Review #400: Suikoden II

 Bigger, badder and better than Suikoden I.

 Suikoden was a fairly unique little JRPG that dealt with themes of politics and war, taking place in a contained region, as opposed to the usual 'defeat the poor attempt at a sympathetic villain, save the world, maybe get the girl' plot that JRPGs love. It had its fair share of unique mechanics and terminology as well as a world that was yearning to be further developed, and then a sequel happened...

 After being sold out by their own forces, Jowy and Riou, two teenagers at the service of Highland's military, become outcasts and become embroiled in a war between nations. There're plenty of poignant scenes, epic battles, epic villains, turns, twists and even flying squirrels. The story is pretty darn fantastic, dealing with subjects of good, evil and what's in-between, having armies duking it out not because of morality, but because of different perspectives. It's a very engrossing story, despite the sometimes spotty translation, and the characters that the game opted to focus on are fairly memorable. There're plenty of returning characters, and if you transfer your old Suikoden savefile, you'll get a few bonus extra lines from them. Luca Blight is the game's only real villain, and what a villain he is, stealing every scene he's in, and the last battle against him is fantastic, and it doesn't even mark the end of the game!!

 The brunt of the game plays like the rest of the games in the franchise: Exploring, duels and strategic battles. As per usual, there're 108 recruitable characters, some will offer passive bonuses to your headquarters, but most of them can be taken into battle. This time around there're up to three different rune slots per characters, so you can customize your spells a lot more, no long must you sacrifice your only rune slot to be able to dash. Heck, you don't need a rune to run this time around anyways! Finding all 108 characters is still nigh impossible without a guide, so do yourself a favor and find one, it's no fun missing out on the best ending because you didn't know that there was only a tiny window of time available to recruit Futch and Humphrey!

 Random encounters play out the same, with a party made up of up to six different units, and they play out in turns, same old, same old. Duels are the same, you must figure out what the enemy is gonna do in a rock-paper-scissors fight according to what they say. Strategic Battles feel more like an SRPG than before: You move each and every individual unit on your army over a map, and then engage in battle or cast spells. It's fairly mundane, and most of these feature a few twists and turns so that they are over pretty fast. Still, be worried, as death of a unit might mean permanent death for some of the defeated characters.

 Do keep in mind that it doesn't matter how you play this game, be it PS1, PS2, PS3 or through emulation, the game will feature audio bugs of different kinds. Most notably, a few songs won't play, ever, even though they are in the disc, so a lot of the strategic battles are fought in complete silence! And while being able to recruit McDohl, Suikoden I's hero, if you have a Suikoden savefile, is a great little bonus, the game will kick him out of the party pretty often, and going back to Gregminster to recruit him again is a pain in the neck that makes it almost not worth it. Almost.

 Suikoden 2 is fantastic. Riou and Jowy's plight to end the war, the different roads they take, the people that gather around them and fate itself will put them at odds with each other. It's an engrossing tale, and the gameplay is a fine tuning of what came before it. While its explosive price was kind of prohibitive, its PSN rerelease means there's no excuse for skipping it.
 9.0 out of 10

Review #399: Suikoden

 War never changes.

 15 years have passed since the liberation of Sol-Falenas, but the world of Suikoden is not a peaceful place, this we shift our attention towards the Scarlet Moon Empire. Tir McDohl, son of one of the greatest generals in the army is the game's hero, who soon comes into contact with one of the 27 True Runes, comes face to face with corruption and must lead the rebel armies against his own kingdom. It's Suikoden alright. While it lacks the layers of depth the rest of the franchise has, the story is pretty darn interesting, and there're more than a fair share of surprising twists and shocks, keeping the player invested all throughout the 20ish hours it takes to complete.

