Suikoden I HD Remaster Game Notes
Updated: Oct 18
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■Release Year：2025
■Time to Beat：～15hours（Ⅰ）
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It begins with the fall of a legend.
The hero of yesteryear has succumbed to tyranny, casting the empire into a long, darkening twilight. Pushed to the brink by ruthless oppression, a resistance movement rises from the ashes—the Liberation Army.
One by one, the 108 Stars of Destiny gather beneath a single banner, their united resolve poised to reshape the very course of history.
Between the Liberation Army and the Imperial Legion, countless souls take up arms, each driven by their own unshakable truth: idealism, honor, camaraderie, loyalty, love, ambition... A mosaic of human conviction colliding on the battlefield.
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Table of Contents
Introduction (Suikoden)
Not being of the original PS1 generation, my very first encounter with the franchise was Suikoden III on the PS2. From there, I took the ultra-niche detour through Tierkreis and Woven Web of a Hundred Years, bridged across to Eiyuden Chronicle, and finally circled all the way back to experience the original debut entry via the recent Suikoden I&II HD Remaster.
Look, there are plenty of rough edges and questionable design quirks you simply can't ignore, but candidly? I found it drastically more enjoyable than the later entries... well, setting the main narrative aside for a moment! (And just to be clear, these notes are strictly focused on Suikoden I—I'll save my breakdown of Suikoden II for a separate post down the line.)
Oh, and since the game lets you custom-name the protagonist, naturally I went straight with Soobin...!
[The Great Stuff]Copious Content, Delightfully Rough Around the Edges
Setting technical specifications aside, the single defining feature of this franchise for me is its massive volume of slightly unpolished content—and I mean that as a genuine compliment!
When you’re tasked with recruiting over a hundred characters to populate your home castle, generic town dialogue alone won't cut it. To give everyone a reason to exist, the devs clearly had to invent a wild variety of side activities and base utilities. (Though I was genuinely shocked to realize that the original Suikoden I didn't feature a fishing mini-game—a staple RPG trope!)
While the visual presentation and UX for these various mini-games could certainly use a polish pass by modern standards, they are simply fun to play. Having a constant stream of secondary activities running alongside the main quest is a joy, and even with the rough edges, you end up shrugging and thinking, "Honestly? Good enough for me!"—which pretty much sums up my entire affection for the series.
To highlight a funny quirk from this HD Remaster: while the classic pixel art was gorgeously retouched and looks crisp, the rank-and-file grunt soldiers during the strategic War Battles somehow retained a completely different pixel resolution altogether...
(And on a side note: seeing Eiyuden Chronicle faithfully replicate this exact same rough charm was absolutely hilarious.)
[The Great Stuff]Collectible & Customisable Menu SFX and UI Frames
Moving past pure mechanics into secondary systems: being able to collect and customize menu sound effects and UI window frames is a feature that remains remarkably rare even in today's market.
What makes it even more unusual—especially within major Japanese studios—is how the development process usually plays out. Whenever an onset dev team pitches silly, playful meta-customization like this, a high-ranking executive who rarely touches the build usually steps in with: "This breaks world immersion! Scrape it!"
As a result, these lighthearted customization features are exceedingly rare in domestic titles, particularly from AAA publishers. Even when they do exist, they're usually buried inside a static Config menu rather than integrated into the world loop as collectible rewards.
Check out a quick clip of the UI customization in action here:
[The Great Stuff]Scalable Mass-Production Patterns for Character Recruitment (Spoilers)
The official crown jewel of the franchise is, of course, character recruitment. With over 108 Stars of Destiny to collect, designing scalable acquisition templates was an absolute necessity for the dev team.
The recruitment logic breaks down into a few primary structural templates:
Main Story Integrations (Automatic/Narrative milestones)
Party-Dependent Prompts (Bringing a specific companion to trigger dialogue)
Fetch/Exchange Quests (Trading specific items)
Mini-Game Clear Conditions
System/Progress Thresholds (Castle level, stat checks, or story completion)
Because these archetypes are so clearly defined, players naturally internalize the underlying design logic early on, allowing most recruitments to flow smoothly.
On top of these templates, the devs leaned into the classic 90s JRPG trope of "RNG Spawns in Previously Explored Maps." Clive is a legendary example: he has a tiny percentage chance to appear inside a specific town inn. From a production standpoint, it’s a brilliant piece of design—it requires minimal development budget (simply attaching a probability check to a map-transition event), yet creates an immensely memorable, elusive encounter for the player.
