Not the best, but a good attempt at a comeback.
The Suikoden series has hit a rut on the PS2 and I think it started with Suikoden III (check my reviews). Anyways I'm not going to talk about Suikoden III anymore cause I have erased it from my memory. Suikoden IV brings back some very good things that made the original two great. Those are when you get into arguments with other characters, you can fight with them for a while (only if you stand by your opinion) til you win the argument. The other has a GREAT storyline, with these two things back it gave the Suikoden series a chance to get back on track.
Game play: There is a very noticeable thing in combat is there are only 4 characters instead of 6, which this makes it even harder to choose who you want in your party. Fortunately Konami made the choice to add a very helpful feature. The 3 different "Boat Parties" makes it a little bit easier to decide who joins and who stays, but it does not add much to the experience of combat. It takes the game about 5 to 10 seconds to switch out the different parties, on top of that you can only switch between the 3 different parties when you are on the Boat, hence the name "Boat Parties". The combo system is a little bit plain there really is no flair to the combo attacks like there was in the other Suikoden titles.
Now the game play outside of battle is also a little plain, none of the places really stand out on there own. The only reason you might tell a few of the places apart is that some are closer to the water than others, other than that they start to feel the same. The BIGGEST thing that made me SO VERY MAD at this game is the travel in between the islands. Any of the ships that you get move TOO slow and I (literary) walked away from the game over to my stereo turned it on, walked back over to the controller pushed the "Auto" command in battle went back over to my stereo found a station, went back to my controller finished the end of the battle, walked away to get some food, came back to push the "Auto" command, went back to get me a drink, came back finished the battle (did this for about 30 minutes) to finally get to were I needed to be. This gets EXTREMELY OLD AND TIRING after the first 2 times. It also becomes a very frustrating and annoying thing to have to do whenever you only stay on an island for about 3 minutes. Now on to the "Army vs. Army" well really "Navy vs. Navy" this is a very refreshing thing after the linear Army vs. Army in Suikoden III. In Suikoden IV it is more of a Chess-like battle, where you need to plan before you attack and if you don't be prepared for the biggest ass kicking you have ever seen.
Graphics: The graphics are not good at all, there are a few (FEW) places were the game looks good, but that does not come along very often. I can't really say anything good in this category. So I will leave this category with this: the graphics are NOT the driving force behind this game.
Sound: There are some very good music in this game, but it could have been better. I think Suikoden III had better music than this game, but that is just me (and this is my review). The battle music in Suikoden IV becomes dull and it blends into the background. Which is a terrible thing for any game. In games like Final Fantasy the battle music changes from time to time and it keeps it interesting, well not in Suikoden IV. I really felt disappointed just by the quality of the music in this game.
