I go into it in more detail in the article itself (as you'd hope!), but the TL;DR version is that this game's biggest problem isn't any plot thread or design decision, it's biggest problem is being tied to the Suikoden name. The game "fails" at things it was never trying to do in the first place, and its successes are easily ignored with a quick "Yeah, but it's not very Suikoden, is it?":
