Topic: Suikoden I & II HD Remaster

I finally got around to starting Suikoden II tonight. I have only played about a half hour of it so I am not to far in it. Currently I just made my way to the first town after escaping a prison and got my first party. I am just about to head into my first major task.

Got a bit farther in Suikoden II. I got through my first dungeon and defeated the first major boss which of course is nothing really, just really a warm up and for you to learn about the game. I got to my home town and of course for reasons I left for my journey.

I have to say I am noticing the improvement overs Suikoden alot. The graphics are a bit better, crisper,.sharper and the music is just as fantastic. I noticed some QoL improvements such as able to equip armor.once you buy it and not have to leave the shop and open sub menus to do it. Shop keepers have now a rare item for sale which is nice. Overall it feels like a true evolution from Suikoden like every is saying. So far the story seems good but I am only a few hours into it. Definitely looking forward to playing more in the upcoming days.

I've been slowly making my way through Suikoden II, and honestly while a lot of it is good, I think it's kind of fallen into the trap of trying to do too much more than the original and stumbles for it. The new castle is way too big and complicated. The people you can recruit are much more spread out and complicated, which isn't necessarily a bad thing but it's much harder than the original to get them. Now I've hit a place that does what I might hate the most when RPGs do it: I have to spread my people out into 3 teams of 6 for a big battle. But other than the ones I usually use, they are grossly underleveled, so now I have to do some major grinding. In the first game there was one battle where you have to use a specific character that I had to level up, but it was a 1-on-1 battle so you just had to level him up to make him stronger. Here I have to not only level up at least 12 other characters, but also upgrade their weapons, runes, armor, etc. because it's a normal battle where it all matters. This is going to take a lot of time and a lot of money, and is putting me off trying. Of course I will eventually, but I think I'll take a break from the game for a bit.

@Xyphon22 Ugh I hate when games do that. Thanks for the warning though. I havent been playing Suikoden II the last few weeks. Instead I having been trying to finish Borderlands 3 so I can start 4. I will eventually get back to Suikoden II but hearing what you said kinda of sours me on it. As I said I hate when games do that to you.

@Tasuki I honestly think it's probably not THAT bad. What happened was the first part I lost a couple people but then the battle ended and moved on to the second part. That party got completely wiped out, but instead of a Game Over it moved on to the third part. Then my final party eventually all died and I got a Game Over. So I assume the boss has a set HP that you have to get rid of, but if each party manages to get rid of 1/3 it will move on to the next. So although my last party was my best, he still had too much HP left since my second party didn't do its job. It probably won't be too bad if I just upgrade some weapons and some levels and get some more Water Orbs for healing. I just don't feel like going through all that right now. Maybe in a couple of days.

@Xyphon22 I read somewhere that if characters die in the large scale battles that they are gone for good, you cant bring them back which makes getting all 108 stars a bit more challenging. So now I am wondering if you did end up beating the boss with your third team if the other teams would be gone for good. An interesting thought.

I finally went and did some upgrading of levels, weapons, armor, runes, and all that and gave it another go. My first party made it through its battle without anyone dying this time. I think my second party did a little better than last time, but still got wiped out. But I guess my third party was a lot better because I managed to win this time. Hopefully there aren't any more battles like that.

@Tasuki I had the one whole party wiped out in this normal turn-based battle, and there is also one of the Fire Emblem-esque tactical battles leading up to it where I had some units wiped out. But before I saved I checked the Stars tablet and no one is permanently dead. So I guess whatever you saw is fortunately wrong.

@Xyphon22 Well that's good to know. That was the one thing questioning me if I really wanted tonplay this game. That's a relief knowing that that's not true.

A couple more annoying things I've discovered playing lately. First, resurrecting people is practically useless. They get resurrected with not a lot of health, which would be fine if you could heal them, but it always performs healing spells before the resurrection spell. So the battle always plays out like: heal the party, resurrect the dead person, boss attacks and kills the newly resurrected person again because they don't have much health. So annoying.

Also, and this one is partly my fault for not knowing, but I didn't know there is a max of 999,999 money you can hold. I got caught in a sequence of events where I had a lot of battles without a good place to stop and go buy things (which was also annoying, because I also didn't want to save for fear of having lost some people permanently, which I fortunately did not), but I had max money and couldn't earn any more. A boss at the end alone would have given me 200,000 but instead I got nothing.

This is still a really good game. I'm just noticing a lot of little annoyances that I didn't have with the first one.

@Xyphon22 I do remember the first came had the gold cap too at 999,999 which was annoying considering how much money you needed to pay to upgrade weapons and armor. I believe I mentioned that awhile back. Obviously the money cap is from an age where games had less memory for stuff like that but in the remaster there is no excuse.

Alright, I finally beat Suikoden II. I got 98 of the Stars, so I couldn't get the best ending, but I just watched that on YouTube. For the reasons I've already mentioned above, I do think I preferred the original, but this was still a really good game. Just like the first game, though, the ending (and particularly the final boss) were quite strange in the standard ending that I got. The good ending makes amends for that, though, but it looks like you have to jump through a lot of hoops to get it. But watching it was good enough for me. I've heard Tierkries or however you spell it is supposed to be amazing so hopefully we get a remake of that one day, but the wait to finally be able to play this series was definitely worth it. These were both great games.

@Xyphon22 I will admit playing Suikoden 1 and 2 have piqued my interest for the other games and I would love to play them especially I think its 4 and 5 that are a prequel to 1. Sadly those are locked on the PS2 and can be quite expensive last time I checked. I doubt we will see a remake of those since Suikoden is such a niche series. Usually when people talk about the series its all about 1 and 2. All the others after 1 and 2 are considered flops and this is Konami we are talking about. Still who knows maybe they will release a another HD Remaster pack of 3, 4, and 5 kinda like they did with the Castlevania series.

is it true that for the dragon quest I and II HD collection they added an invincibility cheat or are youtubers just BSing?