Ah yes, another disappointment for a franchise. It really doesn't help the game when the lead producer left before the game was created (he left midway through Suikoden III's development, for reference). Anyways, yes, Suikoden IV is a flop, but at least it's a Suikoden game.
Yet despite it being a Suikoden game, it's got many negatives that really outweigh a lot of its positive aspects. Yeah, great, lower the party size from 6 to 4. I wouldn't honestly have a problem with this if this game was not a Suikoden game. It also makes unites a lot harder due to party size AND having to use the same characters until they actually learn them. Okay that's not TOO bad. But what is is a whole lot of ocean to traverse, and then you have the frequent random encounter rate, possibly one of the worst examples of one. You guys could've also provided some incentive for status prevention gear, since a few of those characters could've definitely needed it (what goes is a Waking Rune now?). And that's not even scratching the surface on why the Rune of Punishment sucks.
And then I look at the characters, and somehow I still frown. Alright, good job making Jeane playable, that's neat. But then, look at most of the characters. Almost a third of them are one-handed sword users, and basically all of them except Snowe have the exact same fighting stance. Yes, even Lazlo when he's still a knight has that stance. Spear wielders, rod wielders, two handed sword users, gah, they all seem so samey. Making it worse is that there's not a whole lot of characterization out of the characters. While optional ones obviously shouldn't get a whole lot of development as the first Suikoden demonstrated rather well, a huge chunk of characters don't really have a lot of relevance apart from "this character is another Star of Destiny, recruit him/her". Sure, it's nice to have Ted available, after all Suikoden players do love recurring characters, but not only is he the only one who's name isn't Jeane, Leknaat, or Viki, he really is only relevant for his own subquest and nothing else.
Alright, so the Rune of Punishment, at least from a storyline perspective, is good. But in battles, it's the worst thing to rely on. Nice damage, of course at the price of hurting or instantly killing your main character. Real fantastic there. The spells are outright useless, especially since you can get the aforementioned Ted with a much better rune* AND that other magic runes can do just as much damage. But from a storyline perspective, it's pretty nice. A whole lot of Graham Cray's villainy is probably due to his obsessiveness with the rune, which he had before but managed to avoid its curse. Though like any other villain, he's quite questionable. Otherwise, the Rune of Punishment goes from host to host when the previous one dies. Lazlo is quite lucky not to have this burden screw him over**. So even I'll admit Suikoden IV gets a good plot in its own sense, even though its drier than the others in every other aspect.
*Ted actually doesn't have the instakill spells like the Soul Eater from Suikoden 1. But that doesn't honestly matter because they are still better than the Rune of Punishment's main spells anyways.
** that is if you manage to get 108 stars. Otherwise, yep he is a goner. With 108 stars though, it's forgiveness phase finally gets rid of the awful thorn of damaging him. Naturally though, it's probably forgotten by then. Screw this rune from a gameplay perspective.
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