Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes

Like Suikoden? Want Suikoden 6? Here ya go

why they doing this?

I had so much hope for this game since it was being made by many of the old Suikoden crew but this game as I have mentioned is utterly toothless and feels like it was made by children. In this game the Empire takes over a city after a few hours into the game and they just take over, like no one gets hurt, no one dies and no one so much as attempts dissent. Another situation is that a false flag attack is planned on the main characters town and the town is attacked and burned down. Now you would expect for the people in the village to maybe die or get hurt but no another main character shows up and magically rescues everyone and no one dies and that is not even bringing into it that you are in the village for like 5 minutes before they burn it down and because you have had no chance to actually be there and talk to people it means nothing unlike in Suikoden 2 where you go to the local towns and meet Polka and then Luca kills everyone and burns it down. Finally there is the battle to defend the main city and you lose it but the Countess you work for agrees to stay behind and draw their attention and finally when the Empiral Duke arrives and captures her he offers her a chance to bend the knee to him and she refuses to but instead of killing her he just lets her go. Compare this to what happens to Annabell in Suikoden 2 it feels so weak and like the writers did not want to show the real horrors of war but they wanted a more Saturday morning cartoon feeling to conflict. I can remember so much of Suikoden 1 and 2 since they had very confronting scenes that showed the horrors of war but god help me I cannot remember even one interesting moment in Eiyuden Chronicles other than long corridor dungeons that were so boring I was falling asleep.

This is rather enjoyable game for what it is worth regarding gameplay and characters. I tend to think it weighs down for being a bit on lighthearted RPG side, but not necessarily in negative way. Scenes are all voice-acted, there is nice flow with how everything progressess and okay amount of equipment you can accuire. There are minigames to spend your time with and exploration felt mostly rewarding in regards of finding chests off the path. You can have 6 characters on combats (excluding attendants and support) and on top of normal attack you can also choose to use skills/magic, items or special Hero combos where multiple characters use their turn for powerful attack. Combat is interesting and varying enough to keep it nice to smash combat encounters instead of fleeing (or using auto-battle) all the time. Story was interesting enough and character variety is enjoyable, tho i had difficulties to choose sometimes who i actually want into my party next. There may be some sentences some specific characters would say on certain situations, but as far as i found out, nothing too major is missed since all the current story relevant characters are "locked" into your party in a way they are with you, let it be active combatant or attendant (meaning "passive" character in party). Then we have already mentioned bugs and localization issue. In terms with bugs, my main issues were recruitment bug and refresh rate bug that will affect random encounters. Localization... yeah, it can be easily told there were liberties taken. There are multiple instances where characters are saying something that feels very off and even breaking the situational tension game otherwiser managed to build. Where i think it is rather aggressive to make 1 star reviews only based on localization, i also cannot just let it slide as "minor nuisance". I really like the game and cannot wait for the DLCs. But bugs and localization are both something that needs to be checked and corrected in some way.

First off, I've never played Suikoden. Everyone seems to have their opinion on whether or not this is a good successor to the series. I can't speak to that; only to whether or not it's good as a game released in 2024, and... it's not. The first thing that jumps out at you is the graphics. You have a beautifully-constructed 3D world, but all the characters are 2D sprites. Now that was a great trick on the original PlayStation, when the hardware wasn't good enough to render human bodies well. Today... it just feels badly out of place. There's a cuscene early on with Nowa and Seign sitting at a campfire. Beautifully-rendered PBR lighting and reflections on the slightly-shiny stone nearby... and two blocky guys made up of very noticeable pixels, who the lighting just does not look right on *at all!* You have no control over your camera. (Except on the world maps, where you do. So the devs did implement this; they just decided to deny it to you for 90% of the game!) And there are plenty of places where you have to walk through areas that are obscured because of stupid camera angles. Likewise, you have no control over the pacing. There is no way to skip cutscenes, or long battle animations. (Disgaea had this figured out 20 years ago. Why can't this studio do it today?) You have no control over the plot. The entire thing is on very, *very* noticeable rails. Almost every single war battle and duel battle is a scripted cutscene trying and failing to pretend it's a game with actual stakes. And there are really no stakes throughout. If a town falls to the Empire, for example, you can still walk around freely in it and even if you talk to the guards, they don't realize you're their Public Enemy #1! You have no idea what's going on. After playing all the way through, I still have only the slightest idea what a rune lens is, and no clue what primal lenses are or why they're so important. And the entire plot revolves around them! This game is a mess. Buy something else.