The late 1990s was a golden age for RPGs. After the release of Final Fantasy 7, the Sony Playstation became the Mecca of the genre. The classics of the trade all made their appearance during these wonder years: Final Fantasy 7, Final Fantasy 8, Final Fantasy 9, Chrono Cross, Xenogears, Persona, ect. But one of the most captivating and well-written stories is told by the classic Suikoden II, an epic tale of destiny and kingdoms to rival, in a small way, the epic quality of George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones.
Suikoden II excels in three areas over most of its rival RPGs of the area: character development, combat, and in giving the player a sense of ownership. From the beginning of the game, the two main characters, the hero and his childhood friend, Jowry, feel like living and breathing people. The main character comes to life in the way other characters interact with him, and Jowry (and energetic sister, Nanami) is evoked through excellent dialog and anime-styled emotes. With these two simple tools, the story comes to life for the player, and an empathy for them grows to the point that you legitimately care for what happens to them. The player is drawn into the narrative despite himself, truly becoming the role he is playing.
As you venture through the story, you will fight a great deal of monsters. Combat remains fresh and interesting from the ability to pick for yourself five fighters for your party. This opens up tons of customizability in the way your party is structured, and with over 108 heroes to recruit, you will have a fun time constructing your perfect battle group. The game even encourages you to experiment, as the experience gain of lower-level characters is accelerated until they become even with your main character's level. While the magic system is rather simplistic, six characters gives a bevy of options at any given point during the battle. Also, your magic use is rather limited, so you will use strategy to conserve your few magic points for boss battles.
Suikoden II also brings into play two alternate forms of combat. During the storyline, your army will battle against other forces, and a simple square-grid strategy battle takes place where you move your characters and troops around like a game of Mage Knight or Panzer General. It's a nice change of pace, and the dice-roll mechanics (modified by your recruited characters who are the officers of your army) keep the battle more-or-less unpredictable. Since your characters can die if defeated in these battles, you will spend a bit of time playing the smart general to keep them alive while routing your enemy.
Your main character can also engage in personal duels a few times during the story line. These are simple, rock-paper-scissor affairs for the most part, but are short and carry a sort of epic, samurai movie feel. Not much in the way of gameplay, but charming and satisfying all the same.
While creating your own dream party goes a long way towards player ownership, the narrative of Suikoden II is built around it. During the story, you come into possession of a castle, and for the rest of the game, all of your allies will be housed there. They will wander the castle, taking their leisure as they choose, giving the impression that you really are a leader of a varied troop of strange characters. It's fun to just walk around the place and feel that it is yours. With the recruitment of more characters, your castle grows, and it eventually turns into a small town, complete with all the shops and filled to the brim with both your soldiers and random townsfolk who move to the center of your faction's prosperity.
Of course, no game is perfect. There are a few dialogue errors where characters address the wrong people, but you can easily figure out who they meant. Random encounters can become a bit monotonous as most enemy groups are made of entirely one type of enemy (though you will quickly come to take mixed groups more seriously.) Finally, the game sometimes leaves you guessing on where to go next, especially in the early parts of the game. These points can be a bit frustrating. There are also a number of secrets in the game which you can only find with luck if you are unaware of them. Though, I suppose this encourages a replay with a FAQ guide.
Altogether, Suikoden II is one of the best RPGs ever made. On any system. Ever. In my opinion, it trumps all of the Final Fantasy games of the same generation with its superior story-telling. Every RPG fan deserves to play this game, it still holds up today, and it still awesome. While very rare in disc format, there a number of online options to explore if you are willing to tackle the headache of Playstation emulation. Sukioden II sure won't let you down if you do.