 As with the rest of the franchise, this is a turn-based RPG with three different battle types: When exploring dungeons you'll engage in random encounters, and these turn-based battles are just what you'd expect. Six man parties, unite-attacks between certain units, Runes(Magic) and items. Customization is a bit more limited, understandably since this was the first game in the series, since characters can only equip one rune and one rune only. The inventory is a bit weird as well, each character can carry about 10 items, and that's your total inventory, and while you can swap items around inventories, you can't trade them with other items, so you have to make space in a character's inventory if you want to give them a new piece of equipment for them to equip. It's a bit archaic, but nothing you can't get used to. One of my biggest peeves with the game is how much the game forces certain party members on to you. About 70 of the 108 recruitable characters can be taken into battle, but frequently the game will force you to use specific characters, which means that, most of the time, you've only got two free slots for characters that you actually want to use. Pro tip: Keep Victor and Flik up to date, since they'll be in your party any chance they get, the last dungeon included.

 Strategic Battles are the second mode of battle, and these represent Wars. These are... pretty lame and underwhelming. Basically, you and the enemy choose between Bow, Charge or Magic, and they have a rock-paper-scissors relationship. The worst part about these battles is that party members may die permanently. Then, lastly, we've got duels, which also work with a rock-paper-scissors relationship between Attack, Defend and Special. They lack the excitement that future games would adorn these duels with, but they're inoffensive at worst and amusing at best.

 Basically, Suikoden 1 is quite fun and entertaining, but future games manage to make it feel somewhat outdated. 1 Rune per character, NPCs that sometimes block your way when they move around towns, not being able to run without wasting a rune slot with the Speed rune, less than convenient inventory systems, lame Strategic battles, just 20 hours long etc. Still, the plot is pretty good, which is what matters the most in JRPGs and the battle system is pretty fun, a taste of things to come. It's easy to recommend, just keep expectations in check.
 7.5 out of 10

Now Playing: Suikoden II

Time for the big #400!

 It's been a long time coming, but this game marks both my 400th reviewed game as well as my fulfillment of playing one of my most wanted games: Suikoden II. Will it match my expectations as well as its reputation? After finishing Suikoden I I'm quite hopeful it will!

 I've invested but half an hour and the improvements are already showing. You can dash without the speed rune, the graphics have more collor, more animation and better animation as well!

 What an introduction. It was beautiful. The mood was masterfully set before the ambush happened, and they managed to make me feel sorry for the casualties! The music is incredible

Archile's Grab-bag: Spider Edition

 Another day, another package

 Well, a lot of them!

 Marvel Ultimate Alliance: Marvel Ultimate Alliance was pretty dope, I've fond memories of playing this game on the PC and spending hours upon hours on it, so of course I had to get it back!

 Gauntlet - Seven Sorrows: I've heard mostly bad things about this game, but every piece of video footage I've seen about it only served to fuel my interest on this game.

 Jersey Devil: I've been meaning to play Jersey Devil for a long while now, that amazing cover has kept me interested in the game for years on end, and thanks to the age of Youtube, I managed to see gameplay and... It only made me want to play it even more!

 Gungrave: A game from when I was younger, I remember getting this game alongside Marvel VS Capcom 2 back in the day. Gungrave was fun, but it's got nothing on its way superior sequel, regardless, the completionist in me made me want to get the prequel as well.

 Hidden Invasion: I first found out about this game though a videogame magazine, but I was never to interested in it... until one sunday morning I came upon it and bought it on a whim. It was not very good... but fast forward to 2017 and it's dirt cheap, so why the hell not!?

 Gauntlet - Dark Legacy: Gauntlet on the N64 and PS1 was kind of a big deal, magazines were plastered with ads for them... and it took a long while before I was able to finally rent it on the N64. The game didn't meet my expectations, but I also felt like I hadn't been able to spend enough time with it. Dark Legacy is the updated re-release, and I'm willing to give it another whirl now.

 Marvel Ultimate Alliance(PS2): Did I mention how much I liked Ultimate Alliance? Well, the PS2 features and entirely different set of graphics, more akin to the way I played on the PC, so here I am with both PS2 and PS3 versions of the same game!... and maybe there's one more coming...

 Spider-man(GBA): There were two GBA Spider-man games I used to play back in the day, the movie(This) and Mysterio's Menace, and I distinctly liked this one more, albeit I spent more time with the latter. Time to get reacquainted!

