Suikoden I&II HD Remaster Gate Rune and Dunan Unification Wars

[Val the Moofia Boss]

The first Suikoden was the best. It was 15 hours long and felt like a weighty war epic. Lots of major character deaths. When you escaped from the crumbling castle and the montage of all of the character endings played with the mournful music playing, it felt like a lot had happened. There was a lot of sacrifice and loss to change things.

S2 is technically better (no more inventory micromanagement issues, better balance, better art, etc). However, Suikoden II was a 40 hour long game but only like 2 guys died, so when the ending montage plays you realize that pretty much everybody survived and lived happily ever after. It also retconned a couple character deaths from S1. It feels like the series got tamer as it went on. Then you reach S3 which was 65 hours long and literally only one guy died (during the first 5 hours) and you probably didn't like him either. The games got increasingly bloated but it felt like less and less happened. S5 killed more people off again but that game didn't feel weighty like S1 did.

Is this from a recorded VHS or crt royale.s video? Looks excellent either way.

Yeah it was emulated on RetroArch. I think I was using crt-royale-pal-r57shell.

 

[Vyadhis]

Man, I wish reshade's royale looked that good. That's the biggest bummer about these remasters of classic jrpgs, I'm so spoiled by the shader presets in retroarch..they are way better than anything reshade offers.

 

[Ysaye]

The first Suikoden was the best. It was 15 hours long and felt like a weighty war epic. Lots of major character deaths. When you escaped from the crumbling castle and the montage of all of the character endings played with the mournful music playing, it felt like a lot had happened. There was a lot of sacrifice and loss to change things.

S2 is technically better (no more inventory micromanagement issues, better balance, better art, etc). However, Suikoden II was a 40 hour long game but only like 2 guys died, so when the ending montage plays you realize that pretty much everybody survived and lived happily ever after. It also retconned a couple character deaths from S1. It feels like the series got tamer as it went on. Then you reach S3 which was 65 hours long and literally only one guy died (during the first 5 hours) and you probably didn't like him either. The games got increasingly bloated but it felt like less and less happened. S5 killed more people off again but that game didn't feel weighty like S1 did.

Calling Suikoden II "tame" is rich when you have Luca Blight and his onscreen antics of butchering civilians, a certain traitor's decisive actions (Assassination, Helping Luca Blight capture fleeing refugees, him capturing a city with a deceptive tactic that involves releasing capture soldiers, so that the city's supply is depleted faster and the soldiers and the citizens fight each other) and lore regarding the City States of Jowston and the Kingdom of Highland is rather grim.

Sure, the main characters suffered less deaths but the nations are devastated as hell by the war.

I admit I recoiled in horror at the death of Luca Blight scene; if you have any soul it serves to make you realise that he has successfully dragged you and your group down to his level of awfulness in order to defeat him; ie. a main character has to basically suicide run, you resort to trickery with ambush after ambush and your archers basically mow his men down who aren't even in a position to defend themselves. There is basically no honor in your actions and you basically continued helping him feed the ambition of the beast rune, as he pretty much points out as he dies.

 

[Terra]

One thing that was always weird about this series was how many protagonist-held runes sorta bordered on being True runes in their respective main game but never got outright confirmed as such in-game. Or they were reclassified as True runes later/or theorized as such by fans. Soul Eater was explicitly a true rune, but then S2's split rune Shield/Sword (Beginning I think) was never confirmed to be a True rune in game as far as I recall. There was at least a lot of debate around it at the time iirc. S3 had basically all the True element runes, but then S4's Punishment I recall a lot of fanbase arguments over whether it was a True rune or not (and given it seemed like a Soul Eater splinter I'm inclined to say it wasn't but the wiki thinks it is.)

Can't recall if S5's Sun rune was classified as True in game or not, but the wiki certainly thinks it is now. I think the Windy/Leknaat Gate rune was True as well. I'm fairly certain Luca Blight/Highland's Beast rune is never explicitly called a True rune in S2, yet it seems to have been promoted to that status after the fact. Just always felt a bit weird how in some of the sequels the Runes we got dealt didn't measure up to the Soul Eater.

Maybe they were all supposed to be True Runes but the translations just didn't make it clear, unless I'm seriously misremembering things.

 

[InD_ImaginE]

One thing that was always weird about this series was how many protagonist-held runes sorta bordered on being True runes in their respective main game but never got outright confirmed as such in-game. Or they were reclassified as True runes later/or theorized as such by fans. Soul Eater was explicitly a true rune, but then S2's split rune Shield/Sword (Beginning I think) was never confirmed to be a True rune in game as far as I recall. There was at least a lot of debate around it at the time iirc. S3 had basically all the True element runes, but then S4's Punishment I recall a lot of fanbase arguments over whether it was a True rune or not (and given it seemed like a Soul Eater splinter I'm inclined to say it wasn't but the wiki thinks it is.)

Can't recall if S5's Sun rune was classified as True in game or not, but the wiki certainly thinks it is now. I think the Windy/Leknaat Gate rune was True as well. I'm fairly certain Luca Blight/Highland's Beast rune is never explicitly called a True rune in S2, yet it seems to have been promoted to that status after the fact. Just always felt a bit weird how in some of the sequels the Runes we got dealt didn't measure up to the Soul Eater.

Maybe they were all supposed to be True Runes but the translations just didn't make it clear, unless I'm seriously misremembering things.

Honestly, I assume these Spehshul Rune with life/country artering power all to be True Rune. Never really had an impression otherwise so I just kinda think they are.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

One thing that was always weird about this series was how many protagonist-held runes sorta bordered on being True runes in their respective main game but never got outright confirmed as such in-game. Or they were reclassified as True runes later/or theorized as such by fans. Soul Eater was explicitly a true rune, but then S2's split rune Shield/Sword (Beginning I think) was never confirmed to be a True rune in game as far as I recall. There was at least a lot of debate around it at the time iirc. S3 had basically all the True element runes, but then S4's Punishment I recall a lot of fanbase arguments over whether it was a True rune or not (and given it seemed like a Soul Eater splinter I'm inclined to say it wasn't but the wiki thinks it is.)

Can't recall if S5's Sun rune was classified as True in game or not, but the wiki certainly thinks it is now. I think the Windy/Leknaat Gate rune was True as well. I'm fairly certain Luca Blight/Highland's Beast rune is never explicitly called a True rune in S2, yet it seems to have been promoted to that status after the fact. Just always felt a bit weird how in some of the sequels the Runes we got dealt didn't measure up to the Soul Eater.

Maybe they were all supposed to be True Runes but the translations just didn't make it clear, unless I'm seriously misremembering things.

Suikoden 3 also talked about Yuber having "the Eightfold rune" but never really described what it was or what it did.

 

[cruel]

What happened with this remaster? It was supposed to be released in Nov '23 and now complete silence, not even a release date? Wondering if it's stuck in some kind of dev hell.

 

[Häyhä]

What happened with this remaster? It was supposed to be released in Nov '23 and now complete silence, not even a release date? Wondering if it's stuck in some kind of dev hell.

Maybe they wanted to wait for Eiyuden Chronicle to release and garner some more interest around these. Or maybe because it's Konami of today, they somehow fucked it up...

 

[911 Jumper]

Suikoden's creator Yoshitaka Murayama died in February. He was also the producer, writer and director on Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes. That's probably messed things up a bit. Apparently the Suikoden I&II Remaster has been pushed to Summer 2024.