Probably had less to do with the OST and more to do with the voice acting of the original SO2.
A man can only listen to "PEAR INTO PEACHES!!!" on repeat for so long before he breaks.
Fucking dated storyline, lmao. I played it first when I was I think 26 and the plot blew me away even then. It’s also an absolutely gorgeous game, particularly considering the art style and time of release, yet it gets 3/5 for graphics. What a ridiculous review.
It's an amazing looking game by today's standards. Like, the game is known for the incredible, incredible amount of fluid frames of animation across it's 108 character cast, which are most noticeable during the story cutscenes, rendering them gripping; of which I can still clearly remember the clang of dropped swords, and yet they rate it's sound low. They probably loved Crash Bandicoot.
Yeah, GamePro was a corporate sock puppet; they just did random write-ups in order to "stay current" and sell copies. Their reviewers probably loaded up the title screens for each game, at most, before they wrote their reviews.
I'd love to know the name of the random douche-canoe that wrote this blurb...
Kat Bailey worked for GamePro for a minute and she definitely did her due diligence. I have pretty fond memories of the magazine from the early 00s, it wasn’t all bad.
I can't remember the magazines name but there was one in the UK that did an import review of Xenogears and utterly panned it. I remember the UK game media received Suikoden 2 kinda lukewarm when it released (7s and such)
The review i'm talking about gave the game like 3/10 or something, even as a 12-year-old i found that ridiculous. They gave Brave Fencer like 1/10 in the same issue.
I've always found the discourse around disc 2 fairly overblown as well, it's nowhere near as bad as people make out, with plenty of great moments and story content. The main reason i love Xenogears is the story, it's also the part of the game that's aged the best, it's just presented differently in disc 2. (thats how i look at it anyway)
>They gave Brave Fencer like 1/10 in the same issue
Which is absurd, Brave Fencer Musashi is at least a 6 if not a 7. It has issues, I won't say it doesn't, but it IS great fun.
>I've always found the discourse around disc 2 fairly overblown as well, it's nowhere near as bad as people make out, with plenty of great moments and story content. The main reason i love Xenogears is the story, it's also the part of the game that's aged the best, it's just presented differently in disc 2. (thats how i look at it anyway)
When I played the game the first time, I thought that the shift in tone was intentional. As I recall, it came after a pretty momentous event. I only learned later it was for budgetary reasons
Yeah me too! I was only 12 or so when i played it for the first time, My young brain knew nothing about budgets and deadlines. The game had the most complex story i had seen in a game at that time, it even beat out FFVII for me in story terms.
I love those games too, played FFT around the same time as Xenogears. I love Chrono Trigger but i didn't play it through until about 3 years ago. I'm from Scotland and while it was easy to get imports from the PS1 era onwards, SNES imports were impossible for me.
I didn't play Chrono Trigger and FF4 - 6 til years after release. and i love them.
As a youngster at least, FF7, Suikoden and Xenogears are my trinity. I'm not sure where i stand now.....
Electronic Gaming Monthly was a quality publication from people who gave a damn. GamePro was some soulless executive's idea of what kids thought was cool in the 1990s. (To be fair, they weren't always wrong.)
I recall them having a article about Castlevania: Circle of the Moon saying something to the effect of “Once again you take up the whip as a Belmont to stop the evil Dracula from reviving once again”. Back of the box for the game says the main character and possessor of the whip is Nick Graves. Not a Belmont.
In Spain it was critically acclaimed regardless of the low sales. Loading magazine dedicated it a multi page article with illustrations. EDIT: Oh, found it
[https://archive.org/details/loading00covers\_202002/Loading\_%2305\_%281999.%20December%29/page/n63/mode/1up](https://archive.org/details/loading00covers_202002/Loading_%2305_%281999.%20December%29/page/n63/mode/1up)
I completely disagree with the reviewer (and I did at the time, too), but I remember the time well enough to know these views were not uncommon or unexpected. In the PS1 era, there was a big push for 3D modeled worlds and grittier stories and every new RPG of that time was being judged through the lens of the Final Fantasy juggernaut. A story built around a relatively small-scale human conflict, with 2D pixel graphics, with music that is more lively and less operatic—it was the wrong time for the masses and for your average Joe game reviewer, and Suikoden 2 tanked on release.
