Suikoden I&II HD Remaster Review

Is anything quite as good as we remember through the lens of nostalgia? That’s the question at the fore of a remaster, whether in film, music, or even — perhaps especially — in video games. For some classic-but-now-dormant series, fans clamor for the smallest scraps, perhaps dreaming of a brand-new title, but hoping at the very least for an avenue to revisit established favorites. While a good remaster can emphasize what made the original title great and bring a work of art to new audiences, a poorly executed remaster can dull the original game while scaring off newcomers. Suikoden I&II HD Remaster Gate Rune and Dunan Unification Wars packages the first two games of the beloved Suikoden series to modern consoles with a fresh coat of paint and a few quality-of-life changes. The end result is a lovely package of two classic PSX-era JRPGs that reminds us that some things are even better than we remember.

The Suikoden series was created by Yoshitaka Murayama, loosely based on the classical Chinese novel translated to English as 'Water Margin'. The first game was originally released for the PlayStation in 1995, followed by a series that spawned numerous sequels and a few spinoff titles before receding into dormancy nearly twenty years ago with the last mainline entry, Suikoden V for the PlayStation 2. In the years since then, series fans have been left with little to hope for. Although a remaster was finally announced in 2022, Konami stayed unusually quiet regarding these remasters until announcing a release date late last year.

The original Suikoden sees players assume the role of Tir McDohl, son of a Great General to the Scarlet Moon Empire. Shortly after beginning his own service to the empire, Tir and company are quickly exposed to corruption & greed that has rotted through the political establishment. The Empire ascertains that Tir’s vassal & friend, Ted, is in possession of a relic known as the Soul Eater Rune and attempts to abduct him to retrieve it, wounding him. As a result, Ted transfers the rune to Tir, who is forced to escape his childhood home as a fugitive. From there, Tir quickly becomes enmeshed with, and eventually becomes the leader of, the resistance faction to the Empire he has known all his life. 

At this point the game opens up, giving players a home base and a mission to recruit the 108 Stars of Destiny in order to challenge the Empire. Throughout, Tir and his cohort are forced to endure incredible hardships on this liberation quest, which is hard-fought and not without considerable loss.

Fan favorite entry Suikoden II followed in 1998, taking place three years after the end of the first game. Here, the conflict is focused on the invasion of the City-States of Jowston by the Highland Kingdom. Players control a new protagonist in Riou, along with his best friend Jowy. The two boys are members of the Highland army’s youth brigade, soon caught in a self-slaughter by its own forces as a conniving pretext to justify the invasion of the City-States. After defecting from their murderous military, each boy obtains one half of the Rune of the Beginning, which then places them in a seemingly eternal and escalating conflict as the two halves of the rune jostle to be reunited at all costs. 

I don’t want to spoil much of the story despite the age of the games, because the narratives here are really something special. The plots are grandiose but remain relatively grounded, no excessive jargon or confusingly named deus ex machinas to assail at the end of the game, even if there is an odd vampire plotline or evil sorceress causing problems. There’s plenty of magic involved, sure. In Suikoden I and II, however, it’s the political machinations that draw the most blood. Betrayal is commonplace, death is mostly permanent, and those in political power are often engaging in self-satisfying endeavors at the expense of those less fortunate. Eat your heart out, Game of Thrones: Cersei Lannister has nothing on Luca Blight. 

Really though - the stories here are well-written and boast a touched-up translation, capable of tugging at heartstrings more than a few times in each entry. In most RPGs, I find myself drawn more to either the story or the gameplay loop. It speaks to the narrative strength of these games that they are still so very compelling after all this time, even if neither narrative is able to fully service the expansive breadth of more than 100 characters each. I’ve recruited plenty of characters only to send them back to my castle where they sat the rest of the game.

However, one of the biggest strengths in this series is the depiction of the interpersonal relationships between the core cast and how those relationships are affected by the larger political narratives underpinning them. The camaraderie between Cleo, Pahn, and Gremio gives way to incredibly poignant interactions in the heat of war in the original Suikoden. Character dynamics are even stronger in Suikoden II, where the whole emotional core of the game follows the bond between the main trio of Riou, Nanami, and Jowy.

Lucky for us that the gameplay in these games is as taut as the stories. The general rhythm here is typical: travel from one location to the next to advance the plot, upgrading equipment at regular intervals while fighting monsters in the world map or in dungeons. Once your castle headquarters is obtained relatively early, the quest to recruit the Stars of Destiny begins in earnest. While collecting all 108 Stars is optional, it does impact the ending of each game - and in Suikoden II’s case, informs whether specific characters from the first game make an appearance. The reappearance of a handful of characters from the first game brings a great sense of continuity and world-building as a bonus for those who endeavored to recruit everyone during the first game. 

