Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes

The writing has felt incredibly sub par, filled with Joss Whedon'isms "ERM, SO THAT JUST HAPPENED" Also, it's infuriating how they do not make it clear at all where characters need to be placed in your party format for hero combos to be active. I put off getting this game because I was concerned that Murayama's last game would be bad, and here we are. Just go emulate suikoden 2 instead. EDIT - I forgot to mention a few things. The pacing is atrocious. I'm still in the very beginning and every 10-20 steps there's another cutscene, and honestly all of these smaller cutscenes could have been tied into one longer one and the actual pacing, getting to run around grind fights etc would have felt way better. All in all, this game feels like a ripoff even on the fifteen dollar sale I bought it on. This is wholly disappointing because I grew up with Suikoden and this game is just cashing in on nostalgia. I mean christ, even suikoden 4 is better than this. The combat itself is purely functional but it's nothing to write home about. The music is good, the pixel art is great, but the writing is egregiously bad. The intro sequence where you are joining "the watch" with zero context, when compared to suikoden 2 where your adventure kicks off with a false flag operation massacring child soldiers to prolong a war - I mean I guess it's my fault for expecting this to be anything other than a cash grab to be honest. The mighty no. 9 of jrpgs

Got this game from a friend who didn't want it. I'm a big JRPG nut, so I was mildly excited about this. The game's pedigree wasn't one I was familiar with, but the premise seemed interesting enough to at least try. Unfortunately, at 24 hours in I don't think I care much to see the rest of it. The game isn't bad. In many ways, I'd describe it as "the most JRPG of all time". It has turn based combats, it's got a bunch of minigame side quests, there's fishing, there's town building, there's recruitable characters, there's army battles. It has all these 'extra' things which you usually see one or two of in every JRPG, but few comitt to them all. The main issue, however, is that the core of the game isn't very enjoyable. The game goes to great length to offer extreme nuanced automation of the game's auto-battle mode for when you just don't want to deal with random encounters. But the game never really stopped to question why the random encounters aren't enjoyable in the first place. Despite all the options the combat just isn't very deep, even the boss fights are largely uninteresting and don't ask particularly much of you. So one of the two pillars of JRPGs, the combat, isn't a selling point here. The second pillar, the story, also just isn't all that great. Sure, there's a couple of interesting characters, and the overall plot isn't the worst or anything. But there's nothing to really grab me either, and the first main character really just isn't a very interesting one. The focus on also having very many recruitable party members means that they are all quirky and interesting on a surface level... but there's no depth because no one really has any development. I don't think it's a tall ask that once you're 24 hours into a game the story should have grabbed you, and it simply hasn't. But again, nothing in this game is explicitly bad. The music is actually quite catchy! And the production quality feels very high with a lot of voice acting. But you should only really get this game if you're fine with sleeping through most of the combat, and that the story remains largely a side motivator. I'd imagine, as apply put by the title, that unless you're into the concept of running around and recruiting all the game's characters for a sake of completion, then this won't be for you.

Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes (EC:HH) is, unfortunately, quite mid. The story is serviceable. It tells the overused hero's journey of a young nobody becoming the lord and saviour. A 'bad guy' wants progress but approaches it the evil way, while the 'good guys' refuse change because only 'special people' deserve special power. Anyway... Where EC:HH fails quite badly is in the gameplay. It tries to mix many different systems together but none of them are done well. Battles are pretty boring, and even in the 'post-game', the efficient way to play is basically to optimise for auto-attacking or MP-less skills. Hero combos are weak, characters' mana pools are small, and ways to recover mana is limited. Inventory space is tiny compared to how each 'large mana potion' takes up one whole slot. The range and row/column setup in battle look interesting at first but you'll soon realise that many of these mechanics are out of your control. Taunt, counter and dodge barely work and depend a lot on RNG. The mechanics that are within your control inevitably end up being the more useful ones, and it basically boils down to alpha-striking with the cheapest, fastest attack. The rune system felt interesting but was restricted by how each playable character has basically fixed rune slots that from the onset either makes the character good or suck. There are only a few good runes and good characters can slot those runes, while the rest will forever be sucky. The game lets you recruit some 70-ish characters that you can play (and another 40-ish that manage your town), and assuming you do play them, the equipment and rune swap/load out system is horrible. When forced to swap to new characters (due to story), you do not get a chance to change their loadout there and then, so you either run them with subpar stuff or take a trip back to base just to swap stuff around. For such a huge cast, the inventory management system is bad. There is no proper overview system, and the closest functional one is the base armour seller but you cannot actually swap equipment there, only buying and replacing current ones. All in all, a mess. Then for upgrading weapons, you have to do it one by one for each character, having to sit through 5 seconds of upgrading 'animation' each time where a simple 'upgrade all' or ‘upgrade to max’ should have been implemented. (5 secs) x (70+ characters) x (14 levels) = 4900 secs = 81 minutes of your life gone (or slightly less since later characters start with higher levels). Yes, there's a Steam achievement for upgrading every bloody damn thing even if you don't use the characters at all. Also time wasting are the mini games. Now, JRPGs often have long mini games that take many hours to 'complete'. EC:HH has a card game and it was alright... for about 20 games. Because it doesn't get harder after that or reward you anything useful. Yet the game wants you to complete 120 games and each game can take around 3 minutes (because of the many unskippable animations); that's 6 hours. The same can be said for the eggfoot racing, beigoma battles, and cooking mini games. They are too long and unnecessarily time wasting with too many unskippable repeated 'scenes'. On the other hand, I love the main soundtrack and enjoyed some of the English voice acting, especially the bratty teleporter lady. And hers is the voice I've heard the most since having to teleport all over the world to complete every unnecessary achievement in the game. All in all, Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is alright but fell way short of what I expected out of a good turn-based combat JRPG. It is held down by under-baked systems and too many unnecessary, unskippable time wasters.

I started it a couple of times but couldn't really get in to it. Now I finally got into it I found out it was an even worse mistake. I love the premise of the mass recruitment, the additional field battles and settlement building. The story is great and the creation of a rebellion is a cool interest investment. But the more I played the worse it got. - When you turn off the music it is 100% silence. No footsteps, wind, chatting villagers or birds chirping about. - Playing with specific characters creates combo attacks. 95% of these (damaging) are worse that separate basic attacks. Unless they increase targets or give buffs, they are useless. - Magic is way to expensive. 10mp for a basic spell or 60mp for advanced out of 200 (for the first 30 lvls) makes it very costly to use. Not per battle per ENTIRE DUNGEON/AREA. That might consist of 50 battles and a boss or 2. And the damage is meh compared to physical skills. - Some characters are just straight up better then the others. Mio is one of the first in your team but has the lowest damage output, no magic/special skills and dies in 2 hits (for the first 25h). I read there would be motivation to use the other, non-preferred characters outside of your main effective squad you like. After 25 hours I haven't seen this yet. - Your inventory has a max cap of 30 items. This includes healing packs, mana packs, damage items, buffs and remedies, ALL found runes, ring equipment and trade resources. You either dump it in the warehouse or chuck them when out of space. Which happens a decent amount of times for me. - Even tho it is on PC, K&M is a nightmare. No remapping, terrible button choices and the mouse doesn't exist. This game feels unfinished. Really in need of some QoL and balancing. But seeing it's been silent for a year, that ain't gonna happen. It's a shame. It has potential to be amazing. It's just the vast amount of small but continuous annoyances that keep me from enjoying. The DLC's seems to be garbage as well. 5/10

So much hype, for such a surface level game. Combat is the most boring pile of garbage I have ever seen. Combos/team ups mean nothing, your regular attack command almost 100% is the better choice. Magic is "meh" and has no oomph to it. Story is god awful, and after just beating it I couldn't name more than 2-3 characters that weren't in my team as they just didn't matter. Minigames make me want to KMS, and whoever came up with the spinner/battler minigame needs to be fired and never allowed to work on a game again. Random battles are completely inconsequential and serve as mere speedbumps to get to bosses which are just HP filled punching bags with sometimes annoying AF mechanics. All in all a complete let down and I am extremely disappointed I pre-ordered the digital deluxe version supporting these devs in hopes the game would be a proper Suikoden successor, but man oh man, was I ever wrong. They took all the heart and strategy from the Suikoden series and said "nah, people don't want this" and instead we got this drivel.

