>>10881926
3's good and ties in well with 1 and 2, 4 and 5 are insanely boring and I couldn't get through them.

>>10881935
we're done here

>>10881926
i tried playing 3 twice and could not beat it. i would drop it because i thought it was kinda boring. I should give it another chance.

i beat 4. some people hate on 4. some of it feels cheap, like the running animation and the sailing/encounter rate... but i actually really enjoyed 4. 5 was excellent and better than 4.

>>10881926
5? absolutely yes
3? hell no it's garbage
4? nope

>>10881926
Found them all insipid desu.
Stories and characters are okay, but Suikoden 3 suffers from pacing issues, the plot becomes increasingly dull as it goes on, and the gameplay in general is unbalanced. It's odd and in that it starts out strong and gradually becomes a mess.

>>10881926
3 is sad, production values and ambition are high but returns are low. It obviously wasn't working and should have been cancelled and restarted earlier in preproduction
4 is obviously a dirt cheap development that pads game time with shit combat. Even then there are a few bright spots and the rune of punishment is cool
5 has everything and a big scope but in the end it's just 2 but not as good or original

Tried to replay 1 recently.. remembered i had a good time with it.. only lasted 20 mins.. meh

>>10881926
3 is the last game in the series that was made with the series creator in charge who had to leave Konami when the game still was unfinished. After that the series dropped the continuous timeline that was progressing through the first three games and was relying on the prequels first followed by some games that were unrelated to the original Suikoden world.
3 had a rough transition with the series going from 2D to 3D and tried to innovate many aspects that the series established in the first two games. Personally I love some of these changes but it's also obvious that some of them were poorly thought and the game suffers from backtracking and some pacing issues. If you have the patience to overlook that you might be able to enjoy the story and characters that the game offers. Personally back then when the game came out I haven't even noticed the problems the game had and thought that it was easily the best one in the series. After replaying it more recently I could see its issues but still love the game.
4 was made with the artist of the first game being put in charge of its development. It obviously tries to copy the basic formula of the first game the most except it threw away all good aspects of the gameplay of the first game turning its very tight pacing into a horrible slog. It is the most disappointing game in the series by far even if it has a few nice moments. This is very sad since the idea of a Suikoden game being built around naval setting had a great potential.
5 was outsourced to Hudson Soft to a large extent and obviously had a much smaller budget compared to 3 and 4 that were made in house but it's a well made Suikoden game that carefully follows the basic formula established by the early games so it doesn't feels alien to the series at all.

>>10882774
Was 5 really lower budget than 4? Must have had way better management, I consider 4 as the worst production values by far

Which one was the one with the boat sailing? Man, that one sucked.

>>10882774
>4 was made with the artist of the first game being put in charge of its development

thats sad to hear. after coming off the charm of S3's art, models, and desgin, S4 was just bland as fuck, like long stretches of boring architecture and stiff prototypical japanese 3d animations.

>>10883103
4 is honestly weird in a lot of ways. For one it, as well as Tactics, are the only modern games that support progressive scan mode.

>>10883103
4 obviously has a higher budget, it was just incompetly made. The funny thing is that the Konami higher ups considered 4 a success while deeming 5 a failure due to 4's much higher sales without taking into consideration how the previous game affects the reception of the next.