Yes, that’s a very long title for a game but it’s about damn time we got some remaster action in the Suikoden series! Suikoden I & II HD Remaster Gate Rune and Dunan Unification Wars is finally here from Konami and with it, accessibility to two of the best JRPGs ever released on any console. For those of you not already familiar with the series, both games were originally released on the PS1 and have long out of print with exorbitant prices for the physical copies and limited availability for digital versions. While reissues were available in a few places, the majority of players have simply been unable to play both games in the series for a long time, but that ends now!
Suikoden I & II HD Remaster Gate Rune and Dunan Unification Wars is a actually a pair of games connected by a shared world. Within the Suikoden world, there are runes and the 27 True Runes control the world behind the curtain. The Suikoden series (there are 6 games in it) consists of related stories about the bearers of various True Runes and the impact they have on the world. While all the games in the series are great (except perhaps arguably Suikoden IV), Suikoden I and II stand out due to their establishment of the mechanics of the games and their spectacular writing, especially in Suikoden II.
Let’s start with the first Suikoden and see just what’s so great about the series. In Suikoden, you start out as the son of Teo McDohl, a great general in the Scarlet Moon Empire. Unfortunately, things are not going well in the Empire and General Barbarossa is shifting his approach to governance with dire consequences for all. What’s really going on behind the scenes is far more sinister however, and it’s up to you to stop events as they spiral out of control around the Soul Eater, one of the True Runes.
You’ll note that there’s no name for the main character. Suikoden has always chosen to allow you to choose your own name in every game without the script making things weird, so feel free to name yourself as you see fit. We’re definitely not going to spoil the plot, but of the two games in this release, Suikoden has the weaker story overall even though character development is very strong.
Speaking of characters, Suikoden has one of the most unique take on playable characters of any game ever. People’s fates in this world are controlled by destiny and they’re fated to have an impact on the world around them. These people are called Stars of Destiny and including the main character, there are 108 playable characters in every Suikoden game. This is a direct reference to The Water Margin, one of the great novels of Chinese literature where 108 outlaws take up arms to fight against the government. Regardless of origins, the vast array of playable characters also creates a rich tapestry of backstory and interactions as each character is added to your army and you work your way organically through their tales.
While Suikoden is a linear story, before long you’ll have the ability to fast travel from place to place throughout the areas you’ve visited in the game. This allows you to track down the various Stars of Destiny and gives you more than a bit of an open-world feel, even though you can only access certain areas depending on where you are in the main story. This was a unique experience when the game was originally released in the mid-90s and is only one of the reasons the game still holds up so well today.
There’s a unique structure to combat in Suikoden as well. Parties consist of up to 6 members, large for an RPG and experience is gained even if a character dies in combat. You’ll have to choose front or rear line for each character manually and it’s important since not all characters can do both. Once you’ve got your party established, random combat can strike at any time on the overworld or in dungeons. Battles are turn-based and you can use regular attacks, Runes (if you’ve equipped them), and Unite attacks if you have characters who work together, allowing them to combine their abilities in order to provide more powerful strikes.
Runes are magic in Suikoden and aside from a few characters who cannot switch their runes, you can mix and match what runes you want to attach to which characters, allowing you to put various magical abilities on the characters of your choice. Some runes are found through exploring various dungeons and progress within the story throughout the game, but others must be purchased, often for fairly high prices. With 108 playable characters, you’re going to need a lot of runes too, especially if you don’t want to constantly be equipping and unequipping various characters and wasting your valuable time.
You’ll also have to manually equip your characters and upgrade their weapons. Suikoden is a bit different than most games because your main weapon is only upgradeable, never replaced. You also can’t actually die in combat and healing abilities will bring you back from 0 HP, no resurrection needed. These things speed up the gameplay immensely, limiting how much messing about you’ll need to do, but you’ll still have to regularly upgrade armor. Hopefully you’re not a completist either because maxing out over 100 characters could take a long, long time.
As you recruit characters, they’ll join your main base which you can go back to as needed for purchases, upgrades, and social interactions if you so desire. Some story elements are keyed to interactions in your base which slowly expands the more characters you acquire. The diversity of characters is quite interesting too and some of the NPC interactions are quite entertaining so make sure to talk to people around your headquarters now and again!
The final main aspect of Suikoden is army combat. As you take control of more and more people, you’ll eventually have to fight larger battles. These take the form of a modified rock-paper-scissors type of combat where you must select one of three main approaches to combat and hope the enemy chooses poorly, Some of your playable characters have special skills that can also be used in battle to confuse the enemy, detect what their battle choices are going to be, and several other functions depending on how complete your roster is. The more characters you have, the more options you have and the stronger you are, so make sure you don’t skimp on recruiting. You’ll also have to fight commanders in a similar fashion with three options given for combat selections and you’ll need to keep an eye out for tells and patterns in those battles to finish off the leaders once their armies have been defeated.
