making a baseball game, a racing game or an RPG, Murayama and Kawano decided to reopen their RPG project, although Murayama has stated that given the opportunity, he would have preferred to make a shoot 'em up, citing his preference for arcade action titles such as Taito's Metal Black. Committed from the start to make a franchise to rival series such as Enix's Dragon Quest and Square's Final Fantasy, Murayama wrote the scenario of the first Suikoden. With the success of the first game a sequel gained a green-light. After reading fan letters Murayama decided that the selling point of the first game was its story, and thus it became the main focus of the second title. The story for Suikoden 2 was conceived after Suikoden 1 and was mostly written by Murayama himself. Konami later released Genso Suikoden I & II, a compilation of the first two games of the series, in 2005 on the PlayStation Portable. However, it was released only to the Japanese market. Suikoden II was made available for download on the PlayStation Network on December 9, 2014. Reception Suikoden II saw a limited print run, and the lackluster initial response prevented a reprinting of the game. Despite this, the game received "favorable" reviews according to the review aggregation website Metacritic. Francesca Reyes of Next Generation called it "One of the best RPGs to hit PlayStation this year." Since the 2010s, reanalysis of the game is often met with critical praise, and many video game critics and players alike consider it to be one of the best Konami games as well as one of the best console RPGs from outside of the Square-Enix canon, and the best of all Suikoden games. See also List of video games considered the best References External links Konami's Official Genso Suikoden website 1998 video games Konami games Nintendo Switch games PlayStation (console) games PlayStation 4 games Role-playing video games Suikoden Video games about revenge Video games developed in Japan Video games scored by Miki Higashino Video games with alternate endings Windows games Xbox One games Single-player video games