What's so great about Suikoden II?

[Xeogred]

The greatness with Suikoden 1 and 2 is that they're practically one huge game. Lots of recurring MAIN characters (useable) appear in both, and with the similar graphical style and all that... yeah play them back to back for an awesome experience. 2 is like twice as long at least though and definitely even better. A key thing that stands out above the first and the rest of the series, and all JRPG's in existence... Luca Blight. Hands down one of the most ruthless, evil villains of all time. He'd make Kefka crawl on his knees and oink like a pig. The game is also just extremely above and beyond with storytelling, realism, characters, etc... like Luca Blight as another fine example here, he's not that cliche' "single evil ruler" who controls everything. He was just a very high ranked general or something. It's one of the best gray line JRPG's to me next to Xenogears or something. Definitely has one of the richest most developed and interesting worlds I've seen in a series.

The combat could be better, but I thought it was really fun with 6 characters and with so many to choose from, it was pretty versatile. It's easy, but oh well. Everything else about the game made me not worry too much about it.

[Valkyrie-Favor]

...Gah, you mentioned Valkyrie Profile. You knew that would work on me

I'll give this game another chance. I don't have Suikoden 1 though, so I guess I'll be missing out on that.

[pierrot]

He was just a very high ranked general or something.

*Next in line for the throne.

And a beast.
There are two scenes with Luca Blight that most fans of Suikoden squee heavily over. If the second one does nothing for you, then Suikoden probably just isn't for you.

Suikoden 1's on PSN for $15 I think.

[Xeogred]

Haha, but yeah guess what I'm getting at there is Luca Blight, no matter how powerful and strong he was, he wasn't ruling the world or anything. There were dozens of other pivotal enemies and whatnot that had to be taken down too. I wish more JRPG's had this kind of balance. Xenogears does it well, since the guy you'd figure would be the final boss (eventually)... you don't even fight, and I love that. It's not all about brute strength/power, although Luca is the exception in that case... but yeah he's still not the entire spotlight on the enemy side or anything. Tactics Ogre and FFT do this kind of thing well too. I love when games have huge casts and handle it well. That's another thing about Suikoden others probably brought up, more than 90% of those 108 characters are awesome and interesting on their own right.

[Valkyrie-Favor]

I definitely like the idea of a human villain who doesn't already rule the world. Sweet.

[KoLAddict]

The Suikoden series as a whole is great, the first two are the best though. Personally I like the original better than 2, but I'll admit that's largely due to nostalgia. I played the original a lot when it first came out, and 2 came out rare, so I didn't get to truly appreciate it until later.

[elmagicochrisg]

2 came out rare.

Yup. I remember paying close to 4000 Belgian franks for it back then, which is close to €100.

For me this was an 'import' game.

Didn't know there was a PAL version until years later.

Most people still don't know about it... lol

Glad it kept it's value though...

Hmm, about time I play it. But then again, I still have so many games I have to play...

[Jmustang1968]

Damn, you guys are making me want to play it again.

[elmagicochrisg]

...Gah, you mentioned Valkyrie Profile. You knew that would work on me

I'll give this game another chance. I don't have Suikoden 1 though, so I guess I'll be missing out on that.

Download the first one. Garr...

[Valkyrie-Favor]

I don't think few hours are enough to make a judgement of a game (not talking 2600/NES/C64 here ), especially if the said game is a jrpg. I could personally ask the same question about Valkyrie Profile

What doesn't make the game awesome? The vastly inferior FFVII must bow before Suikoden II.

The vastly inferioir Suidoken II must bow before Fallout 2

Hm? It's true that the end of Valkyrie Profile was the best, but it was fascinating from the start.

Better than FFVII, you say? I'm sure it makes more sense, but at least that game was hard sometimes. I'll decide later.