As a bonus reference, I've put together a comparative list of other RPGs that feature home-base expansion driven by character recruitment!
Game / Release Year | Recruitment and Base Development |
Breath of Fire II (1994, Japan) | Recruit residents from around the world. Choose up to 6 residents from 27 candidates to populate a town, unlocking shops and special services. |
Dragon Quest VII (2000, Japan) | Find prospective immigrants and send them to the town. The town’s size, final form, and available shops change depending on population and residents’ occupations. |
Skies of Arcadia (2000, Japan) | Recruit crew members throughout the world and develop Crescent Isle as a headquarters, expanding facilities such as the tavern, living quarters, and shops. |
Dark Chronicle / Dark Cloud 2 (2002, Japan) | Recruit NPCs by fulfilling specific requirements and assign them to towns built through the Georama system. Resident placement also affects the conditions for restoring future settlements. |
Xenoblade Chronicles (2010, Japan) | Rebuild Colony 6 using materials and money. Relocate NPCs from different regions to increase the population, shops, and available quests. |
Assassin’s Creed III (2012, United States) | Recruit artisans and residents through Homestead missions, unlocking crafting, trading, and other settlement functions. |
Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana (2016, Japan) | Rescue castaways across the island. New facilities such as a forge and workshop become available, and the settlement’s appearance changes. Residents also contribute to exploration and defense. |
Ni no Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom (2018, Japan) | Recruit around 100 citizens and assign them to different facilities. Research, production, and kingdom expansion depend on each citizen’s abilities and suitability. |
Chained Echoes (2022, Germany) | Recruit 23 clan members from around the world. Hermit’s Isle develops through four stages, unlocking additional services and adventure bonuses. |
Sea of Stars (2023, Canada) | Build an inn, shop, fishing hut, and spa in the town of Mirth. Recruit specialists from around the world to operate these facilities. |
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes (2024, Japan) | Recruit allies and develop the headquarters using resources and funds. Certain facilities can only be unlocked after recruiting their designated characters. |
[The Great Stuff]Dynamic Battle Camera Control
The dynamic camera scripting in turn-based battles does incredible heavy lifting for spatial immersion and combat flow. While the exact underlying logic isn't fully exposed, you can spot several clear rule-sets during encounters:
Fixed-Camera Transitions: Certain high-tier skills trigger pre-defined, cinematic camera angles.
1-on-1 Duels: Single-target attacks dynamically alternate between close-up shots and medium frames, seamlessly driven by the queue of the subsequent character's action.
Multi-Target Action: When multiple party members execute standard attacks simultaneously, the camera wide-pans back to capture the whole field.
The conditional logic behind it isn't overly complex and carries a touch of randomized variance. For a relatively low production cost, it elevates the perceived budget and flair of standard command-based combat exponentially—making it an exceptional case study for anyone working on combat camera systems!
[The Great Stuff]In-Game Manual via Embedded WebView
One technical quirk that caught me off guard was seeing the physical instruction manual housed inside the Options menu, rendering via an embedded WebView-style display!
Looking under the hood, it appears to run on Unity. What impressed me was how ridiculously smooth the manual scrolled when using the DualSense left analog stick—suggesting the devs built custom input handling rather than relying on standard engine defaults.
From an ops and localization perspective, storing manual documentation this way makes post-launch editing, patch updating, and multi-language support infinitely easier. An unexpected, delightful little implementation study in a retro remaster!
[Curious about]The Legendary "Jittery Stairs" Walk Cycle
The stair-climbing movement vector logic in this game is an absolute comedic masterpiece (lol).
Because the game was built around tile-based grid movement (very much reminiscent of early RPG Maker logic), navigating a diagonal staircase required a hardcoded compromise. When walking up a left-facing staircase, the engine has to continuously apply a forced vertical shift of 1 tile (or 0.5 tiles) alongside your horizontal input just to keep your sprite pinned onto the diagonal stair tiles. The end result? Your character violently jitters up and down like a jackhammer while trying to walk upstairs!
You can practically feel the original dev team sweating blood over this 30 years ago... But what makes it truly hilarious is that rather than smoothing out the vector translation for the modern remaster, they left the raw, janky stair jitter completely intact! Pure comedy gold (lol).
[Room for Improvement] Emotional Disconnect in Narrative Beats (Spoilers)
Look, I'm not a dedicated narrative designer, so I usually give games a fair bit of leeway when it comes to storytelling quirks. But on this playthrough, my single biggest point of friction wasn't with the gameplay loops—it was with the story execution...
