It’s been just about four years since Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes hit Kickstarter, quickly tallying up the support it needed for a bold mission: reignite the Suikoden style of RPG, under the guidance of members of the original Suikoden team. Now, Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is here, and it seems to be making good on that, with some notable caveats.
This is Rabbit & Bear Studio’s debut solo effort, after assisting Natsume Atari on 2022’s surprisingly solid prequel game Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising. It also arrives not long after the passing of Yoshitaka Murayama, the legendary creator of Suikoden and head of Rabbit & Bear, earlier this year. It’s that indelible legacy of Suikoden that Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes tries to carry forward, and to my lesser-trained eye, it is managing it.
I need to put the qualifier on because, while I’ve played roughly what you’d call the “introduction” of Suikoden 2, that’s as far as I’ve made it. Similarly, I’d say I’m still fairly early in Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes, still getting to grips with its systems and grander concepts. The foundational aspects in Eiyuden feel familiar, though. I’m organizing a party, fighting in columns of back and front, three party members apiece. Heck, there’s a castle that I can build up and tons of party members to recruit. That’s pretty darn Suikoden.
Laying the bedrock
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes puts you into the shoes of Nowa to start. He’s an RPG hero through-and-through, adventuring away from his small town to join the Eltisweiss Watch, to see new horizons and grow. Soon, he collects an ever-growing roster of friends gained through little adventures or quests, or as part of the main story, expanding out into a massive roster of playable characters.
All the while, Nowa is caught up in something greater. He lives in League lands, while the Galdean Empire looms in the distance, seemingly gearing up to invade. Seign, another lead in Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes, bears a hefty weight on his shoulders, as an Imperial soldier with his star on the rise. I’ve only spent some brief time with Marisa, the third protagonist, but I dig her connection to the deeper mysteries surrounding the world’s lore.
These three leads fall under some identifiable tropes, but they work. I especially like how Nowa and Seign play off each other, making for some of the more compelling parts of Eiyuden‘s intro. The rest of the Hundred Heroes are, well, a mixed bag.
Having a hundred recruitable characters, as the title purports, means there is going to be wheat and chaff. I really like the more expressive characters, like the attitude-filled punk Yusuke and the healer Francesca, who goes from stereotypical White Mage to a brash, foul-mouthed fighter once battles get heated. She gives Kaine from NieR a run for her money at times. She’s great.
Then, there’s a guy whose whole personality is hunting and having a crossbow. Maybe he unlocks some great revelation down the line, but right now, he looks like he walked out of an isekai Bass Pro shop. They can’t all be winners, but the one-note characters do shine or falter based on how good that note is.
It doesn’t help that the start of this game is really slow, and issues with refresh rates made clearing quests that, say, require you to beat a random encounter enemy a certain number of times, made the intro drag on even longer. Dungeons haven’t really amazed me yet, either. Most have been a lot of running around, walking up and down side paths, and managing the brutally limiting inventory as the game chucks items at you.
Six-on-six
This extends into battles where, again, a slow start and one-note characters can make early fights feel very repetitive. Rune slots allow your teammates to expand their moveset or reinforce their strengths, but those don’t unlock for a while. Instead, you hold a big bag of Runes you’ve collected from dungeons and towns, and wait for levels to unlock.
Where the combat system shines brighter is during boss battles, especially ones with gimmicks. These specifically labeled mechanics require you to engage with something besides just smacking the enemy force in front of you; in my personal favorite, it was hitting the switch on a crane, to make it drop a rock on my foes instead of me. This particular one made me think about turn order and the action economy in new ways, and I loved it.
Other than that, it’s standard turn-based combat that will feel right at home for Suikoden fans. I do enjoy the team-up attacks, called Hero Combos here, and they all look fantastic and haven’t grown old for me yet. Some are funny, some are spectacles, and others are just neat ways of game-ifying the relationships forged within your massive party.
Two other pillars of Suikoden combat are here, too. One-on-one duels are the same as you remember; read the dialogue, respond in kind, soak in the drama. The grand strategy battles are a different case, and I’m a bit mixed on them. During these, you deploy massive forces on a tiled field, and each one can advance or change facing. It feels like an old war in the good ways, where even just directing a massive amount of troops feels as arduous as it should. The actual battles themselves look neat, with some nice effects, and while they’re not incredibly involved or deep yet, I do enjoy them. But they also tie in one of my other major nitpicks of Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes.
Stumbling out the gate
Eiyuden Chronicle was Kickstarted, and it’s obvious in places that other Kickstarter-backed games have been, in the past; think Bloodstained. You’ll be in the middle of a cutscene, and a portrait of someone clearly not part of this fantasy world is hanging in the corner. Pets have names that seem like they came from backers (this is honestly not a critique, though it does mean there’s a pretty high volume of pets roaming Eiyuden‘s world). And during strategy battles, an actual kill feed sits on the right-hand side of the screen, with lore-appropriate names appearing alongside what I’m pretty sure are backer names.
The impact of these things can range from a small irritation to major nuisance, but they all compound. It doesn’t help that some of the dialogue for NPCs also gets… strange, at times. One boy kept asking me, “Don’t you have any?” when I talked to him. No context, no elaboration. Add on some strange pacing decisions early on, like a fade-to-black moment moving into a conversation where Nowa comments on what a wild two weeks it’s been, make a lot of the narrative and world structure around the RPG feel flimsy.
The real, pointed issue with Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes right now at launch, though, is the state of it on the Nintendo Switch. I originally intended to play this game on my OLED Switch, and after a few hours, requested a Steam key instead. Graphical issues, chugging frames, long load times, and a full-on freeze every time I opened my menu—where I use healing items or handle party management—made it rough as hell. Go read our sister site Siliconera’s coverage for more; Jenni weathered more of the Switch version than I could, and is a real trooper for it. Patches have since tried to bandage some of the more egregious problems, but it’s still in a really rough state.
By the accounts of both other reviewers and backers who got early copies, the PlayStation and Xbox versions fare better, but the PC looks to be the most reliable, stable platform at the moment. It’s a major shame, as this sort of massive RPG with tons of stuff to do and chase after, with so many characters to recruit, would feel at home on a handheld. For now, I cannot really recommend picking up the Switch version.
Carrying the torch
It’s a shame that Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes comes with so many caveats. There is a tangible reverence here, a love for the style of game that Suikoden once was, and an attempt to bring that kind of RPG back into the limelight. Like Bloodstained and Shenmue 3 before it, there’s almost a bridging of time happening here. Like Rabbit & Bear truly just set out to make another Suikoden, but with its own world and concepts it could own.
Sadly, that does mean it falls prey to some issues. A few are related to that strict adherence, though I’d argue the vast majority of issues are with how the game performs and functions. Maybe there’s some hope, then, that Eiyuden Chronicle could continue to get patched and fixed, bringing it closer to that ideal vision.
I’m planning on finishing out my run regardless, as I’m curious to see how it ramps up and closes out. There’s enough here that I think a Suikoden fan is going to reignite some nostalgic sparks. Heck, I felt a bit rosy just seeing a new game take on this art form, combat style, and general approach. It’s heartwarming to see that, between Eiyuden and games like Octopath Traveler 2, people might be truly hungry for more pixelized RPGs.
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes will need some time though. It’s not a swinging success right out of the gate, and even with what I hope are inevitable patches and fixes, it will still have its caveats. This one might just be for the fans right now, and PC fans specifically, but if you fit that Venn diagram, this still might be a journey worth checking out.
Published: Apr 23, 2024 03:56 pm