Well, I finished Suikoden IV a few days ago so I thought I'd put my feelings on it together and do a write-up. Suikoden IV is a game that sadly does not bring out strong emotions in either direction so...seriously expect this to be a short and basic review. I'll divide it into strong points, middleground, weak points.
Strong points
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Mini-games: What may seem like an odd strength to put first is not so strange by the time you've finished the game. Suikoden IV features a ton of mini-games. Every mini-game from past Suikoden games has been brought back and rendered wonderfully in 3d. The new mini-games (from blackjack rip offs, to mahjong rip offs, to spinning top fights) are fantastic and IMO put the best mini-games from other rpgs to shame. The first time I encountered one of these mini-games I ended up putting about 2 hours straight into it just because it was a damn fun game. These mini games add a nice touch to the game and provide a great diversion if you're just looking for something to do.
Atmosphere: Speaking of looking for things to do. Suikoden IV does a great job in setting up a moderate sized world where you can go pretty much anywhere (by boat) at anytime in the story and try to find people to recruit, level up, play mini-games, or just talk to people inside your base. There's the newpaper articles to read, the baths to relax in, the window changer, the history books, basically all the little stuff that's really made the series stick out. The towns are pretty small in number and aren't very big but the game still gives a nice SOA feel of being out on the seas.
Ship fights: The ship fights are Suikoden IV's war battles. They are fought on a grid and you choose which elemental cannons and which characters you want on your ship. Basically there's a rock/paper/scissors chart for all the elements so when you fire at an enemy they'll counter-attack and if your element beats theirs than you do damage and they don't, same with when you counter-attack. Also if you move right next to a ship you can have your crew jump onto their ship and fight it out in a normal battle until one ship sinks. In all reality the system is extremely simple and nothing more than a rock/paper/scissors battle. Yet because it's simple it's very enjoyable.
Duels: Again a very simple system. Same as Suikoden I & II where the enemy taunts you and you choose attack/defend/critical and it does the rock paper scissors thing. In Suikoden IV though the duels are actually pretty awesome because the camera swings around the character each turn as they do nicely choreographed attacks and counter-attacks. For example if both characters choose 'defend' then the scene will be both characters slowly circling each other with their eyes watching the other character carefully. Very cool, though Duels aren't that numerous in this game.
Voice Acting: Giving voices to a large amount of characters was a really good choice. It fleshes them out a little more and between the voice and design of some of the characters, it does a good job in getting you interested in actually putting them into your party. Also in duels having the characters shout their taunts is awesome
3d models: The 3d models have, like everything else, a fairly low polygon count. Yet despite this the game manages to do an excellent job at making the characters resemble their 2d portraits. The eyes especially are the best use of anime-style eyes I've seen. Especially when you have 108+ characters, it's nice to have good models to go along with them. Also the animation in the game is pretty nice in battles, there is a good variety of unique run up and hit the enemy and run back animations.
Middleground
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Battle System: As simple as you can get. The game basically re-uses the Suikoden II battle system 100%. It's been a few years since I played that one but I seriously don't think anything has been added. Group attacks are still in, runes spells are handled the same, and the way multiple people attack at once is straight out of the older titles. Main difference is you only have 4 members as opposed to 6. So it's a nice simple battle system that works. But the con is that besides the final dungeon I got through every battle in the game by just tapping O with 1 hand while reading a book or doing something useful
Story: The story is ok. Think Suikoden I level of story-telling. Simple; a certain set of events, an open period for recruiting, and final dungeon. Because it's a prequel it doesn't really deal with or advance the main Suikoden plot. But there are a handful of scenes that could have pretty big impact on letting you know that more things are in play than what you had believed. So in Suikoden V+ these new world developments could re-appear and make a major impact of the main story. Also regarding cameos, sadly not many of old characters re-appear (well it is 150 years before the first game), but the game does have cameos and one in particular is a really nice crowd-pleaser for the fans.
Graphics: The game runs smoothly at 60fps all the time, yet the game is extremely low-poly and it just makes everything outside of battles look like it could've been done on dreamcast. But the tradeoff was worth it I think since having a smooth framerate is much nicer than what happened with Suikoden III. The spell effects are the most simple they've ever been in the series, but at least they are all fast. The team attacks are good looking and also pretty fast. The game also supports progressive scan.
