After teasing the return of a beloved game series, Konami actually delivered the goods at this year’s Tokyo Game Show: in 2023, it will release remasters of the classic role-playing games Suikoden and Suikoden 2.
Suikoden 1 & 2 HD Remaster Gate Rune and Dunan Unification Wars — yes, that’s the title of this combined release — will launch on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Windows PC and Switch. The remastered visuals feature new lighting and atmospheric effects, shadow animations, and updated character portraits redrawn by original artist Junko Kawano. Sound has been enriched, and the games will feature some quality-of-life improvements common to JRPGs of this vintage, including auto-battle and fast forward.
More significantly for Suikoden fans, it appears the games’ translation into English has been redone; the localization of these games is famously, if sometimes amusingly, terrible. This fact wasn’t included by Konami in the press release, but is apparent from footage of the game obtained by IGN.
The Suikoden series saw five mainline games and a number of spinoffs between 1995 and 2012, but nothing has been heard of it in 10 years. Eiyuden Chronicle, a spiritual successor made by several key creators of the original games, is also due for release next year. That project raised over $3 million on Kickstarter, which might have prompted Konami to reconsider the popularity of Suikoden and greenlight this re-release.