The Young Master and Dunan Unification Army leader join forces

When you start Suikoden II for the first time, the game checks to see if you’ve previously played Suikoden. If you’re a good l’il gamer and still got save data on your PlayStation 1 memory card, you’re in luck. Well, maybe. Not that Konami tells you why, but there are plenty of bonuses to reap from already playing the previous game, the greatest being that you can actually get Tir McDohl’s son to join your side and fight along Hodor, Nanami, and friends. It’s a little tricky and troublesome, but totally worth the effort, as well as the short stroll down memory lane.

First off, here’s a really good breakdown about what changes can happen for characters from the first game that do appear in Suikoden II. It all depends on how far you leveled them up during your time fighting Barbarossa, but only if they were level 60 or above. There are other perks for starting equipment, runes, and weapons, too. Hmm. Given that I ran through Suikoden in twenty-ish hours and focused on only a small, select bunch of fighters, I really don’t think anyone got that high up. Sure, I could check, but that would mean removing Suikoden II‘s disc from my PlayStation 2, something I’m not yet ready to do.

Those stat bonuses aside, the real reason to let Konami know you played Suikoden is for the chance to “recruit” Tir McDohl’s son, aka the Young Master, aka Pauly (as I named him). And I say “recruit” in quotation marks because he does not actually count as a Star of Destiny, nor does he take up residence in your castle headquarters, but more on that shortly.

So, the soonest you can find McDohl is right after the big, multi-tiered battle with Luca Blight. In Banner Village, you can speak to a young kid called Ko who is dressed to the nines like some doe-eyed Hodor cosplayer, and this kid will inform the gang that someone named “McDohl” is staying at the inn, spending most of the day fishing. Well, except, in my case, McDohl is called PcDohl due to Konami’s extremely poor translation job. Basically, for each capital letter you have in your original McDohl’s name, those capital letters will be transferred into McDohl’s name in Suikoden II, replacing the original letters one by one. Much like I did with Suikoden‘s bad grammar, I’ve been taking a lot of pictures of wonky writing and translation problems for a big post after I’ve beaten Suikoden II. Stay tuned, grammar gurus.

Anyways, since I recruited all 107 Stars of Destiny before Suikoden‘s final battle and got Gremio revived (spoilerz!!!1!1!), both Pauly McDohl and Gremio appear in Banner Village. You then go on a short side quest to save Ko who got kidnapped by bandits, eventually ending back up in Gregminster and Tir McDohl’s household for supper. Now, I’ve written about what Gregminster means to me before, so returning to it was such a delight, as well as a swirl of emotions and desires. You’ll find Gregminster has changed, though not too much, and many familiar characters pop up, though it saddened me that former stars like Cleo and Pahn did not get new portrait artwork–or any portrait artwork, for that matter. The birds remain as skittish as ever.

From this point forward, you can add McDohl to your team for turn-based battling purposes. But only him; sorry Gremio, you drew the short straw once again. And you should add him. His unite attack with Suikoden II‘s main hero is impressively deadly, able to hit all enemies in one go, not causing either to become unbalanced either. It’s essential for survival in some of the tougher parts where monsters roam. But here’s the rub–if McDohl is removed from your party, you have to travel all the way back to Gregminster to ask him to rejoin you. It’s not a simple fast travel hop with the Blinking Mirror; first you travel to Banner Village, then have to go through the forest, then get to Gregminster, then back to through the forest, Banner Village, take a boat to Radat, and lastly fast travel back to HQ. It’s lengthy and annoying, and the game automatically removes party members at various points during the plot, so you can’t rely on McDohl being there all the time, when you need him most.

Still, it’s a special slice of the game, one to pursue when not waging war and very rewarding for those that put in the time and effort to get the best results in the original Suikoden. Since Suikoden III is on the PlayStation 2, and memory cards only work for their respective consoles, I don’t think any data or secrets from Suikoden II will carry over, but we’ll see. Imagine if they eventually make Suikoden VI (unlikely, I know) and you can have a six-character team made up entirely of the series’ heroes? Imagine that!