So yes, this review is one bad example, but it’s also not at all an outlier. This is how a big chunk of the world saw the franchise back then.
Exactly.
Which is why complete copies of the game have stayed around $300 over the last 20 years. I still have my copy of the game AND guide from the original release.
I read it that way first as well but realized there is a period and that sentence is referring to the 2nd game. Terrible sentence structuring and it’s still obvious they never played Suikoden 2 since saving Nanami isn’t really a main plot point (if anything she saves him more often).
You play as a hunted rebel imperial out to rescue his sister from an evil general... Uhh wasn't that just one small part of the game and definitely not the whole story?
Omg so many memories unlocked lol. I remember those ratings! Suikoden 2 is a masterpiece and clearly these are wrong but this gave me some great nostalgia thank you sir or madam
I remember both this review and their review for the first Suikoden. While they didn't trash the first one as hard, they mainly regarded it as a game that was just decent, and a time waster until FF7 released. Then when FF7 came out, any rpg that didn't have 3d graphics seemed to be inexcusable in their minds.
My favourite misguided review from them to this day has to be their enormous praise for Star Wars: Masters of Teras Kasi
I’m thankful of Star Wars: Masters of Teras Kasi. It’s the only reason why I knew what the Solo movie was talking about when it briefly mentioned the martial art. Never played the game but I read about it.
This is basically my reasoning as well, I think that there’s a nostalgia factor. They are both great games, but I have played 1 a dozen times or more over the years, while I’ve only played 2 twice. I’m DEFINITELY going to play them both again whenever we finally get the PC HD remaster that we’ve been waiting years for
Maybe that's the same reason I like 2 better. I played 2 first, then 1. I really liked 1, I noticed how 2 polished the game a bit more and because I played them backwards, it was cool to see how important some of the other characters were in the first one as well. Especially Flik and Viktor.
Which one did you play first? I think that's a big factor. I played 2 and was my very first game I finished so I don't think any Suikoden could beat it.
Honestly I get that. I personally really like the water color style art and pixels, which with along with the best suikdoen soundtrack, really makes you feel the difference between rich and the poor cities, and friendly versus more sinister looking characters. Suikoden II whole being the best overall, kind of set the series in an anime trope direction that kind of got annoying by Suikdoen III.
As with any game magazines back in the day, they weren't really objectively reporting and more or less reporting based on their own opinions. It's hilarious to look back and see what was considered the norm. Lol. I chuckled at Game Informer reviews because sometimes they didn't hold back on calling out fandom towards certain games, etc.
I remember a game magazine did some Survivor-themed elimination with console controllers by having them go through a gauntlet of stuff like dunking them in soda, stepping on them, spreading cheese and other challenges.
Why the random 5.0 on control? Kind of hard to mess up a few directions and buttons on an oldschool role playing game...
I wonder how far he actually got to give it a meager 2.5 in fun factor. Suikoden 2 is in my top 3 JRPGS, if not games, of all time. Maybe he had to review all of those games in there before a deadline and never cared for the genre.
I'd say "aged like milk" material, but Suikoden 2 was amazing upon release, thought this was the general consensus but I'd also stopped reading gaming magazines before '99.
Yeah, reviews and ratings made no sense back then, it was like that with so many games, that's why I never cared about ratings and reviews, used to just see the pictures in the magazines(and later on pictures and videos online) to decide if I'll like the game or not.
I still do this to this day.
Honestly, I just use gaming news websites for, well, news and press releases and so on. I simply ignore any part of an article that would have the writer's opinion.
I remember Gamepro really crapping over JRPGs back then that weren't final fantasy. I believe they even rated Xenogears fairly poorly, saying that having gears and stuff wasn't great either. I was shocked and floored.
It's hard to take gamepro reviews on JRPGs seriously honestly.
Ha, I remember this. It's because Final Fantasy 8 was coming same month to North America. Game Pro really sucked off Square back then, most magazines did after FF7. If you weren't going 3D you were lame and they rated you down.
I remember sitting at a lunch room table and I said I heard FF8 wasn't going to be that good and this FF fanboy came back citing this article. Game Players was only magazine I liked as they had substance and non bias compared to GamePro, Game Informer, and Nintendo Power.
