Suikoden II/Other Secrets

The Restaurant
As soon as you recruit Hay Yo, your cook, he will open a restaurant in your castle. You will be able to compose the menu of your restaurant, choosing an appetizer, a main course and a dessert, talking to Hay Yo. In order to make the dishes, however, you will have to bring the recipes to Hay Yo, which you can find around the world or sometimes for sale in shops, as a rarity. Hay Yo already has some with him. You will then need the ingredients, which you can produce in your vegetable garden bringing seeds to Tony, from animals, bringing puppies to Yuzu or fishing with Yam Koo. You will also need to bring five spices (sugar, salt, soy sauce, mayonnaise and red pepper) to Hay Yo, which you can buy at the trading points. You can add just one spice (if you want) to each dish and the name of the dish will change based on the spice you choose. Once you have chosen the menu, you will be able to order the dishes, which will become healing or attack items in your inventory. Also, every time you talk to Hay Yo, he will hand over your restaurant's profits. The better the dishes offered, the greater the profit.

However, the funniest thing about your restaurant is the cooking contest. In fact, at intervals of about an hour of play, a rival chef will show up at your restaurant and challenge Hay Yo. In these challenges you will have to prepare three dishes, i.e. an appetizer, a main course and a dessert for four characters chosen randomly from those you have recruited, who will act as judges. You will then have to choose three dishes from among your available recipes and add a spice of your choice for each of them (note: during the contest all ingredients and all five spices will always be available). The four judges will rate your dishes and those of your opponent with a score from 0 to 5. The judgment obtained by each judge depends on several factors. First of all from his tastes, which will be revealed to you by the speaker before the start of the challenge. If then the proposed dish is actually suitable to be an appetizer / main course / dessert, the judgment will be higher, while if it is not, the vote will be low. Even the spice used heavily influences the judgment, each of them is in fact better suited to some dishes and much less to others. After you have presented all courses, your total score and that of your opponent will be calculated and the winner will be announced. If you win, the opposing cook will leave a recipe for Hay Yo as a prize, that is, that of his main dish. As the challenge progresses, more and more details about Hay Yo's past will be revealed, who was part of a brotherhood of cooks and, apparently, stole a secret recipe.

Note: in one of the challenges the opponent will cheat by hypnotizing the judges and you will be forced to lose. However, you will understand it easily, because the opponent will always get maximum scores for each dish.

Hunting For Elza
Premise: this is a secondary and absolutely optional mission, which will force you to reach the end of the game in a very short time. In fact, you will have to complete it within 20 hours of play. To respect this time limit, you will always have to follow the fastest routes, give up all other side missions, skip cutscenes and scroll through dialogues very quickly. It goes without saying that you will absolutely not be able to recruit all 108 Stars of Destiny. It's a real race against time, which can be frustrating. Anyway, if you want to finish this mission, here's how.


 * 1) First of all, you will have to meet Elza in Muse. You'll find her near the covered walkways to the east, after the destruction of Victor's fort. She will ask you to hold two packages, as there is a man chasing her. Soon after, you'll meet Clive, who will ask you if you've seen her. You will then understand that she is a criminal. You will find Elza again near the city gate, where she will take back the packages and give you a Sound Set. Clive will arrive, but Elza will manage to escape. Clive will set off in pursuit of her.
 * 2) You will then have to recruit Clive. You will find him in South Window and you must inform him that you have a ship with which you can take him to Lakewest. You must always have Clive in the group in all subsequent steps.
 * 3) Once in Lakewest, head to the inn and talk to the innkeeper (if you are still on time). The innkeeper will tell you that Elza is no longer there, but she has left you a letter, informing you that she is in Forest Village.
 * 4) As soon as you have the opportunity to go to Greenhill, then first head to the Forest Village, to the northwest. Here, at the end of the village, you will find a girl posing as Elza. After unmasking her, he will tell you that Elza went to Matilda.
 * 5) As soon as you go to Matilda, enter the inn and talk to one of the patrons, who will tell you that Elza has gone to Radat.
 * 6) At Radat's inn, you will finally meet Elza again and a fight will ensue between her and Clive. But Clive will have the worst of it and will fall to the ground wounded by Elza's bullets. He will be saved by Doctor Huan.
 * 7) Later, when you can return to Muse, you will find Elza on the top of Jowston Hill, near the conference hall. Here Elza will reveal details about her past and then she will leave, meeting you in a small village east of L'Renouille, the capital of Highland.
 * 8) Just before the game's ending so when you can reach L'Renuille on the world map, head east, to find a small village called Sajah. Here finally, your mission will end.

Whack-A-Mole
You will be able to play this minigame after recruiting Tony. Just talk to him, in the castle garden. In this game, you have to crush with a hammer the moles that will come out of six holes in the ground, by pressing the buttons. Each button corresponds to the hole in its position. You'll have to be quick to hit the moles before they retreat. The game has a fixed duration of one minute. On the third miss, it's game over. If you manage not to miss more than two moles until the time runs out, you will receive a prize at the end. Brown moles move at normal speed, gray ones are slow and green ones are fast. Sometimes, a woodpecker can also appear from the holes, which you shouldn't hit (if you do, it equals a miss). There are four difficulty levels:


 * BEGINNER: it's the easiest level, only moles come out of the holes in the ground. Reward: Mole Helmet.
 * NORMAL: sometimes the woodpeckers also come out of the holes, be careful not to hit them. Reward: Mole Shield.
 * HARD: you will have to hit the moles while the screen rotates (the buttons to press remain unchanged). Reward: Mole Suit.
 * ULTIMATE: same as for the hard level, but on the first miss it's game over. Reward: one of the previous three, at random.

Fishing
You will be able to fish at your castle harbor after recruiting Yam Koo. Talk to him to start this minigame. You can also listen to his explanations or see your high scores. Every time you fish, you will have to pay 100 potch for the bait. Once the bait has been thrown into the water, you will have to wait for a fish to bite.

When the fish bites, you'll have to drag it ashore. To do this, you will have to make sure that the top of the green bar that will appear on the right of the screen (the shot of the fish) is always within the yellow cursor, which represents your pull strength. To move the cursor, you have to press X: the faster you press the button, the more the cursor will move upwards. If you don't press the button instead, the cursor will go down gradually. You will therefore have to carefully follow the movements of the fish and press the button accordingly. If you pull too hard (the bar turns red) or too softly (the bar turns blue), the fish will break free and flee. The stronger the fish, the smaller the size of your cursor will be. The distance of the fish from shore is instead represented at the top of the screen. If you can keep the top of the bar within your cursor until the distance reduces to zero, you have caught the fish.

After you get the fish, Yam Ko will ask you if you want to keep it for cooking (whenever possible) or sell it to him. In the second case, he will give you some potch based on the type of fish and its weight.