108 HD Doodles in the Water Margin: They're Remastering Suikoden!

[Issun]

It was probably a purposeful slowdown. Combat in the first two Suikoden games is some of the zippiest you'll ever find in an RPG.

 

[Peklo]

The first two Suikodens are generally famed for their blazing fast battle systems, which coalesce into such a pace through multiple factors, like lack of loading times for battle transitions, general downplaying of elaborate attack animations, use of auto-battle, and in group combat individual animations being able to play out and resolve simultaneously so long as the targets for them don't overlap. Single-target boss battles such as the one in the preview aren't encounters where these elements will manifest all at once and don't really reflect the general structure of the battles at large, as they don't in most RPGs. I still wouldn't call them slow by most measures.

 

[Mogri]

However the new translation shakes out, there are some lines that had better be left untouched.

 

[Poster]

See the power of the science!

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

there was another video I saw where a party was fighting a vampire looking guy in a church. The combat seemed super slow to me, which is a negative. Maybe it was purposely slow to show menu choices to players.

The battle system in Suikoden I&II are, as other people have noted, lightning fast. This evaluation mostly applies to regular encounters you'll fight against mobs in the overworld or in dungeons. There is literally an auto-battle button that the cursor defaults onto at the beginning of fights where your characters will just auto-attack, and it's completely viable to just smash that the entire game because of the nature of how the battle system works. Battle is fast not just because of the lack of loading times or the speed of attack animations, but every character that can attack at the same time due to the attack order will. So you don't have to wait for characters to attack one-by-one, when like three of your dudes immediately jump, assault, and kill at the same time in the opening salvo of battle.

But in general, auto-battling/free-willing will only be viable for common battles. There's a whole magic system and skill system in the game, and that system becomes quintessential during boss battles. Boss battles themselves can last quite a while and be very involved. There's attack patterns, weaknesses, gambits, etc. And Bosses will have elaborate attack animations as well. The video you watched was an early boss battle in S2 (that's actually a reoccurring villain from the first game) and the elaborate animations are more event-oriented in nature, meant to shock and awe the player that this baddie has returned. It's not the last time you'll fight him either, so this battle is more of an interactive cutscene than a true boss battle.

 

[Voncaster]

Thanks for the information. It makes sense to have the bosses feel more special with extra animation.

 

[Pajaro Pete]

Thanks for the information. It makes sense to have the bosses feel more special with extra animation.

Spell effects and special attacks tend to be pretty slow (and Neclord's special attacks especially), but the remasters are supposed to have a fast forward. Anyway here's an official comparison clip of a random encounters, whose intended purpose is to show off the (slow) spell animations, but you can see how more standard enemies attack

https://twitter.com/x/status/1572270516693790720

 

[Pajaro Pete]

hrmmm these seem to be varying tremendously in quality - to be expected on account of the number of portraits that are in the game i guess. the core starter group looks good, but then you have mandatory characters like kirkis and tai ho that feel a little rough.

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

That’s just the original character art for those characters, before they were Rastorized for the game. Even the rough ones in S1 looks leagues better than the ones for S2 I’ve seen for the remaster. They should have brought the artist back to redraw the portraits, or gotten S1’s artist to draw new ones. They look BAD

 

[Pajaro Pete]

it isn't the original character art. here's tai ho's original portrait from suikoden 1

 

[Peklo]

Yeah, it's all new work, and moreover, it's still by Kawano--compare to her other modern work in Eiyuden, for example. Konami puts it like this:

• New Character Drawings
  • All character portraits have been updated in HD. Junko Kawano, who designed the characters for the original version of Suikoden released in 1995, has newly re-drawn all the character portraits for Suikoden I HD Remaster: Gate Rune War.

The first game's new opening shown in the collection's announcement trailer is basically the Saturn opening, but it too contains new art for its respective character portraits and frames, with them having been redone too (unless what shivam said earlier is accurate and they're from some older revisions Kawano did). Suikoden II meanwhile does use Fumi Ishikawa's original art--if it looks different, it's because it's no longer digitized for low-res displays and may have been otherwise filtered or upscaled in the process, but the base artwork is identical.

 

[Fyonn]

Re: battle animations, I've been playing the PS1 version of Suikoden and the auto-battle option seems to prioritize getting as many attack animations playing simultaneously as possible, even when it will lead to less efficient victories.

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

It is far from being the most efficient way to mete out maximum damage, but it is the most expedient way to battle. And because of the nature of the exp system and how characters gain their stats, you very quickly get to the point where your entourage can destroy whatever common adversaries you encounter with swiftness no matter how they choose to attack. So long as your entourage has a stout frontline and enough physical damage.

 

[Fyonn]

Oh yeah, my number one impression of Suikoden 1 so far has been "oh wow, in exactly one of these battles (zombie dragon) has my approach mattered whatsoever." For context, I think I'm approaching the first army battle.