Music: Well the positive is that music does exist, something I wasn't too sure of in Suikoden III. The bad news is that it's all forgetable and not a single tune outside the OP and battle theme stick out. One thing that's kinda wierd is the music sounds like the composer tried to copy Mitsuda's Xenogears soundtrack, I swear a third of the tracks are almost stolen from that game ^^;;
Movement speed: Pretty good. You have 3 levels of moving: walking, running, 2x fast-foward. Then later you get a 4th which is ~4x fast foward (it just skips frames in the animation). This makes running through areas on land pretty comfortable.
Weak points
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SHIP CONTROL: Seriously, this will drive people insane. Basically you have to sail around to every island just like in Zelda. The would be fine except they decided to make it so you could only dock at an island when positioned in front of the port. This would be fine except they decided the make an invisible wall 5 ship lengths out from EVERY OBJECT IN THE OCEAN. See when your ship hits an invisible wall it automatically swings in some random direction away from the object. This means when you are trying to dock and go near and island you get BOUNCED AWAY FROM IT -> random battle -> swing back towards the island -> random battle -> move close to the dock -> BOUNCED BACK AWAY -> random battle, repeat and repeat until you finally dock. This is seriously ridiculous and can make docking into a single port take 10 mins >_< I'm guessing this invisible wall was created because they were having collision detection problems, but I don't really understand why no one in the team said "stop! our system just pisses off people. We really need to fix this thing". See what's funny about this is that there is an auto-sail option in the game. You go to the world map and point where you want to sail and it goes there. Yet if any object is between you and your destination the game will hit the object, get rejected and positioned into another direction and just head along that direction forever. So when you actually look up at the screen and check the map you'll find yourself way the heck away from where you wanted to be.
Loading: Loading is a serious issue in the game. The battle loading isn't too bad but it's not great either, but the cutscenes are where everything falls apart. If there's one thing the cutscenes in Suikoden IV show, it's that Monolith Soft were smart by making FMV cutscenes of real-time footage in Xenosaga. See this goes the opposite way, basically you see a guy on ship A shout "go south" and the music starts increasing...then it cuts to a black loading screen with all sound dropping out, 2-3 sec pause, we now see a guy in the ship at the wheel shouting "ok, turning the wheel" as the music starts to get loud again...cut to black silent loading screen, 2-3 sec pause, shows the ship turning, 2-3 sec loading screen, shows the deck and everyone is running around, etc.... This is a realistic example of probably 50% if not 75% of the cutscenes in the game. The pausing and dropping out of music seriously kill any momentum the scenes had and really really hurt the story telling presentation. Between this and the island collision stuff I think Konami really had an amateur programming team handle the game's execution.
Encounter rate: On land this is ok. But on the sea the rate is extremely high and as you can see with my docking description above, the high encounter rate can be annoying. Luckily you can get your magical teleport mirror about 30-40% into the game and then you basically never have to sail or dock again. Suddenly the encounter rate and ship issues are not a problem.
Dungeons: Dungeons in this game completely suck. It's worse than in the NES days. The dungeons are like: room A has 3 doors, which do you want to take, room B has 3 doors which do you want to take. Really simple stuff. Luckily there were only maybe 2 dungeons in the entire game and neither took more than 20 minutes so it's just a small part of the overall game and doesn't detract much at all.
Overall
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So basically what you have IMO is a Suikoden I but in 3d. It's a simple rpg with the unique touch of gathering up 108 stars and hanging out with these people. The game like Suikoden I has some flaws, and really doesn't stick out in any huge way, but it's also a very enjoyable experience. The game is around 30 hours long which is pretty much on par since all the games in the series are rather short. Also like all the other games, the difficulty is pretty much non-existant. If you like the Suikoden series, you'll have a good time with Suikoden IV and while it won't leave a strong impression, it'll have you satisfied and looking forward to Suikoden V (which considering Suikoden IV's sales is probably a shoe in at this point). They've done good to correct everything that was wrong with Suikoden III but by doing that they basically went back to the start and didn't really go forward very much. I give the character designer credit for being able to make a game that "does not suck" but at the same time she shows that she can't fill the shoes of the series creator and storywriter who left Konami during Suikoden III. My overall rank of the series after this is S2 >>> S4 > S1 >>>S3.
