Suikoden 1 is so easy to breeze through that I would do it once to get Tir unlocked and prep the way for the "real" game of Suikoden 2
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108 HD Doodles in the Water Margin: They're Remastering Suikoden!
- Thread starter JBear
- Start date
Absolutely hilarious bit from the just-concluded Suikoden stream: the remasters include a menu toggle for preventing Clive's storyline in Suikoden II from expiring due to the series of real-time deadlines in following it to its conclusion.
You can also watch Suikoden II as an anime once that comes out. Though for myself, Aki Shimizu--who authored the Suikoden III manga back in the day--returning to adapt the also-announced mobile game Star Leap as a comic is probably more interesting, because unless there's some console or PC-based version of it, I likely won't be able to play it. They're clearly courting existing fans with it too by setting it shortly before the first game, within the existing continuity.
You can also watch Suikoden II as an anime once that comes out. Though for myself, Aki Shimizu--who authored the Suikoden III manga back in the day--returning to adapt the also-announced mobile game Star Leap as a comic is probably more interesting, because unless there's some console or PC-based version of it, I likely won't be able to play it. They're clearly courting existing fans with it too by setting it shortly before the first game, within the existing continuity.
That's a good change. I'm glad they're putting these kinds of quality-of-life rom-hacks into the game. As much as I simp this series, and as easily accessible it already is, that quest was always a punch in the gonads.
I found myself surprisingly down/upset by all the news coming out of this.
As someone who was just desperately hoping for them to announce a S3 remaster and was reasonably convinced it was going to happen, that entire stream was a series of increasingly hilarious rug pulls. My hopes were like a sine wave, rising over and over only to be dashed again. The next step... is a S2 anime. But then the next step... is a mobile game. But just one more thing... there's a stage play. Best moment was devoting five entire minutes to chat stickers.
Are you really surprised Konami doesn't know how to manage its properties? Lol.
Reviews are coming in for the Remaster package, and so far the overall tenor seems pretty positive. There's some performance issues on the Switch version it seems during a handful of instances like when there's a lot of particle effects on screen, but I haven't read anything about bad bugs or glitches. Seems like the biggest criticisms I've read/heard so far is just some of the innate gameplay mechanics, that were part of the original games. (Things like no party inventory in Suikoden I). Which frankly I'm glad they've preserved. I'm looking more and more forwards to it...!
Just starting out.
- kind of a huge deal to be able to play a version of the first game with diagonal movement and ability to run inherently applied (wonder what the Holy rune does now, if anything). Probably the best addition the otherwise technically slipshod PSP port compilation (which this is based on, features-wise) made.
- the script seems much revised on a line by line basis. The original localizers certainly must've worked under heavy time and resource crunch, so both of the PS1 games always teetered on the brink of non-sequiturs, missing context and odd terminology (Mathiu the "military surgeon"). The content hasn't changed in the revision, but it flows more legibly while coming across as the text those familiar remember.
- don't love a lot of things about the battles. The battle screens have a more muted aesthetic that isn't particularly true to the saturated colours of the original; the damage numbers being conveyed in a nondescript thin white font is a poor substitute for the thick, pinkish numbers they used to be; and lastly, the fast-forward function distorts the audio as well, which is something that should never happen in bespoke remasters like this that aren't just an emulation wrapper.
You still need it to run on the world map iirc
I'm glad to hear they improved the script while still keeping the intent of the original lines. That's exactly what I was hoping for from this remaster.
I’m personally glad a lot of the gameplay jank of S1 survived so I can have a more authentic experience. But I worry it will turn off new players.
I think the new backgrounds are ok but I really wish I had a toggle to go back to the originals.
Playing this game 2ft away from a 55” oled is kinda rough. Definitely will need to sit further back. I hear there are performance issues on Switch but I bet it looks great on handheld.
I think the new backgrounds are ok but I really wish I had a toggle to go back to the originals.
Playing this game 2ft away from a 55” oled is kinda rough. Definitely will need to sit further back. I hear there are performance issues on Switch but I bet it looks great on handheld.
Becksworth
Aging Hipster Dragon Dad
I'm just shocked that Konami of all companies was keeping their old art assets well enough preserved to do decent remasterings of PSX era cutscenes.
If you’re talking about the CGI intros and other pre-rendered cuteness, I’m pretty sure they remade them from scratch.
