Good, serviceable role-playing game, does not stand out as excellent in any one way.
If you really want to see a moderate amount of what the game has to offer, then Suikoden III is a very time-consuming game. One of the games' key trademarks is the 108 stars of destiny that can be identified and recruited. Many of them are interesting characters-as well as valuable in battle-but to recruit and fully develop all of them would take a monumental amount of time and grinding to achieve, and ultimately feels unnecessary, an attempt by most players to do this would probably be a cause for some fatigue and take away from the rest of the game. I spent upwards of seventy-five hours with the game, did some moderate recruiting, treasure-gathering, and character building and I was ready to be finished with the game at that point after completion of the story. If you successfully attain all 108 stars of destiny then you will get an extra scenario with different characters to play through upon completion, but I had pretty much had enough as it was. Eventually you will attain your own home castle and many of these recruits will have other services and roles besides fighting and support.
The story is interesting at times, with some bland segments thrown in there also, however the characters-many of them-are well-developed and personable and they will hold the players interest adequately. It is not a great story, just a good one, and your interest may waver somewhat at times, but I still got enjoyment out of the game for the most part. Even though the game is long, it feels like the story wraps up rather abruptly, or just as you are assembling the majority of your recruits together, which makes some of them feel kind of useless to be honest, unless you really want to go back out and separately level them up when already being so close to completion of the game. You can build all of your characters' attributes through a skill-education/training system with the skill-points that they accrue in battle. There are a variety of skills to choose from--with some characters having more fundamental proficiency in a given skill than others--and a respectable deal of customization is readily available, all without the entire process feeling overwhelming. Runes serve as magic in the game, simply affixing a rune to a character and boosting it with the appropriate magic education will provide spell-casting abilities. Other runes are used for status effects/boosters and some are also weapon-specific.
Battle system has an awkward feature in that you pair up your characters in twos, and they are commanded together; this does compromise the individual control to a degree, in particular when one character is casting a magic spell and the other character will conduct a random action--usually attack--on its' own. Both characters in a duo cannot cast a magic spell or use an item on the same turn, and sometimes the system can reveal its' shortcomings when the other character will attack while his partner is casting and the attacking character will be affected by certain magic spells that damage both friends and foes alike in the area. You can have up to three groups of two in battle, and a non-fighting support character as well, some groups of characters will have special combo-attacks if paired up together. In spite of the complications, the battle-system is still pretty fun and works acceptably well. There are two other types of battles that will occasionally take place in a story-related fashion. One is a turn-based strategy style system where you position and move units of four to five characters to effectively conquer the enemy of meet other given conditions; you have limited control of what your individual characters will do for these encounters. The other battle-system is a one-on-one duel which is heavliy story-driven and an advantage is given by interpreting what the rival is saying and choosing the appropriate action based upon that; it has a bit of an arcade feel to it actually and is fun to play. 8/10
Visuals/Artwork: The game has a nice clean look going for it on the whole, the environments are decent to look at, not downright gorgeous and ultra-detailed or anything, but they get the job done. You will get tired of looking at them over time however due to the aforementioned numerous visits to each area. Monsters and spell-effects are standard fare for the most part, nothing really jumps out at you and makes you take notice, but it is all more than serviceable. There are some combo-attacks that look pretty neat; the magic effects are not terribly unique, but they look decent enough, a handful of them take too long to animate and slow the pace of the game down however. The characters are also pretty well-drawn and convey a good sense of personality and individuality. 7.5/10
Music/Sound: The music is rather subdued much of the time, it sounds pretty nice and is competently orchestrated, but only a handful of tracks stood out as stimulating to me personally; that being said, there are no annoying or awful pieces to be found either, and the music is complementary to the respective areas of the game. It is odd not having battle sound-effects during fighting; no talking or catch-phrases, no clinking of swords and armor or sound-effects for magic, just the music and animations, I'm not sure I have ever played a role-playing game that took this approach. It didn't really bother me, it is just a way of doing it I guess. 7/10
Overall Suikoden III is a solid role-playing with enough commendable attributes to warrant anyone looking to satisfy their curiosity or just fizzle away some time to look into. I have not played the other games in the series as of yet, so I cannot make any comparisons on how it ranks among the others.