Suikoden 3: 3 out of 10
Grpahics: The graphics of Suikoden 3 were good for it's day and for being the first game in the series to be completely 3D. But even still the character sprites were stiff and the backgrounds were dull and lacking. The battle affects were also poorly done. One good thing i could say is that the intro movie was amazing (however, this just made playing the game that much more painful). 1 out of 2 for Graphics.
Sound: The suikoden series, for me at least, has also had very good music that have keep my volume up. (hell i have soundtracks from the first to games on my iPod) but aside from a couple of songs in Suikoden 3 i found the music, well, not very good. When i first heard the introduction movie's song i got my hopes up but the rest of the games music was nothing special. 1 out of 2 for Sound.
Gameplay: One of the most disappointing aspects of suikoden 3 was the battle system. The Suikoden series is known for it's six member party battle system. However, in this installment someone at konami got the bright idea of taking one of the best battle systems in RPGs to date and **** with it. This time the six members of your party were split into three sub groups of two. So instead of give seprate commands to each member give a command to each sub group. Magic was pretty much useless to. Why? Because you could hit your own party memebers! And just for kicks Konami threw in Final Fantasy's Skill system to help the player customize the characters. I could continue this rant but i'll spare you... 0 out of 2 for Gameplay. *crys* damn you Konami! Damn you.*
Storyline: It's not that Suikoden 3 has a bad storyline, in fact it's very good, but it's just done very poorly. Konami used a "Trinity Sight" system to give the player the story from 3 points of view. But this seem to slow the story progression down and well just seemed to hurt more then help. It felt to me like at this point Konami was just using a Suikoden Formula to make some more money. I mean it's all there: two nations at war: check (in fact it's three nations this time. WHAT A TWIST!), A hero gets a fabled True Rune: check (again it's three heros this time. WHAT A TWIST!), raise an army of 108 people and get a castle: check (however this time we had few memorable characters and the castle was just boring), have the hero lose someone close to them in the war: check (poor Lulu we hardly got to know thee), finally have the war end with the uniteing of the good guys: check (in fact if you got all the other characters the bad guys randomly join your army! WHAT A TWIST!). As i said it's all there, it's just not very good. 1 out of 2 for storyline.
Misc.: Suikoden 2 had some of the best minigames and replayablility i have ever seen. Suikoden 3 had none of that. In fact I can't even remember a minigame in Suikoden 3 that is even worth mentioning. 0 out of 2 for Misc.
Overall: Needless to say Konami really dropped the ball on Suikoden 3. It breaks my heart too. I'd say skip buying the game and get the Suikoden 3 Manga (in book stores everywhere) it's the same great story without the badness of the game getting all over it. 3 out of 10 for Suikoden 3.