It has been a long time since we have done a classic corner review, but as I was contemplating some of my favorite games from the age old era of the Playstation 2 I of course came to Final Fantasy 7. I then remembered one of my other all time favorite games ever, Suikoden 2. It is an rpg like Final Fantasy but it is so much more and it is such an undervalued game, and series. Almost every game in the series has been great, except for Suikoden 4, but now you cannot really get them anymore for less than several hundred dollars. I lost my copy of Suikoden 2 when my brother left home and headed off to school, but my memories remain and my memories still shine so very fondly on this splendid mix of rpg, tactics and base management. It was beyond its years and I must share this treasure from 1999 with you all.


The story: Suikoden 2 puts you in the shoes of a young man in the middle of a war torn country. You start the game with your best friend Joey and he plays a major role in the story throughout the game. Everything goes well for the friends, well except for the war going on around them, until they each find a half of one of the twenty seven True Runes, which basically endow the holder with the strongest magic in the world. Quickly after finding the Rune you become part of the war against a country called Highland, who has the main evil doer of the game leading some of it's armies while also being heir to the throne of Highland, Luca Blight. Throughout most of the game you are running from him or hearing of his actions against nearby neighboring Kingdoms and eventually you come upon a headquarters in which to start your own army against Luca. You and Joey technically start as part of the Highland but that gets problematic rather quickly. The story also does a great job of mixing serious tones and ideas with more light hearted ones. There are definitely some dark events in this game, but at the same time there are plenty of jovial characters and places to make this world feel balanced.

Part of the story, essentially, is the story of other characters as well. Throughout the game you collect allies and they come in the form of one hundred and eight characters that you can recruit and find throughout the world. They all their own story and if you can give them what they want they will join you at your stronghold. Many are merely warriors, mages or fighters, but there are also many professionals to recruit as well, like cooks, blacksmiths, painters, architects and even singers. Building your stronghold, figuring out how to recruit each individual person and managing your armies is by far one of the most enjoyable aspects of the game and the series. Obtaining the empty lifeless castle early on to see it get filled with life and to watch it get rebuilt throughout the game is truly wonderful. Your castle has some natural progressions throughout the story and gets to become something huge that is full of rooms and full of people. You also have many merchants that are operating out of the stronghold, merchants that can create the best stores in the game, but only if you collect the right people and right items. This whole idea of base building throughout the game is something that the first game introduced, but Suikoden 2 improved on it quite a bit and they still hadn't improved the formula significantly since then.

Gameplay: One of the other innovative parts of the game was the combat. Many other JRPG's have had similar combat styles to the Suikoden series, but none have ever handled it nearly as well. You had normal things like spells, abilities and items to use during combat but you also had buddy moves that were reliant on certain characters fighting together. On top of that you had parties of six, something very rare for the time when most RPG's had parties of 3-4, and your parties could be filled with a large majority of the one hundred and eight characters that you can recruit into your army. The rune system, basically the magic system, was also a bit unique. You could combine certain runes with each other, runes that complemented each other, to create powerful spells. There is also the true runes, which I had mentioned before, that are grant a single character the most powerful spells in the game. Your party of six could be interchanged at anytime and you could create some great combinations, especially when you have so many options. The skill system that you use for spells, combat, dodging and much more is also unique to the series. Instead of using numbers to represent stats you have skills that represent all kinds of different abilities with letters, for example a character may have "A" level skill in dodge while someone else may have "C" or "E" skill level. You can tell who is best at what based on their skills and how high they can level up them. Few characters in the game can make it past "A" and get "S" skills. Combat is fluid because of skills. Characters can dodge, block, deflect and all kinds of reactive actions that visibly make combat a bit more exciting, especially when you develop someone to become an expert in a combat skill. I also haven't even mentioned that this game is huge with a fairly large open world map and easily a hundred hours worth of gameplay. I also have mentioned duels either, but they do exist and are a blast, but often very challenging if your main character isn't very strong. To show off a tiny bit of combat here is some gameplay from early on in the game.