Should I finish Suikoden IV before playing Suikoden V?

[Arcana]

In this thread, there are NO SPOILERS PLEASE, for either Suikoden IV or Suikoden V.

I currently own Suikoden IV and am playing it. I think I'm just after the part where you're supposed to recruit the Narcissist, but then he tells you that you have to get him a Rose Brooch. In total, I've played maybe 12 hours worth of the game. I do NOT own Suikoden Tactics or Suikoden V.

I have heard conflicting reports about whether I should wait to complete Suikoden IV and Tactics before Suikoden V. I want to get an assessment from you people who've finished V and learn if it's worth finishing IV. Mainly, I want to know if there are interesting tie-ins, or maybe loadable data from IV and Tactics, and so forth.

If you do post spoilers, blank them out. It's fine to explain exactly what happens in 5 that was mentioned in 4 but if you explain it I DON'T WANT TO READ IT KTHXBYE!
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Woo, 2000 posts as of Tuesday, 2007 August 28.

[Sophita]

I think it might be slightly better to play through SIV and Tactics first. There's an interesting bit in the game that I'm not sure you'll enjoy as much without playing through IV/Tactics first. However, SIV and Tactics have little effect on the storyline of SV, so you won't have huge gaps in knowledge if you decide to play through SV now, then finish SIV/Tactics later.
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[Hawk Thanatos]

Play Suikoden IV and Tactics first, there's no loadable data but there's a few references to characters from Suikoden IV and the Island Nations do have a part in Suikoden V.

[Blackjack]

Eh. There's a (VERY) minor wink-of-the-eye, tip-of-the-hat type thing in V, but nothing major.

But, uh...I personally suggest finishing IV just because it's a hell of a lot better than V. Unless, of course, you don't like it. Then it's really up to you.
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[Stampede]

Screw Suikoden IV. It's not particularly important to the story of Suikoden V, and the game is so generic that by this point you can probably guess everything that's going to happen anyway. Do yourself a favor and just skip the rest of SIV.
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[Blazing Camp]

I'd also suggest playing through SuikoIV as well as Tactics. Sure SuikoIV is a crappy game, however it does get referenced alittle bit in SuikoV and there are a few characters from the Island Nations. IN Tactics, it redeems IV in a way with better story and music, plus it's a pretty good tactics game and you get too see what the RoP should've been like :)

But the references are kinda light so it's not really necessary to play SuikoIV before SuikoV.

[Shrew]

If you haven't bought Tactics yet, you could just skip it if you really want V. Tactics adds a good deal on to IV, and it's a decent game, but it has pretty much nothing to do with V.
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[Arcana]

Well, my real thing is... should I play S5 sooner, or later? If I buy a game in the summer, it'll basically be EITHER Tactics or V... not sure if I'll have time to go through both of them.
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Woo, 2000 posts as of Tuesday, 2007 August 28.

[jjrrs]

speaking as a person who got to the end but didn't finish IV after playing it a good 50+ hours, played tactics for about only 15 hours and now is about 50 hours into V, I'd say if you like the series enough to consider everything about the suikoden history to be interesting at all, you really should finish IV first with all 108 stars just to have the save transfer and then play tactics before V if you can.

With my own experience of missing important parts of the stories of IV and tactics I'd say it doesn't bother me at all playing V. The main reason I never finished both games is that the character development and storyline for IV was not very good and it doesn't get better in tactics, plus I didn't really like tactics as a stand alone SRPG. So when stopped playing IV about 2 hours before finishing it, I found playing tactics to be very deflating since I didn't like the system and I'd have to replay it all over again if I want to get the bonuses that came with the transferred save... So I think you might as well play everything in order if you care enough to at least get the 108 stars save and finish IV, it's not like you'd be playing V right on release anyways. But if you just get sick of IV in the middle(or gets bog down having to massively backtrack like me), get V and start playing it as soon as you can.
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[Dura Sinai]

S stated it is not really necessary to play iV but I do believe that several characters do make a bit more sense as they have ties to the Island Nations and there are references to that. In fact one of the quests in the game is rather heavily tied to Suikoden iv and tactics.

[Buff]

[Sami]

Play Suikoden IV first, there's a lot of great things you haven't seen and the game's not too long either. Skip Tactics, it's a completely worthless addition to the Suikoden game world. In Japan, it's not even called Suikoden, it's Rhapsodia. That should tell you all about the relevance of Tactics. Also, Suikoden IV and V are both rather different, both good in their own way, so you're better off having played both of them.

There's no loadable data, but as has been said, there's a few references and one scene connected to Suikoden IV.

[jjrrs]

:off topic: This is kind of off topic but I didn't check for suikoden stuff from after I flamed out on tactics up until about the weekend before V came out, I'm guessing during that time genso shinsho or some other source named hero IV Lazlo? don't really like that name since it sounds like the name of a slob or somekind of negative character, hoping there was some good reason behind the name, can someone refer me to the topic that discussed that? thanks
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[Fudozukushi]

It's in the Suikoden IV novel. It's not canon, but it's better then saying HeroIV all the time.
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[mumbay]

In my opinion :off topic: Chicken is good
On topic
You do not need to complete Suikoden IV there are no bonus's all you get is some little Suikoden Iv info in Suikoden V so if you wanna know where most of the stuff came from you can do that. But it is no neccesary for anything important other then information.