Suikoden II

• If you want the true ending, you'll probably want to find a guide to recruiting all 108 stars.

• When you return to your home village at the beginning of the game, don't enter Nanami's home just yet. First, you need to turn around a big tree located at the north of the house. You'll gain one of the stars. Otherwise, you can gain it later but it's much longer and random.

• Also, try to level up at least 18 people by mid-late game. You may know what it pertains to, but if you don't, don't look up why because it is pretty awesome.

• Play Suikoden 1 first. Import your the save data. The bonus is really, really good, but a lot of the characters are even more awesome because of their involvement in Suikoden 1.

• Clive's sidequest is based on your playtime and there is a very good chance you will miss most of it on your first run.

• Most of the war battles are scripted. If winning seems impossible, it probably is and you should instead focus on keeping your units alive until enough turns pass.

• The default unit assignments for the war battles aren't that great so feel free to talk to Apple to change them to your liking. For example, having two characters with the cavalry ability in the same unit is redundant since you only need one cavalry character per unit to get the extra movement. However, putting a cavalry and a flying character in the same unit will stack to grant 3 movement

• Most of the stars of destiny can be recruited anytime but there are a few exceptions:
  • Gilbert can only be recruited during a war battle in Muse. You'll need to inflict damage on his unit and then let him talk to one of your allies on the following turn.
  • Outside of a glitch exploit, Futch and Humphrey can only be recruited at the highway village during the first visit to the Matilda region.
  • When you recruit Badeaux he will give you two listening stones. You can use them to recruit two out of four possible monster allies, but for some reason the red octopus will not count as a star of destiny.
  • You will need a listening stone to recruit Ayda at the forest village. After defeating the griffins you'll need to use a stone to recruit her and Feather, or she'll leave forever. If you don't want Feather you can lose the battle and then talk to Ayda at the north end of the village to recruit her.
  • After the conclusion of the events in Tinto, Jess will talk to you. Accept his apology to recruit him, otherwise he'll leave forever. It's the first dialog option so you don't need to worry about advancing the text too quickly.

• If you want the true ending, the last chance to do any recruiting is after defeating a skeletal dragon boss and before you deploy on your next mission.