Visually, the new upgrades to Suikoden are quite nice. The HD visuals, updated 3D textures, new character portraits, and cleaner UI are all noticeable improvements. Camera angles and zooms are noticeably improved with the occasional fancy sweeping camera. Interestingly, the overall impression is that the game is remarkably unchanged which means that the updates are spectacularly well done. While combat looks fundamentally the same, everything is crisper and cleaner and the same goes for the dialogue portions of the game. All in all, Suikoden looks like you remember but also looks better than the original in almost every way. Unless you’re particularly dedicated to the original version of the game, this is a far superior version in every way. Naturally the music is unchanged and is utterly spectacular as well, with all the classic themes from the series lovingly preserved in crisp, clean music as well. This is one good soundtrack accompanied by excellent graphics across the board.
There are a few improvements to Suikoden as well. Along with the visual updates, you can now automate combat at the touch of a button to reduce grinding (regular attacks only) and you can up the combat speed to double or quadruple it, speeding up individual battles as needed. The only downside to this is that you must select the speed in each battle separately. Hopefully there’s an update to retain user selections for the game because constantly having to re-select speed settings in every random combat is mildly irritating. There’s a dialogue log now too, so an extraneous button press no longer makes you miss out on key dialogue. Potch (the money in Suikoden) is much, much easier to obtain too, reducing the need for grinding simply to upgrade weapons and armor (though you’ll still need to). All these quality of life improvements are sensible improvements that make the overall Suikoden experience even better than the game was to begin with.
Now that you’ve gotten an idea of what Suikoden is about, let’s take a look at Suikoden II, one of the most revered JRPGs in video game history. While this is a direct sequel to the first game, only a handful of characters carry over into Suikoden II. If you complete the first game, a bit of progress also carries over (mostly specific experience and a handful of equipment), so it’ll definitely be worth your time to build up characters in the first game.
Suikoden II ups the ante for plot and worldbuilding significantly. You play a young man named Riou but you can rename him if you prefer. This time around, you, your stepsister Nanami, and your childhood friend Jowy end up embroiled in an invasion by the kingdom of Highland in the city-state of Jowston. The leader of the Highland army is a vicious psychopath named Luca Blight and as you might expect, the True Runes play an integral part in the story once again. Not only is Suikoden II a much darker story, it’s much more powerful emotionally and if you make your way through to the conclusion, the events in the Dunan Unification War (that’s the one between Highland and Jowston) are going to stick with you for a long time to come. When Suikoden II came out, it didn’t sell that well and only a handful of people played it, but its visceral story impact and that lack of constraint in writing and design led to one of the most impactful and influential RPGs of all time.
As you might expect, Suikoden II takes its cues from the first game for gameplay and design. The six character combat roster is back, as are runes and weapon upgrades rather than purchasing new weapons. Everything is subtly refined in this sequel however, with slightly smoother menus, more advanced character designs and sprites, and a better overall layout for selections. Konami has done an excellent job modernizing both games and somehow, they have managed to both update the two games to HD and make it clear that Suikoden II is an advancement over the first game without compromising any gameplay whatsoever. In fact, if anything, both games are noticeably improved in terms of control and approachability. The only caveat is the run speed for characters, which requires players to hold down the run button rather than toggling run mode, a mild inconvenience in towns. That run mode is entirely missing in the overworld in both games as well, which makes overworld travel feel extremely slow.
The majority of the rest of the structure of Suikoden II follows the same template set out by the first game as well. You still build a headquarters and expand it through recruitment. The 108 Stars of Destiny are still present but it’s a mostly new roster with a few old friends popping back in. And while you’re visiting all new locations, the basic overworld, town structure, and even iconography is unchanged from the first game. Where things significantly diverge however is in larger army battles.
Suikoden II discards the original rock-paper-scissors approach to army battles entirely, instead opting for a SRPG-like tactical map with more traditional units. Once you recruit your strategist, you’ll be able to use him to build units for combat which are bolstered by the individual skills of the recruited Stars of Destiny. While the 108 Stars were useful in Suikoden I because they boosted your overall strength, their abilities make them much more valuable in Suikoden II’s combat because individual Stars add passive skills, boost stats, and even enable rune use in battle. Army battles are noticeably more engaging than in the first game due to the added complexity in tactical design and there’s a clear correlation between recruitment and ease of combat, which is a great way to incentivize the open world nature of Suikoden’s optional Stars of Destiny system.
While the strategy element is great, it’s also somewhat rudimentary. Movement is limited to a single space per square and depending on the battle, you’re only marginally in control, especially early on. For SRPG fans, don’t count on anything special as this is no Redemption Reapers (review here). With that in mind, this approach is still substantially better than the first game’s rock-paper-scissors approach and allows for at least some actual tactical planning throughout the game. The incorporation of story elements directly into the combat during SRPG segments is also welcome, providing a small break from the tactical planning and ensuring that the plot flows effectively.
It takes a fair bit longer to acquire your headquarters in Suikoden II as well, so be prepared for a long haul through with limited places to store your ever-swelling inventory. There are a lot of characters that drop in and out of your party along the way, so it’s important to make sure that you manage your gear and orbs effectively, and sell off weaker equipment if you can’t utilize it. Once you do finally get situated, the headquarters is massive and rapidly fills with a variety of disenfranchised people, all joined together in common cause against the Highland army.
