Back in the day, when I was still a bright-eyed youth, the first Suikoden was one of the first games I played on my shiny, new PlayStation. I was immediately won over by its charms. Still, I wasn’t ready for how hard its sequel would hit me. To this day, I believe Suikoden 2 to be among the best games ever made.
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Is Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes A Worthy Suikoden Successor?
Suikoden fans everywhere rejoiced at the announcement of Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes, a spiritual successor from series creator Yoshitaka Murayama. (RIP, buddy.) After years in development, it finally launched in 2024. Does it live up to Konami’s long-dormant RPG epic?
But while it’s fair to say that I’m a pretty big fan, I’m not blind to some of the shortcomings of this duology. From translation issues to inventory management awkwardness, there’s most certainly room for improvement.
That is why an HD remaster like The Gate Rune And Dunan Unification Wars is so enticing. Not only is this collection set to expand the reach of the series and make these great titles more accessible than they’ve ever been, but it has the potential to fix all those smaller issues and make this the definitive way to play these classics. Does it do that? Well, the answer is a resounding ‘kinda sorta’.
These Stars Still Shine Brightly
For the unacquainted, Suikoden’s claim to fame has always been its massive roster of recruitable characters (108 in total), and its snappy battles, wry sense of humor, and gameplay variety. Suikoden 2 then takes everything great from its predecessor and builds on it. Not only does it refine the combat engine and greatly improve upon the first game’s inventory system, but its story features more twists and turns, a healthy amount of intrigue, and some of the best villains in RPG history.
While Suikoden’s plot utilizes the dreaded mind control trope to justify the atrocities of certain antagonists, most of Suikoden 2’s antagonists are fighting for what they believe in, with some of them being downright heroic. Just to add a little variety, Suikoden 2 mixes in with one of the most iconic ‘pure evil’ antagonists to ever grace the genre: Luca Blight. Sure, you may have never heard of him, but his influence is all over the genre. He’s your favorite villain’s favorite villain.
There’s a surprising amount of nuance in Suikoden 2’s story, and while the cast is extremely likable in the first game, the sequel’s cast is better utilized, better developed, and utterly magnetic. Returning characters retain their personalities from the first game while building on them. There’s real growth with a few of them as well. It’s great stuff!
While Suikoden 2 features a brand new core cast, and is absolutely worth playing on its own, it is an even better experience if you play through Suikoden first. Oh, and you can carry your save data over, which impacts your playthrough in a number of very cool ways.
Two Steps Forward, One Step Backward
But for all the praise I’ll heap on the first two Suikoden titles, it’s no secret that the original translations are a little rough around the edges. This is where I was hoping to sing the praises of the touted new translation effort. But while the scripts are better, the improvements are often fairly slight, and some of the stilted dialogue present in the original remains.
This retranslation effort was clearly less of an overhaul and more of an additional edit. Suikoden suffers more from this approach than Suikoden 2, as Suikoden 2’s translation was always a lot sharper. While it is nice to see some of the more confusing bits adjusted and the grammatical errors cleaned up, it feels like they could have gone a lot farther with it.
While Konami took a light-touch approach to the script update, the same cannot be said about the completely overhauled backdrops. Being able to play these classics in widescreen is a novel experience, and I appreciate the massive amount of work that must have gone into redrawing all the backdrops, but the high-resolution art doesn’t always pair well with the lower resolution sprites.
The occasional use of physics-based water effects can add an additional level of clashing. Things can get real weird-looking, folks!
Worse yet, a lot of the new backdrops feel oddly characterless in Suikoden. There’s something distinctly flat and lifeless about a lot of those backgrounds. This clash is much less apparent when playing the sequel. It’s clear that a great deal more effort was expended on updating the visuals of Suikoden 2.
The opening scene in Suikoden 2 is set in a soldier’s encampment that is tinted blue by the light of the moon: it looks downright gorgeous. I’d be lying if I told you that Suikoden 2 never falls victim to those same incongruities, but the visuals work more often than not. This one step forward, one step backward waltz continues with the profile images.
The Suikoden portraits have been completely redrawn and, outside of a derpy portrait or two, are largely a massive improvement over the originals. However, Suikoden 2’s character profiles were already pretty great, and as a result, Konami approached them differently, seemingly painting over the originals. I’d say the end result is more mixed here.
In a better world, we would have been given the ability to pick and choose which changes we played through the game with. Having access to the original backdrops, portraits, text font, and maybe a scanline filter, would have gone a long way to making The Gate Rune And Dunan Unification Wars collection the definitive way to play these games – that’s already an option in some other remasters of titles from the same era, like Tomb Raider. Instead, Konami’s approach with this collection has largely been ‘what you see is what you get’. Unfortunately, what you see isn’t always particularly easy on the eyes.
The Quality Of Life Improvements Are Largely Welcome
The gameplay additions are largely welcome, but the execution is frustratingly uneven. The inclusion of a run and eight-way directional movement is great, but when moving on a diagonal the animation looks awkward. The fast-forward function allows the already-snappy battles to zip by, but the developers decided to make the music match the gameplay speed – a truly befuddling choice.
Suikoden’s awkward inventory management is better, allowing you to swap items between party members, and the UI looks much nicer, but it could have gone farther, as some of the niceties included in the later games would have been welcome additions. At least as an option. Though, credit where credit is due, the Log function is a lifesaver as it lets you paw through past dialogue, which is super helpful for fulfilling certain recruitment requests.
However, while their restoration itself leaves a lot to be desired, The Gate Rune And Dunan Unification Wars is still the easiest way to access the first two games in the Suikoden franchise, and despite my many quibbles, the quality of the original titles bears out. That is more than enough to justify this collection’s existence, even if it does feel like a bit of a squandered opportunity.
Played on PS5.
A hero’s destiny is written in the Stars. The legendary Konami JRPGs Suikoden I and Suikoden II have now been remastered in HD!
The Story of Suikoden I: A once renowned hero turns into a violent tyrant, and an empire falls into decline. A Liberation Army is rising up in an act of rebellion against an oppressive rule. One by one the 108 stars of Destiny gather to shape the course of history.
The Story of Suikoden II: Our story’s hero and his friend Jowy are members of the Unicorn Youth Brigade, which participated in a drawn-out border dispute between the Highland Kingdom and the City-States of Jowstown .
A few months earlier, a truce agreement was signed between the two forces, both of which were happy to see an end to the fighting.
However, hidden under the momentary peace the fires of a new war continued to smolder…
- Many of the quality-of-life features are quite convenient
- The new portraits in Suikoden are largely excellent
- This is the best English translation available for these titles
- Both games are excellent and hold up
- Many of the HD backdrops look cheap and incongruous
- The fast-forward feature screws with the battle music
- Suikoden?s remastering feels like a missed opportunity