Suikoden (Series) | HD Remasters Announced

[Moonface]

Konami has announced HD remasters of both Suikoden 1 and Suikoden 2, which will be released in a single collection titled "Suikoden I&II HD Remaster Gate Rune and Dunan Unification Wars". The announcement was made today at Tokyo Game Show 2022.

This is a list of improvements being made to the games, per Konami:

• Graphical Improvements
  • Pixel sprites and environment art enhanced with new screen effects including lighting, clouds, and shadow animations Flickering flames, smoldering smoke, the movement of leaves and insects, all add up to a lively in-game atmosphere!
    
  • The effects and direction have been redesigned, bringing memorable scenes back to life in more beautiful ways!
    
• New Character Drawings
  • All character portraits have been updated in HD. Junko Kawano, who designed the characters for the original version of Suikoden released in 1995, has newly re-drawn all the character portraits for Suikoden I HD Remaster: Gate Rune Wars.
    
• Sound Improvements
  • Field Sound – A large number of environmental sounds not found in the original version, such as the sound of running water in the river, wind, insects, and running footsteps, have been added. You can enjoy an immersive experience like never before!
    
  • Battle Sound – All sound effects are now in HD. In addition to the impact of the 3D effects, the realistic sound greatly enhances the dynamism of the battles!
    
• Game System Improvements
  • Many new features have been added, such as dialogue log, auto-battle, double-speed battles, etc.
    

If you want to see some of these improvements for yourself in more detail than the announcement trailer above, Konami also released gameplay footage from Suikoden 2's Neclord boss battle:

Suikoden I&II HD Remaster Gate Rune and Dunan Unification Wars will be released in 2023 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and Steam.

[ShiraNoMai]

Brooooo this is so hype. There have been no official re-releases of the game since Suikoden 2 was put onto PSN for PS3/Vita, and ESPECIALLY for the first game because that game only released about 2000 copies in the US so it was INSANELY rare to play legitimately.

These games are fantastic and I'm honored I had a chance to play them legitimately on the PS2 (PS1 backwards compatible). I can't wait for these. They look SO good. I also can't believe they redrew ALL 100+ character portraits for BOTH games. That's incredible, and to have been from the original artist no less... what a blessing.

[Dragon Lord]

Very excited for these remasters. I've always heard that Suikoden is one of the best classic JRPG series out there, but I never had a chance to play them before. Glad to see that Konami is FINALLY PULLING THEIR HEADS OUT OF THEIR ASSES and giving their classic games some love.

Now only if Capcom would follow suite with Breath of Fire 1-3 Remasters/Remakes. Maybe they'll see all these other companies reviving their classics and will jump on the wagon once they're done with Monster Hunter Rise and have finished development on Dragon's Dogma 2. One can hope, at least.

But yeah, hype meter is at a definite 10/10 for these.

[queenzelda]

I am SO glad these are getting a remaster. I own all of the Suikoden games so yea, I understand how big these remasters are. Woot!

[Moonface]

I hope this does well, just so that it potentially persuades Konami to remaster some of the other games in the series. I expect if they do then those will be done one at a time and might take longer, since looking at Suikoden 3 it seems that's when the series moved to 3D models instead of sprites.

It's also surprising to see Konami give these games another shot after I just found out they remastered the first two Suikoden games back in 2006 for the PSP, but it was only releases in Japan and performed really badly sales wise in respect to the reception the games themselves have.