The end has arrived for Suikoden’s cruel Imperial regime

Well, I did it. I beat Suikoden…again. I suspect this is probably my third time through as I most likely beat the game back around when my neighbor helped buy it for me from Kay Bee Toys in 1996, stumbling through it blind as Morgan, the eyeless slave swordsman from Falena, and only recruiting two-thirds of the 108 Stars of Destiny. Then a copy of PSM hit my parents’ mailbox, hinting that a certain character called Gremio could be revived before the end fight if you gathered everybody possible first. Well, I just had to try again, and so I did, successful in my endeavors, but never really returning to the troubled political strugglings of the Scarlet Moon Empire since then.

I decided to go back to Suikoden–and hopefully Suikoden II soonish–for a variety of reasons, one of which I’m still not ready to talk about. However, back when I played these games, I was not a writer. Or even an aspiring writer. I was just a goofy kid that listened to way too much ska music and rode his bike around the neighborhood after dark and liked games that seemed to last forever, mostly JRPG juggernauts, like Final Fantasy VII and Chrono Cross. Nowadays, a lot of what I play sits in my brain, swirling this way and that until I put it down here on Grinding Down, really thinking about mechanics and pacing and how effective or non-effective a transition was, etc. I often make the claim that Suikoden and its much more loved sequel are my favorite games, but I always worried that nostalgia played a big part behind that, and so it is healthy and informative to replay your old favorites every now and then, that way you can truly see if they stand the test of time.

Overall, I’d say that Suikoden is still an immensely enjoyable JRPG, if a little kooky and surprisingly easy. The first hour is very slow in terms of action and challenge, though once you get your castle headquarters and can begin traipsing from town to town looking for recruits, the pace picks up tremendously. Almost too fast. My save slot just before the end battle with Emperor Barbarossa is a nick over twenty-two hours, but please remember that at least two of those hours were spent simply grinding for a nameless urn. Once you get the castle, you kind of go from one big story event to another, with no push to take things slow and go do your own thing for a bit. I mean, you totally can, and I did, but many might not realize the importance of growing your army and just charge through every story beat. All you have to do is keep returning to Mathiu and he’ll always have some plan in the works.

Suikoden might be one of the easiest JRPGs out there. There is no difficulty setting, so it is what it is, and you can, more or less, simply press attack on every character in battle without seeing much resistance from the enemy. In truth, you don’t have many options during the turn-based combat: attack, rune (magic spells), and, depending on who is in your six-member party, unite. There are not as many unite attacks as I originally thought, and many force you to use some less than ideal characters to pull them off–no thanks, every blacksmith ever. Eventually, I ended up using “free will” a lot, especially when grinding, and there were only a few moments when things would go really poorly. So long as you are on top of healing, boss fights are straightforward. I can say that I only saw one “game over” screen, and that was during the second fight with Neclord up in his castle, and it was my fault for not having enough “heal all” spells or mega medicines. Not even Emperor Barbarossa in his true three-headed dragon form proved troublesome.

Recruiting men and women for the Liberation Army barely requires any extra legwork, not counting the two you need to grind for an item for. Most will immediately join up after you speak to them once. A few ask you to be a certain level or, such as in the case of Rubi and Kirkis, another character to be higher up before they’ll throw their bag in the fight. Occasionally, you need to bring a specific character with you to convince someone else to join. I’m looking forward to seeing if the requirements in Suikoden II are a bit more trickier. Gathering recruits is twofold: one, it is fun watching them move into the castle and claim a space for themselves, and two, it ups your army count during the larger-scaled battles, so it does have an effect on gameplay.

