It could have been so good
User Rating: 5.5 | Genso Suikoden IV PS2
I love the Suikoden series, its one of the few game series that actually keeps me entertained enough to want to finish it. But this game just wasn't very good. They fixed the minor annoyances of the combat in 3, only to provide hundreds of new ones at other points. I hate missables, and easily missable characters near the beginning or badly marked Point of No Returns are just bad game design. The random combat was a little trigger happy, especially in the boat. It was also reminiscent of the bad parts of Wind Waker, no one likes featureless sailing, especially if you're interrupted every 3 seconds (on average). However, the music was nice, if not as epic as 3, and the island locations were good. The transition to 3D was good, and poor camera angles don't really spoil a turn based battle system, so no complaints there. I thought there could have been more character development, as one of the impressive thing about the previous games was how many of the characters got a little back story. This seemed less well developed. My closing remarks would have been "you'll love it if you're a die-hard fan" but I am, and I didn't enjoy it as much as the others. Its a solid RPG with a good battle system, and for once no limit on item storage, but it just didn't grab me. It didn't disappoint me so much I refuse to play the sequel tho, so it can't be all bad. 
