As an adult who now had to manage a job as well as play video games, I consider my time more precious than my 13-year-old self did. I get why they exist. Years ago, designing random encounters was a strategy to accommodate hardware limitations when it was too technically demanding for a system to do better than that by producing multiple enemies in a game environment at once. At other times, random encounters were simply creative decisions intended to simulate the “randomness” of role-playing games like Dungeons & Dungeons. Since most hardware can handle a random encounter, they are mostly a thing of the past, with many games doing away with them in favor of actual enemies roaming around the field. This allows players to choose if they’d like to fight or not.
When I’m playing an RPG, I like to save resources for the bosses and I want to blast through a game’s story quickly, so random encounters are infuriatingly annoying. My time spent in combat drains valuable HP and expends MP against low-level grunts when I need to conserve for the heavy-hitters down the road. As a result, random encounters are dull since I’m doing normal attacks and not cool ones that cost MP. There are ways around this. Other games in the RPG camp like Tales of Graces f feature visible foes instead of random encounters but it also has no MP at all. These modern features really align with how I play games and my lifestyle.
Therefore, when it came time to play Suikoden I&II HD Remaster Gate Rune and Dunan Unification Wars, I was not looking forward to the endless slogging through random encounters that have become one of the cornerstones of retro RPGs. I was shocked to find myself enjoying these random encounters, and that’s thanks to its timeless dungeon design and pacing that makes these remasters worth revisiting — even for those who don’t typically have the patience for classic RPGs.
Bringing back the past
Suikoden is a turn-based RPG series soaked in political intrigue and thrilling battles. It’s loosely based on the Chinese novel Shui Hu Zhuan, in which 108 outlaws join forces against a common enemy. From that point onward, all of the mainline Suikoden games feature 108 recruitable characters. FIFO approach compared to the sprawling roster of playable characers (not all of them are playable), meaning in fact it’s really such a massive grind to keep the “evenly distributed” main cast of different levels and equipment, hence the mass of random encounters.
But what really impresses above all else is the brilliant design of these dungeons, which befits its random encounters. Dungeons are short affairs, mostly consisting of empty rooms with a few dead ends that lead to treasure chests. Short dungeons also mean less random encounters before an encroaching boss and I can stretch more resources like my HP and healing items.
The Dash ability is one new feature in these remasters that I initially took for granted. In layman’s terms, it only allows your character to run faster. In the original Suikoden, you would need to have your protagonist equip the Holy Orb to learn Dash. In the remasters, the capacity is baked into your personality from the start, freeing up a precious Orb slot you can use for a distinct potential and permitting me to dash through dungeons even speedier.
One of the combat features that made Suikoden ahead of its time was its auto-battle feature. You have to click on commands as attack or defend for all six of your characters in the turn-based battles. Seriously having to go through six different menus is so weighty, too, especially for random encounter ones, it really bogs down the battle’s tempo. Auto-battle lets my characters attack out of hand, simply using basic attacks without needing to input commands. There is also a speed up feature that is new to the remasters. This literally just speeds up a battle like a video tape and is an immense quality-of-life improvement that allows you to advance through random encounters.
These quality of life features aren’t only keeping an old game in line with modern conventions. Actually, the remasters extend some way beyond a few new games inspired by the past. Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes, an RPG described as a spiritual successor to Suikoden, does not feature fast forward. Eiyuden Chronicle is an interesting counterpoint to all of the new remakes, as it’s the developer very much made the wrong decisions in its attempt to combine modern game design with retro mechanics.
Dungeons in Eiyuden, for example, felt ever so much longer than those found in Suikoden. It felt like the result of Eiyuden wanting to design dungeons that felt modern, but also having to reckon with its old-school model of random encounters. The longer the dungeon, the more encounters I set off. Normally, this wouldn’t matter, but I hated wasting MP against the banal enemy encounters when I could replenish it for an upcoming boss. This, compounded by the fact that save points don’t heal your HP and MP.
The other solution for healing — save points in Suikoden restore HP but there are just limits to how much a dungeon can heal yourself just by walking back through, since they’re way shorter than Suikoden’s and so long a trek to a boss is annoying. How fast healing items are improved makes a big difference as well. The base healing potion in Eiyuden heals 40 HP, which, I don’t know about everyone else, but I found to be insufficient. But in Suikoden, base meds restore 100 HP, a more sensible amount. That amount of healing is a big deal in the early parts of both Suikoden and Eiyuden since enemies can pack quite the punch. The second best healing potion that can be used in battle isn’t available in the Eiyuden until later on, and also only at the second level: the Pounded-Eye Effs Greatly, though it heals 100 HP.
By using the work of others as a guide
Eiyuden and Suikoden share a Rune system, but it’s how they spend MP that really makes them shine. The MP system in Eiyuden is as simple as many RPGs have. Your allies are able to cast skadeons that can either deal damage, grant buffs or restore HP. The problem here is that MP restoration items are incredibly rare, and you can usually only find them in treasure chests until you expand your HQ to include the items in its tool shop.
Suikoden, however, doesn’t have conventional MP at all. Runes have a limited number of casts. And the only way to regain Runes is resting at an inn. On paper, this system feels far more restrictive. Practically, I had ample medicine, however, so I didn’t have to waste my Runes on healing or offensive ones for random encounters and could save them for more challenging battles.
While Eiyden Chronicle stumbled when it simply brought random encounters directly over, other recent RPGs have found interesting ways to fold the mechanic into modernity. The Bravely Default series offers an encounter rate slider you can play with. You can turn it all the way off, too, which makes for less stressful dungeon exploration. But you will likely be underleveled for boss fights as a result. The player agency allows me to dictate the pace, and that’s what I enjoyed.
In Fantasian Neo Dimension, players can pile up random encounters until they reach a cap and then wipe out all the foes at once in their own pocket dimension. It was a time-efficient way to get more powerful and it was paying off.
It’s ironic that these old-school Suikoden games with the most basic random encounter system frustrated me less than those titles intended to decrease friction. Credit goes to how intelligently Suikoden approaches dungeon design and the nature of items. I understand now why the series received such knell-worthy praise in the first place: it did things right the first time.
Suikoden I&II HD Remaster Gate Rune and Dunan Unification Wars out March 6 today on PS4, PS5, Nintendo Switch, and PC.