[b]Suikoden or Suikoden Successor? No, but something different....[/b] + great nostalgic feeling of Suikoden series (only until the first text appears) + some OST tracks are pretty good + many different characters + some pretty cool characters [spoiler]like Milana, Reyna, Markus, Francesca, Djikstra, Isha, Lian[/spoiler] + great Japanese Dub as always + some are expressive (some not) + different system + some very interesting ones, like in Suikoden + mini games are interesting + duell function is good +/- war management not that impressive +/- effects are good, but Rune Magic effects sh** - graphic bugs - weird shouting bubble glitch - story [spoiler](This isnt a story worth a Suikoden Successor, its a good night story for children)[/spoiler] - story pretty much weird and sucky [spoiler](missplaced unreasonable kills in subquests and its allright for characters that happened, but mainstory all is happy and fine. Wtf is happening here?[/spoiler] ----- very very very bad and faulty localisation. What is this sh**? This is a story game, just get the words right. Not that woke sh**!!! And don't invent extra sentences which arent present in the original! Also, dont exagurate things, which arent in the japanese original dub! By the love of God >_> - localisation reeks of "woke" message [spoiler](for example: gender becomes more important than story, harsh words were political corrected in a harmless way, harmfull content is ignored or censored)[/spoiler] - translation also 50% wrong translation, 20 % woke stuff, 20% just plainly wrong, woke and exaggerated, 10% a mix of the before mentioned - also dont put your weird westernized jokes and memes into the game. There is no such words in Japanese Dub! 120%!! None of them!!! - some character portrays westernized (aka censored) - setting up controller is faulty - also on xbox/ps5 controller very few rumble feedback (for real?) - music is way off (somtimes music tracks are barely hearable and other tracks pretty loud) - game is in 4k gpu heavy (means with medicore graphic like here unacceptable) - missing some important tutorials (you gotta find some stuff out by yourself) - lol, there is no footsteps - Dungeon walking Simulation - camera infight buggy - audio inconsistent = shouting lines in the game kills my ears, some audio recording is quieter and more damb as others - minigames... [spoiler]gated some characters! Minigames shouldnt do that, because not all ppl like minigames in hardcore grind mode[/spoiler] - [spoiler]fishing[/spoiler] has no background music - [spoiler]Beigoma[/spoiler] is pretty much not suitable for this rpg - [spoiler]Card Game[/spoiler] too much hassle to collect all - [spoiler]Cooking Duell[/spoiler] the longevity of this, has aged me like 20 years and beyond - you cant enter edgeparts of the world map for no reason - some quests are weirdly skipable, game wants you to go to Point A. But if you go to Point B (which isnt highlighted as the next step after Point A), the quest will skip to the step of Point B, ignoring Point A Storypart - Battle plan options often buggy (for example for auto atk options: characters heal, even if nothing is set in the options or attacking same enemy, but attacking different enemies) - some characters are overwhelmingly overpowered, while in contrast others are pretty much very weak (in everything they do) - therefore the balancing between characters suffers a lot, chars with heavy armor with nearly the same stats like the backline medium armor/light armor characters, suffers nearly no dmg, while the backline often dies in one attack (these problems were adressed in many community hubs) - random text stuck in some cut scenes without a chance of skipping to next dialogue - [spoiler]sorry to say but your whole story is "safeplay" sh** for children. This is not a Suikoden or Suikodenlike story, here is no real Betrayal, no war feeling, no real sadness, lackluster evil schemes, no prisoners, nothing gamechanging, no real sad deaths etc.[/spoiler] - Healing Magic is pretty much useless in comparison to healing items - [spoiler]recruitable characters are really easy to find, I miss some hard to find characters like in Suikoden 1: Crowley[/spoiler] - Ending: [spoiler]graphic, text and audio bugs killed the mood[/spoiler] Conclusion: Two part rating: The Game can be interesting for the new Audience (those who like Concord, South of Midnight, Alan Woke 2, Dragon Age Wayneguard etc). You can call this a kinda "New Age" JRPG which looks like Suikoden or even a Successor of sorts. But it clearly isnt when you dive into the game itself. This JRPG is more oriented to the new age of gamers (like Concord etc.) Clearly this audience doesnt exist or a minor who dont really buy video games. [b]Score (as a "New Age" Game for the new audience): 70[/b] The Game has mild themes and censored speech in comparison to Suikoden 1-6. As stated from the devs, this game is a Successor of Suikoden. So it should be compared to Suikoden: A story which consists of real betrayal, killed families, brutal villians etc. [spoiler](Remember the Suikoden Neclord Scenario? Man that was great!)