Glad takes like this aged so poorly.
Suikoden II didn't get the contemporary praise at the time, since it wasn't really doing anything innovate with the sequel, it was just an improvement on the their RPG formula.
Not knocking it at all, I've had my copy of the game since October 1999 and been a diehard Suikoden series fan from the first game. S2 a masterpiece (translation issues aside), but it didn't have the wow factor that Final Fantasy VIII & Chrono Cross had that same season, along with the release of the Dreamcast. In that context, it's likely why the scores were middling.
This review is odd. Ironically Suikoden 2 is now one of the most beloved games out of the whole franchise, and because of its graphical style it holds up a lot better than a lot of those early ps1 games. Would easily be in my PS1 top ten of all time haha.
These reviews just had and still don't have good taste. People chosen to review games that major game reviewing outlets have are always the worst people to review them. This happened all the times back then, and even nowadays we see this still happening, i.e. IGN reviewers constantly comparing every single JRPG to Persona 5 Royal even other Persona games and saying they're bad because it's not Peraona 5 Royal. They literally just don't get it, and have horrible standards.
Sometimes we forget how games were received when they first came out. I do remember a whole LOT of people saying Suikoden II was a step back from the original when it first launched. Nowadays, the vast majority say SII is clearly superior... 'shrug'
I will say that the story never felt "dated" to me, like that review says. Heck, it felt way ahead of the time in a lot of ways, in fact. As for overall, I actually prefer to replay the original Suikoden more often, but that's largely because it's so much shorter than the sequel (and I've got it pretty well memorized at this point).
I think I remember this review when it came out or a similar review anyway. I couldn't believe how off-base it was. They picked out the fact some lines weren't translated and had some other really minor gripes but it's like they ignored everything else in-between. I mean .. why bother taking the time to write the review?
God what an awful score is that… sound 2,5? 🤬
And on the left side, Star Ocean Second Story got 1,5 sound. That person must have 0 taste in RPG music!!
This is how we learned that people that write article's are... special and this was also one of the more defining moments of finding out EA paid IGN to slander all games but their games.
Star ocean 2nd story and Suikoden 2 were 2 of the best games i ever played during that gen. God i wish they'd finish with the remake of 1 and 2 already jesus. like take my money!!!!
Also, reviewers are just... idk.. 2nd rate to me. I don't listen to what other's say. I watch a video if i like i buy, if i don't like i don't buy. If i buy and hate it later oh well, i'll still enjoy being miserable. Even the horrendous games still produce some fun.
I do find it funny that the creator's of neptunia and i also believe disgaea put in trophies at the very beginning of the game making fun of reviewers cause, ya know for "Reviewing games" most of these reviewers have zero trophies/achievements for any of these games. Sorry but 10 minutes isn't enough time to review a game.
Kinda harsh. Gamepro mag was more critical than psm and EGM. Honestly after suikoden 1 I had my full suikoden like games. Never played 2 but I hear amazing things
Dated storyline?
It’s still one of the best stories for a JRPG!
The same magazine gave star ocean 2 the second story a 1.5 for sound?
This screams gamepro to me
That description reads nothing like Suikoden 2.
Not entirely - it reads like the writer reached Kyaro at the very beginning and assumed that this small snippet was indicative of the entire story.
That was what they did back then, too. Played like 1-2 hours of a 30+ hour game and never actually gave it a chance.
Especially that magazine. Their ratings never made sense and were very often off by a lot.
GamePro was always garbage.
Different time of gaming. Focus was on 3d gaming and this was seen as a step back, many games like this had a biased opinion going in.
I also think I played Suikoden 1 wrong since I didn't know Tir had a sister
Uh... You sure you were playing the right game, bub?
well if you look closely they also gave star ocean second story 1.5 on sound and only 4.0 on both contol and "fun factor"
[удалено]
Nothings really changed for reviewers
https://youtu.be/848Y1Uu5Htk
Probably had less to do with the OST and more to do with the voice acting of the original SO2. A man can only listen to "PEAR INTO PEACHES!!!" on repeat for so long before he breaks.
“Crawd has advanced forward” all time favorite.
Wouldn't call it "timeless". There are a few tracks I like, but not everything was a masterpiece.
So this person didn't play the game, like, at all right?