 Spider-man 2: Another Spider-man game? That's so weird! Spider-man 2 is a bit of a classic, I bought it when I was younger based on the hype behind it and boy did it deliver! I did enjoy Ultimate Spider-man a bit more though.

 The Amazing Spider-man: Three Spider-man games in a row? What a strange coincidence! Straight to the point: Amazing Spider-man looked, well, amazing, like the proper next-gen free roaming Spider-man game we deserve... and it features Kaine as an alternate costume, I simply had to have this one.

 Spider-man 2 - Enter Electro: Yes, another Spider-man game, but this one has an explanation: I used to play this one when I was younger, it was the second Spider-man game I had ever played(The first one being Vs Sinister 6 on the NES). See? It's all a big coincidence.

 Spider-man: ...or maybe there's an Spider-man Gameathon coming soon...

Now Playing: Suikoden

 Man, this game feels ancient.

 So, I wanted Review #400 to be something Special, and what better game than Suikoden II to suit my needs? Suikoden II, often touted as one of the best JRPGs of all time, and a game that eluded me for so long due to its high asking price. But before we get to that, we've got to go through Suikoden I first!

 The game has a very SNES charm thanks to its primitive graphics and interface. The inventory is a collection of the inventories of every character in the party, which is rather odd, you can't compare your equipment with the one you are buying, menus are rather archaic as well, and the graphics make little use of the Playstation 1's increased color palette. It makes for an ancient-feeling game, but a very charming one for people that liked games from the SNES and PS1 eras.

 I've gotten up to the point where Ted reveals his True Rune... or rather, 'Rune of Truth' as they are called in this installment(Early Installment Weirdness!) and I'm having fun, it feels rather different from Suikoden III, IV or V and I can't pinpoint why exactly. Maybe the 2-D graphics make it feel more whimsical and fantasy-ish? Not sure, yet.

Review #398: Shadow Hearts - Covenant

 Another spin of the Judgement Ring.

 Shadow Hearts came out of left field and turned out to be a surprise cult hit on the PS2, so naturally, a sequel was bound to happen. It's... it's somewhat of an interesting beast, as it has a very different tone from the previous two games, while retaining some Shadow Hearts' most defining features: A quirky sense of humor alongside the Judgement Ring. Hilariously enough, it somewhat parallels Evil Dead's evolution. Evil Dead and Koudelka were both pure horror(Albeit Koudelka had a tiny smidgen of humor sparkled in), Evil Dead 2 and Shadow Hearts were horror with added humor... and both Evil Dead 3 and Shadow Hearts Covenant put a major focus on humor with a few horror elements sparkled throughout.

 The story picks up six months after the first game's bad ending. Yuri is still grieving the death of his beloved, but as World War I picks up, he makes it his job to defend Domremy from a german invasion. It quickly turns sour as his defeat marks the towns' destruction, and he gets infected with a curse that steals away his fusion powers and will kill him in time. An entirely new cast of characters will join Yuri on his quest, spanning Paris, Russia and Japan, trying to stop evil organizations, evil demons and maybe even Japan itself. The story is alright, but it's the cast that really makes it work, let's just say that one of the party members is a wrestling, vampire, gay super hero that turns into a golden bat every now and then. The cast is so interesting that I wish the game would've done more with them. Lucia, the assassin-turned-diviner gets barely any development, and Gepetto, the drunkard old puppeteer quickly falls to the wayside after the first disc. There was so much potential, and quite a bit of it was squandered. The story went full anime as well, which I didn't particularly enjoy mostly because they tried to ret-con the previous game's last boss into a 'He was a good guy all along but simply opted for evil means'. Seriously? It totally undermined him as a villain.

 The one thing that really disappointed me was the total tonal shift the game underwent. The first game had a very quirky sense of humor, and boy did they bank on that, and it worked wonders for the game... but they did away with almost every single horror element the game had going for it. As a result, a lot of the charm that Shadow Hearts 1 held for me... is gone. It somewhat feels like yet another fantasy JRPG, with only the fact that it's set in real life locations as well as a few real life people to set it apart from the rest. Another small gripe deals with dungeons, most of them are rather labyrinthine, particularly a few of the first ones, which can make them a bit dull to explore, but they get better as you go along.

