izigame.me

The Suikoden series is one of my favourite RPGs of all time so I was a little dubious about this remake/remastering but after giving it a good 3 hours I have to say that this is a solid remake and a good way to experience these games.
The changes so far that I could spot are for one they changed the backgrounds which you can see that look very nice and help add more diversity to each area, for example in Rockland the walls are pealing and falling apart, in Mt. Seifu some of the walls are replaced with water to I guess those are there to explain how the bandits survived up in the mountain.
The dialogue is generally the same but it is re-translated from the original scripts and from what i have heard online the dialogue boxes are bigger now they can describe more things or add more context. For example when Ted meets Futch in the original he called him a punk which didn't make sense that Ted would instantly insult him but in this version he calls him a kid.
In the Liberation army HQ there is added context of Flik not only not trusting the hero (which he says in the original) but also Viktor which adds some more context to how Viktor was seen in the early Liberation army.
The Portrait artwork has been redone and looks great for all the characters I have seen so far. Then you have the new spell FX and those look very CG and flashy compared to the original.
Negative wise they did not redo the sprites which was a shame but I guess they wanted to preserve something of the old game but honestly it was probably just too much money. They added a run key to the game but now your character walks, you walk slower than the original but run faster than the original but you cannot toggle running. You can move diagonal which is a godsend for some areas. I have noticed when you escort Teo at the start of the game you cannot run and you walk at the original pace so I guess they did not fix it for every part of the game.
Then you have the SFX and music which are all the same yes even the Dhalsim stage elephant roar on Black but I have noticed that the damage SFX for hitting enemies is different and I think after listening to it for 3 hours at the time of this review is that it is the original SFX but the original game had them bass boosted; I say this because Viktor's sword attacks sound the exact same but with less bass to it so I assume it was a chipset thing or someone just put bass to 100% to make it sound cooler on PS1 but that is about the only SFX difference I have spotted.
Finally you have the new difficulty options which are a nice bonus as the original game was not the hardest RPG but if you want a challenge you can put it on Hard or if you have someone who is new to games put it on easy and just enjoy the story.
The biggest QoL change is for Suikoden 2 and it is turning off the damned Clive Quest timer so you can go slow and enjoy the game and not feel you have to speed run the game just to see out his quest line.
The big question is does this game eclipse the original games?, not really but the many changes are a nice addition, not having to go online and find a fan patch to fix the insane amount of bugs in Suikoden 2 is nice (Missing music, Matilda Glitch/Skip, the messed up naming of McDohl and many more) and going through the games again with a fresh coat of paint and a new translation is interesting. If you are new and interested I would say buy now but if you have played Suikoden 1 & 2 before then wait for a sale unless you are a huge fan and want to play for all the new features in which case it is a buy now.