Almost every major Japanese publisher had to have a big RPG franchise in the PS1 era. Square Soft had Final Fantasy. Enix had Dragon Quest. Capcom had Breath of Fire. Bandai Namco had Tales. And so, Konami made Suikoden. Its innovation was trading a set party of heroes for a cast of 108 total characters who could be recruited on your adventure. Combined with a world of rune-based magic and political intrigue, Suikoden I and II managed to carve out a unique lane in a crowded field, and now both games have finally been updated with modern bells and whistles for current platforms.
I’ve played around a bit with the Suikoden I & II HD Remaster collection, which technically includes the much longer subtitle “Gate Rune and Dunan Unification Wars,” and am pleased to report two main takeaways. First, these JRPGs still have the juice, especially Suikoden II. The snappy turn-based combat and open-ended collect-em-all-fest holds up 30 years later, with decent storytelling and even better character writing.
Second, both games have survived the journey from low-resolution 4:3 aspect ratio to 16:9 HD mostly intact and looking better than ever, especially in Suikoden II. The character sprites remain perfectly pixelated-looking without any smoothed-over upscaling effects or muddy silhouettes. The backgrounds, never a series highlight, look crisp and get the job done. The tiling of its top-down world can feel a bit bland and repetitive, but certain scenes with more detailed shadows and lighting really pop. Most importantly, the battles still look and feel great, at least to the eyes of someone who grew up with these games back in the ‘90s. Things are less great in Suikoden I where some environments look weirdly flat and empty.
For those unfamiliar, Suikoden I (1995) follows military nepo-baby Tir who comes into possession of a magical relic that jumpstarts a rebellion against the empire he had previously pledged to serve. Suikoden II (1998) follows childhood friends Riou, Jowy, and Nanami after a false-flag attack by their military unit leads them to be branded as traitors amid an invasion by a neighboring kingdom. The first game is about 20 hours long and focuses mainly on recruiting characters to aid you in your fight against the evil Scarlet Moon Empire, while the second is longer, much more narratively dense, and a bit more morally grey and complex.
Both are propelled along by random encounters and boss fights, toil made much better than in some other games thanks to Suikoden’s old-school but flashy turn-based formula and the fact that you’re always finding new characters with unique abilities, strengths, and weaknesses to fight alongside. Instead of just three or four characters, you get to fight with six, with front and back rows as well as synergistic combo attacks adding to the strategy. None of it felt revolutionary at the time like the multi-cam cinematic quality of Final Fantasy VII battles, but it’s crunchy and well-balanced as far as conventional turn-based combat goes.
So what improvements and new quality-of-life features does the Suikoden I & II HD Remaster collection bring to the party? Aside from the graphical overhaul and updated script (the original localized versions were far from perfect), there are standard additions like auto-saves (though only on a screen with a save point?) and a menu log that keeps a record of what people have told you. There’s no mini-map but you can sprint from the start now. You can speed up fights to auto-battle through them quickly, though weirdly the music speeds up during this as well. Plus there are optional difficulty modes now. The ability to turn off timed events is coming in a day-one update (certain characters can’t be recruited if the in-game clock ticks past a certain point).
It’s unfortunate that you can’t speed up the game outside of battle, and it feels like a missed opportunity not to have the option to turn on the game’s old graphics and aspect ratio for enthusiasts who want to revisit the original experience on PS1. The inventory systems in both games are also still a pain (though not nearly as clunky as how they were left in the recent Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake). An in-game gallery, museum, or other historical feature would have been a nice bonus as well, especially for the $50 price tag. The bar keeps rising for modern remasters of all-time classics, and it certainly feels like there was room for Suikoden I & II HD Remaster to be a more comprehensive package.
It doesn’t make any major missteps, though, which can’t be said for every PS1 JRPG that gets an HD makeover. Suikoden I & II HD Remaster presents one good game and one excellent one (it’s sacrilege to say but if you’re short on time I think you should just play II) with everything a modern player needs to enjoy two genre classics (well, except for maybe an option to turn off random encounters). Konami has already announced an anime adaptation of Suikoden II and a new mobile spin-off called Star Leap that looks beautiful but has gacha microtransactions. If this burgeoning Suikoden renaissance is successful, though, maybe we’ll finally get Suikoden VI, or at least Suikoden III as a PS2 classic on PlayStation 5.
Update 3/5/2025 2:29 p.m. ET: Added a link to Aidan Moher’s review which discovered the auto-save feature is basically a lie.
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