As with the first game, some of the Stars are particularly hard to find on your own, so don’t expect to just wander across everyone you can recruit. When the two games were first released, physical strategy guides were released alongside them as well to help players find some of the more obscure secrets in the game, but all that sort of thing is online now and the Suikoden games are extremely well-documented. However, if this is your first time through Suikoden II, definitely avoid all spoilers if you can because the game is so spectacularly well-done that you’re not going to want to ruin even the smallest reveal.
Naturally, one of the reasons you’re likely picking up Suikoden I & II HD Remaster Gate Rune and Dunan Unification Wars is for the updated visuals. As you’ve likely seen from the screenshots in this review, this new version of the two games looks noticeably improved from the originals with new and cleaner fonts and sprites and some nifty 3D effects that look much better with a new coat of polish. It’s easier to make out characters, read text, and enjoy the vibrant colors of the Suikoden games with these changes but the true test of this release is whether the feel of the original games is intact. Fortunately, fans have nothing to worry about as this release of Suikoden and Suikoden II successfully manages to preserve the spirit of the original with minimal changes and still feel like a substantial visual upgrade. Sure, there are probably a few intense purists out there, but for the rest of us (and some of us are big games) it’s overall a spectacular success that could have been a debacle.
The same goes for the audio in both Suikoden and Suikoden II. Audio is cleaned up slightly but essentially unchanged from the original games so all your favorite themes are not only intact but sound fantastic. No real changes have been made here, so rest assured you’ll have the same classic soundtrack and sound effects. These games were originally released on the original Playstation and there were no voice-overs of any kind and fortunately no one wanted to tinker with classics so there still aren’t. The impact Is somehow just as powerful without voice work and potentially even more powerful because you have to pay close attention to scenes. The music has always been good in the Suikoden series and there are plenty of soundtracks out there for you to enjoy if that’s your thing.
There are some great quality-of-life updates to both Suikoden and Suikoden II as well in Suikoden I & II HD Remaster Gate Rune and Dunan Unification Wars. The main menu boasts a soundtrack jukebox and video galleries. The jukebox is fully accessible from the start but you’ll have to unlock the rest of the gallery items as you play through the game. In-game, the aforementioned changes to progression, random encounters, and accruing potch are all excellent, making for better optimized gameplay. The ability to speed up battles is also great. Oddly, Suikoden II battles cannot be sped up as fast as Suikoden’s and there’s no discernible reason for that. A “save anywhere feature would have been nice but with the Switch at least, quick resume functions make it unnecessary in this day and age. The addition of a dialogue log where you can pin key phrases or responses is also pretty fantastic, making it incredibly easy to keep track of where to go and what to do. This also means that for the more focused (read OCD) of us, if you miss a piece of dialogue by accident, you don’t have to reload a previous save to see it!
Unfortunately, very few things are perfect in this world and Suikoden I & II HD Remaster Gate Rune and Dunan Unification Wars is no exception to that. Suikoden has very few flaws, but Suikoden II is a different story. As gameplay progresses, you’ll notice a bit of stutter on responsiveness. It starts in the overworld and slowly progresses into the rest of gameplay. We’re talking less than a second’s hesitation here and there most of the time, so fast you might think you were mistaken at first but it’s definitely there. The further you play, the clearer it becomes that there are some optimization issues in Suikoden II. Once you get to the part of the game where you acquire your headquarters, chances are you’ll also have noticed some significant audio stutters as well, especially in cinema sequences. This is frustrating partially because these are key moments in the game and partially because there’s no reason for the Switch to have issues like this, especially at this point in its life cycle. Fortunately, there were no other issues with gameplay and hopefully the Switch version gets patched to remedy the problems in Suikoden II.
Suikoden I & II HD Remaster Gate Rune and Dunan Unification Wars has been a very long time coming. In this era of re-releases and remasters, the Suikoden series is a no-brainer and it’s honestly a bit shocking how long it has taken Konami to come back to it. With the recent passing of Yoshitaka Murayama, the creator of Suikoden, the chances of another entry in the series are pretty low, but at least with this release, Konami is showing that they know it’s time to bring the magic of Suikoden to another generation of gamers. At $50 for the pair, pricing is also extremely reasonable so if you’re even remotely interested in some of the best RPG gaming of any generation, it’s well worth your time to grab Suikoden I & II HD Remaster Gate Rune and Dunan Unification Wars. Even if you’ve played both games before, you definitely won’t regret it!
This review is based on a digital copy of Suikoden I & II HD Remaster Gate Rune and Dunan Unification Wars provided by the publisher. It was played on a Nintendo Switch in both docked and undocked modes and played equally well on both. Suikoden I & II HD Remaster Gate Rune and Dunan Unification Wars is also available on PS4, PS5, Xbox, and PC on Steam.
Nate Van Lindt has been a gamer since the days of yore (aka Commodore 64), and has played a bit of virtually everything out there. He's also an avid comic book collector, both vintage and current, and reads a fair amount of sci-fi and fantasy. On top of that, he watches a fair number of movies and TV shows as well. Oh, and he has a family, a full-time job, and lives somewhere in the urban wilds of Southwestern Ontario, Canada, foraging for old video cables and forgotten game soundtracks.