Every so often we get a game that can bring fans from the past together with the present. That is what I feel has happened regarding Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes. This game has bridged the JRPGs of old and the present day. Leading to what in my opinion is a masterpiece modern take on a classic JRPG experience. **may contain minor spoilers**
Developer & Publisher // Rabbit & Bear Studios / 505 Games
Platforms // Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PS5, PS4, Switch, and PC
MSRP & Release Date // $49.99, April 23, 2024
Reviewed On // PC (Steam)
A Story That Draws You In
The story kicks off on the continent of Allraan. A place where you can experience a diverse range of people and cultures. There is everything from humans, elves, beastmen, desert people, and much more. Everything revolves around these magical items called “rune-lenses.” Due to the eventual greedy Galdean Empire and their search for rune-lenses, the world suffers. They have a way to amplify the power of run-lenses for diabolical purposes. In the beginning, Nowa and Seign go on a quest to seek one of these rune-lenses as companions. After this, the true intentions of the Galdean Empire are revealed posing a threat to Allraan.
The story is very important to me in games. Sometimes I can forego a different mistake if the story pulls me in enough. I can’t stress how much Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred does just that. It has everything you could ever want in a story. There are heroes and villains. But the unique stories behind these characters add to the overall arching story. Then you have war, politics, betrayal, death, and people coming together to save the world. One of my favorite things was the fact there are technically three main characters in Nowa, Seign, and Marisa with times when you get to play all three of them as the main focus here and there. Nowa is the primary, but I enjoy how it branches out to the others and allows me to experience someone else’s perspective even if for a short time.
Good Pacing Plus Extra Adventures
You could be fighting against someone at one point, and then ultimately they become an ally. There also isn’t just one villain in the story. Like in the Suikoden series, this story had multiple antagonists/villains. Just when you think I can focus on the main antagonist, Dux Aldric of the Galdean Empire, someone else sides with him or shows up. Naturally, this causes a lot of conflict. All this leads to multiple different scenarios that draw in the player throughout the story. I haven’t been this engaged in a game’s story in a long time.
As you experience the story, I’d recommend you take time to talk to as many people as you can. You never know who you could meet that could lead to other sidequests and allies. It took me over 50 hours to complete the game, but I could have maybe done it around 40ish hours.
The pacing was great and there was never a dull moment especially if you wanted to just go from main quest to main quest to complete the story. With all the extra activities in the game, I wanted to experience as much as possible. So I did go off to explore, recruit extra people, and do other side quests. If you do everything in Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes that is easily over 80 hours worth of content.
Beautiful Art Style and Backgrounds
One of my favorite things about games that draw me in is the game’s art style. This is one of the many things that Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes does well. Utilizing 2D sprites with 3D backgrounds is a unique art style that we don’t get to see often enough. Depending on where you are in the game’s world Rabbit & Bear did an excellent job of making the colors fit that scene. I was able to experience different backgrounds and scenes where leaves were falling and some areas where the plants swayed back and forth. Because of this, you could tell how much work they put in the attention to detail. It was nice to feel like the world I was experiencing was actually alive.
Eiyuden Chronicle did an excellent job in these designs because of their distinctive features. Towns that were in the desert looked authentic to their biome. The same is true with castles and the themes they represent. One castle belonged to an undead character, and resultingly the features were a little darker. In contrast, a royal castle was embellished with royal colors and highlighted its royal themes and features. So, I appreciated the different accurate representations in various areas and locations.
Unique Characters and Designs
Now unfortunately in my first playthrough, I didn’t get to recruit all the different heroes. But I will say the ones I did recruit were all amazing in their own ways. The details Rabit & Bear Studios put into each character in Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes were amazing. It’s not just the fact they designed over 100 unique characters, but it’s also the background and why those characters are doing what they are doing. Don’t get me wrong, I loved how each model was unique with their designs and colors. However, the backgrounds of each character and their motivation help provide more uniqueness to the story as well. For example, there are three bandits Yuthus, Zabi, and Kogen. You might think bandits are bad, but these three stole plants, vegetables, and other food to feed the villagers they were helping.
Sometimes characters can seem just thrown in and might not fit. That is not the case here. Then you have some characters’ interactions with other characters that add to the experience. For example, one of my favorite characters is the undead revenant king Markus and a necromancer named Milana. Milana keeps calling Markus her thrall and he continuously denies it. This leads to a lot of banter between the two which is great. Having so many characters in a game seems a daunting task, but one Rabit & Bear Studios excelled at very well.
A Clutter-Free UI
One thing that doesn’t get complimented enough is how great the UI in a game can be. At times, Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes can have multiple things happening at once. For example, sometimes when running around the world map or a location, characters could be having a little text conversation. This takes place in the bottom corner of the screen and isn’t overly distracting from what is going on. These conversations might add some context to what might be happening. Sometimes it might just be a small comment about the current situation too.
