![]() Short range characters have to be placed in the first row and can only attack the opponent’s first row. ![]() When assembling a party, the player is expected to pay attention to each character’s range: short, medium, or long. Where Suikoden separates itself is by having battles be, up to, two groups of six. If both sides survive, then another round commences. There’s no active component to the fights as the player simply tells each character what to do and watches the round unfold. Battles are turn-based with the heroes and enemies having their order of attack determined by an individual speed score. Enemies, aside from boss fights, are encountered randomly when on the world map and in dungeons. At times, the player will be tasked with completing more tactical battles.īattles are also pretty straight-forward. If you’ve played any other JRPG from this era then it should feel pretty familiar. Travel takes place on a world map and the player can enter and exit towns and dungeons as they are found. Each character has his or her own reasons for joining the resistance against Blight’s tyranny and the player is free to mix and match parties of six almost at will throughout the entirety of the game. Throughout the hero’s adventure he’ll encounter over 100 recruitable allies. The main antagonist, Luca Blight, is a villain so evil he’s boring, but like many games in the genre, he’s only the main villain for so long as another emerges from the shadows and the stakes get higher. War has broken out across the land as the most powerful, ruling family is not just seeking to bring everyone else to knee but seeks total chaos and destruction of the world. The main character and his best friend, Jowy, are soldiers in a youth brigade that soon is attacked from outside, and within, and disbanded. As the player, you control a nameless, voiceless, shell of a character who seems unimportant at the game’s start but soon is arguably the most important person in the world. Suikoden II is not unlike many games in the genre in terms of pacing and structure. However, that didn’t prevent me from enjoying it now. It is kind of a shame that I did miss out on this one back in 1999 (when the US version was released) because I would have really enjoyed it then. Finally, Sony and Konami were able to make the game available this past June on the Playstation Network, and I’ve been playing it on my Vita ever since. For years, I’ve often heard from friends and relatives that I should seek out and play Suikoden II, if nothing else, but the game fetches obscenely high prices on resale markets and I was just never willing to pull the trigger (or borrow such an important game from a friend). ![]() During my time spent with the Playstation I played a ton of RPGs, but none of the Suikoden games. I wore out my Playstation which conveniently ceased to function just a month before the launch of the Playstation 2. When the Playstation was in vogue, I was an early adopter. Suikoden II reserves its best character models for its boss encounters. Suikoden’s approach to variety is part of what made it a success, but also contributing to that success was its massive stable of characters and high stakes. Turn-based battles entered into via random map encounters paired with large, map-based tactical confrontations more commonly found in a series like Fire Emblem. Rather than trying to be something entirely different from the established franchises at the time, it opted to be a jack of all trades. Suikoden did not break the mold in terms of what it brought to the genre. Suikoden debuted on the Playstation in 1995, but the series truly arrived with its sequel in 1998 simply titled Suikoden II. Back on the NES, Capcom and Konami were arguably the two most popular so it made sense for Konami to toss its hat into the JRPG ring and it did so with the Suikoden series. One of the other main Japanese game developers was Konami. Capcom has since dabbled with the genre here and there without ever becoming a true power. Capcom would enlist Square’s help with localizing its own take on the genre with Breath of Fire. When someone strikes gold with an idea a legion of copycats arise. These two companies were not the only ones exploring the JRPG genre. ![]() During the 16 bit era, Square would come to surpass Enix as the premier publisher for the genre, as not only were Final Fantasy’s many sequels hits, but so was seemingly everything else Square etched its name on. Prior to that, Enix had already staked its claim to RPG supremacy with its hit Dragon Quest (known as Dragon Warrior in the US). Square, as the legend goes, was rescued by the success of a last ditch effort for relevancy in the form of Final Fantasy for the Famicom/Nintendo Entertainment System. In the early part of the 1990’s, there were basically two companies known for producing Japanese Role-Playing Games: Squaresoft and Enix.
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