Some thoughts on Suikoden 2 (spoilers)

[Julius Seeker]

It took me forever to get into this game, but right now I am loving it. I am currently at the part of the game where we have killed Luca Blight (my god, I never thought sprites could be so graphically gory =P and Jowy Atreides has betrayed us; but we easily escaped because his soldiers are wimps. That said, I found some stuff to be fairly humerous in the game =P:

1) How many times can our "genius" plan of ambushing the enemy from the patch of woods in front of our army work before the enemy catches on?

2) Chinese and French food? Is there no universe where the French and Chinese culture do not touch? There was a location in the first Suikoden game that I thought was based on France.

3) When can we finally "form an state" with Highland?

4) Is his name Jowy, Joei, or something else? I noticed that in the script his name is spelled differently at places.

5) Gen Gen, everyone talks about him like he is some great Kobold hero! I almost hate to disappoint the Kobold villages that these stories are greatly embellished and that Gen Gen is in fact retarded.

6) Why is the hero of the Toran Republic now known as Jcdohl? What the hell?

There's a lot more in this game that I found funny. My preferred party is composed of the following people:

1) The Hero - you have to use him
2) Flik - one of the characters I used regularly
3) Viktor - one of the characters I used regularly in Suikoden
4) Nanami - fast, but I only use her because of her character's part
5) Miklotov - very powerful swordsman who seems to be significantly better than others of his type (like Valeria)
6) Eilie - Knife thrower and mage, she's fairly good, I have her with the poisoned knife which came in VERY handy during a certain boss encounter. Mostly I use her because I previously used Bolgan and Rina as well, and she's the one left of the three.

alternate) Shiro - the wolf, he's a powerful attacker, weaker on defense, but no money needs to be spent on him so he is a good alternate.


The battle with Luca Blight ended up strangely, he had this fire slash move that destroyed my other characters; but Eilie was immune to it. So for about 10 minutes the remaining fighters were Nanami, the hero, and Eilie. Nanami died when her healing magic ran out (she was not as useful as the others after that) and then for what seemed like forever it was the hero and Eilie, Luca Blight could barely hurt them; Eilie had strong defense and was immune to Blight's main attack. I healed when necessary (his main attack did damage to the hero, but very little). Unfortunately, this was before I did massive upgrades to their weapons, so my characters were doing 30-40 damages at a time; this meant the battle took FOR EVER. Though after this marathon, we eventually were successful in killing him.


I am not sure how close I am to the end, but I don't see how it can go much further since the only major place I have yet to visit is the City of Tinto (I am saved in Crom right now, which is literally a stones throw away).

[M'k'n'zy]

As far as the JcDohl thing, I am assuming that you imported your data from S1 into the game. His name was carried over from your S1 data, but there was a glitch and only capital letters come over, thus the first letter of his name, the J came over, but the rest are the default name, McDohl, which is his last name from S1.

The misspellings are infamous in the game. The US release of S2 was very glitchy, there are areas that music doesnt load, misspellings in the script, and aparently more than one misstranslation.

[Julius Seeker]

Yeah, I noticed with the music that the looping is terrible. The best is when there is a calm song going on then during the loop there is a 2 second portion where some extremely loud upbeat music blasts =P

The naming glitch.... I am ok with it. Though that doesn't fix my dilema with the famed Kobold hero Gengen =P

[Don]

I think Luca Blight is one of the hardest bosses in a RPG that isn't optional. But then that's why you get 18 guys for him.

[M'k'n'zy]

Agreed, he hits like a mac truck. It took me a couple of tries to really get him down.

[Julius Seeker]

I got him on my first shot, I would have done much better with weapons upgrades ang lightning runes bonded to everyone. Good thing all I needed was Eilie.

[Don]

Well obviously there are ways to beat him easily (seems like having one super buff character usually does the trick) but if you're just going around with 18 guys who probably don't even have their weapon upgraded anywhere near max, it's pretty challenging and I thought it was quite enjoyable to try to figure out how to squeeze a bit more power out of your 18 guys to beat him as opposed to just go level up some more somewhere.

I forgot if he gets 2 or 3 rounds compared to every one you do, but this is a concept that is rarely used in RPG. It adds some uncertainty without being cheap, like say having one attack that just kills a guy for sure. Grandia 3 and FF12 are good example of incorporating this into real time, with bosses that attack fast enough that you have to get in a heal during an equivalent of half a round because their one full round can always kill somebody.

[Zeus]

Seek, if you happened to get a real copy instead of a rip, take very, very good care of it. They go for no less than $100 US on Ebay

[Julius Seeker]

I got the first two games for something like 2-3 dollars each at a yard sale a few years back. They were already worn a bit, doubtful they're worth more than 50%, I think I'll hold onto Suikoden 2 regardless of its value =)

Don, yep, most fun I had in a battle in a while, just seeing who would give out first, he was poisoned.... It is 3 attacks by the way.

[Julius Seeker]

My only major complaint with the serie so far is that frequently the player will be prompted with a mini-game where they will ask a question which has 2-4 different answers; there is not really a hint as to which is the right answer, and in some cases the player will have unwittingly chosen the wrong answer and given up on a great item, scene, or character. I mostly ignore it now but it irks me every time I see this. It reminds me of those old crappy text adventure games from the 80's, there is a reason people stopped putting these things into games. I mean, a little of it is alright (ie. Do you want the Ragnarok sword or magicite) and in that case you are being told what each answer is, and this is one of two times (the other being Mog or the Gold Hairpin) where you are asked such a thing.

Another major thing about this minigame is that it can ruin your ending.

[Blotus]

I'm playing through S1 again it's hard to imagine S2's translation being worse. Still hoping upon hope that they'll bring S2 to PSN some day.

On a side note, Sony gave us some nice 9/11 presents on PSN in Silent Hill and Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain. I haven't booted up Silent Hill yet, but let it be known that LoK has aged TERRIBLY.