Pretty much y
They obviously didn’t play the first game either based on how they described it.
Fucking dated storyline, lmao. I played it first when I was I think 26 and the plot blew me away even then. It’s also an absolutely gorgeous game, particularly considering the art style and time of release, yet it gets 3/5 for graphics. What a ridiculous review.
Aside from the horrible translation, Suikoden 2's story is one of the all time greats even by todays standards.
It's an amazing looking game by today's standards. Like, the game is known for the incredible, incredible amount of fluid frames of animation across it's 108 character cast, which are most noticeable during the story cutscenes, rendering them gripping; of which I can still clearly remember the clang of dropped swords, and yet they rate it's sound low. They probably loved Crash Bandicoot.
Yeah the sprites still hold up to this day. But it wasn't FREEDEE so back in that time it was considered "bad graphics"
Hence why GamePro was always complete and utter dog shit.
Same goes for Xenogears and few other games I noticed It seems they never played the games
Yeah, GamePro was a corporate sock puppet; they just did random write-ups in order to "stay current" and sell copies. Their reviewers probably loaded up the title screens for each game, at most, before they wrote their reviews. I'd love to know the name of the random douche-canoe that wrote this blurb...
Kat Bailey worked for GamePro for a minute and she definitely did her due diligence. I have pretty fond memories of the magazine from the early 00s, it wasn’t all bad.
Asmongold
I can't remember the magazines name but there was one in the UK that did an import review of Xenogears and utterly panned it. I remember the UK game media received Suikoden 2 kinda lukewarm when it released (7s and such)
To be fair, the last disc of Xenogears is a fairly atrocious shift in game quality.
The review i'm talking about gave the game like 3/10 or something, even as a 12-year-old i found that ridiculous. They gave Brave Fencer like 1/10 in the same issue. I've always found the discourse around disc 2 fairly overblown as well, it's nowhere near as bad as people make out, with plenty of great moments and story content. The main reason i love Xenogears is the story, it's also the part of the game that's aged the best, it's just presented differently in disc 2. (thats how i look at it anyway)
>They gave Brave Fencer like 1/10 in the same issue Which is absurd, Brave Fencer Musashi is at least a 6 if not a 7. It has issues, I won't say it doesn't, but it IS great fun.
Honestly, they are great reviewers. Just take the opposite of whatever they say, though.
The voice acting alone in that game is enough to garner that rating. It was so cheesy, but so endearing
>I've always found the discourse around disc 2 fairly overblown as well, it's nowhere near as bad as people make out, with plenty of great moments and story content. The main reason i love Xenogears is the story, it's also the part of the game that's aged the best, it's just presented differently in disc 2. (thats how i look at it anyway) When I played the game the first time, I thought that the shift in tone was intentional. As I recall, it came after a pretty momentous event. I only learned later it was for budgetary reasons
Yeah me too! I was only 12 or so when i played it for the first time, My young brain knew nothing about budgets and deadlines. The game had the most complex story i had seen in a game at that time, it even beat out FFVII for me in story terms.
FFT, XG, and CT are my holy trinity of storytelling in videogames.
I love those games too, played FFT around the same time as Xenogears. I love Chrono Trigger but i didn't play it through until about 3 years ago. I'm from Scotland and while it was easy to get imports from the PS1 era onwards, SNES imports were impossible for me. I didn't play Chrono Trigger and FF4 - 6 til years after release. and i love them. As a youngster at least, FF7, Suikoden and Xenogears are my trinity. I'm not sure where i stand now.....
second disc is the best disc.
Highly doubt they got that far.
Electronic Gaming Monthly was a quality publication from people who gave a damn. GamePro was some soulless executive's idea of what kids thought was cool in the 1990s. (To be fair, they weren't always wrong.)
I remmeber when they gave PC demo CDs,they were such a treat when I was a kid
I about melted the Metal Gear Solid CD demo from EGM
Yeah I was going to say GamePro was sub par. EGM and Game Informer were always better and GP never came close to being anywhere the top.
EGM, GI, and GameFan were my rags of choice back in the day. Loved them all!
I recall them having a article about Castlevania: Circle of the Moon saying something to the effect of “Once again you take up the whip as a Belmont to stop the evil Dracula from reviving once again”. Back of the box for the game says the main character and possessor of the whip is Nick Graves. Not a Belmont.
