If you need to kill time, and don't need it to be exciting...
I played it more because I felt like I had to for some unknown reason. The reason really being that I had already played the other 3 and find it necessary to collect all 108 characters every time.
So not to be redundant, but this game did not have much to it. It felt short, and the storyline was not so memorable. After beating the game quite easily, I spent just as much leveling up all my characters for absolutely no reason. It's like I have to level them up just in case I can load my save data on a future Suikoden game.
Anyway, it did occupy me long enough I suppose, and it was a $40 instead of $50 game (brand new). If you are a Suikoden fan I don't see why you wouldn't play it, but I don't feel this game stands on its own to draw in new players and such.
I am also surprised that all all the Suikoden games, this title is getting the spin off.
As for gameplay, the battles can be annoying long with certain animations and loading time. The dash feature is very useful. Hitting the edge of the 'world' map gets very annoying in the boat. Being able to use "Flash" to end battles instantly was a great feature on that end. The graphics in this series never were superb, but they are not bad. The sound is just kind of there, neither annoying or something to pay attention to.
Wow, what a useful review this is...