Outside of exploration, combat in both games is round-based with a party of six. Players input commands for the entire party before any are executed. One of the flourishes that tickled me during the PSX-era is when multiple party members attack at once, each striking a separate target, rather than each attack taking place individually. It wasn’t a marvel of processing power, but man did it feel stylish back in the '90s. Good news, it still looks and feels great. Long-range combatants can snipe from the back row, but sword-fighting fan-favorites Viktor and Flik need to stay in the front row. 

Party members can use their upgradable weapons, cast magic from an equipped rune (or rune*s*, in Suikoden II), use items, or deploy a United Attack if the required party members are present. A few notable characteristics of the combat include a limited number of spell charges, which are only replenished by resting; another being that experience awarded after combat is determined by the difference between levels between each party member and the enemies. When you enter a new area, enemies are tougher but yield much more experience than when you can steamroll right over them. It makes it harder (or practically impossible) to over-level; on the other hand, it’s great fun to bring in a new or severely under-utilized character and watch them gain fifteen levels in a single fight, making it relatively painless to experiment with new parties and not fall behind. 

This combat isn’t even the only type of fighting here, either. There are also one-on-one duels which are played out in a rock-paper-scissors format as well as large army battles. In the first game, these are also rock-paper-scissors style, but in Suikoden II they are upgraded with a grid-style system that adds more depth. These combat sequences are used at moments of high-drama in the narrative, adding a sense of weight and consequence to the proceedings. I really mean it, as some characters can permanently die in combat here, precluding players from obtaining the reward for recruiting all 108 stars. It’s a treat to include three combat systems in these vintage RPGs, but an absolute feast to be able to enjoy them this much. Even more, there are a handful of minigames in each title that, while making an appearance in the storyline, are basically left to the player to enjoy. I don’t hate the dice rolling game you have to win early in Suikoden, but I do sometimes curse the RNG gods when faced with a streak of bad luck.

I’ll admit to feeling worried about not only how the Suikoden remaster would feel, but also how it would look. It feels nice to exhale, since the games look absolutely incredible, especially in terms of spritework. The character and enemy models retain their PSX-era presentation with slight touch-ups, and somehow pull off looking both razor-sharp and kinda fuzzy, just like I remembered. One of the worst things a remaster can do is break the nostalgic immersion with oddly filtered character sprite work or other graphical choices, so I am pleased to report the nostalgic receptors in my brain were fully firing off when encountering my first enemies in the same way the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster games did.

Everything looked like I recalled - almost - with some of the background tilework being the visual exception. It’s sometimes ugly, reminiscent of an outdated version of RPGMaker. It’s a slight detractor, but to be fair the original games’ backgrounds weren’t exactly system sellers, and I'm not sure how those original backgrounds would fare on modern TVs and monitors.  While I would have preferred the option to toggle the original portrait artwork in the original Suikoden, I came around to the updated portraits present remade by Junko Kawano here. The spell effects are flashy, especially the fire spells and the devastating Soul Eater attacks. Likewise, the gorgeous arrangements and rousing combat themes led by Miki Higashino sound just as dramatic and beautiful as ever.  Even the sound effects are seared in the brains of series fans - and yes, the dragons still sound like elephants. 

There are a few quality-of-life changes provided, too, including difficulty options for each game. While combat can be sped up to various options, there is the odd wrinkle of the music speeding up as well. It’s jarring to hear the combat theme at such a clip, which is a bit of a bummer considering most remaster projects include a speed up option that maintains the pace of the music. We’re also given no options for auto-run, or to disable random battles, or any of the other sort of QOL hacks typically issued when revisiting a golden-age RPG. I don’t want to sound like a total hater: there’s a Suikoden II specific option that will make it easier to see specific time-gated scenes with a certain character, which I’ll admit is a formidable inclusion. Okay, I’ll be a slight hater: I was hoping for a streamlined item management system, since each character has a limited capacity, making it rather difficult to inventory armor and accessories. I understand the desire to keep the game's systems intact, though. 

The effort put forth by Konami pays off in dividends. The end result is a project that, like another Pixel Remaster project before it, has the best of both worlds. These are games that play and look just like you remembered them, but somehow even a bit better. Slight QOL changes complement, rather than complicate, the gameplay. Suikoden I&II HD Remaster Gate Rune and Dunan Unification Wars might be a mouthful of a title, but it’s one that reaches for the stars - and knocks it out of the park.