8.6/10
Strong points
----------------
Mini-games: What may seem like an odd strength to put first is not so strange by the time you've finished the game. Suikoden IV features a ton of mini-games. Every mini-game from past Suikoden games has been brought back and rendered wonderfully in 3d. The new mini-games (from blackjack rip offs, to mahjong rip offs, to spinning top fights) are fantastic and IMO put the best mini-games from other rpgs to shame. The first time I encountered one of these mini-games I ended up putting about 2 hours straight into it just because it was a damn fun game. These mini games add a nice touch to the game and provide a great diversion if you're just looking for something to do.
Atmosphere: Speaking of looking for things to do. Suikoden IV does a great job in setting up a moderate sized world where you can go pretty much anywhere (by boat) at anytime in the story and try to find people to recruit, level up, play mini-games, or just talk to people inside your base. There's the newpaper articles to read, the baths to relax in, the window changer, the history books, basically all the little stuff that's really made the series stick out. The towns are pretty small in number and aren't very big but the game still gives a nice SOA feel of being out on the seas.
Ship fights: The ship fights are Suikoden IV's war battles. They are fought on a grid and you choose which elemental cannons and which characters you want on your ship. Basically there's a rock/paper/scissors chart for all the elements so when you fire at an enemy they'll counter-attack and if your element beats theirs than you do damage and they don't, same with when you counter-attack. Also if you move right next to a ship you can have your crew jump onto their ship and fight it out in a normal battle until one ship sinks. In all reality the system is extremely simple and nothing more than a rock/paper/scissors battle. Yet because it's simple it's very enjoyable.
Duels: Again a very simple system. Same as Suikoden I & II where the enemy taunts you and you choose attack/defend/critical and it does the rock paper scissors thing. In Suikoden IV though the duels are actually pretty awesome because the camera swings around the character each turn as they do nicely choreographed attacks and counter-attacks. For example if both characters choose 'defend' then the scene will be both characters slowly circling each other with their eyes watching the other character carefully. Very cool, though Duels aren't that numerous in this game.
Voice Acting: Giving voices to a large amount of characters was a really good choice. It fleshes them out a little more and between the voice and design of some of the characters, it does a good job in getting you interested in actually putting them into your party. Also in duels having the characters shout their taunts is awesome
3d models: The 3d models have, like everything else, a fairly low polygon count. Yet despite this the game manages to do an excellent job at making the characters resemble their 2d portraits. The eyes especially are the best use of anime-style eyes I've seen. Especially when you have 108+ characters, it's nice to have good models to go along with them. Also the animation in the game is pretty nice in battles, there is a good variety of unique run up and hit the enemy and run back animations.
Middleground
----------------
Battle System: As simple as you can get. The game basically re-uses the Suikoden II battle system 100%. It's been a few years since I played that one but I seriously don't think anything has been added. Group attacks are still in, runes spells are handled the same, and the way multiple people attack at once is straight out of the older titles. Main difference is you only have 4 members as opposed to 6. So it's a nice simple battle system that works. But the con is that besides the final dungeon I got through every battle in the game by just tapping O with 1 hand while reading a book or doing something useful
Story: The story is ok. Think Suikoden I level of story-telling. Simple; a certain set of events, an open period for recruiting, and final dungeon. Because it's a prequel it doesn't really deal with or advance the main Suikoden plot. But there are a handful of scenes that could have pretty big impact on letting you know that more things are in play than what you had believed. So in Suikoden V+ these new world developments could re-appear and make a major impact of the main story. Also regarding cameos, sadly not many of old characters re-appear (well it is 150 years before the first game), but the game does have cameos and one in particular is a really nice crowd-pleaser for the fans.
Graphics: The game runs smoothly at 60fps all the time, yet the game is extremely low-poly and it just makes everything outside of battles look like it could've been done on dreamcast. But the tradeoff was worth it I think since having a smooth framerate is much nicer than what happened with Suikoden III. The spell effects are the most simple they've ever been in the series, but at least they are all fast. The team attacks are good looking and also pretty fast. The game also supports progressive scan.
