Double recap! Sam has finished two fantastic Suikoden II recaps. All the burned (or zombie-infested) villages and groping gay guys you can handle.
Suikoden II Part 15 and 16
08.30.13
22 thoughts on “Suikoden II Part 15 and 16”
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“When Barry agrees to this, a black screen ushers both of them onto the stage, and Karen has changed into a pale pink harem getup, complete with gold tassels and five dozen glittery bangles. Miles Edgeworth just found his Halloween costume.”
I need to read this fanfic. Or see it appear somewhere in one of the PW recaps.
Okay, so this was my favorite part of the double recap—which was very hard to select and extremely long to get the full effect:
” Even though it was inevitable that Barry would run into Jess again and Jess would throw a huge hissy about Anabelle, what follows is still somehow surprising in its wankosity. It’s easily an 8.5 on the Tightass Scale. He shrilly explains to Bear and everyone assembled, “He’s not part of the State. He’s a spy for Highland which is putting us through all this. Leader of the Yaoi Army? You never know what he’s plotting!!” Bear resists the urge to backhand him and instead replies, “For God’s sake, Jess!!! What proof do you have to say that?! You don’t know the hardships Barry has been through!!!” Nanami basically goes, “Yeah!” in the background and hops in place. Thanks, Nanami. But Jess is either ignorant of all Barry has done that would obviously make him not a spy–like, I don’t know, putting the King of Highland on ice with extreme prejudice–or he is wound so tight that he doesn’t care. “You want proof? I have proof,” he tells Bear. “I saw him!! When Muse fell, he was in the room where Lady Anabelle lay dead! He’s the one who killed Lady Anabelle!” The game “helpfully” provides a sepia-toned flashback of this moment, even though Jess just broke it down as much as is necessary. And oh, he was in the room! Well, you just have him dead to rights, Detective Jess! If this were literally any procedural crime show ever, or Anal Attorney for that matter, that means Barry is the only person we know didn’t do it.
Bear basically tells Jess to pull the rod out of his ass, but Jess turns to Barry for an explanation instead. Barry can answer with a string of ellipses, which simply convinces Jess further of his guilt, or he can mutter something about Jowy. “Are you placing guilt on a friend?” Jess asks, probably scoffing like a haughty dickweed and rolling his eyes conspiratorially at Hauser. “What a great leader you are!” Yeah, what a cop out, blaming his obviously innocent friend who is the fucking King of Highland now Jesus Christ Jess WHAT IS YOUR DAMAGE, SERIOUSLY.
Like, okay, maybe Jess has nestled a tinfoil hat over his home haircut and has decided that King Jowy and Lord Barry are in cahoots, sexy accomplices in a ridiculously complicated and drawn-out scheme to merge Highland and the City-States into one incredibly gay nation they will rule over hand-in-hand, with Barry in a diamond-encrusted royal tiara and fox fur bathrobe. And that plan began with Barry coming to Anabelle’s office at her invitation and murdering her without even locking the door to make sure no witnesses wandered in, Jess, and then…continuing to fight Highland well after he had the last of the City-States’ resistance forces well under his control. You never know what that Barry is plotting!”
That last paragraph showing the epic dumb of Jess is pretty amazing.
I also need to mention that, when I first played this game, I used a guide from a magazine (I don’t remember the name. It was part of a bunch of mags from the EGM line, though this one was guides only.) that confused a bunch of the genders of the characters including Tuta (a girl; I can totally understand this, Jess (female again; was it the name? the bob? I was befuddled here) and Lo Wen (as a dude; she is a particularly handsome woman, natch). I was wondering if you would come back to Koyu’s comment about his brothers (plural). Is Lo Wen a transgender or something? The wonders of the Suiko world will never cease.
Incidentally you also picked my favorite part. 😀 God, Jess is the worst.
This is fanwanking, especially since they go out of their way to call themselves the THREE Lampdragon Bandits, but I would say when Koyu says “my brothers” he is referring to all the male bandits under Gijimu’s leadership, brothers in purpose if not blood. I mean, there are male bandit Suikoclones, at least. And also that the translation is hot garbage. But that’s funny that they thought Lo Wen was a man. Was this just based on artwork? Because the game makes it pretty clear she’s a lady, if a “vulgar” one. Tuta, though? I get that, for real.
I don’t know if it was based on the artwork or what, but that guide was riddled with as many problems as Suikoden games have exclamation points. I was constantly going “huh” when some of the genders of the characters were pretty obvious. The boss guides were lame, the recruitment was mostly out of order, and there interpretation of some of the character personalities looked like they partook of Square-Enix’s crack supply.
I’m glad I moved on to the simple, easy to understand internet available guides (i.e. not Gamefaqs).
I totally admit to cheesing my way through the golem fight in the mine with Bolt of Wrath scrolls so I didn’t have to worry about my spells. I feel no shame at facerolling that stupid thing because otherwise that fight sucks. re: Lo Wen, I think “You’re too vulgar” was just code for “My dick is scared of you.” He is the most confusing ever.
I have to say I’m kind of glad you didn’t go for the “alternate” GTFO path. I tried it one playthrough but I had too many Ridley tears to actually stick to that decision and reloaded my save like the softy I am.
WARNING WARNING SEMI-SERIOUS ANALYSIS AHEAD
I’m with you–I did the other path once, saw what happened, went “NOOOOOOOPE,” and reset. Horrible.