 Covenant kept most elements from the previous games but enhanced them. The overall structure is the same: Explore Towns and Dungeons, fight turn-based battles and defeat bosses. Fights come out of random encounters, and beside your usual HP and MP gauge you also get the SP gauge, or sanity points. It will go down by one each turn, and if it drops to 0, your character will go berserk, luckily, the gauge refills after each battle and there are items to restore it during fights, and by the end of the game your characters' SP threshold will be so high that it will be of no consequence. The judgement ring makes its return as well, whenever you want to attack, be it magic or physical, or use items, you'll have to engage in a timing mini-game of sorts, having to press X on certain highlighted zones as a marker goes through the judgement ring in order to successfully carry out your action. It's not as tedious as it sounds, I promise.

 That'd be all fine and dandy, but the developers went the extra mile and polished everything to a sheen. This time around you can customize the Judgement Ring for every individual character. You can enlarge the highlighted areas as well as the hotspots, you can choose from different types of rings(Like Practice, which will keep spinning even if you mess up, but it will deal reduced damage), so if you are particularly good with a certain character, you might go for a high risk-high reward set-up. The combat is also much better, you can now see the turn order and set-up combos between two or more characters for bonus damage. Magic is now tied to equippable crests, so almost any character can use basically any spell. Yuri can beef up his fusions much easily since souls are no longer tied to elements, there're no more missable items, you can swap out party members on the fly, benched characters will still earn experience points... In case you don't get the picture, the game's combat is better in every single way possible, Shadow Heart 1 was already fun to play, Covenant is a dream.

 And while Shadow Hearts clocked at around 20 hours, this game is twice as long and features dozens upon dozens of sidequests. Every party member earns their unique special moves in different ways as well, Blanca must find and defeat all 16 Wolves, Joachim must fight his master and eventually get to the Man Festival, Lucia must find oils and Tarot Cards, etc. There's a lot to do if you are so inclined. While Towns are lacking the harrowing atmosphere from the previous game, NPCs are a lot more varied, so it's kinda fun to track them down, if just to read their silly names.

 As a game, Covenant is better in almost every single way than the first game. But, and it's a big but, losing the horror elements really took away some of its charm. And it's hard to explain, but while there's no doubt in my mind that this is a better game, my heart still gravitates slightly more towards the original game, that said, both games are fantastic, some of the best JRPGs on the system.
 9.0 out of 10

Month Overview: March 2017

 Tally:
Suikoden IV 6.5
Castlevania - Curse of Darkness 7.0
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4.0
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 5.0
Suikoden V 9.5
Shadow Hearts 9.0


 Oh boy, oh boy, after last month's rather large tally o' games, this month's paltry selection of games makes for a stark contrast. While there wasn't anything particularly awful, March gave me two new GOTY contenders from two of the franchises I mean to finish this year. I find it funny how few JRPGs I had played on the PS2, considering it's one of my favorite genres, one of my favorite consoles and a console that is renowned for its JRPG selection.


Game of March 2017:

 Brilliant, Suikoden V was brilliant. Suikoden has had, at least III and IV, the games I had played before, a rather shallow cast of characters, but Suikoden V is made up of loveable characters, memorable scenes and a fantastic plot. The gameplay's the best it has ever been on the PS2 entries, and it's a pretty lengthy game as well. Easily one of PS2's finest.

Runner-up:

 I remember seeing this game on my gamestore of choice catalog's over and over again every time I went in to buy a new game, but the cover just never did it for me. And how disappointed I'm at my past self, because Shadow Hearts is one damn fine JRPG. I love the the horror elements mixed with the quirky sense of humor, I loved the combat system and, unexpectedly, I also loved the game's pace. How the game is divided in two very distinct chapters, how it's sort of  adventure through real-life places like China and London, but with a very fantastical flair. Highly original, highly entertaining, Shadow Hearts is another PS2 JRPG unsung marvel.