This is what many JRPG fans have been clamoring for. In this Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes review, we judge the game whether it's fit to inherit the mantle of the Suikoden series and how the game holds up to modern standards.
Admittedly, I have been waiting for this game's release since it was first announced by the late Yoshitaka Murayama several years back. I came in late into the Suikoden fandom, having my first encounter with the series as late as the PlayStation 2's Suikoden V, but ever since I've always had an itch for a JRPG like it that has never been fulfilled by any other game after that.
Now, with the release of Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes, I, along with many Suikoden and old-school JRPG fans, can potentially relieve that itch.
However, the passing of time comes with an increase in our standards. Hence, I should also preface that I will not judge this game with rose-tinted glasses. For example, not because a feature carried over from Suikoden to Eiyuden means that it's automatically a good thing. We still have to judge every feature's inherent merits.
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes Review: What is Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is a Japanese Role-playing game with turn-based combat and overworld exploration. The game was released on April 23, 2024, on the Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and on PC through Steam and the Epic Games Store. Gamers who pre-ordered the game's Digital Deluxe Edition gained access to the game 48 hours early on April 21, 2024.
Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising, released in 2022, serves as a prologue story for Hundred Heroes. While having played Rising will give players a better appreciation of this game's lore and characters, it's not necessary. So, don't feel hindered if you haven't played that game yet to enjoy Hundred Heroes. Some characters appear in both games, so having played Rising would also give you more insight into their stories and their motivations.
Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising uses a lot of gameplay elements that were present in its inspiration, the Suikoden series. The game features several main characters and scores of side characters that you can recruit to be part of your fledgling army. The game also uses a classic turn-based fighting system that is utilized in many JRPGs. Players give each of their party members an action and all of these actions are played out based on an action order dependent on their speed.
The game features a sprawling overworld, divided into regions, each containing cities, villages, caves, dungeons, and passages, free for the player to explore. These locations are home to gnarly monsters, daring heroes, vile villains, and your everyday normal villagers. Scattered around the world are shops, treasures, secrets, mini-games, and optional side content.
Players can take up to ten party members at a time: six are usable in combat, one is set in a support role, and three more in reserve capacity. Furthermore, the six are positioned either as a front-row fighter or a back-row fighter. The positioning of each combatant is important, as they can only reach enemies based on their weapon range – short, medium, and long. Short weapons can only reach front-line enemies when the character is on the front lines, and so forth.
The game also has light castle management, introduced mid-game, which opens up new features for the player's headquarters, giving them access to resources, shops, and mini-games.
Finally, the game also has large-scale battles. The player's party members are assigned contingents of soldiers and are tasked to fight in tile-based, turn-based tactical battles where large armies clash against each other. These battles only happen as part of story's progress and don't happen often, although players need to get past them to progress in the game.
Duels reminiscent of the ones found in Suikoden also appear here, pitting story characters against each other in one-on-one combat. These are mostly scripted as far as we can tell and mostly serve as a narrative device more than anything.
As mentioned, there are also a couple of mini-games present in the game, including fishing, beigoma (a Beyblade-like game with spinning tops), and a card game that feels like a simplification of both Gwent and Artifact.
There's a lot to unravel here and players can enjoy anywhere between forty hours to sixty hours of gameplay, depending on how much they immerse themselves into the side activities. It really is a homage to classic JRPGs through and through, down to its length. But a long game is only a boon if the game itself holds up. That being said, how is Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes as a game?
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes Gameplay
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is an easy game to love. If you're a classic JRPG lover, you'll get tons of that 90s-era gameplay here, complete with the game's presentation, music, sound effects, the familiar shameless tackiness of some characters, and the game's refusal to hold your hand. Fun fact: save for the main objective, the game doesn't track any of your affairs, so playing with a pen and paper to jot down notes is highly recommended.
Some aspects from yesteryears are present here that I would wish were left behind in the past. For one, the game has a lot of backtracking, to the level that if you want to do a completionist run, you better go back and check on every single location you've been to before in every new chapter just to make sure you don't miss any new recruits.
The game also has this weird attachment to arbitrary inventory storage. Your inventory has 30 inventory slots. Items, including equipment and runes, occupy these slots. Some items can be stacked up to a certain number before they occupy a full slot, like the game's basic healing herb taking up six, while equipment and runes each occupy one slot by themselves.
While the inventory system add a layer of challenge to the game, but I think it introduces more annoyance than anything else. There are ways to increase inventory space later on in the game, but the fact that you can also collect other resources that don't contribute to your inventory slots makes the inventory system feel arbitrary and unnecessary.
