Suikoden II is the second installment of the series and the sequel to the first Suikoden, released for the PlayStation. It is set years after the first game although you will meet familiar characters upon your journey across the land. The first game was clunky in its user interface and the combat system and so the first thing that hits you with Suikoden II is how the developers have improved upon these aspects. It has updated everything from the first game to make it smoother and much easier to grasp. The graphics gained an overhaul and is a lot more detailed and the sprites are exceptionally animated. The player character has the ability to dash from the get go without being required to waste a Rune slot.
The combat system remains effectively the same as you have a party of six characters, organized into two rows. Placement gives characters an advantage and disadvantage, some characters can only attack from the front, while other characters who are on the back row are less likely to be attacked. Each character can attack, defend, use magic if they are equipped with a Rune, and if applicable, use a Unite attack with another character. Perhaps the best thing is that the inventory system is handled a lot better. While each character still has their own equipment slots and accessories slots which is shared with consumable items, you have a party-wide inventory bag. It makes its so much better to organize items and equipment compared to the first game.
The rock papers scissors minigame return in the form of one-on-one duels, and plays exactly the same. While the large scaled battles have now changed into a SRPG affair. Unfortunately, these "World Battles" are horrible as the vast majority of them are scripted and means that your input is pointless. It only prolongs the game when you are waiting for the scripted event to happen, it's a massive waste of time and as much as the first game's version was luck based, this is even more so.
The game begins with you naming the main character. He and his childhood friend, Jowy, are part of the Highland Army when they are suddenly attacked. The pair manages to escape but find themselves betrayed by their country and ends up joining a mercenary group in the neighboring Jowston. Thus beings their journey of recruiting characters to their cause and defeating the villain. The villain this time around shows up much earlier and feels a lot more personal. The game doesn't shy away from sad scenes and shows the suffering of civilians as the collateral damage of some guy's ambitions. It's unfair, it's cruel, and the game throws it in your face with plenty of hard hitting emotional scenes. However, it takes around three hours before you finally get sucked into its world.
Once again, there are 108 characters able to be recruited, known as the Stars of Destiny. While not all of them can be in your party, the majority of them can. Unfortunately, some are permanently missable and thus you pretty much require a guide to recruit them all if you don't want to spend heaps of time aimlessly wandering around. Even when you know what to do, the requirements to get all characters are much more annoying than the first game. This includes backtracking through long dungeons (and suffering through the random encounters), doing specific tasks like earning over a certain amount of money through trading and knowing where to get items (which is very random) that the character asked for. It's much more like a chore rather than a bonus now.
Despite the improvements there are still a few quality of life issues. Recruiting characters is annoying without a guide. There are situations where you temporarily cannot recruit any characters, which is extremely annoying. There are also a few characters which relies on luck or some tedious grinding to get. A big negative is how long it takes before you can teleport. In the first game, you gain the ability to immediately return to your castle and also go to any town you want pretty early on. This time, it takes around half the game before you can teleport to places you've already been to, and then another fair chunk of time before you get to teleport back to your castle. It doesn't help that the story forces you to trek back and forth between cities using a slow walk on the world map.
What's also annoying is how heavily reliant the game is on magic users. Magic deals a significantly higher amount of damage compared to melee attacks. It's extremely annoying when bosses have large HP that forces you to heavily rely on magic. Another big boss later on forces you to use characters that you have not leveled, making it frustrating when you have one (or maybe two) strong party that you wanted to use and be able to easily deal with the boss but instead have to spread your characters thin. The worst part is that normal enemies are so easy but the bosses can hit hard with multiple attacks per turn.
There are a few difficult spikes throughout the game, mainly due to the bosses. It's inconsistent which bosses have a save point before them and which ones don't (forcing you to redo the whole dungeon if you end up dying). The final boss is one such spike since it's various attacks are damaging, can attack multiple times per turn and worst of all, extremely resistant on magic which is deadly if you have a magic orientated team (which is likely since magic is so much more convenient in dealing massive damage to bosses).
Overall, Suikoden II significantly improves upon the first game with better graphics, quality of life improvements and a pretty satisfying story. Unfortunately, there are still some niggling quality of life issues like the fact that you cannot fast travel for such a large portion of the game, inconsistent difficulty and the boring world map war battles which is little more than RNG and predetermined results making them pointless exercises wasting 20-40 minutes of your time in each battle. It's still a solid JRPG but definitely not a top-tier one.
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