Wrapped up Suikoden earlier. The script revision is solid throughout, and about the only thing I miss are certain memorable turns of phrase that people familiar with the original pass probably have fondness for; "giant woman", "I feel so good" and "No way. Woof" are all absent and reworked into arguably more coherent but not as memetically impactful statements. For all the obvious criticisms that you could outline in the way these games read on PlayStation in English, there nonetheless never came a point in them where I was lost on what dialogue was conveying, what character motivations were, or what some detail of warfare or political maneuvering was about in specific... so the benefits of the new localization are mostly there to be enjoyed by new players who will not know any other version.
Kawano's new portrait artwork is neat to see for an artist adapting her own work from many years before, and the end results are more convincingly authentic than other such modernizations have gone, like for instance Hirohiko Araki riffing on his older material where the realities of an artist's current style completely consume the stylistic foundations of the original work. The original art is more interestingly textured and especially coloured for my tastes, but it's a fair reinterpretation throughout.
Kawano's new portrait artwork is neat to see for an artist adapting her own work from many years before, and the end results are more convincingly authentic than other such modernizations have gone, like for instance Hirohiko Araki riffing on his older material where the realities of an artist's current style completely consume the stylistic foundations of the original work. The original art is more interestingly textured and especially coloured for my tastes, but it's a fair reinterpretation throughout.
From what I've seen, I will say that the PS1 textures, portraits etc for Suikoden 1 look considerably better than their remastered versions. Actually, it seems like Konami had planned to include a version with the original art alongside the remaster, but unfortunately couldn't get it finished in time. Hopefully someday...
For those curious, like I was before: Holy runes don't exist in Suikoden in this version anymore, as sprinting is a native feature of the game now; put a Killer rune or the like on Gremio and Viktor and revel in it. The True Holy rune is now the much less confusingly named High-Speed rune, and it has a new function: recruiting Stallion (he doesn't need to be in the active party) adds an additional and higher battle fast-forward multiplier to toggle between. The fastest elf outran the game mechanics themselves.
If playing on PC, applying the Suikoden Fix is neat. Pick and choose what features you want from the lot; for myself I enabled quite a few, of which music speed-up during battle toggled off, the pretty aggressive vignetting toggled off and dash as a toggle are particularly good tweaks.
Darkened screen corners in displaying the game. They're pretty much always applied (plus there's an oval-shaped imprint around the center of the screen that's really visible much of the time). It's a common option in games that use such an effect (like the postprocessing-heavy HD-2D branded RPGs) to have an option to toggle it off, which I would rather do as I don't think it does much for the presentation of games like this.
People have been posting screenshots of them going through the Suikoden 2 remaster, and, wow. I knew it was a pretty game, but had forgotten just how pretty it was. Still waiting for a sale before I get these, but those screenshots tempt me to get it right now.
Too bad about the upscaled portraits in II. I'm guessing Ishikawa isn't particularly active these days in the way Kawano is and this is what they had to resort to instead of a more artisanal revision to old material. But given that other long-retired series creatives like Miki Higashino have recently returned to doing work in the industry, who knows what the future might hold.
It's a wrap, oddly phrased achievement description and all. Overall these are good versions of both games that retain the most striking aspects of their visuality--the character and creature sprites and their animation--and provide valid alternative means of adapting the rest in ways that do many similar things to the HD-2D brand of presentation but with more restraint for the better. Hard mode just felt like a very meager HP bump for enemies and nothing else; I was surprised difficulty modes were implemented at all, as the series's design sense in this era doesn't really benefit from charging up its mechanical friction... which barely exists to begin with.
I didn't drop the combo just yet and read through the Suikogaiden duology, starring agent of Harmonia and Howling Voice Guild also-ran Nash Latkje; he'll go on to feature in Suikoden III fairly prominently but these visual novels are his personal story and day in the limelight. I thought both were mostly decent, which goes well with my middling opinion of Suikoden II, which these are most connected to; part one especially is heavily reliant on "actually, this guy was also there" scenario writing as Nash just wanders into pivotal or memorable scenes from that game and it's embellished that he actually played a major role in the background. By contrast, part two is set after II's conclusion and so has more opportunity to tell an original story, even if the structuring of these games is built on fan service through trainspotting characters who often cameo explicitly for the purpose as one-scene wonders, even if the more integrated roles also exist.
