Aspect Analysis: The Good and Bad of Suikoden II's Villains

I had finally played the cult Classic Suikoden II early last year (A couple years ago now, this is a bit of an older write up), and I felt it lived up to just about all the hype it's fan base had given it. Suikoden II really was a fantastic title, but there was always something I felt didn't quite hold up. If you have not played the game, I will be spoiling the games biggest twist for you, just to give you a heads up.

The antagonist of the game starts out as a man named Luca Blight. You barely get any glimpse of this guys story, or why he is such an ass hole. Let us ignore for a second this guy is so blatantly and over the top evil (Seriously, between his character design and the fact his name is Luca Blight? There is no subtlety to this man), and I will say as a character he lacks so much. Now, an unstoppable force of evil with virtually no reason for it isn't inherently a bad thing, I mean look at Final Fantasy VI. Kefka really didn't have much of a reason to be the way he was, but he was a perfect foil for your party and fit the theme of the game. Suikoden II has a lot of focus on Politics, character, and motivations, however. This leaves Luca Blight feeling a bit out of place.

On the other hand, I cannot recall many other villains that feel up to par with just how threatening Luca Blight is. The game does nothing short of a fantastic job building him up as this unstoppable monster of a man, and every time you cross paths Luca makes you believe nothing can stand in this guys way. All culminating in the final battle against Luca, in which you have to take this one guy down (Mind you, he possess no supernatural powers, and isn't fighting with the power of the games True Runes, the strongest artifacts in the world it would seem), you set up an ambush for his coming raid and take him down with a total of three different parties of characters. The battle is very intense and is a fantastic send off to the guy.

Luca Blight may not be the smartest military guy, but he was smart enough to know this. He essentially leads everyone to believe the only thing he's good at is using his numbers and power to crush smaller guys, though surprising everyone with some pretty basic strategic moves that they simply aren’t' expecting from him. Jowy, who I'll get more in-depth on, is the only reason you succeed in the fight since he warns you of the coming night raid.

After Luca Blight meets his end, your childhood friend Jowy takes over the empire to the North and acts as the antagonist for the remainder of the game. Jowy, in stark contrast to Luca, has a very well written story and motivation. You genuinely feel for what it is he is trying to do, you understand the motivation, and you can even sympathize with him, all while understanding he is, in fact, the villain now and needs to be stopped.

But there comes a problem with Jowy following up Luca Blight as the villain. That problem comes, oddly enough, in the form of one of my favorite characters from the game. The strategist for your army, Shu. In terms of story, Shu clearly seems to be the most genius strategist in the game but struggles to an extent against Luca Blight to due to his armies overwhelming numerical advantage, and Luca Blight's borderline brilliant trick of being a tad bit smarter then he lets on. So now we move to face off against Jowy, who has been manipulating his way to the top of this empire, and now you are going toe to toe with someone who is clearly the mental superior of Luca Blight in charge of the same kingdoms army.

And from that point forward, Shu's battle plans are just crushing Jowy at every turn. Time and time again your victories are clear and decisive. All threat and tension from this moment forward are gone, as Jowy is obviously far out of his league when matched up against Shu. Even the final battle against the creature summoned by the True Beast Rune that serves as the games final boss just doesn’t have the epic feel Luca did.

It was frustrating for me to see the game drop the ball come that last stretch. Clearly, the writers behind Suikoden II knew how to build a threat, we saw that with Luca Blight. And they can make fantastic characters and villains such as Jowy. So when you were to go head to head with a guy who helped orchestrate the fall of the mightiest warrior in the game only to run rampant over him with relative ease, the victory at the end just leaves you feeling a bit unsatisfied, or at least not the great feeling that it had the potential to be.

High stakes and a threatening foe can do a lot to cause a game to have an impact. That's not to say Jowy or Luca as a Villain don't do a good job, just pointing out each one of them is lacking something. Luca is a character that does not really fit in well with the theming of the game, and Jowy not feeling like a proper threat to the party leaves your victory feeling more hollow then it otherwise could have.