The game's combat is very fun, though. Players start each turn giving each one of their characters a command. The commands then get executed based on a turn order, which is determined primarily by each character's speed, along with attack modifiers. This gives players the opportunity to work around the turn order to minimize the damage they take and the damage they deal, strategize around timings for healing, and optimize their turns.
Each character has three resources: HP, MP, and SP. HP represents their health, knocking them out when their HP drops to zero. MP is used to cast magic. SP is a resource that replenishes between turns and is used to execute special skills and team attacks.
Optimizing your turn is also a fun challenge to play around. The game isn't shy to ramp up the difficulty, and enemies in this game can hit hard. MP is also a very limited resource, with magic-users usually only managing to cast a couple of spells before running the well dry. With the game not offering a lot of ways to restore MP, this essentially balances the game's magic attacks.
Party management is also a fun aspect of the game to play around. Since some characters can only reach enemies from a certain distance based on their weapon's range, it also means you are pretty much limited on the combinations of characters you can have in your party at a time if you want to remain effective. This balances the game's team attacks that become available if certain members of the party are all present at the same time.
Leveling up characters will unlock new rune slots for them. Sometimes, these rune slots will already come occupied with a character-specific rune, giving the character access to a unique special skill. Sometimes, these rune slots are open for the player to fill, giving the player freedom when it comes to customizing their characters. There are fairly enough runes to go around to have drastically different builds between players, and the fun part is that almost everything is viable.
All in all, the game's battle system is engaging, with many situations encouraging players to swap around characters. Creativity around party composition is vital, and keeping everyone high level will make sure that the player always has options when it comes to gameplay. That being said, the game is also mercifully not grindy, as low level characters can quickly catch up in terms of levels in just a couple of battles.
The large-scale battles, meanwhile, is the most underwhelming aspect of the game. They're played out to be these vital fights and are usually must-win scenarios in the story, and the game's presentation helps in hyping up these battles. But I felt like these battles were not very intuitive and they're not very exciting to play, and most of the time I felt like I just wanted these battles over with.
The game's array of distractions is also fun. I can't tell you just how much time I've sunk into fishing, beigoma, and card games, which is one of the big reasons why this Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes review came out as late as it is.
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes Story
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes follows the exploits of Nowa, an impressionable youth who joins up with the Elitsweiss Watch in search for adventure. He then finds himself embroiled in a war that is much larger than he is but steps up to the place as he is thrown into the forefront of the war as the leader of Resistance Fighters.
Fighting on the opposite end is his friend, Seign Kesling, a young officer who, on top of his own skills, rose to the rank of lieutenant thanks to his noble background. He is less of a loyalist than others in the Imperial army that he finds himself fighting for, however, and he's more questioning of the Empire's motivations.
A third protagonist becomes available mid-game, Marisa. She is a member of the Guardians, protectors of the forest and are a neutral entity in the war. However, they are inexplicably drawn into the conflict as the ancient powers that they protect, the rune-lenses, are a power that both sides of the opposing armies need to win the war. Hence, Marisa and the Guardians are forced to choose a side.
The overarching narrative of Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is full of politics and intrigue, although it's not too deep. Characters have very clear-cut motivations, scenes and acts happen as you expect them to, and in the end, the game's conclusion is predictable. However, predictable isn't necessarily bad, and Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes has a feel-good story that makes you feel accomplished after everything is said and done.
What I feel lacking in the game, however, is character depth. All of the game's characters are one-note and lack character development. Almost none of the characters you collect to become part of your army has any story outside of their own recruitment arcs. They don't affect the direction of your story nor do they do anything aside from being there in scenes and in battles.
It would be unfair, however, to say that these characters are not well-designed. In fact, the characters are charming. It's just that they weren't given the chance to shine on the main stage, nor were they given enough screen time to develop even more side-stories and form relationships with other members of your army. It's something that we've seen Fire Emblem games do successfully before, and I wish Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes had a bit of that in it.
But I'm also somewhat thankful that Rabbit & Bear didn't force itself to overcommit to these characters. Their open-endedness makes it easier to write more stories about them in the future. It would also have been a disservice to these characters if they were put into senseless stories just for the sake of having more screen time. We also didn't have to tolerate some senseless relationship-building element in the game. So all in all, I think not having a relationship system in the game is better than having a bad one.
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes Graphics
The game's strongest suit is its 2.5D graphics. It's charming, vibrant, dynamic, and very easy on the eyes. In this part of our Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes review, we talk about the game's look and art direction.
The game boasts highly detailed pixel art sprites for its characters, with beautifully rendered 3D landscapes and environments serving as backdrops for the game's scenes. It's also filled with moving foliage, grass that moves with the wind, and other smaller elements that add a lot of life to the game's environments.
