Suikoden V is better. If you had to play one of those two, play V. The stories aren't connected at all, so you won't miss anything. Suikoden IV is one of the two worst games in the Suikoden series along with the original. I am not counting the Suikoden: Tactics game which I never played.
Suikoden IV stripped down the combat to its basics with mixed results. You also only have four characters, which I didn't particularly like. Its story was alright. The best thing it had going for it was all the naval stuff which was added to the game, which I liked quite a bit. The boat battles were fun, but unfortunately Suikoden V has even better boat battles.
Suikoden V was very solid all around. Personally, either II or III is my favorite, but this game is as good or almost as good as those two games, and in some ways better. III had too much worthless backtracking and time-wasting for my tastes, but it is still probably my favorite of the series. V had a pretty good story, IMO.
Suikoden V will not disappoint, Suikoden IV might disappoint.
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