[/spoiler]. here in this Game: ([spoiler]even the invading Empire cant be felt in its potetial brutality[/spoiler]). In comparison to Suikoden, here is not much real on-screen drama to avoid that the audience is offended in many ways, which is a "no-go" for a Suikoden Successor [spoiler](no burned down villages + many "on-screen" killed ppl, safeplay in terms of war, no dragic past played out in front of the player etc.)[/spoiler], the localisation is also a woke mess (I neglected the translation of Voices after 2 lines into the game and just pay attention to the always superb japanese dub). This game has modern graphics and have potential to be more entertaining, but clearly misses the point to please the nonexisting "new" game audience, with irritating and false interpretated themes, which arent present in the original localisation, not a bit of it. The character models are good but you can see the censor/toned down models across the board, which is poison for a Suikoden Successor. The feeling in the story is not there, many characters a bland or even none existent. The Battle scenario has gone to hell and takes to long to unfold. The Base Managemenet is better than Suikoden (well 20 years later no wonder). Characters are not well hidden, which is pretty much disappointing. Gameplay across the board is easy and not engaging enough. Dungeons tend to be very long. There are some things with nostalgia, but afterward destroyed by the nonsense story without its tragic point. All Suikoden Installments where pretty much better. Here are so many missed points which are present in Suikoden. If you are looking for a new and better Suikoden or a Successor, better look forward to the potential remasters of the original series (and maybe mod some things), which were made with love. Play this game, when you wanna play another 0815 JRPG if you are the "new" nonexsistent audience. Game is not acceptable to be called a Suikoden Successor. In general the game lacks in thriving interesting story, the important moments were killed with woke localisation. Many bugs in gameplay, camera, controller etc. appears a lot. Many characters are dull written and easily accessable. Graphics are good, but the world is bland and empty. All in all a forgetable game, I feel very sorry for the backers. This game could be really good. But Players were betrayed, it fails as "new" Game a Suikoden successor. Even Eiyuden Chronicles Rising was a far better game than this. All in all this games suffers in many aspects. I wanted to give the game a neutral or good rating....but there isnt any point to give a good final verdict. So I have to rate it, as a failure game. But for the "new" audience it can be good. [b]My personal score: 35 and score as Suikoden Successor: 10[/b] 13/10 Healerstick Magic Ass-Ram!!!

I'm 8 hours in and it's painfully boring. There's cutscenes every few seconds so you barely get to play, and the story isn't very interesting. It's the same loop on repeat: - enter area - recruit new character - small dungeon with boss - move to next area There's an illusion of an open world but it's actually linear, e.g. you can play through a dungeon but the boss doesn't spawn until you backtrack across the map, talk to a specific NPC, then walk back through the dungeon. Now the boss magically appears. Honestly just buy Dragon Quest XI instead, it's a much better game with a great story.

I just finished this after 101 hours and I definitely have mixed feelings about the game. I do recommend it, but I must warn you of certain things. If you plan to recruit all characters like I did you're in for some pretty egregious mechanics. The minigames to acquire a few characters took away a few points in my opinion and brought the game down quite badly to the point that I considered giving up. The card game was tolerable, but every other minigame was atrocious and left me wondering "What were they thinking?!" I persevered though. As far as characters go I liked the variety, but sadly as one would expect with 120 characters some are going to be absolute trash compared to others. Not to mention each character may have 1 unique skill and that's it. Some had no unique skills at all. You're getting quantity here, not quality. All in all, I enjoyed it, but it's not fantastic, nor is it garbage. 6/10