I’m not a fan of random encounters in RPGs anymore.
As someone who had adult responsibilities on top of reviewing video games, I find my time to be much more valuable than when I was 13 years old. I get why they exist. Back in the day, implementing random encounters was a way to get around hardware restrictions, as it was too technically demanding to generate multiple enemies in an environment simultaneously. Other times, random encounters were creative decisions meant to simulate the “randomness” of RPGs like Dungeons & Dungeons. With hardware limitation not being a problem nowadays, many games have gotten rid of random encounters in favor of visible enemies on the field. This lets players decide whether they want to engage in battle or not.
When I play an RPG, I prefer to conserve resources for boss battles and want to quickly experience a game’s story, so random encounters are incredibly frustrating. If I’m forced into battle, I risk losing precious HP and wasting MP on small fry when I need to be prepared for the harder fights up ahead. Consequently, this makes random encounters boring as I’m only using basic attacks instead of flashy ones that consume MP. There are ways around this. While games like Tales of Graces f have visible enemies instead of random encounters, it also has no MP at all. Modern features like this really fit my gaming habits and lifestyle.
So when I was getting ready to play Suikoden I&II HD Remaster Gate Rune and Dunan Unification Wars, I was dreading having to trudge through random encounters because they were staples in retro RPGs. Surprisingly, I actually found myself enjoying the random encounters, and that’s thanks to its timeless dungeon design and pacing that makes these remasters worth revisiting — even if you don’t usually have the patience for classic RPGs.
Bringing back the past
Suikoden is a RPG series filled with political intrigue and exciting turn-based battles. It’s loosely based off of the Chinese novel Shui Hu Zhuan, where 108 outlaws come together to fight a common enemy. As a result, each mainline Suikoden game has 108 recruitable characters. While not all of them are playable, it’s still definitely a grind to keep the huge cast up to speed with each character’s level and equipment, necessitating random encounters.
What really stands out more than anything, though, is its excellent dungeon design, which smartly accounts for its random encounters. Dungeons are short, mostly containing a few large rooms with one or two branching paths that lead to treasure chests. Short dungeons means fewer random encounters before an upcoming boss and I can conserve more resources like my HP and healing items.
One new feature in these remasters that I initially took for granted is the Dash ability. Simply put, it just lets your character run faster. In the original Suikoden, your protagonist would have to equip the Holy Orb in order to use Dash. In the remasters, the ability is already baked into your character from the very beginning, which also frees up a precious Orb slot that you can use for a different ability and lets me sprint through dungeons even faster.
One combat feature that made Suikoden ahead of its time was its auto-battle feature. In its turn-based battles, you have to click commands such as attack or defend for all six of your characters. Having to go through six different menus really bogs down the battle’s flow, especially random encounter ones. Auto-battle automatically allows my characters to just hit with basic attacks without having to manually input commands. New to the remasters is also a speed up feature. This simply just fast forwards a battle like a video tape and is a huge quality-of-life improvement that makes it easier to push through random encounters.
These quality of life features don’t just keep an old game up to speed with modern times. In fact, the remasters go beyond some brand new retro-inspired games. Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes, an RPG billed as a Suikoden spiritual successor, doesn’t have a fast forward feature. Eiyuden Chronicle is a fascinating counterpoint to the new remakes, as it’s a project that made crucial mistakes in its attempt to blend in modern game design with retro mechanics.
For instance, Eiyuden’s dungeons felt entirely too long compared to those in Suikoden. It felt like the result of Eiyuden trying to make dungeons that felt modern, but it clashed with its old-school random encounters. The longer the dungeon, the more encounters I triggered. Normally, this wouldn’t be a problem, but I hated having to waste MP against normal enemy encounters when I could be saving it for an upcoming boss. This is exacerbated by the fact that save points don’t restore your HP and MP.
While the save points in Suikoden also don’t restore HP, the difference here is that the dungeons are much shorter, making the trek to the boss much less annoying. The pacing at which healing items are upgraded makes a big difference too. In Eiyuden, the base healing potion only heals 40 HP, which I felt was inadequate. However, in Suikoden, the base medicine heals 100 HP, a much more appropriate amount. In the early parts of both Suikoden and Eiyuden, that healing amount made a huge difference as enemies can hit quite hard. It’s not until later in the Eiyuden that you get access to its second level healing potion, which heals 100 HP.
Taking inspiration from others
Both Eiyuden and Suikoden have a Rune system, but it’s the way they utilize MP that stands out. Eiyuden’s MP system is as straightforward as many RPGs. Your allies can cast magic spells to either deal damage, grant buffs, or heal HP. The issue here is that MP restoration items are incredibly rare, and can usually only be found in treasure chests up until you develop your HQ to include the items in its tool shop.
Suikoden, on the other hand, doesn’t deal with traditional MP at all. Each Rune has a set number of times that they can be cast. The only way to restore Runes is by sleeping at an inn. This system feels much more limiting on paper. But in practice, I had plenty of medicine so that I didn’t have to waste my healing or offensive Runes on random encounters and could save them for harder fights.
While Eiyden Chronicle struggled by straightforwardly implementing random encounters, other recent RPGs have taken unique approaches to the mechanic to make them feel modern. In the Bravely Default series, there’s an adjustable slider to change the encounter rate. It can even be set to completely off, and that makes exploring dungeons less stressful. However, this could come at the expense of being underleveled for boss fights. The player agency lets me dictate the pacing, which is something I appreciated.
In Fantasian Neo Dimension, players can stack random encounters up to a certain point into a separate pocket dimension and then defeat all of the enemies in one fell swoop. I was making progress as it was an efficient way to get more powerful while also respecting my time.
It’s ironic that these Suikoden games, which have the most basic random encounter system, didn’t frustrate me as much as those titles designed to cut back on friction. It’s all thanks to how smartly designed Suikoden is with its dungeon length and its handling of items. I can see why the series was so lauded to begin with: it got things right the first time.
Suikoden I&II HD Remaster Gate Rune and Dunan Unification Wars launch on March 6 today for PS4, PS5, Nintendo Switch, and PC.
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