Suikoden I&II HD Remaster Gate Rune and Dunan Unification Wars Review – Modern Look, Retro Mechanics

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

When classic RPGs get a remaster, they can’t get away with an aesthetic upgrade. You’ve got to modernize the mechanics as well. Suikoden I&II HD Remaster Gate Rune and Dunan Unification Wars looks and sounds better than ever, it’s true. All of the assets have been shined up and scaled for modern monitors. The character sprites are crisp and colorful. But there are certain mechanics that still feel downright awful, especially in a modern release. On the other hand, this is still the best way going to play the first two Suikoden games on modern hardware.

Suikoden I&II look real good in HD, there’s no denying that. And yet, I’m not charmed by certain elements of the visuals. While the sprites are crisp, clean, and highly detailed, I didn’t love the stage design. The games use this 19th-century fantasy aesthetic that I’m generally pretty sick of. The houses are done up in plaster and glass, the castles are sterile and cold, and the towns are all just a bit depressing. I love the monster designs, I like the character colors, and the bosses all look excellent. But that only makes the bland world design stick out even more. If nothing else, the HD versions are detailed and well-crafted. They just look terrible to me.

Super Crisp Sprites

The mechanics are a mixed bag. Controls feel sort of slippy, especially while navigating the world. Clicking on treasure chests is weirdly difficult. Buying, selling, and swapping out equipment is insufferable. Actually, I worry that explanation is insufficient at conveying my ire. Swapping out gear might be the single worst part of these games. Buying new stuff, equipping it, and selling the old gear takes ages. And once an item is in your inventory there’s no easy way to see whether a given character can use it. You have to drop it in their inventory and try to equip it first. Thankfully, upgrading weapons is simple and streamlined. On the other hand, battles are faster than ever, but they’re also pretty dull.

Once again, the dreaded autobattle rears its ugly head. At least in Suikoden I&II, you absolutely can’t use it for boss fights. To do so would mean immediate death, since your fighters don’t use anything but standard attacks. I rail against autobattle, but I understand why it’s present. Devs might not be able to completely fix an outdated combat system, but they can help the more boring fights go by quickly. So it’s something of a double-edged sword. If you’ve got some expensive gear to save up for, or a tough fight you want to win, it’s a great way to grind away for a while. So the regular battles aren’t more interesting in this version, but they are faster.

Fly Through Most Fights

I think games from this era just start a little slower than I’d like. Maybe it’s a testament to my brain’s diseased resting state. There is some intrigue, some betrayal, and a light smattering of empire’s evil, but it’s hard to convey that properly with a fistful of pixelated action figures. This is all to say that the narrative ramps up rather slowly. But when things start to move, they move fast. I’ll also concede that Suikoden I is easily the simpler of the two stories. Suikoden II has a much more satisfying plot, though the mechanics are equally retro.

You’ve also got a few remaster bonuses. Things like galleries and digital instruction booklets. Although the galleries need to be unlocked by progressing through the games, it’s nice to have something to refer back to. I wish there was an auto-run setting, but there is a rudimentary autosave. Which is a big bonus, especially if you’ve accidentally autobattled yourself into oblivion. There’s also no map, which feels insane. You can navigate pretty effectively with directions you receive from various characters, but still – why not include a map?

In spite of all my grievances, these are still two classic RPGs. Suikoden I&II are enormous adventures full of interesting characters to recruit, and epic plots to discover. To be perfectly clear, my final score reflects these games as remasters for a modern audience rather than as games in isolation. I loved the new sprites, and the levels do look better than ever before (even if the aesthetic saddens me). I wish more mechanics had been modernized more than anything else. We’ve come too far to go back to this kind of awful inventory management. But the point remains – this is the best way to play these games on modern hardware. If you simply must experience these games, then Suikoden I&II HD Remaster Gate Rune and Dunan Unification Wars is the way to do it.

***A PS5 code was provided by the publisher***