Ok, so I played about 8 hours and finished the intro part. Here's a quick +/- breakdown of my thoughts.
+Story is good. Much better than IV, not interesting on an epic scale like III though.
+Characters are great.
+The script is good as well. Characters have distinct personalities and good lines.
+Battle system is almost like 2 and better because of formation. More on that later.
+Music is >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 3/4, but still <<<<<<<< 1/2. It's nice though.
+World map = yay.
+Dungeons! III/IV had none (IV had like two), so this is an improvement.
+Character art is excellent.
+Character models are excellent and have nice expressions and animation.
-Loading is not too horrible and you get used to it, but loading into battle is longer than any rpg I can remember (besides Popolocrois III). I timed it and it's about 8 secs from when you stop moving until you can choose commands. Loading out of battle is another 3 secs. Loading also interrupts cutscenes, but usually it's not like IV where a character says one line and then it loads and another character says one line and it loads. Though there are times where it gets kinda close to that. Those loads aren't too long though.
-Battles are a bit slow paced. Suikoden I/II battles were great because you'd be walking and then instantly jump into a battle and your characters would quickly jump across the screen and hit and you'd be back on the map 15 secs after you left it. Now you gotta wait for everyone to slowly do their attacks and it just takes a bit longer. Spells especially take longer than needed. This trodding pace keeps them from being as fun as I/II battles. Better than III/IV though.
-Pacing is really slow. Those who thought Xenosaga and SIV were sleep inducing may have trouble here. The game moves story-wise, movement-wise, battle-wise at a really slow pace and you just have to deal with ti.
-NPCs SUCKCKKKK. Looks like they are from rpg maker. Even the shop/blacksmith people are generic suckers.
-Towns suck. The problem isn't that they're too big. It's that they're really big and boring looking. Again like Rpg maker towns.
-Camera really sucks. The overhead view is good, but it hides doors you need to go through sometimes or paths you need to take and you literaly can't see yourself at times.
-Doesn't feel like Suikoden. I'll expand on this below.
So yeah, I'm liking it but I think a lot of that comes from my love of all games Suikoden (I mean I enjoyed IV the entire time I was playing it just like I'm enjoying V). I don't think its a good game, but I can look past that and enjoy it as a good game in terms of Suikoden games. If I = 8, II = 10, III = 6, IV = 5, then V = 7~7.5. It makes sense that famitsu gave the game a 32, which is the bottom number that all 'real' rpgs recieve. Suikoden V is at the point where it's just stepping into the quality of weak 'good' rpgs and not just a good 'bad' rpg like III/IV
One thing that's gonna turn off a lot of people and something that I both like/dislike is the fact that the intro is 8 hours long. By intro I mean the fetch quests, story-section in all Suikoden games before you can really do anything. In the first 8 hours you can't make your team since you never have more than 5 people; you can't collect anyone; you can't really fight except for two small dungeons that last maybe 15 mins each; you can't really explore anywhere; and the plot doesn't really start. That means for the first 8 hours it basically doesn't feel that much like Suikoden. Instead the entire first 8 hours is just walking around huge areas where you have to talk to EVERY NPC because either one of them triggers the next event, or the next event is triggered by going everywhere and talking to everyone. This is because the first 8 hours is a political story and you're mainly just gonna be reading it.
I actually enjoyed those 8 hours becauase I found the political tale to be pretty interesting and the characters well written. But at the same I'm still itching for the real Suikoden experience that I'm guessing will start next.
Another thing that is a wasted chance are these towns. Huge multi-screen towns, yet they all look boring and are filled with tiny little characters and small generic rooms. When I think of Suikoden I think of running through town looking for cool looking characters who will join my party later on. I remember there would always be a few in each town so I'd know where they were when I went party hunting later. But here you have these giant towns that are 5-10 screens big with tons of houses and 30-50 NPC characters and maybe, just maybe you'll have 1 character with a portrait that you can recruit later. Some towns don't even have a single person like that at this point. When I see a huge boring looking town with no one recruitable...it doesn't feel like I'm playing Suikoden.
These are what stores/trading centers/blacksmith shops look like:
This is your average bar:
This is a town:
Battle system-wise...it's good stuff. The formations have special properties like the dress spheres in FFX-2 (ex. attack+2 for all members) and you can change formations on the fly mid-battle. You also have formation attacks in some formations, that have the whole party attack at once. So yeah, they're pretty good but it would've been nice if there was fast forward button.
The skill system sucks though. You get skill points and you use them to upgrade from a standard skill list of maybe 20 max and you upgrade them from F->S and equip two at a time on your character. Basically it's like the Tactics skill system except there are no interesting skills from what I've seen. All the skills are just boring "parry", "critical", "attack damage increase".
Graphics are kinda good. The characters look great but the environments are mixed. Some major areas look good, but towns and stuff can look really bad. Sometimes when there's a lot of people on screen (7-8 characters) the game slooooooows down which is noticable even when moving through dialogue choices.
Oh and the dialogue choices are great because you can pimp all the girls including your little sister.
Speaking of your character though...wow....holy shit wow....for all the stuff Vaan gets about being girly...and all the shit the Suikoden IV guy got for looking lame......wow, this takes the cake. I like the character designs but the facial expressions the main guy makes are amazingly bad. He's the worst lead character I've ever seen in a game. He'd be better if he was just like a floating puffy ball or something so you wouldn't have to see his facial expressions. I try to just look at the dialogue boxes and avoid actually seeing the game. I don't know why the Suikoden teams continue to give lame looking silent people, but yeah maybe it's all a joke on the players.
So yeah, story = good (reminds me of Suikoden II's story plot-wise [not character-wise]), battles = good, music = good, graphics = good. It's the best 3d Suikoden so far, but more of a mish-mash of III and IV, rather than some new game that's much better than both of those ones.
Still too early to judge though. I mean I haven't even fought a strategy battle yet or recruited anyone (though I have an idea where my base is going to be [no I didn't read your spoiler Himuro]). Hopefully that'll start soon and then I'll see how it really lives up as a Suikoden title.
In the end I think if you had the patience to finish IV, you'll have the patience to finish V. I'll definitely be sticking around for the entire experience whether it gets better worse at this point.
