An RPG Masterpiece
Written: Jun 14 '00 (Updated Jun 20 '00)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: 108 Characters, Attention to Gameplay.
Cons: Horrid localization, inflexibility of Army battles.
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| Alkaiser's Full Review: Suikoden II for PlayStation 1 |
In an era where games now are leaning towards "better" translating into graphics and sound spilling on to 4 or 5 CDs (You'll notice those games don't cost more than the 1 CD ones, though, CD manufacturers screwing us?), Konami came up with a novel idea...how about some gameplay?
Suikoden II is the sequel to one of the sleeper RPGs of times past. I grew disinterested in the first game quickly, and found that it wasn't my cup of tea. However, I picked up the sequel, gave it glance and decided to give it a whirl.
I was immediately hooked. The graphics are the worst part of this game by far, but once you're playing you tend to almost overlook them entirely. The intro movie is nice, and there are some nifty rendered cutscenes, but if you're expecting this to look like FF8, you're in the wrong section, pal.
The story begins with you, the Hero being "ambushed" by the armies of the State (by which they mean the City-State of Jowston). Immediately into the "ambush" you discover it is all a charade, and that your own armies are doing the attacking. You and your pal Jowy are forced to jump into a raging river in order to survive.
From then on, it's a massive quest filled with a whole lot of deception. (That seems to be the only way people can generate plot twists, nowadays...deception...ah well.) There are massive battles, for which you will need to recruit new members...106 in all, if you get the maximum number of characters. (You and your adopted sister fill out the other 2...hence the 108 reported on the box.) While it might seem that the 108 characters would lack any sort of development, each of them has certain criteria you must meet in order for them to join up. Some of them will do it as part of the plot, while others need you to give them an item, or have friends recruited already and in your party when you go to meet them. When you reach the end of the game, there will be a brief bit of text describing what happened to each of the 108 people you found, of didn't find, and I could remember nearly all of the people, despite only having played for just over 40 hours.
There are three types of fighting in the game. You have your standard turn-based RPG fights. In addition, you'll occasionally get challenged to duels, which basically end up being a game of rock-paper-scissors. ("Defend" beats "Wild Attack", "Attack" beats "Defend", "Wild Attack" beats "Attack".)
In addition, you've got large-scale army battles to fight as well. These are my favorite part of the game, however, I wish that the battles weren't all decided ahead of time. Most of the fights are skewed so you will either definitely win or lose, and you'll figure out the outcome by, like the 5th turn. The ones that look even are always decided by plot points. (you getting reinforcements that scare off the enemy, troops are forced to retreat, etc.) You can never "win" a battle you're not supposed to. You can however, "lose" a battle you were meant to win. I really don't like that aspect of it. Still, it is my favorite part of the game.
One of the other aspects of the game I didn't really enjoy was the fact that you pretty much have all the weapons you're ever going to get at the beginning of the game. Instead of buying new weapons, you sharpen your old ones. (You'd figure it's pretty hard to sharpen a pair of tongfa, or that eventually, you'd sharpen a sword to dust.) In addition to sharpening them, you can add runes to them, which is the source for all of your special attacks in the game.
Runes come in two forms "True" runes, of which there are only 27, and "Crystals" which you'll pick up off of enemies and buy in stores. They'll allow you to add fire to your weapons, and in some cases, do some really huge damage to enemies. (Incredibly useful, this doing damage thing.) Other runes will give you the ability to attack twice, always be Berserked (A good thing, unlike in the FF series.), and to not get knocked off balance.
The big thorn in my side throughout the whole game was the lack of proofreading that was done in the game. There are SO many text errors in the game, that you pretty much expect them in nearly every text box you encounter. What did Konami do? Have like 2 testers on the entire game? That won't cut it, and that's the main reason I can't give this 5 stars.
This game also has COOL mini-games. You can fish, play Whack-A-Mole, your requisite "Simon Says" dance game, take a bath (side plots occasionally happen here.), engage in an "Iron Chef"-esque cooking battle, and much more. There's even a suggestion box where your characters will drop you little notes. That is SO cool, and it's such a little thing! Konami paid attention to the details, and crammed a whole heck of a lot of them in. Defnitely worth the 40 hours of play time, and $29.99. However, I'd definitely recommend playing through this with some sort of FAQ so you can figure out what you're missing before you stray too far. It'll defnitely save you some frustration.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
Alkaiser
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Member: Clayton Chan
Location: Irvine, CA
Reviews written: 655
Trusted by: 344 members
About Me:
Broke the 700 pound mark on my leg lifts.
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