Our tale begins with Nowa, a young boy from a rural village who joins The Watch, a group of like-minded individuals who roam the lands, assisting the various denizens of the scattered villages and cities. Assisting them on this particular mission – to find a ‘Primal Lens’ - are hand-picked soldiers of the Empire, but whilst this motley crew work well together at present...what will happen when peace fails and they are sworn to fight against each other?
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is a pretty classic affair that will be accessible to both those hardcore JRPG fanatics out there as well as new arrivals to the genre, tutorials breezily guide you through the various mechanics, all of which are quite straightforward to grasp.
With whimsical music, and crisp, 3D visuals for its environments - with characters of the world being being brought to life through pixel art – Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes gives off vibes of Octopath Traveller-lite in how the game is presented.
You’ll spend your time wandering the overworld, towns and dungeons in a bid to meet as many possible companions as you can, in order to fine-tune your six-character party (with support characters available, natch). With over 120 possible selectable friends on offer, it’s a pleasure as you get sucked into random battles and work out which of your current line-up works best.
The game feels bite-sized in terms of the speed at which you accrue characters, and there’s always a thrill as your little group grows in size, and you level up their weapons at the blacksmith, swap out their special powers (rune lens), or kit them up with some awesome armour.
The game is fully voice-acted, which I personally found quite incredible, due to the amount of characters that you meet, and that certainly works to keep players involved. There’s a lot to love here, from the music through to the visuals, voice work, traditional gameplay and solid – if simplistic – combat, but it’s not all clear sailing.
In almost Dragon’s Dogma 2-esque fashion, the quest lines are wonderfully vague, and state things such as ‘go and recruit more allies’, there’s no ‘follow-the-line-to-your-goal’, no hints, no map highlights...just ‘off you go’. Whilst this could be loose, fun and full of exciting exploration, the land map is so desperately sparse, and the enemies so limited and oft-recycled that there feels little to discover beyond ploughing through the main quest, and this really hampers the fun of roaming the countryside.
SUMMARY
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is a solid game that is a welcome continuation of the Suikoden games, but also feels too stuck in the past to break new ground or really stand out.
In almost Dragon’s Dogma 2-esque fashion, the quest lines are wonderfully vague, and state things such as ‘go and recruit more allies’, there’s no ‘follow-the-line-to-your-goal’, no hints, no map highlights...just ‘off you go’. Whilst this could be loose, fun and full of exciting exploration, the land map is so desperately sparse, and the enemies so limited and oft-recycled that there feels little to discover beyond ploughing through the main quest, and this really hampers the fun of roaming the countryside.
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is a solid game that is a welcome continuation of the Suikoden games, but also feels too stuck in the past to break new ground or really stand out.
I’m sure that there are some people that will really click and connect with this game, and I hope that you are one of them – but the limitations that creep in can’t be avoided.
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