This seems to be a popular opinion, but I don't get it. Suikoden 3 was a major disappointment after 2, I found 4 to be a move back in the right direction with 5 bringing it back to pretty damn good.
Alundra 2 and Star Ocean 3 are my two picks. Throw Tomba 2 on that list as well.
Oh, lots of old posts getting bumped today looks like, I'd forgotten this.
To elaborate on Suikoden 4 though, it was too much of a course correction I thought. They played it safe by going into the past of a character from the first game, and while that's partly because the original writer/creative lead left the company, it was also a pretty unambitious turn after having a trilogy where the world was changing from game to game.
Turning the party down to four characters instead of six really hurt too, in a series where you recruit over 100 characters, with about 70 or so potential playable ones, allowing you to use even less of that enormous cast at a time is a boring choice.
Suikoden 3 was a really awkward game, where they tried to explore the options the PS2 afforded them and came up with a lot of clunkers. (Movement during combat being weird and finicky being my least favorite, of course). There's a ton of really interesting choices though, and the way it let you influence the story with a selection of protagonists made me want to play through and mix things up more than once.
Overall I'm more likely to appreciate the ambitious mixed-bag that is Suikoden 3, over S4 taking zero chances and being really rote and conventional as a result. The PS2 has a hundred games just like it, why play this one right? Credit to the developers though, they still turned out something decent after the series creator left, and between that and Tactics it was a dry run for what was a *real* return to form with the fifth game. (I think they actually went a bit over-board with that one and it's nostalgia for S2, and some of the recruitment feels unreasonable without a guide, but I still really liked it.)
Japanese version of...