In this era of bringing classic video games from the past onto modern consoles, we’re seeing a range of ideas being used. Remakes are challenging our perceptions on how we experienced these games initially, sometimes even changing the stories themselves. While most remasters are simply adjusting the graphical style to fit our widescreen televisions, and adding a few small quality-of-life features. I love the range but I feel like pushing too hard on either end is an interesting choice. Suikoden I & II HD Remaster Gate Rune and Dunan Unification Wars is a very simple remaster. Regardless of how I feel about the remaster itself, I’m very glad these first two Suikoden games are available on modern platforms.
Suikoden I&II HD Remaster Gate Rune and Dunan Unification Wars
Developer: KONAMI
Price: $50
Platforms: PlayStation 4/5 (reviewed), Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, PC
A PlayStation 5 code was provided for this review
Suikoden I & II HD Remaster Gate Rune and Dunan Unification Wars is a very simple remaster. Featuring upgraded background illustrations, new environmental sound effects, an auto-save function, fast-forward in battle, and a pinnable conversation log, Suikoden I & II HD Remaster have some modern conveniences. Unfortunately, those conveniences are where it ends. Suikoden I gets 3x battle speed and Suikoden II gets 2x battle speed for some reason. And playing both games back to back really emphasized the difference between the two games and their pacing. One KONAMI doesn’t seem to be highlighting is the new translation that Suikoden I uses, and I’m wondering why they would downplay that.
Suikoden I, for better or worse, has an interesting translation. It’s not bad, per se, but there are some very strange errors. I think Suikoden I’s translation works and I never found it detracted from the experience, however, the Remaster is better. The translation has been updated in all respects too, from significant main-story dialogue to quips during duels, a lot has been adjusted. Suikoden II seems largely untouched outside of larger dialogue boxes and being able to fit more text into the box, which likely fixes a few parsing issues. Suikoden I & II HD Remaster is also fully playable in English, French, Italian, German, Chinese, Japanese, and Spanish, which is pretty impressive.
Suikoden I & II HD Remaster now has a set of difficulty options. Simply Easy/Medium/Hard, and Hard is locked unless you play it from the start. You get a big warning when starting Hard that you won’t be able to change the difficulty during gameplay. Whereas playing on Normal/Easy allows you to flip between the two from the settings menu. A feature added in after I had written this review allows you to stop the event timer. Suikoden II has an in-game timer running and certain events are only available to the player before a specified time. Stopping the event timer allows the player to leisurely play through the game without fear of missing recruits.
There’s no way to speed up moving around, aside from running. I was kind of hoping there’d be a way to speed up overworld movement, and some issues like having to wait a moment for the controller to begin working when presented with a choice remain. Both games seem to struggle when the player enters a room with an optional save point, otherwise known as the Journeyman’s Orb. When you enter a room with one such orb, the screen remains black as a dialogue box pops up letting you know it’s preparing to let you save. It happens every time and it takes several seconds. Likely a remnant from the days of requiring memory cards, I imagine there’s little desire to rework the save system beyond letting you save locally. There are only 16 save slots and the autosave isn’t as consistent as you’d hope.
Suikoden I & II HD Remaster is a very good looking game. The original games came out in the late 90s and veered away from that 3D fad that was creeping around at the time. This allowed them to have some of the best pixel art games had to offer and it really shines through in this remaster. Notably, Suikoden II’s in-engine animations are spectacular. Experiencing these animations and the whole of the first two Suikoden games stories is the way to go. By not messing with the original games too much, Suikoden I & II HD Remaster is likely alluring for newbies and purists alike.
The original soundtrack, composed and arranged by Miki Higashino, sounds incredible. All of the audio sounds pretty good. The updated battle effects would be unnoticed to me if I hadn’t played both games recently before the remasters. The battle sound effects along with the new environmental sounds are very much appreciated and become a welcome part of the experience. Likewise, the improved battle effects and illustrations just make the game look better on a modern screen.
The biggest thing to me though is the sped up battles. Animations in PSX JRPGs are notoriously long and load-times to get in and out of battles were the bane of keeping games short back then. I managed to collect all 108 stars of destiny in Suikoden 1 in 19 hours. A non-completionist run of Suikoden on howlongtobeat.com is averaged at 21 hours. Which means the speed-up battles play a significant role in reducing the time to completion for these games. Looking at my save in Suikoden II, I’m shocked at how far I’ve gotten in the 20 hours I’ve played. I still managed to screw up the Clive side-quest though.
The Final Word
With the new audio, battle effects, battle speed, auto-save, and new translations Suikoden I & II HD Remaster is the definitive way to experience the first two Suikoden games. My only hope is that the rest of the games in the series receive this treatment.
– MonsterVine Rating: 4 out of 5 – Good
