Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes [Review]
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes, developed by Rabbit and Bear Studios and published by 505 Games, is a spiritual successor to the Suikoden series. This game was made possible due to very high demand and success on Kickstarter. Fans of the Suikoden series are in for a treat! Hundred Heroes is a beautifully crafted game taking advantage of the now more modern 2.5D, 3D, and half 2D art style that has taken the JRPG scene by storm, led by Square Enix’s Octopath Traveler. The story of Hundred Heroes challenges our hero's morals and sparks war in the empire. The start of the game feels rushed and is rather weak.
Everyone meets Nowa for the first time.
The game starts with Nowa meeting Garr, Lian, and Mio. These three people met Nowa in town and had a brief, small conversation before they randomly joined Nowa's party. I found this introduction and the start of the game to be a bit odd. Let's get the bad out of the way first. The exploration is large and open, causing a lot of mindless wandering, and I often feel like I'm wasting time. The battle system, although good, can also be super easy. Need to walk away? Just turn on auto-battle. Auto-battles with random encounters are just a guaranteed win. Lastly, like in every classic RPG, the bosses have triple-stacked health bars. I personally don't care what anyone has to say about my next statement. After gaming for 25 years, I don't think any boss fight in a game should be 20–30 min.
I remember the days of leaving my PS1/PS2 running for days to survive a boss battle. Even now, with Persona 5, I was in a boss battle for what felt like an hour. Lastly, I am not in any way a teacher, nor do I claim to be the best when it comes to grammar and punctuation, but, in some areas of this game, it's rough. Also, a lot of the catchphrases in the game are rinse and repeat. It was like hearing Naruto say, "Believe it!" over and over again. This took individuality away from a handful of the characters since they all would repeat the same things from time to time.
With all of that out of the way, this game is still top-tier. The OST is very memorable and got stuck in my head. I ended up going on YouTube and adding it to my song playlists. Despite anything negative I said about this game, Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is an absolute delight to play. The characters in the game are fully voice-acted and the acting is top-notch. The battle system is of a standard Turnbassed RPG but overly cinematic and reminded me of Riviera the Promised Land for the PSP or Golden Sun on the Gameboy Advanced. The 3D visuals do not clash at all with the 2D animation. Anyone looking for a gripping story that's going to have you wanting more, shouldn't look any further. Any fans of Turn-based RPGs definitely need to keep Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes on their radar. I feel like this game will be a cult classic and a hard one to get physically. Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is available for the Xbox Family of Consoles, Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4/5, and PC.
I had an absolute blast with this game. The flashy, over-the-top animation in battle made me want to try every attack just to see how it was animated. Often times in RPGs, I just read the description and decide if I should do an attack, but man, was I blown away by the animations in this game. The voice acting was superb, and I enjoyed the characters a lot, too. Nowa sort of cliché, he was a good main character. The music was a huge success for this game, compelling me to add it to my music list on YouTube. The only thing holding this game back are the long battles. The grammar issues here and there, and the pacing, whether it be the general walking around in emptiness or the slow points in the story.