Suikoden II. If you are an RPG fan this one is not to be missed.

Story

 This is one of the places that Suikoden II excels. It weaves a complicated tale of conflict and betrayal that other games in the genre can only dream to live up to.  There are more twists and turns than your average mystery novel. Suikoden II tosses aside the typical "save the world" story of most jrpgs in favor of a more focused, down to earth tale about political upheaval and rebellion in a single nation. You won't be circumnavigating the globe in this game but instead traveling between a small collection of well fleshed out locations. It's a refreshing change of pace if you're used to games like the Final Fantasy series.
 

Gameplay

 Suikoden II plays like a standard rpg for the most part. Go from town A to dungeon B, recruiting new allies along the way. Fight monsters. Level up. But what sets this game apart from the rest is the large cast of characters. All told there are 108 different characters to collect. Not all of them are battle party members though as some will simply tend shops and so forth in the castle that serves as your army's base of operations. Trying to collect them all adds a very fun element to the game that fans of pokemon may be familiar with. Another thing this game has on it's competition are the battles. While at it's heart the battle system is a fairly standard turn based affair, the battles of Suikoden II are very fun and fast paced. No battle ever lasts more than a few turns.
 

Graphics

 Suikoden II was released fairly late in the PS1's life cycle but instead of opting for the sub-par 3D that other games of the time used Konami chose to go the 2D route. And it's a good thing they did. Suikoden II has some of the nicest sprite work I've seen in any game. The characters are all very detailed and animate well. There are also an absolute ton of small one time custom animations the characters do that really help tell the story.
 

Overall

 The graphics are beautiful. The gameplay is fun and rewarding. The story is superb. The music is amazing. I cannot recommend this game highly enough. If you can get your hands on a copy do so and play this game. You'll be glad you did.