Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes

a perfect love letter for suikoden 1 and 2 fans!

Honestly surpirsed how this game turned out. I went in with no expectations but I am glad to have given it a chance. Its got some flaws here and there and a few bugs it should probably fix, but regardless I had a great time with this game.

Eiyuden Chronicle is far from a perfect game, but it's a good nostalgia trip for Suikoden fans and a fun time in its own right. There's a lot of variety between standard JRPG combat and exploration to duels to large army battles to character recruitment to base building to a large number of mini games and collectables. If you really want to go deep on the latter, it's available for you, though the game would strongly benefit from not forcing players to play through so much top spinning and cooking challenges in order to recruit the full gang. The music is solid and the graphics are impressive, particularly in the backgrounds. It's never going to end up at the top of anyone's list, but it's fun to play.

It seems this game is embroiled in some kind of perpetual battle against trolls, but uh... I guess I'll leave a review. My heart goes out to the Eiyuden/Suikoden community. I don't know what Suikoden is but people mention it a lot. I got this off of Humble Bundle. I only played the game for like 10 minutes. I'm not really interested in playing more. The combat felt overwhelming in the first couple of battles. They gave me like 7 characters. I don't know what they do, what their skills mean, what the action economy is. All I know is that its another initiative based JRPG system that has some unclear range restrictions. I would have preferred getting slowly introduced to the battle mechanics and a smaller pool of characters. I used Japanese dub with the English text. Full disclosure, have like 1 college-class worth of Japanese proficiency, but the localization just seemed bad. I was hearing dialogue that I was translating in my head that was just not equating to what the characters were saying in English. I'm not sure I trust the rest of the game to communicate the themes or characters. As far as the vibe goes... I just didn't really get it. They starting throwing random terms at me that were obviously important in the context of the world, but I was given no extra explanation. Drive-by-exposition, I would call it. I got scared off from the game because of the translation, the gameplay complexity, and the world-building. Thank you for reading!

The game is fun and I've almost beat it, but there are things that the devs need to come back and fix, or someone needs to mod. For me, the biggest it rune allowance and the next is unskippable animations. Rune Allowance: If you want a party of fun characters, you are going to have a really rough time in fights as the fun characters have the worst rune allowance. Runes have a strength from 1-4 stars and characters have 4-8 rune slots that have an allowance from 2-4. The problem is that fun characters have 4 slots with 3 having an allowance of 2. Want to use the luchador? Great, just make sure you are ready to rest him every fight. Want to use the cool samurai? archer? Awesome, just make sure you don't mind her barely doing damage. What about the bazooka lady? She can't use any of the runes to make her helpful. Rune allowance take most if the fun characters and make them unusable. Unskippable Animations: War battles, eggfoot races, and card battles become a true slog and push you away from wanting to engage with them when most of the time spent on these minigames is spent watching the game sloooooooooooowly get to the point where you can act again.

Este juego es tal vez el unico rpg que trata sobre un conflicto belico que logra verdaderamente transmitir la escala de la situacion, ademas de que se resuelven los conflictos no con "6 tipos elegidos" sino con todo un grupo enorme de gente resistiendo (de ahi el nombre los 100 heroes). Con eso dicho este dato contrasta con el tono del juego que comienza serio, pero va degenerandose en algo medio serio pero que si sos un adulto no te podes tomar completamente a pecho, tipo el malo pasa de ser un tipo que quiere unificar por sed de poder a "el siguiente paso evolutivo de la humanidad *risa lokita*" el protagonista no tiene personalidad, esto es en parte, una consecuencia de que tiene que poder interactuar con los mas de 100 personajes a reclutar y seguirles el juego con sus diferentes personalidades, cosa que no se, deberias notar. El final de la historia es epico apesar de todo lo dicho y lo encontre muy satisfactorio (aunque el ultimo tramo si estuvo algo apresurado) Por ultimo en terminos de gameplay: ta bien. Muy simplificado porque alfin y al cabo tenes 100+ personajes jugables, muy sobre railes tipo leveas cuando el juego te diga que subas de level y las peleas de jefe son muy sencillitas, saliendo del combate esta cosa tiene mucho MUCHO contenido secundario, pesca, cartas, beyblades, duelos de cocina, reclutamiento, carreras de pollos, carreras de autos, etc. Es un juego con una historia basica pero ejecutada en una escala poco convencional, y que te puede servir para meterle muchas horas si vas por el platino que estimo debe tomar unas 80 o 100 horas.

Character design 7/10 - I like how they differentiate each places with colors and culture but there are tons of misalignments for me. One dude is a Samurai, a knight, a ninja, then suddenly there's a military soldier and mechanized kids. The treefolks and Sharks didn't look marking, other characters are somewhat forgettable since they don't have that much screentime. Story 7/10 "It’s pretty straightforward: you lose a battle, go to the next town or village, and maybe you win, maybe you lose. That's totally fine. You also come to expect some betrayal; since it's an RPG, that trope isn't really new anymore. You just suspect it's coming and end up shocked by how it happens—or maybe you aren't shocked at all because it was too obvious. A lot of times, it feels like there was supposed to be more time spent in an area, but the game gives you a 'we need to move on' type of feeling. It's good, though! A little too close to another game (iykyk) Mini games 8/10 A lot of it needs polishing but it was still fun to play, you are not forced to play to progress to the story and a lot of them are pretty straightforward as well. Soundtrack 8/10 Battle Mechanics 7/10 You can choose who you want to empower, and this is where strategy comes into play. Not all of them have good rune slots, and combos are so unrewarding that you won't even need to pay attention to them. A lot of the passives are nonsense too, so you won't even bother using those kinds of runes. Still, it's a nice game, and there's no specific character so powerful that I absolutely need them on my team—besides Momo, I guess. You can bring anyone and decide, 'I want you to be the tank,' even though they aren't supposed to be, or make them a spellcaster because why not? The story feels a little too short; I feel like there should be more to it. Completing the game leaves you with a, 'Whaaaaat? I was expecting to play more,' kind of feeling. Overall 8/10

I really wanted to like this game. I was a huge Suikoden fan when I was younger but either I've outgrown the genre or this isn't a good interpretation of that game. It's just so boring and the core characters are uninteresting. I played for more than 10 hours and I have zero interest in the plot, base building or combat. So disappointing.