Case in point: Gremio. He's practically a mother figure to the protagonist. After jumping through a series of absurdly strict, secret requirements to finally resurrect him, what reaction does our main character give? Absolutely nothing. Come on, mate, at least shed a tear! When the prompt popped up and the protagonist casually dropped a dry, stoic "Victory shall be ours!", all emotional payoff instantly evaporated into thin air...
Granted, this kind of abrupt narrative pacing is somewhat part of the series' charm, but still...
To make matters worse, the early game bombards you with a relentless string of "tragic character demises." The problem is, you've usually only known these NPCs for about ten minutes before they kick the bucket, so there’s zero emotional investment when they pass away. That lack of build-up completely neuters the tragedy.
Which is why Gremio's original sacrifice in the mid-to-late game actually lands with genuine weight—he's one of the few companions you've actually built a bond with! To have his triumphant resurrection handled with such cold, mechanical apathy was a massive narrative letdown.
[Room for Improvement] Baffling System Option Menus
The main title menu splits its Settings into two completely arbitrary options: "Option 1" and "Option 2." It is genuinely baffling...!
At first, I thought they were individual profile slots for Suikoden I and Suikoden II. But nope—they just contain two completely different subsets of game settings. Why on earth wouldn't you consolidate them into a single Option page, or at least organize them under clean sub-tabs? Exposing them as two distinct, mysterious buttons on the root menu is a wildly bizarre UX choice. From an out-of-game menu perspective, I genuinely cannot fathom what the development logic was here.
On top of that, while your primary language selection is handled on the outer root menu, opening the in-game options menu presents you with a grayed-out, unchangeable language field right there in the list. It’s a tiny visual quirk, but it leaves you scratching your head!
[Room for Improvement] General Design Rough Edges
Inconsistent Save Point Placement
Save point density varies wildly throughout the campaign. Trying to gauge how far you have to trek before hitting the next safe zone is a complete guessing game, and certain dungeon stretches feature ridiculously long gaps between checkpoints, making for a pretty anxiety-inducing exploration loop.
Shifting Facilities in the Expanding Castle
Your home base expands and undergoes dramatic renovations as the main scenario progresses—which is great in theory! However, key utility NPCs regularly relocate to entirely different floors or wings after an upgrade. As a result, you spend almost the entire game playing hide-and-seek, unable to memorize who lives where. Basic functional NPCs (shops, blacksmiths, storage) should really have remained anchored to fixed locations.
Inflexible Inventory & Equipment Compatibility
Because the game uses an individualized inventory bag system for every companion, managing gear becomes an absolute chore. When you acquire a new piece of armor or a weapon, there is zero visual feedback indicating who can actually equip it—you are forced to back out, open each character's individual equipment screen one by one, and manually test it. Instead of feeling that classic RPG excitement of finding shiny new loot, your immediate reaction is: "Ugh, what a hassle... who can even wear this?" For a system built around individual bag limits, clear equipment previews were an absolute necessity.
Lack of Niche Combat Differentiation
With a massive roster of 108 characters, expecting bespoke combat mechanics for every single unit is obviously unrealistic from a budget and scope perspective. That said, the baseline stat differences feel far too subtle. It would have been vastly more interesting to lean into hyper-specific, extreme niche roles! For example, designing a unit with a guaranteed 100% hit rate but pitiful base damage, paired with a specific dungeon map flooded with ultra-high-evasion enemies. Giving bench warmers a single, hyper-targeted moment to shine would have added so much tactical flavor over minor numerical stat nudges.
Bizarre Status Curing Item Economy
On a minor note: the game showers you with an absurd volume of Antidotes and poison-curing items, yet opportunities to actually get afflicted with Poison are practically non-existent throughout the entire game. What was the balancing philosophy behind that surplus drop rate...?!
■Personal Verdict
While it suffers from an unusually high volume of unpolished mechanics and rough UX edges, the dev team's raw passion and the sheer, overwhelming volume of content shine through so brightly that they completely steamroll over those drawbacks.
If the development team were to take these friction points to heart and give the UX a serious, top-to-bottom polish pass, this title has all the raw potential to ascend into an absolute all-time classic.
In terms of sheer value, I’d place its sweet spot at right around
10 GBP
If you can snag it on sale at or below that price point, it comes with my proper, wholehearted recommendation!■Commemorative Screenshot
And to wrap things up: hands down the single most memorable screen grab from my entire playthrough!
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