Music: Well the positive is that music does exist, something I wasn't too sure of in Suikoden III. The bad news is that it's all forgetable and not a single tune outside the OP and battle theme stick out. One thing that's kinda wierd is the music sounds like the composer tried to copy Mitsuda's Xenogears soundtrack, I swear a third of the tracks are almost stolen from that game ^^;;
Movement speed: Pretty good. You have 3 levels of moving: walking, running, 2x fast-foward. Then later you get a 4th which is ~4x fast foward (it just skips frames in the animation). This makes running through areas on land pretty comfortable.
Weak points
--------------
SHIP CONTROL: Seriously, this will drive people insane. Basically you have to sail around to every island just like in Zelda. The would be fine except they decided to make it so you could only dock at an island when positioned in front of the port. This would be fine except they decided the make an invisible wall 5 ship lengths out from EVERY OBJECT IN THE OCEAN. See when your ship hits an invisible wall it automatically swings in some random direction away from the object. This means when you are trying to dock and go near and island you get BOUNCED AWAY FROM IT -> random battle -> swing back towards the island -> random battle -> move close to the dock -> BOUNCED BACK AWAY -> random battle, repeat and repeat until you finally dock. This is seriously ridiculous and can make docking into a single port take 10 mins >_< I'm guessing this invisible wall was created because they were having collision detection problems, but I don't really understand why no one in the team said "stop! our system just pisses off people. We really need to fix this thing". See what's funny about this is that there is an auto-sail option in the game. You go to the world map and point where you want to sail and it goes there. Yet if any object is between you and your destination the game will hit the object, get rejected and positioned into another direction and just head along that direction forever. So when you actually look up at the screen and check the map you'll find yourself way the heck away from where you wanted to be.
Loading: Loading is a serious issue in the game. The battle loading isn't too bad but it's not great either, but the cutscenes are where everything falls apart. If there's one thing the cutscenes in Suikoden IV show, it's that Monolith Soft were smart by making FMV cutscenes of real-time footage in Xenosaga. See this goes the opposite way, basically you see a guy on ship A shout "go south" and the music starts increasing...then it cuts to a black loading screen with all sound dropping out, 2-3 sec pause, we now see a guy in the ship at the wheel shouting "ok, turning the wheel" as the music starts to get loud again...cut to black silent loading screen, 2-3 sec pause, shows the ship turning, 2-3 sec loading screen, shows the deck and everyone is running around, etc.... This is a realistic example of probably 50% if not 75% of the cutscenes in the game. The pausing and dropping out of music seriously kill any momentum the scenes had and really really hurt the story telling presentation. Between this and the island collision stuff I think Konami really had an amateur programming team handle the game's execution.
Encounter rate: On land this is ok. But on the sea the rate is extremely high and as you can see with my docking description above, the high encounter rate can be annoying. Luckily you can get your magical teleport mirror about 30-40% into the game and then you basically never have to sail or dock again. Suddenly the encounter rate and ship issues are not a problem.
Dungeons: Dungeons in this game completely suck. It's worse than in the NES days. The dungeons are like: room A has 3 doors, which do you want to take, room B has 3 doors which do you want to take. Really simple stuff. Luckily there were only maybe 2 dungeons in the entire game and neither took more than 20 minutes so it's just a small part of the overall game and doesn't detract much at all.
Overall
---------
So basically what you have IMO is a Suikoden I but in 3d. It's a simple rpg with the unique touch of gathering up 108 stars and hanging out with these people. The game like Suikoden I has some flaws, and really doesn't stick out in any huge way, but it's also a very enjoyable experience. The game is around 30 hours long which is pretty much on par since all the games in the series are rather short. Also like all the other games, the difficulty is pretty much non-existant. If you like the Suikoden series, you'll have a good time with Suikoden IV and while it won't leave a strong impression, it'll have you satisfied and looking forward to Suikoden V (which considering Suikoden IV's sales is probably a shoe in at this point). They've done good to correct everything that was wrong with Suikoden III but by doing that they basically went back to the start and didn't really go forward very much. I give the character designer credit for being able to make a game that "does not suck" but at the same time she shows that she can't fill the shoes of the series creator and storywriter who left Konami during Suikoden III. My overall rank of the series after this is S2 >>> S4 > S1 >>>S3.
8.6/10