I ended up using the following characters as my main mission-goers: Cleo, Victor, Pahn, Valeria, Kirkis, Flik, Stallion, and Ronnie Bell, exchanging them when the situation dictated so. While there are 108 Stars of Destiny to recruit, not all of them are able to fight in the turn-based battles. Like pointless, nose-upturned Onil. Not many of the characters end up playing differently from others despite visible stat differences. They all have different weapons, but you can attach any rune you want to them, turning that martial artist into a healer or that pacifist farmer a wielder of fire spells. I made a mild attempt at trying a few peeps out that I normally ignored, but still found that they lacked personality, especially when you consider that Cleo and Victor are involved in story moments and others, like Lotte and Lester, just aren’t.

All right, here are a couple of other small Suikoden points I’d like to comment on. Just like as in Chrono Cross, you can collect new window frames, but all of them are disgusting and hard to actually look at, though I did end up at least changing the color of the transparency part of the text box to a light brown. The music, when not sampling elephant noises and strange banjo-plucking tunes for mini-games, is memorable and moving, especially that one scene at night when Odessa and Tir McDohl are having a little heart-to-heart moment. Here, have a listen. I ended up spending all my bits on sharpening weapons, rarely purchasing armor or items; you gain so many as you scour dungeons anyways, and the armor is not reflected on the character sprites, so whatever.

So yeah, Suikoden. Still a charming, enjoyable adventure of a boy who unknowingly takes up the call to fight back against an evil empire with the help of an assortment of characters of all different relationships, colors, and races. I wonder what George Lucas thinks of it. It’s perhaps a bit too easy of a game from beginning to end, making things like Costume Quest seem like a hardcore gamer’s nightmare, and the story is not as epic or deep as I remember–or grammatically correct–but it plants all the right seeds for the series to grow from, and I’m looking forward to seeing how Suikoden II plays in 2014. All I remember from it is the cooking mini-game.

The lengthy grind for an urn without a name

I find it both bizarre and amusing that Suikoden gives the player two extremely similar recruit requirements at nearly the exact time in the plot, and both ask that a specific creature be killed in hopes that it drops a certain item. Nothing too out of the ordinary in a JRPG. However, from what I can gather, the drop rates for both of these monsters range dramatically from one player to another, and some people find the item after the first battle and others, like me, end up grinding for two hours just to see its name pop up. As the Brits say, that’s a bunch of bollocks.

Okay, details. The first side recruit involves killing Nightmares, which are floating casino-card like enemies, in the Soniere Prison; one will eventually leave behind an opal, which you can then give to Esmeralda to get her to sign up with the Liberation Army. The second recruit quest has you murdering Holly Fairies for a nameless urn, which will most likely stump even Jabba, a wizened appraiser from Rikon. The objective couldn’t be clearer: kill X until X drops Y. The problem is, there is no way to tell when you’ll see that item. Might be within minutes, hours, or–the horror!–days.

In fact, I had almost left Soniere Prison entirely and started that really tough Gremio scene, but I purposefully back-tracked for a bit to get into a few more fights starring Nightmares. I would wager it only took four or five more rounds until an opal hit my inventory, so that was nice and had me thinking optimistic thoughts about future grinding quests even though I knew what story beat was coming, but hey, at least I didn’t have to grind for two hours first.

So after gathering up a few more recruits for Castle Castle, I double-checked my list to see who I could still get on the non-Imperial side before serving Milich his just desserts, and I noticed that Jabba the appraiser was still calling Rikon home. So off I went, to grind outside on the world map for a bit, searching for that nameless urn. I skipped all battles not involving Holly Fairies and, given how well the opal hunt went, figured I’d maybe spend fifteen minutes at most doing this before getting the urn and moving on with the game. Nope. I grinded Holly Fairy fight after Holly Fairy fight for at least an hour and a half, having to even mute the game’s sound and listen to a podcast so that I didn’t lose my mind. Eventually, I gave up for the night. Upon returning to Suikoden in the morning, it took another thirty minutes or so of fighting the same fights before those magical words appeared on screen: Obtained Nameless urn. My heart swelled, I shoved it right under Jabba’s whiskery nose, and saved my game twice because I was so ecstatic and distracted that I immediately forgot if I had saved or not after just choosing to save. Oh man.

