Seems strange that they didn’t put them on PS5 and Xbox Series, but I’m guessing it’s because not many people in Japan have those consoles.
And then I just ramble on for like 8 minutes about what the game’s like:
In either case, these games are IMO, two of the greatest hidden gems in video games. Also the only games I still played using the actual PSX discs, since Xenogears is on Vita, and all other PSX games I still play from time to time are on Switch (and formerly Vita).
For those who haven’t played it and are still around on tows. It’s a game series that feels much like what I imagine an SNES CD RPG would have been like. Suikoden 2 is a direct sequel to 1, and you can transfer your save data. The second game is similar to the first (in that there are 108 playable characters, and you can build a town for them) but is better in just about all ways. So what games do they feel like?
1. Final Fantasy 6 - at least the beginning portions of the game feel a lot like the Suikoden games, although Suikoden is more medieval/renaissance and FF6 fuses steam punk and mechas. The world of the Suikoden games is much larger. Much like FF6, in Suikoden I an Empire controls many different lands and is fighting for others; in Suikoden II it’s the Highlands, which probably summons images of rural Scotland, but it’s more like a highly developed medieval Kingdom of Germany with the sort of military might of Frederick the Great or Bismarck. And much like other fantasy, there aren’t any guns (or at least not many) the technological development is closer to the 17th or 18th century with architecture being more reminiscent of post-1660s (Great Fire/Great Plague) England and Sun King Louis XIV era France; goods including things like modern beds, distilled liquors, and new world crops, and economic order basically being 19th century capitalism than mercantilism or manorialism… despite industrial centres not being a thing yet - this also happens in The Witcher 3 where the world has a substantially higher production in it than what the setting suggests… fairly typical of the RPG genre.
2. Dragons Quest 3, 4, 5 - in that the countries of the game feel like they have their own unique cultures. There’s always some kind of gimmick usually based on stereotypical versions of old world (Europe, Asia, Africa) cultures. In Dragon Quest, they’d split these cultures up across a massive worldwide map. In Suikoden, while the map is still huge, you get more of the opinion that this is just a small chunk of the overall world; so all these cultures are crunched into much smaller areas. There are also a few more unique cultures, such as the Kobolds (which I’ll get to). Also, much like the SNES era Dragon Quest games, there are a lot of towns, and they’re usually fairly decent in size and things to do; I’m playing Romancing Saga 2 right now, the game has a lot of towns (probably like 30-50, I haven’t explored a lot of the world), but the majority of them are villages that typically have 1-3 interesting things about them, if anything, some are just pit stops. Suikoden’s towns are almost always home to
Characters you can collect, there are stories in all of them.
3. Fire Emblem - but mostly because there are humanoid cultures. Also, the art style is kind of close to the Fire Emblem and Ogre Battle styles.
5. Ogre Battle/Fire Emblem - largely because the game has a lot of characters to collect in a kind of medieval setting.
6. Lunar - Lunar reminds me a lot of the same games as Suikoden 1 and 2 do, it’s also about the same time period as Suikoden.
Like many SNES/PSX era games, this music is brilliant.
A unique feature is that while you can take small parties of characters on adventures, you can also fight massive wars with characters leading large forces of thousands of troops. This almost certainly came from Romancing Saga 3 - which is the earliest game I can think of that does this.
So, anyway, I feel like Suikoden I and II are games for everyone on this forum. The creators didn’t follow the trends of most PSX RPGs, and instead the game feels like it draws heavily on SNES, but uses the space of the CD for larger scopes and more details in cosmetics and content. In a way, SNES RPGs were already doing that with the existing hardware, Chrono Trigger, Terranigma, Lufia 2, Earthbound, Mario RPG, and Tales of Phantasia, were larger and more detailed than FF4, Mystic Quest, Ys III, and Shadowrun.
And then I just ramble on for like 8 minutes about what the game’s like:
In either case, these games are IMO, two of the greatest hidden gems in video games. Also the only games I still played using the actual PSX discs, since Xenogears is on Vita, and all other PSX games I still play from time to time are on Switch (and formerly Vita).
For those who haven’t played it and are still around on tows. It’s a game series that feels much like what I imagine an SNES CD RPG would have been like. Suikoden 2 is a direct sequel to 1, and you can transfer your save data. The second game is similar to the first (in that there are 108 playable characters, and you can build a town for them) but is better in just about all ways. So what games do they feel like?
1. Final Fantasy 6 - at least the beginning portions of the game feel a lot like the Suikoden games, although Suikoden is more medieval/renaissance and FF6 fuses steam punk and mechas. The world of the Suikoden games is much larger. Much like FF6, in Suikoden I an Empire controls many different lands and is fighting for others; in Suikoden II it’s the Highlands, which probably summons images of rural Scotland, but it’s more like a highly developed medieval Kingdom of Germany with the sort of military might of Frederick the Great or Bismarck. And much like other fantasy, there aren’t any guns (or at least not many) the technological development is closer to the 17th or 18th century with architecture being more reminiscent of post-1660s (Great Fire/Great Plague) England and Sun King Louis XIV era France; goods including things like modern beds, distilled liquors, and new world crops, and economic order basically being 19th century capitalism than mercantilism or manorialism… despite industrial centres not being a thing yet - this also happens in The Witcher 3 where the world has a substantially higher production in it than what the setting suggests… fairly typical of the RPG genre.
2. Dragons Quest 3, 4, 5 - in that the countries of the game feel like they have their own unique cultures. There’s always some kind of gimmick usually based on stereotypical versions of old world (Europe, Asia, Africa) cultures. In Dragon Quest, they’d split these cultures up across a massive worldwide map. In Suikoden, while the map is still huge, you get more of the opinion that this is just a small chunk of the overall world; so all these cultures are crunched into much smaller areas. There are also a few more unique cultures, such as the Kobolds (which I’ll get to). Also, much like the SNES era Dragon Quest games, there are a lot of towns, and they’re usually fairly decent in size and things to do; I’m playing Romancing Saga 2 right now, the game has a lot of towns (probably like 30-50, I haven’t explored a lot of the world), but the majority of them are villages that typically have 1-3 interesting things about them, if anything, some are just pit stops. Suikoden’s towns are almost always home to
Characters you can collect, there are stories in all of them.
3. Fire Emblem - but mostly because there are humanoid cultures. Also, the art style is kind of close to the Fire Emblem and Ogre Battle styles.
5. Ogre Battle/Fire Emblem - largely because the game has a lot of characters to collect in a kind of medieval setting.
6. Lunar - Lunar reminds me a lot of the same games as Suikoden 1 and 2 do, it’s also about the same time period as Suikoden.
Like many SNES/PSX era games, this music is brilliant.
A unique feature is that while you can take small parties of characters on adventures, you can also fight massive wars with characters leading large forces of thousands of troops. This almost certainly came from Romancing Saga 3 - which is the earliest game I can think of that does this.
So, anyway, I feel like Suikoden I and II are games for everyone on this forum. The creators didn’t follow the trends of most PSX RPGs, and instead the game feels like it draws heavily on SNES, but uses the space of the CD for larger scopes and more details in cosmetics and content. In a way, SNES RPGs were already doing that with the existing hardware, Chrono Trigger, Terranigma, Lufia 2, Earthbound, Mario RPG, and Tales of Phantasia, were larger and more detailed than FF4, Mystic Quest, Ys III, and Shadowrun.
