Designated Villain: Troy. He's kind and fair to innocents and is against the brutal tactics others use. The only reason he even is an antagonist is due to Cray manipulating the Kooluk empire.
This game has an absurdly high encounter rate, especially while navigating through the sea with a slowpoke for a ship.
Although it's not an encounter, playing Ritapon can become annoying very quickly, as the game's random factors, like deciding what tiles are worth more points, always seems to favor Rita's hand. It's not uncommon to see Rita win a hand and get two, if not three, times more points than if Lazlo had won.
Good Bad Bugs: The duel with Lino en Kuldes can be skipped by initially refusing to fight him (choose the option "W-wait a minute!") then accepting him offer the second time (choose "I accept your challenge"). This will automatically lead to the victory cutscene, where Lino acknowledges his defeat.
Aldo, to Ted. This got him killed and his soul sucked into Soul Eater.
Reinbach has this with Charlemagne. Their unite attack is even called Love Love attack. Not to mention the animation that plays out at the end of the battle if you use it.
The Cat Combo attack between Chiepoo, Chumpo and Nuluk has them frolicking together in a bed of flowers.
Lazlo still recruiting Snowe after all the crap Snowe pulled might be seen as this.
Jerkass Woobie: Snowe. He cops a lot, both fairly and unfairly, but it sure doesn't help that he tends to be a complete idiot about everything.
There is also problems during the cutscenes: the screen blinks whenever the angle changes or you answer a question. After the destruction of Iluya, the scene changes to a meeting of the antagonists in Fort El-Eal, discussing they successful nuke...with the calm "Headquarters Ship" theme song as background music.
Another error with cutscenes happens after Glen receives the Rune of Punishment and Snowe asks the hero to bring medicine to the commander's room. When talking to Glen, choosing the second option ("I bought some medicine...") will cause Glen's character model to change back to his healthy looking one and his left hand will not have the Rune of Punishment.
The four members-only party (plus a support). When you've got several dozen playable characters, only being able to use four at a time is quite bad. In addition to reducing the party combinations you can play with, it also makes unlocking and using all of the Combination Attacks a pain. In particular, the 4-person combo attack by the Razril knights (minus Lazlo and Snowe) can only be used during ship travel by calling them in as a reserve party, since that's the only way to remove Lazlo from the active roster.
Ship travel is also annoying slow, an irritation compounded by the Random Encounter rate being higher than other Suikoden games. You'll be even more thankful than usual when Viki appears.
Army battles in the series have always varied in quality, but the ship battles this time around don't feature any special tactics, interesting maneuvers, or surprises about your enemies' capabilities—you're basically playing rock-paper-scissors against someone missing their first two fingers. Even worse by comparison to Suikoden V, which features both more interesting and larger-scale naval battles, despite those battles being confined to a mere river while Suikoden IV is on the open ocean. In Suikoden IV, the number of ships involved is always in the single digits, turning what are supposed to be major engagements into mere skirmishes.
Also about the naval battles, when two ships gets close enough, it starts a normal battle between your assigned fighter and the enemy's. The problem is that you can only attack or defend, making mages useless. Losing said battle also causes the ship to sink instantly, regardless of HP.
Sequel Difficulty Drop: This game is much easier than Suikoden III, as you can use up to three parties in overworld battles (and can swap them without wasting a turn), the Slash Rune instantly win fights against weak enemies and there are fewer dungeons overall. Naval battles are also easy, as there are few enemy ships and you know what Rune Cannons they have before choosing yours.
Sequelitis: Suikoden IV is generally considered the worst game in the series thanks to some bad gameplay changes (limiting the player to four party members, upping the random encounter rate, and shortening the overall length of the game) and for being a prequel set 150 years before the first game instead of following Suikoden III's timeline (meaning no ending for the series, fewer Continuity Nods and returning characters). On top of that, the game fells unfinished. Particularly, the combination of the smaller party size and shorter game made it very hard to get to know most of the cast.
So Okay, It's Average: While it doesn't live up to the previous games, Suikoden IV is a decent, if underwhelming, RPG with a Waterworld-esque world map, minigames to play, islands to explore and many characters to recruit.
That One Sidequest: The Battle Tops minigame. If you want to collect every Window Set, Old book and Treasure Map, you have to play it. Basil will reward you depending on your number of consecutive victories: 5 wins grants you the "Window Set 2", for 10 wins you get the "Old Book 2", and for 20 WINS you get Treasure Map 14. The problem is that you cannot lose not even once; if you win four times and lose the fifth match, your score resets and you will have to start over.
They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Cutting the standard Suikoden party size from six to four is the most hated thing about this game; it does not help that, unlike in the previous games, Combination Attacks have to be learned and leveled up.
Warlock, a powerful sorcerer who invented the rune cannons, who was used for warfare. He could have been a much bigger role, but is only a optional character with minimal dialogue interactions. To make things worse, he is unceremonious killed off in the epilogue, despite the sequel, Suikoden Tactics, being focused on the Kyril's journey to destroy his inventions.
Troy. Glen's speech paints him as an incredibly powerful opponent that brought a crushing humiliating defeat to Razril years ago. But Troy is only marginally involved in the game's main plot, and is only fought twice. Once in a brief battle you are not meant to win, and then is defeated from one duel with Lazlo.
Too Cool to Live: Glenn, the chief of the Knights of Razriel and your father figure (more or less).
Underused Game Mechanic: The "Confession System", which replaces the "Detective Investigations" from the previous games. Keen always asks the same three questionsnote "Is there someone who is causing problems?", "Do you like Lazlo?" and "Do you have something to confess?" and nearly every character gives similar answers for the first two. The system is also impractical to use, as Keen will only judge when Lazlo is the only party member.
Viewer Gender Confusion: In-world example: Wendel, a TomboyishAction Girl who declares herself the apprentice of Nico, your ship's lookout. Who, despite his frequently-praised vision and having her constantly hanging around him, thinks she's a guy. And yes, she has quite obvious breasts.
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