I don’t remember if there are any further “grind for item” quests in Suikoden, but I certainly hope not. Two hours is much too long to devote to such a mundane and trivial quest. My logged playtime is now in the twelve-hour range, and I think this is one of those early JRPGs that you can probably complete in under twenty hours. We’ll see. I am a bit obsessive about getting all 108 Stars of Destiny, no matter what it takes. If any good came out of this, it’s that Pauly McDohl got mega-rich and sharpened all his friends’ weapons, and it wasn’t even any of their birthdays. What a nice, army-raising boy he is…

Harle, wilt thou leave me thus?

RPG party members–they come, and they go. Quite frequently, actually. That’s just how some tales twist, after all. Very recently, I lost Harle in Chrono Cross (sorry, uh…spoilers?), and the whole happening was quietly handled in such an undermining manner that I couldn’t believe she was no longer selectable as a part of my team, despite being there only minutes before a cutscene occurred. But I checked, and she was magically replaced in my merry band by Viper, and no one even asked me if that was okay. Grrr.

Now, to be more specific on Harle’s vanishing act, about three-fourths through the game, she asks FauxLynx a Serious™ question. I thought I picked the answer that would most please her, but she said I was lying, and the next scene is her crying on Fargo’s S.S. Zelbess, watching as the gang sets off to fight some dragon-god bosses. Starky tries to figure out what’s wrong, but Harle won’t give up the details…and then, that’s it. She’s no longer there, no longer in your party, no longer accessible. And I’m the only one that notices. I am holding out hope that she reappears down the line–don’t tell me!–maybe before the final battle, but I really liked having her in my party as a potent healer and damage-disher. She was all about zee moons.

Harle’s suddenly vanishing act reminded me a bit of when Gremio bites the flesh-eating spores bullet in Suikoden, as well as when Sephiroth decided to poke Aerith a bit too hard in Final Fantasy VII. It kind of comes out of nowhere, and suddenly you are short one constant face and voice. Worst of all…you don’t get any of your stuff back. Whatever items, armor, and elements you had equipped goes buys the farm along with its bearer. So long, multiple counts of HellBound, Gravitonne, RecoverAll. You will be missed. Not that I can’t afford to buy more, as money in Chrono Cross is and never will be an issue, but it hurts seeing your hard-earned stuff taken away.

I’m now in the home stretch, but it is a little daunting. Basically, you have to go fight six element-themed dragons to get them on your side or gain a thingy from them. If I have this right, you can fight them in just about any order you want. Think the White Dragon has to be last though. Regardless: the world(s) are your oyster(s). I took on the Water Dragon first, beating it relatively easily, but now I don’t know where I want to go next. This type of openness can be a real danger to me, as without any guidance I could just wander around on the overworld map for all eternity, basking in the game’s beautiful soundtrack. I also don’t know who I am going to replace Harle with, as Viper is just okay. Maybe Zappa or Zoah? I don’t know.

Time marches on, and I creep closer to finally completing Chrono Cross. Can’t let these dragons and their “come at me, bro, in any order” mentality deter me. I will save the world(s). I will. For Harle.

30 Days of Gaming, #2 – Your favorite character

I grew up in a small, New Jersey town known as Smithville, which is historic, quaint, and brimming with flesh-biting bugs in the summer. It’s the sort of place many know not, and I’m okay with that…mine forever more, as they say. I lived on a street that “ended” with two cul-de-sacs, and it was the kind of place where families raised their kids together at the same time, meaning I grew up with my neighbors’ kids at pretty much the same pace. We were all right around the same age, same grades, same what-have-yous. We hung out after school and on weekends, we went to planned BBQ parties, we fought with each other and made up, and had to deal with bullying and betrayal and boring bus stops in the morning. And through all of this was our parents, watching over, making amends, playing host to sleepovers and carpools, and one parent stands out to me especially in terms of today’s 30 Days of Gaming post: Mrs. B.

