whats with the permanent dying part??
the good part is that not all characters can die but those characters play important roles in the story, and the more challenging and good to use characters can die, like hervey and sigurd and carrie and rene who are good back-ups for healing and item collection.
compared to final fantasy tactics this game is not as good. ff tactics is the best SRPG i played and considering the fact that it is on psx console, it is really good.
i bought this game because it bears the suikoden name and i played, finished and liked suikodens 1,2 and 3 but not the fourth.
overall this game is good but i think there are better games out there where the characters stay alive until you want them to.