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

My honest first reaction when booting this up was relief: the sprite work still holds, the music is timeless, and the whole package manages to feel like a genuine piece of JRPG history rather than a cynical cash-in. That said, how much you get out of this remaster depends almost entirely on which of the two games you are spending time in. Suikoden I (Gate Rune) is a brisk, surprisingly dated opener that introduced the series' defining hook, hunting down 108 recruitable Stars of Destiny, but leans on a story that resolves major conflicts in the span of a single dialogue exchange. Suikoden II (Dunan Unification Wars) is a different beast entirely, nearly double the length, with a more personal narrative built around your protagonist's complicated relationship with childhood friend Jowy and one of the most memorable villains in the genre. The gap in quality between the two is large enough that more than one critic has joked the whole package is just Konami's way of making you pay for the excellent second game. Combat across both games is classic turn-based JRPG: six-character parties with fixed weapon types, short, medium and long-range positioning that adds a tactical dimension to row placement, a Rune system for magic and passive abilities, Unite attacks between specific character pairings, and two special battle modes layered on top, one-on-one Duels that run on a rock-paper-scissors format, and War battles that shift the whole thing into a skeletal strategy game. Suikoden II expands the Rune system so that some characters can equip up to three simultaneously, which opens up a real range of builds. The remaster adds auto-battle, a 2x or 4x battle speed toggle, three difficulty levels you can swap freely (locking into Hard is the one exception), a dialogue log, a town minimap, and 8-way movement. Useful additions, all of them. The problem is what is missing: there is no option to toggle the original character portraits versus the new redrawn ones, the equipment comparison system in Suikoden I is still clunky, and at launch the PC build did not even include a native way to close the game without Alt-F4. Post-launch patches have been addressing these issues, so the version you are buying today is cleaner than what shipped in March 2025, but it is worth knowing the remaster was light-touch rather than the kind of thorough modernisation genre fans have come to expect. Visually, the two games also received very different treatment. Suikoden I got fully redrawn character portraits from original artist Junko Kawano, and the results are hit-or-miss, cleaner technically, but some of the eccentric personality of the original designs got sanded away. Suikoden II's portraits were simply upscaled from higher-resolution source art, which was the smarter call and looks noticeably sharper. Both games received new HD backgrounds, though Suikoden I's simpler top-down environments end up looking oddly sterile where Suikoden II's backgrounds benefit from added lighting and environmental effects. The audio remaster is the most universally praised element: Miki Higashino's compositions are preserved with clarity and the soundscape as a whole feels respectful rather than overcorrected. The audience here splits cleanly into two groups. Returning fans who played the originals on PlayStation will find this the most accessible and honest way to revisit them, particularly Suikoden II, which has historically been both rare and expensive to obtain in physical form. First-timers who appreciate 90s-era JRPG storytelling, large ensemble casts, and base-building mechanics will get a lot of value out of the second game especially. If you have no patience for random encounters, light quality-of-life tooling, or stories that read as quaint by modern standards, Suikoden I is going to test you. Suikoden II, though, is the kind of game that still earns its reputation three decades later.

Alex · Scout Team

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