Suikoden IV – Retro Reflections

Chalgyr's Game Room writes:

I thought all Japanese RPGS have charming graphics, exciting storylines, lovable characters and fun to learn combat mechanics but Suikoden IV on PS2 is an exception. Although it belongs to a well-known series, it offered me a shallow experience.

The story is about a young man graduating from a naval academy on an island kingdom. Soon he gets involved in an adventure of betrayal and foreign invasion and he is forced to abandon his home, having only his friends to rely on. The plot is fragmented and suffers from serious pacing problems, without any tension building or general direction. The hero often doesn’t have any quest to fulfill and he wanders around to trigger an event irrelevant to his actions. Non-player characters have no interaction and their dialogues are forgettable. In addition, the hero never speaks, which makes him seem like a marionette.