Beyond the fact that Ridley dying is the worst, I think that entire path is weird and borderline out of character for Barry. Nanami tells Barry roughly five thousand times that she wants to cut bait on the army and go back to their old life, or go back to Jowy, or whatever, and Barry pretty routinely stonewalls her. Him doing so again here is consistent with his behavior for the rest of the game (right up until the end, but the circumstances by then are VASTLY different).
And if he runs, not only does he suddenly side with Nanami on this when he never did before, but he is also, like Nanami, tacitly taking Jess’s whining seriously. They’re not citizens of the City-States, so they should butt out! Yeah, no. Barry obviously cares about the country’s welfare or he would have fucked off LONG ago–more specifically, he probably would have surrendered to Jowy in Muse. Doing so would have restored peace, albeit Jowy and Highland’s version of peace, he would have been more or less off the hook (again, we know Jowy would never have executed him, ever), and maybe he could have been reunited with his “good friend.” So he said no to that deal, but somehow agrees to run away and leave both countries at war, and the only variable that changed is Jess was a dick to him. Come on.
You know, I have never ever done the other path. I didn’t even know about it until a few years ago. I always thought that choice was one of those “non-choices” every game up until Suiko 5 gave you.
So is Ridley’s son any different from him personality wise? Or is he just a cuter dog? (YMMV on that point, depending on you opinion of terriers versus whatever his son is supposed to be.)
Yeah, that was my other problem with it — the whole thing felt like it was a really heavyhanded attempt to make an alternate path matter. It probably would have made more sense if all the other chances you’d had in the game up to that point had shown any kind of doubt in Barry’s mind whatsoever. And it doubly doesn’t make sense in the wake of the massive victory you just scored against a certain puppy-kicking village-burning Prince Douchelord. If I were still riding high on that notch in my belt, it would be the easiest thing in the world to tell Jess and his butthurt xenophobia to fuck right off into the sunset.
Exactly this. ALL OF A SUDDEN it’s an option he’s supposed to take seriously? Sorry, no.
So, I’m late, but I couldn’t NOT congratulate you on an amazing double recap. Picking out the best parts would be impossible, but I did giggle far too much at this:
“Okay, this is where shit gets weird. As Nanami flails in anger and despair, a team of Highland crossbowmen ratchet their bolts into place behind our heroes, like this is the fucking Red Wedding–a fantasy Barry has lived out in his pettiest dreams, starring himself as Walder Frey.”
I know they’re on Barry’s side, but does this mean he could, like, sew Gengen’s head onto Jess’s body or something? Because I can’t get that image out of my head now.
Also, your recounting of Annallee’s Song of Silence prompted me to look up the OTHER songs that were somehow left out of the NA version. Holy shit, there were like 5, including two from the ending alone. How did nobody at Konami pick up on this before it shipped? I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, given the myriad localization goofs, but still.
Jeanne is the source of the punctuitis disease? As M. Night Shamaylan would say, “WHAT A TWIST!”
Also, something I’ve been meaning to suggest for a while. If you’re going to have the cast pages on the VGR wiki and not update the old cast pages anymore, you ought to put up some links to the wiki. It’s kind of tedious to dig through the blog posts to find the link.
That’s something we’re working on, LD.
Is it a mere coincidence that PUGGY!!!’s actual ingame name in this file, according to one of the screenshots is MAKOTO, a name shared by one of the gayest gays to ever gay? I am, of course, referring to Makoto from Enchanted Arms.
It’s a coincidence.
I figured as much. Still a funny conicidence though.
This is Makoto from Enchanted Arms, if anyone who hasn’t played the game is curious. If you didn’t believe my earlier comment about Makoto’s gayness, this cutscene from the first 15 minutes of the game should prove it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMr8k2TNcx0&t=8m16s
Sorry I’m always such a nitpicker, but I’ve been re-reading the Suikoden recaps and I’d like to point out a few things.
1) Since you nicknamed Luca Blight “Adolf Hitler”, shouldn’t you also change every instance of “Blight” to “Hitler”? I.E.: Agares Hitler, Jilia Hitler, Jowy Hitler, etc.
2) I do believe that the name of your army in S2 becomes the name of the country after the war, so, in the S3 recaps, shouldn’t every instance of “Dunan” have been replaced with “Yaoi”?
3) In S1, I’m fairly certain that the “random pantsless guards” are supposed to be women. Now, there’s nothing concrete showing this, but it’s what I gathered from their stance and their lack of pants.
1) Uh, I didn’t early on, so I kept it consistent. If you want to fanwank my own recap terminology, the nickname was only his and nobody else in the family had any ownership of it. But that’s dumb, I just chose not to.
2) Yes, and that is the case. Not sure what your point is. It doesn’t come up very much at this point.
3) Can’t comment on this one except to say stance of early PSX-era sprites is not a thing that exists.
By “stance”, I meant the way they’re standing.
http://www.spriters-resource.com/playstation/suikoden/sheet/3325/
See?
Oh, and there’s no wind on the world map in S4, but there are invisible walls surrounding each and every island in a perfect square shape, and running into one forces your ship to go in a completely different direction.
Pretty sure she’s aware of that, dude. Methinks you need to tone down the nitpicking a little bit and safely assume that if the recappers are playing these games, they’ve played them before, unless they explicitly state otherwise.