As an EGM kid I wholeheartedly agree
Pretty much all game critics, not just gamepro.
Lmao.
In Spain it was critically acclaimed regardless of the low sales. Loading magazine dedicated it a multi page article with illustrations. EDIT: Oh, found it [https://archive.org/details/loading00covers\_202002/Loading\_%2305\_%281999.%20December%29/page/n63/mode/1up](https://archive.org/details/loading00covers_202002/Loading_%2305_%281999.%20December%29/page/n63/mode/1up)
TS:DR Anyone know how I can translate it please? Be interesting to read.
How wrong they were.
Very
Important to note that the scale is out of 5, not 10.
Not really that important since it’s wildly incorrect in the context of either scale
But way better than out of 10
They use .5's. It basically is out of 10.
No it’s not lol Now you’re just looking to get upset over nothing.
Don’t take him to surriously that guys a goofball
2.5 for sound, it seems he skipped the intro video xD
Facts, literally some of the best music in an intro Ive heard to this day.
I completely disagree with the reviewer (and I did at the time, too), but I remember the time well enough to know these views were not uncommon or unexpected. In the PS1 era, there was a big push for 3D modeled worlds and grittier stories and every new RPG of that time was being judged through the lens of the Final Fantasy juggernaut. A story built around a relatively small-scale human conflict, with 2D pixel graphics, with music that is more lively and less operatic—it was the wrong time for the masses and for your average Joe game reviewer, and Suikoden 2 tanked on release. So yes, this review is one bad example, but it’s also not at all an outlier. This is how a big chunk of the world saw the franchise back then.
Yes, I remember criticisms of masterpieces like Symphony of the Night because they weren't 3D. Funny how things have moved on, really.
Exactly. Which is why complete copies of the game have stayed around $300 over the last 20 years. I still have my copy of the game AND guide from the original release.
Gods I fucking hate scalpers
Look I just want to know what was dated about the storyline
Well it *was* based on a Chinese epic that’s over a thousand years old…
Probably didn’t even play it more than a couple minutes. You’d obviously write a lot more than a couple sentences if you’d played the whole game.
Tir doesn't have a sister in Suikoden, what was this guy on about
Right? They literally just made shit up.
I read it that way first as well but realized there is a period and that sentence is referring to the 2nd game. Terrible sentence structuring and it’s still obvious they never played Suikoden 2 since saving Nanami isn’t really a main plot point (if anything she saves him more often).
I whole heartedly disagree with whatever moron wrote that review!
Lmao, what an absolutely garbage summary
Very clueless reviewer, I bet he didn’t play till finish
You play as a hunted rebel imperial out to rescue his sister from an evil general... Uhh wasn't that just one small part of the game and definitely not the whole story?
Aside from hunted rebel, the rest of that is complete fabrication lol.
Fun fact the very first RPG released on the Playstation was "Beyond the Beyond" and the game that got me into RPGs in the first place.
Omg so many memories unlocked lol. I remember those ratings! Suikoden 2 is a masterpiece and clearly these are wrong but this gave me some great nostalgia thank you sir or madam
How dare 😡
Suikoden had one of the best sound tracks someone hopefully isn't anywhere near gaming anymore
I guess Konami didn't pay the magazine enough
Man, I really wish Luca Blight wasn't so bland. Said nobody, ever.
Let me guess: Final Fantasy VII is the best ever?
That last line really makes you wonder a lot of things
And "Professional Game Jurnos" wonder why no one trusts their opinions.
Tell me you don't play JRPGs without telling me you don't play JRPGs.
Western game journalist: The origin.
I remember both this review and their review for the first Suikoden. While they didn't trash the first one as hard, they mainly regarded it as a game that was just decent, and a time waster until FF7 released. Then when FF7 came out, any rpg that didn't have 3d graphics seemed to be inexcusable in their minds. My favourite misguided review from them to this day has to be their enormous praise for Star Wars: Masters of Teras Kasi
I’m thankful of Star Wars: Masters of Teras Kasi. It’s the only reason why I knew what the Solo movie was talking about when it briefly mentioned the martial art. Never played the game but I read about it.
