Suikoden 4 was simple, but fun. It is the weakest of the four games by far and too many characters were cookie cutter, but it was a fun RPG with an interesting world, pretty graphics, and some cool Suikoden plot elements that will hopefully be explored more in Rhapsodia. It did have quite a few liekable characters, but the game seemed to end before more than a few could be explored in much depth. It had an overly simple battle system with no real strategy. I particularly enjoyed being able to explore the nice looking world in the first person view.
Suikoden 3 was deep, long, slow, and rather repetitive. It did a great job exploring the majority of the cast and had great characters that stacked up to the best from parts 1 and 2. The battle system was complex and highly strategic, but a little too contrived and unwieldy. The story fleshed out the Suikoden universe much more deeply than any of the games that came before and brought about an overall plot to the series.
I wish I could combine the good parts from 3 and 4 into one uber Suikoden sequel.