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[Soriku]

I only played 3 and 5. I can't recommend 3, it's really slow/boring, battles while unique aren't that good, and the plot was kind of dumb.

5 is pretty good though. It's also a bit slow but worth going through. After about 25-30 hours I'd say the game gets very good. Good political war story and a good soundtrack. Battles with 6 characters are cool if a bit simplistic. The only downside is the loading and the frequent random battles. The latter moreso.

 

[Count of Monte Sawed-Off]

I only played 3 and 5. I can't recommend 3, it's really slow/boring, battles while unique aren't that good, and the plot was kind of dumb.

5 is pretty good though. It's also a bit slow but worth going through. After about 25-30 hours I'd say the game gets very good. Good political war story and a good soundtrack. Battles with 6 characters are cool if a bit simplistic. The only downside is the loading and the frequent random battles. The latter moreso.

If you liked 5 you should really go back and play the first two. 5 was them basically trying to recapture the magic of 2, which they somewhat succeeded at doing.

 

[SolVanderlyn]

3 is the best game in the series, even with its warts. It has the highest payoff for sticking with the world and characters over three games and the most ambitious form of storytelling in the series. Also has some plot twists that none of the other games really match.

Just throwing that unpopular opinion out there for anyone considering skipping it.

 

[Look! The Pie!]

If you can, play them all, but you can skip 4 if you want; quite aside from arguments about its quality relative to the others, it basically has zero connections to the rest of the series, aside from a couple of side characters (who appear in all the games anyway and are essentially just cameos) and one other character who shows up for a sidequest and does very little of note.

If you can only play a few, finish 1, move on to 2, then play 5. 3 is great and I adore it, flaws and all, but it has some major issues with backtracking, which tends to be a dealbreaker for a lot of people.

I consider myself a pretty big Suikoden fan and I couldn't even remember this guy's name. 4 completely dropped the ball in terms of characters.

 

[YankeeDonB]

3 is the best game in the series, even with its warts. It has the highest payoff for sticking with the world and characters over three games and the most ambitious form of storytelling in the series. Also has some plot twists that none of the other games really match.

Just throwing that unpopular opinion out there for anyone considering skipping it.

I vacillate between 3 and 5. 3 has a great vibrancy and a metric ton of heart. And it actually has my favorite battle system though it took a while to grow on me.

 

[Basileus777]

5 having Lucretia automatically disqualifies it from top status.

 

[Spman2099]

This. Just skip the rest of them.

Terrible advice. You could maybe skip the first game, but it would negatively impact the second, third, and fifth (which are awesome). Just play them in order while skipping the fourth.

 

[Eternal Flame]

People who say skip the fourth game have never played a bad rpg in there life. I say Suikoden 4 plays more like a suikoden game than 3 does. Its not a bad game at all. I actually kinda like it. It is not as good as 2 or 5 though. Two is my fav rpg of all time.

I remember coming off the high of playing 2 and buying three. I was excited but there was something weird about the game. Like the colors or presentation, it was making me feel kinda sick. Then you throw in the battle system where two characters act as one instead of like 2 where you control them individually. I really didn't like that so I decided to take it back. Maybe it gets better but that first impression was just awful. Although I recently decided to buy it again and give it another shot, we'll see how it goes, but my rpg backlog is out of control.

4 on the other hand was an immediate click. Most people complain about slow ship without reading instructions about making it faster, and four man team instead of six when in reality its a 12 man team cause you get a main party plus 2 backup teams. Allowing you to use more characters in the long run. Or was it one back up team? I forget but 8 is bigger than six regardless. Also duels although still rock paper scissors were presented really well in this game which continued in 5. Also war battles which is easily to me the worst part of suikoden games are still bad in this game, but I like how in this game you can just ram a ship board it and fight a normal battle to win.

Now 5 is just wow. Some would say a love letter to the people who played suikoden 1 and 2. This game is great although I kinda don't agree with going with super pulled away camera on static background. With empty black space everywhere. And although you can zoom in. (which keeps resetting) Coming from 4 its just seems kinda weird.

I never played 1 (although i saw someone else do it) or tactics or the handheld game so I don't really have an opinion on them. I'm gonna play 1 eventually though cause it nets you a character in 2 and i just didn't have 1 before i played 2 at the time. but i say go in order of the mainline games.