face of evil and cruelty (though, as we’ll see later on, for arguably an understandable reason. Remember, there’s very little unambiguous evil in Suikoden). Luca is easily the game’s most memorable character. There’s a great, spoilerific write-up of his last moments on the site. Luca is going to be showing up a lot, and bad things usually follow.


Realizing the plan they were unwilling parts in, Hirowy rushes north to try to escape. There the path ends at a cliff overlooking a waterfall. They try to understand what just happened, only to be surprised by Captain Rowd and a group of soldiers. Looks like it’s time for battle #1!


Suikoden II’s battle system sticks fairly close to the original, though with some changes. I’ll get to those later, since these guys are little match to Hirowy, caught here in a Unite Attack.

Rowd runs off to find more soldiers. Unable to return the way they came, Jowy realizes there’s no other option but to jump. Before they do, they they promise that if they make it but are separated, they return to this spot. They each mark this promise by making a slash on the rock, then step to the edge and jump. This is a "But thou must" moment, but if you try to delay it you keep being attacked by soldiers. Interestingly, if you kill 108 of them before jumping the next section is in color instead of sepia. Exciting!


The game flashes back through Hirowy’s life with Nanami in Kyaro, showing them playing, growing up, joining the army, and…


…dueling, which always seems much cooler to me than the limited sprites should allow.

Hiro regains consciousness and hears a familiar (to you, not him) voice. Enter: Viktor!


Viktor apparently finds Hiro unconscious, floating down the river. Two bodies were floating down the river, but he was only able to save Hiro.


Enter: Fliktor! Flik attempted to save the other person in the water but was unable to.


When Viktor and Flik disappeared at the end of Suikoden, they decided to travel north. They’ve now created a Mercenary Army and are allied with Jowston. Viktor takes Hiro captive, with him being a Highland soldier and all.


Back at Camp Fliktor, Hiro finds out that by personal guest Viktor means…

…servant.


Hiro does various menial tasks for Viktor’s amusement, such as pushing boxes…


…gathering rope…


…and getting supplies. He’s tasked with gathering flint from the blacksmith, boots…


…from this lovely lady, and some flour. He’s got the first two, but what about the flour?

Oh no! Apparently this fetch quest isn’t nearly fetchy enough, so we’ve gotta go find some more.


Of course, being a prisoner and all Hiro can’t just walk out of there, so we’ve gotta get an escort.


After some sweet talk from Leona Gengen here agrees to go along.


So does Tuta, Dr. Huan’s young apprentice. Expect to see lots of him as you jerks fine people insist on placing him in my party. And that’s right, he is a guy. He’s not even the most confusingly gendered character in this game, but a good early example.


After a short lecture on the dangers of the world, Hiro, Tuta and Captain Gengen are ready to go! Will there be flour in Ryube? Stay tuned!

god, this game is so beautiful. even from the very first, you can see how improved it is vs suiko 1.

Amen. The whole game is beautiful and they spared not a single frame of animation for any sprite. The Iron Chef minigame really has to be seen in motion. Maybe I'll make some videos of it, if nobuyuki can't (for whatever reason).

BTW, the memory card went out via UPS today, so it'll reach its destination sometime next week, probably Tuesday or Wednesday.

Glee!

This being a jRPG, I think we all know where this is going...

I always assumed there was no transfer to Suikoden III, but someone said differently in Brick's LP. But what's the point if you can't recruit Riou or McDohl?

A few carryover characters get a boost in levels (big whoop) and I believe you get an extra play. Not sure what else.


Hawt.

I think it was a much bigger deal in Japan, where you could transfer over Genso Suikogaiden save data. I don't remember specifics, but Suiko III and the Suikogaiden games are pretty closely tied and I think using that data opened up a lot more. We never got those games of course so Konami (fortunately!) flagged everything that would transfer over by default.

The Suikogaiden games were all about Nash, a guy who's kinda prominent in Chris's later chapters of Suikoden III, so I wouldn't be too surprised.

It's just so....beautiful.

I vote for Shiro. All the time.

I still can't wrap my head around the fact that Tuta's male. That just seems impossible.

And then there's Tomo, who just looks like a slightly taller Tuta. And is a girl.

Oh man, Gengen. I loved that little booger and kept him in my party all the time. Probably explains why I kept getting killed towards the end of the game. As I recall his magic stats were awful.

This LP seriously makes me want to cry over my stolen copy. Fuck, I want to play it again.

I did write something about the game, though! I have to validate my existence somehow.

When you load over data from 2 to 3, you get two bonus plays for the theatre: The final stand of Barbarossa (Suikoden 1 play), and Neclord's final stand (Suikoden 2 play).

I've heard to get the first play, you have to load in data from 1 to 2 as well.

Fun facts:

2 to 3 loads in data correctly. So if you got a funky name like "NcDohl" in 2, that means in the play, he's referenced as "NcDohl McDohl".

The S1 play contains a hot remix of the Gregminster theme, and the S2 play contains a cool remix of the Neclord battle theme. These themes aren't on the OST.

Gengen is awesome. I'll take no lip from anyone on this.

Viktor seems to be having a very Gumshoe moment. Oh wait, that's normal.

Did anyone ever use the unicorn/gryphon?

screw that. it's all about the kraken.

But unicorns are pretty!

(Actually, I loved how Suikoden II's unicorns were actually dangerous, temperamental and, uh, did questionable things to virgins.)

The trouble with them is they took up two spots. That's lame. The unicorn recruiting was fun though. Good way to test if any of the characters of questionable gender were actually girls.

I don't think I ever got the krakens.

I used the Suikoden II griffin a lot though! ^_^

It's been years since I played the game, but if I'm not mistaken, wasn't there one female character who slept with everything that moved? And presenting her to the unicorn would make him kind of pissy?

I wouldn't be surprised. I think there was something funny if you brought Sierra for it? Not sure. I read a lot of people's accounts of that scene and some of them might have been made up.

My early votes for his recruitment? Not Nanami and not Tengaar. They're the super obvious ones that most people'd probably get when playing.

Brick has a shiv with your name on it.

Are you sure about that? I know about the S1/S2 stuff but I wasn't aware that transferring Suikogaiden data was possible/did anything. The only thing I can even think of it doing is unlocking some of the scenes where you see Nash [in Harmonia], but there are some pretty big revelations during those scenes so I don't know if that's possible. But I can't imagine what else it would do.

And Gengen is annoying as fuck. Please, please, PLEASE don't use him longer than these jokers make you do it.

What would happen if someone said "not-Viki"?