So I got the latest Suikoden. I"m five hours in and it's not looking good. The music is forgettable, the characters are boring, and the story is ridiculous thus far. I suppose there's the possibility it'll pick up if I play some more, but it's really annoying. The graphics are okay, but it seems like unite attacks are nowhere to be seen; the closest I've seen is having 'linked' partners do a normal attack at the same time.
If you're wondering what the story is about, it's basically a 'every 100 years a special form of monster comes to wreak havoc, this time someone is trying to control them.' There's a plot device called the Dynasty Tree that allows the characters to go 100 years to the past, but it has to be the worst plot device ever. As an example, there's this cutscene depicting the death of an important character early in the story. The characters then use the Dynasty Tree to travel to the past to cause a series of events that prevent said character from dying. Five minutes later the character is alive again. WTF? Any and all plot coherence is thrown out the window.