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

That battle is indeed the first real confrontation where you have to be careful, use tactics, observe attack patterns, and also have your party leveled up and decently equipped. It's not gonna be the last one, but it might actually be the hardest in the game since it's a crash course in battle mechanics that you'll be better prepared for later on.
Kind word of advice: any army battle you enter, make sure you create a save file before starting. Army battles in S1 are generally pretty easy (at their heart, it's simple rock-paper-scissors going on) but if you mess up, you can potentially get a party member permanently killed and removed from the game. And if that happens, you can kiss the best possible ending goodbye. Which, to be honest, isn't that big of a deal. You can always just watch the short clip of the ending on youtube.

 

[Issun]

This sucks, but better delayed and good than rushed and bad. I've seen speculation that the endgame is to release it as close to Eiyuden Chronicle as possible, which would be a Konami-ass move, but no one knows for sure when that's coming out, either, so that would be kind of a gamble, and Konami's feelings about gambling are...

Oh.

 

[WildcatJF]

I'm glad they're holding it, even if the reasoning could be assholery. More time is going to help, I feel.

 

[Lokii]

I’m sad this was my most anticipated release this year

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

I'm not surprised in the least that this would need a delay. I'm only surprised that Konami is giving it a delay.

 

[Olli]

They need more time to put the NFTs in.

 

[Second Duke Revier]

As much as people stress the grand shared scope of the series as far as what makes it significant and dear to them, those estimations also all inevitably tend to revolve around II as the centerpiece, to a degree that it can feel like a black hole consuming all else through the gravity of its perceived virtuosity. Collecting the two most fundamental games together like this can be nothing but a good and necessary move in reintroducing the material, but the rhetoric of treating the first game as a stopgap one is obligated to play--or queries whether it should be played at all--on the way to the main course have already begun, based on the reputation II holds. The fan-cultivated hype across a couple of decades has honed far too much on that solitary game as the ideal form the series should only exist in for my tastes, and seems to be informing the shape Eiyuden will eventually take as a reactionary work on the creator end as well. Even in the agreed-to-matter Murayama-helmed stretch of the series, all three of the games are very distinct works and portray different strengths and weaknesses of the overarching concept and evolving writing voice.

Tbqh I don't think either Suikoden 1 or 2 are particularly good stories, 1 kinda falls too much into a generic "good rebellion defeats evil empire" story without much to make it stand out, 2 meanwhile has some interesting ideas, like showing how killing the big bad guy doesn't necessarily stop a war, but the overall storytelling still comes out as rather haphazard, with a few strong moments barely saving it. I would say the most memorable thing about both games is their unique blend of faux Middle Ages Europe with faux Song dynasty China in their setting, and some of the small arcs, like the party setting off to defuse tensions between elves and dwarves.

Honestly, I wish these stories took more from Water Margin. I really miss my dark comedy doubling up as a satire of society, complete with questionable "heroes" lol.

 

[Sarcasmorator]

The best parts of the Suikoden I and II stories are interpersonal. Riou and Jowy and their differing approaches and tragic frenemy status, etc. The way the games link into a larger story in spots is neat, but the core of the narrative's appeal is in the characters and subplots involving them more than the larger tale.

 

[Pajaro Pete]

March 6, 2025. Thank you Konami for not letting a trailer for your upcoming remasters to be embedded on third party websites.

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

Konami really needs that youtube ad revenue, don'tcha know

 

[Peklo]

Remastered openings are out, so buckle up and stare at some Kawano and Ishikawa art flying your way.

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

Very tastefully done!

But man, you can really tell they brought Junko Kawano back to reillustrate everything she did for S1, but they didn't do the same for Fumi Ishikawa and just reused legacy assets for S2.

 

[Peklo]

Ishikawa might be retired from the industry or otherwise unavailable, going by her latest development credit dating from 2008. Kawano by contrast has been more public than she's ever been before about her process and workflow thanks to all the Eiyuden material that's been covered and promoted, so I'm not surprised Konami likely contacted her to collaborate and contribute for these remasters.

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

Tbf, the original S2 art assets look like they hold up a lot better than the S1 art assets probably did. Scanning tech (and photoshop) in the mid 90s was still at a very primitive state and took leaps and bounds in just a few years IIRC. So there was probably a real need to do it this way.

 

[Lokii]

Would ya believe this is coming out this week? After such a long time it feels like the release suddenly rushed up on us. I'm trying to decide if I want to go through 1 first or jump straight into 2. It would mean missing out on TcDohl but is he worth a 20 hour prequel tax? Not to slight Suiko 1--it is a very fine game--but I've spent much more time with it than 2 and two Suikos back to back is a lot of Den.

Also Konami has announced a Suikoden focused stream today at 4 pm EST. Today? March 3 the 3rd? Propitious timing...

 

[Second Duke Revier]

I'm actually cautiously looking forward to this, as the remakes seem to be redoing the scripts to be less nonsensical, and, with these games being extremely story focused, the scripts should help the experience immensely. While I haven't thought particularly highly of these titles' stories in the past, I've always enjoyed their general environments and vibes, and with better scripts they could very well turn out to be excellent experiences for me.