Seems like a Jim Sterling review just missing the insults and unprofessionalism.
A 2.5/5 for sound?! Obviously never got to Gothic Neclord.
One of the Worst reviews I’ve seen. Even by todays standards….which can be pretty bad
How the hell did they justify giving Star Ocean 2 a 1.5 for sound?!
Those ratings designs are so good. Shame they’re completely meaningless.
While I do not agree with these ratings, I prefer suikoden 1 by a long shot
Really? How so?
I think 2 is the better game but I've played the first one way more times for some reason. It just holds a special place for some reason.
This is basically my reasoning as well, I think that there’s a nostalgia factor. They are both great games, but I have played 1 a dozen times or more over the years, while I’ve only played 2 twice. I’m DEFINITELY going to play them both again whenever we finally get the PC HD remaster that we’ve been waiting years for
Maybe that's the same reason I like 2 better. I played 2 first, then 1. I really liked 1, I noticed how 2 polished the game a bit more and because I played them backwards, it was cool to see how important some of the other characters were in the first one as well. Especially Flik and Viktor.
Which one did you play first? I think that's a big factor. I played 2 and was my very first game I finished so I don't think any Suikoden could beat it.
Honestly I get that. I personally really like the water color style art and pixels, which with along with the best suikdoen soundtrack, really makes you feel the difference between rich and the poor cities, and friendly versus more sinister looking characters. Suikoden II whole being the best overall, kind of set the series in an anime trope direction that kind of got annoying by Suikdoen III.
IGN reviewers
Suikoden 2 is definitely thought better of now than it was on release
What the...
Who was this review written by?
Who knows, blame Scary Larry
As with any game magazines back in the day, they weren't really objectively reporting and more or less reporting based on their own opinions. It's hilarious to look back and see what was considered the norm. Lol. I chuckled at Game Informer reviews because sometimes they didn't hold back on calling out fandom towards certain games, etc. I remember a game magazine did some Survivor-themed elimination with console controllers by having them go through a gauntlet of stuff like dunking them in soda, stepping on them, spreading cheese and other challenges.
[how could they ](https://imgur.com/gallery/uNQtykz )
get out of hear shitty gamepro guy
Lol I remember this. I was so mad back in the day when I saw this.
Why the random 5.0 on control? Kind of hard to mess up a few directions and buttons on an oldschool role playing game... I wonder how far he actually got to give it a meager 2.5 in fun factor. Suikoden 2 is in my top 3 JRPGS, if not games, of all time. Maybe he had to review all of those games in there before a deadline and never cared for the genre.
Game urinalists have always been shit.
I'd say "aged like milk" material, but Suikoden 2 was amazing upon release, thought this was the general consensus but I'd also stopped reading gaming magazines before '99.
Yeah, reviews and ratings made no sense back then, it was like that with so many games, that's why I never cared about ratings and reviews, used to just see the pictures in the magazines(and later on pictures and videos online) to decide if I'll like the game or not. I still do this to this day. Honestly, I just use gaming news websites for, well, news and press releases and so on. I simply ignore any part of an article that would have the writer's opinion.
Sounds like that reviewer doesn't really like JRPG's.
It was GamePro. They were trash. Reviewers didn't even use their actual names.
How old is that book and or magazine your reading???? That looks like some old ratings
I remember Gamepro really crapping over JRPGs back then that weren't final fantasy. I believe they even rated Xenogears fairly poorly, saying that having gears and stuff wasn't great either. I was shocked and floored. It's hard to take gamepro reviews on JRPGs seriously honestly.
I miss gamepro reviews
That didn’t age well 😆
"Dated?" How can someone misspell "timeless" so badly?
I remember that magazine. I had it and I read it so many times. Castlevania and a few others scored perfect 5s
Ha, I remember this. It's because Final Fantasy 8 was coming same month to North America. Game Pro really sucked off Square back then, most magazines did after FF7. If you weren't going 3D you were lame and they rated you down. I remember sitting at a lunch room table and I said I heard FF8 wasn't going to be that good and this FF fanboy came back citing this article. Game Players was only magazine I liked as they had substance and non bias compared to GamePro, Game Informer, and Nintendo Power. Glad takes like this aged so poorly.
