[gooktime]

The first one is very, very charming and can be finished with all of the characters recruited in about 20 hours. While some of the 108 characters in these games have a line or two of dialogue and just as much backstory, most are decent and have some optional scenes and such to find if you use them.

I played the first ten hours or so of Suikoden V and it was almost entirely cut-scenes and so forth, then Oblivion came out. Does it pick up the pace at some point?

[gooktime]

I'd definitely suggest playing the first two in order, by the way. Not only does Suikoden 2 take place the next country over, there are a lot of returning characters and references. You can even load your save game from the first one to unlock a sidequest relating to the hero of the original - this also transfers over your hero/army names when referenced for consistency.

I also vaguely remember this feature returning in Suikoden 3, where you could load data from the first games and have your characters perform some of the key scenes from them in the theatre.

[gooktime]

I vaguely remember reading a very heated, raving article about how horrible IV is on Suikosource, it was pretty funny.

[gooktime]

Seconding that. If you start with 4, you likely won't play the rest.