I'm playing this and I love it. Maybe it's because I'm kinda a Suikoden virgin(I played 1 and 2, but both not for very long. I did have the castle in 1 though). All those things that you stated annoyed me too, but I got over them rather fast. The story's great, though not as political as the other ones: (Not a major spoiler, but something you might not want to know right away)
The main enemy is some sort of cult gone way out of hand that believe that everything is predetermined. They attack countries in an attempt to convert them to this religion (The Order of the One True Way).

Also, I don't know if it's the deepest handheld RPG of all time indeed, but it indeed goes pretty damn deep.

Yeah, I'm loving this so far as well. I won't say where I am in the story, but my party is all about level 26/27. Also I am a massive Suikoden fan so this may be kinda biased BUT my expectations had always been extremely low for this so I am actually sort of surprised.

The first hour or so seriously made me wonder but it gets better. The voice acting is by far the worst aspect and can out-and-out ruin some scenes, but once you've gotten somewhat used to it it's fine. Also the hero and his friends from Citro (who are all kind of INCREDIBLY BORING characters except for possibly Liu) probably have the worst voice acting in the game which is really shit as they're all you get for the first quest or so and that's gonna be enough to put loads of people off

Yeah I wasn't expecting much from the story but there have actually been a couple of pretty neat developments so far. Also the music. <3

From what I heard, Tierkreis isn't a reboot, but it does add the concept of infinite worlds to the mix, allowing the creators of Suikoden to do WHATEVER THE SHIT they want without screwing up their canon. (Which does suck though, IMO)
Thing is, this ain't Suikoden VI. It's a spinoff. That's kinda what people seem to forget most of the time. Don't take the absense of things from the original Suikoden universe too seriously. See it as a fun RPG in its own right. That's what I do.

Its a decent rpg, i like that you can download quests online even though you have to actually get far in the main game to get this feature which is bullshit.

I don't get why Konami decided the series needed a reboot.

Okay, I guess this did feel kind of unnecessary. Not only are there no returning characters (tbh I was getting kind of bored of Viki and Jeane but SOME returning characters or references are always nice), but they abandoned the concept of 'runes', including true runes, which have always been at the foundation of Suikoden plotlines. But I guess the alternative is pretty similar, which, yeah, kind of raises the question of what the point actually was.

I don't especially mind the whole reboot thing, so long as they don't abandon the already established world in any future numbered installments. And heck, with the whole Infinity thing, there is even a chance that Tierkreis could be absorbed into the existing Suikoverse. (or just pay $1.99 for the hero as Suikoden VI DLC or something...  ​)



One more thing about Tierkreis, though... maybe there were hardware issues or something, not sure how powerful a DS cart is, but it really really REALLY would have benefited from a 6-party battle system. I mean, for most of the early game you even have 5-6 people travelling with you, and the story just decides which 3/4 will be on your party at which time... 

Actually thinking about it I know why some of the characters didn't join your fighting party at that point, but these games with insane amounts of playable characters are always better with 6 people in battle anyway.

That brings me to one of the points I didn't like so much:

IT'S TOO EASY.

There's no need for 6-party battles, because you never need more than 4 people to kick your enemy's ass!

wake me up when they announce suikoden 6 i seriously don't give a sh*t about this stupid ds spinoff crap

gatdam it konami

also this game looks p.stupid

ahhhhyess... makes perfect sense

what are you doing dude

edit: There is a pretty obscure missable in this game, but the list Ralph posted should have all the information you need. Turns out the cutoff point wasn't as late as I thought, though. curse you, gamespot forums

If any of you (Eike) need a recruit list, I'm using this one. They mark all the missable recruits so it's nice to have if you go for all 108.

http://suikosource.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=10449

Yeah you know what? Turns out that was bollocks, there is an obvious cutoff point for Wustum but that wasn't it, it seems to be later. Which is insane as the fact that the mission is commissioned doesn't make sense in the context... 

I don't care, though, I'm just happy that I don't have to restart (I couldn't really see myself playing the game through twice anytime soon)

And, yeah, CTRL + F and 'missable' and that list is pretty good!