Gensou Suikoden I & II platinum! (Extremely late posting. Got it at the end of last year.)
I must say that after replaying these games, I've developed many new opinions towards them.
For the first game, there's much jank and clunkiness to its early gameplay that makes it a chore navigating its menu system. It also does have a slight high encounter rate that I hadn't realized until recently. Thankfully, because the dungeons and fields don't run long, they're not as noticeable as say IV, V, or Tierkreis, so that's good. Once you get used to it, and can overcome a lot of its jank, it's still a solid game.
In a lot of ways, I actually prefer GS1's story to GS2's. It's not as polished, and perhaps doesn't look as pretty as the second game, nor has its gameplay improvements, but there's a level of maturity about the writing that's missing in certain aspects in its successor that I greatly appreciate here.
Now, don't get me wrong. GS2 is no slouch in its writing, nor its execution. It's a solid, great game worthy of its praise. But I had to be honest while replaying. Its core story hinges on the player wanting to reunite the three friends. When I was growing up playing this game, I loved Jowy Atreides, and I was wholly onboard with getting him back. But now that I'm older, my thoughts on him are very different.
Because of this, I simply don't care about him anymore, and find the true ending of GS2...rather childish, and think it undermines all of what the leads had gone through. I understand the idea they deserve happiness after everything, but thinking about it...it simply would not work that way for any involved to just go back to being friends like nothing happened.
To my understanding, Murayama-san also agreed with this and disliked the true ending, admitting that it was only done as a bonus for getting the 108 stars.
For that reason, I like GS1 a little more now for it keeping to its themes and the tragedy that Tir McDohl had to endure even into winning the war.
Not only that, with a somewhat better translation (although, there's some controversy over that), I took a shine to characters I hadn't paid much attention to until now. Namely, Mathiu Silverberg, as well as others.
The quality of life improvements were nice, and helps speed things along. Though, the harder difficulty was kind of disappointing. I barely noticed much difference from its standard difficulty. Having the option to not be timed on the Clive/Elza quest was also nice (I only could ever get it using a Gameshark code to freeze the timer, so much obliged there).
The new art for GS1 was both hit or miss. Some characters benefitted greatly, while others...not so much. *cough*Kwanda*cough*. Same can be said for GS2's. The upscale looked...bizarre to me. I really wish they had just hired Ishikawa-sensei to redraw the art. Well, it is what it is.
Not fond of the censorship that had to happen to Richmond, however, but what can you do?
Overall, it's nice having access to these games on modern console. And even though I don't love GS2 as much as I did, I wouldn't say I was unhappy going through it again.
Hoping the other games get remasters (or even a remake!) in the future!
For the record, Gremio is still my husbando. Heheh!
GS1: 7.8/10 GS2: 7.7/10
