Publisher: Konami
Developer: KCET
Release Date: 9/28/1999
Date Played: 1/28/2020-2/21/2020
Region: USA
Time Played: 30 hours
What’d you think?: Finally, I beat another classic JRPG. After some embarrassing failures, I had been worried that German Final Fantasy 8 was going to be the only JRPG I beat, especially as I’ve exhausted the list of ones I’m already familiar with. Before playing this I knew the Suikoden franchise only by reputation, and even then the only reputation I really knew was “JRPG series that some people like”. Now that I’ve played this, I’m interested in playing more; Suikoden II was pretty damn good.
The game is gorgeous. It got some guff in its time for having 2d sprites in an era of 3d polygons, but playing it a few decades later, they’re honestly much nicer to look at than the clunky models of something like Legend of Dragoon. There’s a lot of personality and charm in the sprites, especially during cutscene vignettes where animations will get more involved and expressive.
There’s also a ton to do in the game. You get a headquarters partway into the game that you can upgrade and play several minigames in. My playthrough lasted 30 hours, and there were probably a dozen or so recruitable characters (of the 108 total, though scores of these are recruited automatically over the course of the story) I didn’t even bother to get. There’s lots of sidequests, one strictly time-gated, and the overall depth of content feels rather modern.
The story and setting aren’t anything spectacularly new, but deal with family, war, genocide, fascism, and refugees in ways that feel sadly timeless, and ideas of fate and destiny that personally frustrate me. I don’t want a JRPG hero strung along by fate, I want a JRPG hero with some goddamn agency. There’s a time about 3/4 of the way before the game’s actual ending where your foster sister can try to convince you that this war you’re fighting is pointless. That it will only lead to more killing. That there’s no reason at all that you, specifically, have to lead this army. So fuck it, we can run away. And you CAN. You can say fuck the war, fuck the fighting, have the lead strategist of your army slap you in disgrace, and you and your sister can bounce. You then see a cabin in the woods and “fin”. That this is considered a “bad ending” is the game’s biggest flaw. That it allows you the choice though? That despite the rune embedded in your hand being destined to fight the rune in another’s hand, that despite the psychopathic killer massacring cities, you can say it really isn’t your beef and go? That’s pretty cool, and so is Suikoden II.
YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8OIYTfquVffA1D6ChZaaRqzvHFx0L0jt