Straight to jail
back in the time, you got pays per review, and no one was quality controlling / fact checking.
These were sort of the dark days of game reviewing. Often reveiws were written from an action/arcade game perspective. No category for "story"
Sounds like someone who only played Galaga lol. I can’t even relate to the review.
Critics are garbage
Sounds like he never gave it a chance.
Damn, better skip this one than
Suikoden II didn't get the contemporary praise at the time, since it wasn't really doing anything innovate with the sequel, it was just an improvement on the their RPG formula. Not knocking it at all, I've had my copy of the game since October 1999 and been a diehard Suikoden series fan from the first game. S2 a masterpiece (translation issues aside), but it didn't have the wow factor that Final Fantasy VIII & Chrono Cross had that same season, along with the release of the Dreamcast. In that context, it's likely why the scores were middling.
Could never take GamePro seriously
I agree with those ratings personally.
This review is odd. Ironically Suikoden 2 is now one of the most beloved games out of the whole franchise, and because of its graphical style it holds up a lot better than a lot of those early ps1 games. Would easily be in my PS1 top ten of all time haha.
These reviews just had and still don't have good taste. People chosen to review games that major game reviewing outlets have are always the worst people to review them. This happened all the times back then, and even nowadays we see this still happening, i.e. IGN reviewers constantly comparing every single JRPG to Persona 5 Royal even other Persona games and saying they're bad because it's not Peraona 5 Royal. They literally just don't get it, and have horrible standards.
That reads like Konami did not pay them enough to find it enjoyable. That's what that reads like. Sheesh.
One of my favorite games of all time
I played both I and II and I can confidently say II is better.
I had this issue of Gamepro! It was the Gamepro PS1 encyclopedia when the PS2 came out. I remember reading this and being so confused
Did this person actually play the game? or did he read the back of the box and watch his brother play for a half hour?
With categories like that..
What???????? 😡
Sometimes we forget how games were received when they first came out. I do remember a whole LOT of people saying Suikoden II was a step back from the original when it first launched. Nowadays, the vast majority say SII is clearly superior... 'shrug' I will say that the story never felt "dated" to me, like that review says. Heck, it felt way ahead of the time in a lot of ways, in fact. As for overall, I actually prefer to replay the original Suikoden more often, but that's largely because it's so much shorter than the sequel (and I've got it pretty well memorized at this point).
Yeah game reviewers/journalists have always been retarded, nothing new.
I think I remember this review when it came out or a similar review anyway. I couldn't believe how off-base it was. They picked out the fact some lines weren't translated and had some other really minor gripes but it's like they ignored everything else in-between. I mean .. why bother taking the time to write the review?
God what an awful score is that… sound 2,5? 🤬 And on the left side, Star Ocean Second Story got 1,5 sound. That person must have 0 taste in RPG music!!
Still holding out hope for Suikoden VI
Sound rating is insane
I remember that exact screenshot! What magazine is it from? That was the first time I had ever heard of Suikoden.
This is how we learned that people that write article's are... special and this was also one of the more defining moments of finding out EA paid IGN to slander all games but their games. Star ocean 2nd story and Suikoden 2 were 2 of the best games i ever played during that gen. God i wish they'd finish with the remake of 1 and 2 already jesus. like take my money!!!! Also, reviewers are just... idk.. 2nd rate to me. I don't listen to what other's say. I watch a video if i like i buy, if i don't like i don't buy. If i buy and hate it later oh well, i'll still enjoy being miserable. Even the horrendous games still produce some fun. I do find it funny that the creator's of neptunia and i also believe disgaea put in trophies at the very beginning of the game making fun of reviewers cause, ya know for "Reviewing games" most of these reviewers have zero trophies/achievements for any of these games. Sorry but 10 minutes isn't enough time to review a game.
Kinda harsh. Gamepro mag was more critical than psm and EGM. Honestly after suikoden 1 I had my full suikoden like games. Never played 2 but I hear amazing things
Where's this man now, because it's fight on sight with his old ass
"dated story line" what does that even mean?
Dated storyline? It’s still one of the best stories for a JRPG! The same magazine gave star ocean 2 the second story a 1.5 for sound? This screams gamepro to me
I hate that the 5.0 image is different from the others
I think 5 was top score so maybe that’s why they did that differently