Thinking on the familiar characters that I enjoyed seeing the most--Sierra, Elza, Nina, Lo Wen, Oulan--it's certainly the case that I like these women characters, but the game's writing voice and tendencies are to mostly pair Nash with women too, and the impression isn't always that it's to characterize the participants further but to keep rotating in ladies for him to flirt with and always cast interactions through some kind of romantic undertone or slapstick horseplay... to the extent that part two involves a scene where Nash's aunt kisses him on the mouth as part of a jailbreak ploy if you've treated her decently (if not, he gets a punch). There aren't any sexualized CGs and Nash's responses even at their worst aren't trash like something like Policenauts would peddle, but the viewpoint feels highly male-oriented in who's expected to be doing the reading and what kinds of narrative beats there should be, and that's a pretty familiar refrain coming from other series entries.
Still, these are extremely breezy reads (maybe six hours total, generously) and the production values are sky high, with terrific animated openings (almost certainly by the same studio that carried the standard into III), a huge number of illustrations for the length and soundtracks that take the material that existed in II, and usually remix it for the better--I think the scale of Suikoden II expended Higashino for nearly all she had and these game provide a platform for revisiting the material with more adventurous instrumentation and arrangement.
Thinking on the familiar characters that I enjoyed seeing the most--Sierra, Elza, Nina, Lo Wen, Oulan--it's certainly the case that I like these women characters, but the game's writing voice and tendencies are to mostly pair Nash with women too, and the impression isn't always that it's to characterize the participants further but to keep rotating in ladies for him to flirt with and always cast interactions through some kind of romantic undertone or slapstick horseplay... to the extent that part two involves a scene where Nash's aunt kisses him on the mouth as part of a jailbreak ploy if you've treated her decently (if not, he gets a punch). There aren't any sexualized CGs and Nash's responses even at their worst aren't trash like something like Policenauts would peddle, but the viewpoint feels highly male-oriented in who's expected to be doing the reading and what kinds of narrative beats there should be, and that's a pretty familiar refrain coming from other series entries.
Still, these are extremely breezy reads (maybe six hours total, generously) and the production values are sky high, with terrific animated openings (almost certainly by the same studio that carried the standard into III), a huge number of illustrations for the length and soundtracks that take the material that existed in II, and usually remix it for the better--I think the scale of Suikoden II expended Higashino for nearly all she had and these game provide a platform for revisiting the material with more adventurous instrumentation and arrangement.
I got the impression that you hated Suikoden 2 because its story was supposedly worse than 1, at least in the whole feminism department? Not that I personally care about either game's story much, like I expressed earlier in this thread, I felt that 1's story was extremely barebones and cliched, while 2's story tried to do some interesting things but seriously fumbled the execution. Maybe the new scripts will make me appreciate them better, but that's still up in the air, and there's only so much a good script can do to fix a story's shortcomings.
If you want to be reductive about it, because there are lots of other reasons why the first game's storytelling works for me better, and instances where it displays the same kind of offputting inclinations (Odessa's whole "in the end... I chose to be... a woman...." spiel, for instance).
Disregard this, actually: both of the games have jokey-joke alternative chapter 3s that you can access if you've been stockpiling "luck points" according to mostly boneheaded choices. Replayed to check out the first game's, and a lot of it is predicated on Nash walking in on Ayda bathing, which gets its own illustration before it veers into tired sex comedy hijinks comeuppance. Ayda's also seventeen, so there's that aspect to it too.
Disregard this, actually: both of the games have jokey-joke alternative chapter 3s that you can access if you've been stockpiling "luck points" according to mostly boneheaded choices. Replayed to check out the first game's, and a lot of it is predicated on Nash walking in on Ayda bathing, which gets its own illustration before it veers into tired sex comedy hijinks comeuppance. Ayda's also seventeen, so there's that aspect to it too.
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So, after watching an LP of the two remastered Suikodens, I've come to a firm conclusion about them.
They're by no means good stories, though the second game sure does try. They're also too simplistic mechanically to work as "proper" RPGs. What they are good for, however, are as "diet" political dramas, and quasi medieval China-Europe-India travelling sims. In that respect they actually work very well for a bit of relaxation, especially when they're aided by good commentary or a fervent imagination. The brilliant OSTs and the amazing pixel art of the second game help a ton in this regard. In short, they're good "vibe" games, and are worth playing for a little winding down.
They're by no means good stories, though the second game sure does try. They're also too simplistic mechanically to work as "proper" RPGs. What they are good for, however, are as "diet" political dramas, and quasi medieval China-Europe-India travelling sims. In that respect they actually work very well for a bit of relaxation, especially when they're aided by good commentary or a fervent imagination. The brilliant OSTs and the amazing pixel art of the second game help a ton in this regard. In short, they're good "vibe" games, and are worth playing for a little winding down.