Suikoden IV/YMMV


 * Crowning Music of Awesome: "La Mer", the opening theme.
 * Designated Villain: Troy.
 * Game Breaker: Kika and her triple-damage, non-missing, infinite-use Falcon Rune. Throw in (most powerful spellcaster, bar none) and  (gets an ABSURDLY powerful Combination Attack with Lazlo), and you've got a team that simply can't be stopped.
 * Oh, it gets worse: Grab the duo of Lazlo and, slap a couple high-level magic runes on them (in addition to their default runes), and let them go to town on the Training Hall. Then, take advantage of how the Training Hall works (the enemy levels are based on the highest-level member of your group) to grind the entire combat cast to level 100 in a couple hours (except the guy who runs the Training Hall, of course).
 * Goddamned Bats:
 * 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.
 * Ho Yay:
 * Aldo, to Ted.
 * 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.
 * 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.
 * Magnificent Bastard: Graham Cray.
 * Moe: Mitsuba, Rita, Lilin, Lilan, Viki, Rene, Agnes and Noah.
 * Most Annoying Sound: Playing the minigames can quickly get grating due to the voice acting. They repeat 1-2 lines for every choice you pick before starting the game (i.e. which rules, which level of bet, how many potch), and can't be skipped by button-mashing. Rita's is especially grating, as she has a lot of lines of dialogue in the minigame...
 * Never Live It Down: Snowe's poor leadership during his first real crisis continues to haunt him, both in- and out-of universe.
 * Scrappy Mechanic:
 * Cutting the standard Suikoden party size from six to four is the most hated thing about this game. 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.
 * 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.
 * Viewer Gender Confusion - In-world example: Wendel, a Tomboyish Action 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.
 * The Woobie - In a sense, Snowe is this Gone Horribly Wrong; he'd be more sympathetic if he weren't so damn dense.