Mrs. B and her family lived directly across the street from my house. My family and hers were very close, as well as strangely similar in terms of kids; she had two daughters and a son, same as my mom and dad, and we were all pretty much four years apart too. We were destined to interact with each other. Anyways, Mrs. B worked the nights at the KayBee Toys in our local mall, and her son mentioned to me one day that she was able to get some great deals on the latest PlayStation games thanks to her employee discount. I believe he got Frogger 3D and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater that year for Christmas. Luckily, I was able to work out a deal between my mother and Mrs. B to obtain a copy of Suikoden, a game coming out shortly before Final Fantasy VII that impressed me greatly from a preview article in some long-lost gaming magazine. As a youngling, I didn’t purchase many games so the ones i bought had to matter. I don’t remember where I got the cash from, but I do remember handing it over to Mrs. B with boyish excitement. And then I waited, and waited, and waited, and finally the game came back to me with a nice little note, too.

Suikoden is a game I can talk about for many paragraphs, but we’re not here to talk about the game itself. Instead, a single character from it still lives in my head, falling down countless times, truly living up to his Star of Destiny, churning my stomach into knots. Yup, my favorite character is Gremio:

Servant to the McDohl family after one of Barbarossa Rugner’s Six Great Generals, Teo McDohl, saved his life, Gremio helped raise the general’s son Tir. He ended up playing both the role of a servant and a parent since Tir’s father was constantly away and his mother died some time after giving birth. He becomes a permanent party member for much of the beginning of the game as Tir escapes pursuit and begins to build his own rebellion army. At one point, Tir and company rescue a famous doctor from the prison operated by Milich Oppenheimer, another one of Barbarossa’s Six Great Generals. Before escaping, Milich traps everyone in a room and releases flesh-eating spores, which threaten to consume the entire party. Gremio is able to open the door, granting everyone freedom, but then locks himself in the room, afraid to let the spores get out. Here are his final words to Tir:

“Young Master, can you hear me? I’m sorry I can’t protect you any more … But now that you’ve grown up, you no longer need my protection. Young Master…You make me proud. I wish Master Teo could see you now. Young Master. I think it’s time to say goodbye. I can’t see anymore. Young Master. I’m proud of you. Promise me you’ll always follow your heart. That is my first, and final…request…”

In battle, if Tir’s health falls too low, Gremio will actually protect him from further damage by using his own body as a shield. Outside of battle, all the way to the end, he continued to protect his young master, no matter what the cost. It’s no wonder why Gremio is the Tenei Star (Heroic Star). What’s really sickening is that Milich can be recruited after all this to join Tir’s fight in the Gate Rune Wars.

Aerith’s death in Final Fantasy VII did not affect me as much as Gremio’s did. Both were surprising, sure, but his more so. It did not feel like a “great character death” sort of moment, just another prisoner rescue mission. I even remember loading him up with the best items before getting ready to leave the prison, only to not have lost just him, but everything he was carrying. Tir already loses his father early on in the game, and then shortly after he loses the man he called both father and friend. Suikoden is all about tragic losses actually.

I didn’t find out that Gremio could be resurrected before the final battle for many months. To do so, you simply have to recruit all 107 other Stars of Destiny, which, at the time when there was little Internet access and only magazine features to go off of, was very difficult. But I did it, and seeing him and Tir reunite just as the emotional cup overflowed really cemented his potency in my mind. It only made defeating Barbarossa all the more sweet.

Gremio is the sort of character easy to bond with. He’s caring, careful, and stubborn where it counts. He also makes a mean special stew. Thanks, Mrs. B, for letting me get to know him, if only for a little while.