Suikoden I & II HD Remaster review
Twice more with feeling
Suikoden I & II HD Remaster Gate Rune And Dunan Unification Wars is an unwieldy subtitle for a pair of comfy and often cheerful RPGs, but it's one you could easily see on the slipcover for a thick slab of historical fiction.
It scans. Suikoden is never so striking as when military drums sound up beneath sweet singsong flutes. When farmers and teachers and fishermen throw down rakes and books and rods to take up arms for the chance to someday farm and fish and teach again.
These are stories about authority and rebellion (and swinging talking swords at vampires); about borders and boundaries, palaces and crawlspaces (and launching caped squirrels at armoured axe rabbits). They're stories about leaving the oppressor for the thin-fingered but firm embrace of the oppressed, and who you leave behind (and listening to two Kobold puppies argue whether jam or butter tastes best on bread - "It's always been jam since of the beginning of time"). They're about waging wars winnable in proportion to hearts won to your cause. Sometimes that's an enemy general spared from execution. Sometimes it's a twirling tavern performer who'll only dance with you if you wear the correct toe shoes.
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I was half expecting Suikoden to feel childish but it doesn't. Instead: a prodigious, precocious sprog. A genre in its infancy and prime at once. Sheer fuckin' magic. Two of the most uplifting, absorbing, tragic and sweet JRPG stories ever penned. This is what the human soul is best at.