Junko Kawano's character designs are also pleasing. I'm not that fond of Nowa's design, but the rest of the crew have unique appearances and color palettes that are pleasing to the eye. The blend of colors in the characters' outfits really fit well with the game's tone, and there's enough diversity in the character's designs to go around.
Even the side characters and NPCs look well thought out. Every voiced character seems to have gone through the full development treatment, with care on how they are presented and on how they look. We'll talk about the performances of these characters in a later section, but just the character designs on their own already bring a lot of soul into the game.
Of course, there are also a lot of positive things to say about the game's beasts. The enemies in this game have really good design and are rendered with high fidelity – oddly enough, with higher fidelity than the characters themselves. The enemy designs are also varied and unique enough to stand on their own. It's not Pokemon-level unique, though, but enough to make some of the monsters memorable.
The animations are also a treat to watch. Turn-based JRPGs nowadays can live or die on their fight animations. Thankfully, Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes features flashy animations and amazing special effects that really make battles more exciting. It's always a treat to learn new skills and abilities just to see how they'd look like when performed.
The game's presentation of its conversations is also as vibrant as possible. I like the design decision of telling conversations through speech bubbles instead of what has become the norm nowadays with visual novel-style conversations. The speech bubbles are also accompanied by a small character portrait with varying facial expressions to drive home emotions and accompany the actors' performances. The backgrounds of these portraits even change depending on the emotion being derived.
The dynamic camera adds a lot to the experience, too. The camera would pan, zoom in, zoom out, rotate, or move behind your characters to highlight their attacks. Camera work is also applied on cutscenes perfectly, adding more emotion and energy to the scenes we watch unfold. The only gripe I have with the game's camera is sometimes environmental objects block your view of your party when traveling, making it hard to follow your character at times.
The game is highly detailed on this front, and I'm happy because this part really shows how much love was poured into this game. Not a single character feels like they got the short end of the stick. That's an important aspect of this game, and the ultimate sin it could have committed is having a hundred generic heroes that not only feel the same but also look the same.
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes maintains the retro feel of old-school JRPGs while also using modern engines to the fullest to make sure that the game looks as good as it can.
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes Music and Sound Design
The game's soundtrack was made by Motoi Sakuraba and Michiko Naruke, two prominent artists in the JRPG scene who have had their fingerprints on many memorable OSTs. They don't disappoint in Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes. From the moment you are greeted with the game's music in the console menu to the inspiring music it greets you within its opening sequence, the game's music is full of heart and soul.
The emotions of each scene are elevated thanks to the music that plays as they unfold. Even if the game features dialogue that progresses at the control of the player, the music's beats and overtures seemingly match the pace of conversations and of events happening in cutscenes in an amazing, unexplainable way.
The battle music is also invigorating and it never gets old. The music in this game is really up there and definitely deserves to be part of all-time lists moving forward.
In terms of sound effects, the game also features a lot of lively sounds. This is mostly true in battles, as the flashy attacks are matched by equally vivid blasts and chirps. The sounds effectively marry the charm of chiptunes as they are mixed with more modern sound effects.
Finally, the game's voice acting was also very well acted. All characters feel real thanks to the performance of the actors. I never found any actor that felt out of place in the Japanese dub, although some of the American counterparts felt a bit too overzealous at times.
Speaking of voice acting, playing the game in Japanese voice language and English text can be a bit jarring at times. Knowing some Japanese myself, I could recognize that some English texts weren't translated correctly. It's an odd, little thing that I eventually learned to live with, but it's still weird to sometimes see simple lines like “Hmm,” be translated into something longer in English. It in no way ruined the game, but did take away some of the immersion.
Conclusion: Is Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes Good? Is it Worth Your Time and Money?
Despite its shortcomings, I could say that I enjoyed Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes enough to recommend it to friends who enjoy these kinds of games. It's a classic JRPG through and through, and it occupies a space that is rarely provided for in today's gaming space. If there's anyone who could recreate the magic of 90s JRPGs, it's this team.
However, I would be remiss not to criticize the game for what it is. It doesn't fully lean into its massive roster and at times feels like the game doesn't know what to do with its characters. Their participation in the story is forgettable, and most of the time not even value-adding. The slight changes in localization was also off-putting, and at some points I feel like the battles could get trivial.
I'll fondly remember the game for its charm and its colorful character design, and I'll be speaking well about my experience with it. It's a fitting series as any to take on the mantle of Suikoden, a fitting swan song for Murayama, and I hope that Rabbit and Bear Studios will continue making future games in this same style. Hopefully, any commercial success that this first entry experiences can launch the series forward with better mechanics and modern features.
Score: 8/10
Editor's Note: This game was reviewed on the PS5
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