When a battle is going on nothing is cluttered. Everything from the character models to the portraits isn’t overbearing on the screen. All this allows all the great visual effects to be shown off and take the front stage. Even when running around the world due to the way the UI is designed you are afforded the full experience of your surroundings. All of this allows you to experience how beautiful this game really is.
Unique Encounter Rate
Throughout the history of JRPGs, it’s been difficult to balance a perfect encounter rate for random battle encounters. Initially, I was surprised by the lack of random battle encounters when I booted up Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes. So, I was skeptical about how my experience would be affected. As I progressed through the story I changed my point of view. Yes, to some the encounter rate is low, but the battles you do get are more meaningful. It feels like a slight difficulty increase and sometimes takes more strategy. When I did encounter battles it seemed like the characters were handsomely rewarded with XP as well. Those battles, in my opinion, are slightly more difficult than your typical random encounter every 30 seconds.
Surprisingly, I grew to like the rate at which enemies appear. There seems to be some flexibility with the encounter rates because there are items that can influence it. You could get accessories that can increase or lower the rates of encounters. So in my experience, I can see this might be an issue for some, but I was fine with it.
Battles and Some Unique Gimmicks
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes utilizes a turn-based combat system which I love. As we have evolved over the years games tend to shy away from this style of combat, but it is my favorite. Turn-based combat allows you more time to think about potential strategies and formulate a plan of action. In addition, players get more chances to bask in the beautiful visuals of abilities, rune-lens spells, and attacks. One of my favorites is Melridge’s “Dragon” skill ability which you see him paint massive rune symbols on screen that unleash a fire dragon on enemies. Each rune-lens spell seems unique.
There are also “Hero Attacks” that combine multiple characters into a unique attack that only they can do together. Though I didn’t recruit everyone during my review playthrough I didn’t get to experience them all, but the animations I did encounter were very well done. For example, Melridge and Hilda combine for the hero attack called “Tactician Combo.” This is where Melridge paints a big symbol and Hilda throws her weapon through it to unleash massive damage.
When you get to bigger fights such as minor bosses in areas or the big bosses/villains of the game, expect battles to have gimmicks. There are multiple gimmicks like an icicle hanging from a ceiling you can attack to trigger it to fall on an enemy and damage it. There’s another fight where a boss sucks up one of your allies and regenerates its health and you have to attack the “gimmick” to prevent the boss from healing during those turns. Some battles on the world map with minor booses have a treasure chest that you can attack to get an item. These are only just a few that I experienced, and I enjoy the unique feel it adds to those fights.
War Battles and Duels
Not only were there the traditional battles with a party of six characters but there were also war battles and duels. In particular, war battles provided a decent tactical experience. Fortunately, war battles didn’t overcomplicate things, while providing enough tactics and strategy to entice players. Especially how different units provide abilities that can help sway the tides of war. Then there are the one-on-one duels in Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes.
While in duels, players choose to attack and defend based on what their opponent says and how he’s reacting. Then when your tension bar gets high enough you can use the third option of “Break.” This choice based on your tension bar can break through the opponent’s defense allowing you to potentially deal massive damage. Not completely like the rock, paper, scissors, aspect of Suikoden but puts its spin on it to make it unique to Hundred Heroes.
Meaningful Town Building
When you finally establish your operations base, it starts as a rundown castle. Players can restore it by collecting materials. As you rebuild your town and castle, you can rebuild buildings such as an Inn, Blacksmith, Item Shop, Armorer, and more. In return, you can recruit some of the many heroes in the game to run those particular shops. The more people you recruit, the stronger your town and army become. The more I developed and rebuilt my town the more I could improve the inventory of some shops as well.
Trust me when I say that a better inventory in your shops is needed for the right gear and items in the later stages of the game. You even have some characters that can accompany you throughout your travels as a support character that increases the amount of materials you can harvest. There were times I had to go to certain areas for certain resources. But overall it felt it was time well spent and didn’t feel like a giant fetch quest.
Simplified Gear System
Another thing I enjoyed in Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is the gear or equipment system isn’t overly complicated. Rabbit & Bear does a good job of providing a variety of gear and items to use in a more simplified system. That way you can build many of the characters in your own unique ways, to experience the game like you want. I focused a lot on the accessory slot to get bonuses to MP to use more spells. There are plenty of different items that can increase defense, speed, power, magic power, and more. Then, you can equip different types of rune-lens which increase stats, unlock unique abilities, or give you access to certain magic.
Once each character reaches certain levels, it opens up slots where you can equip them with runes. Each one of the over 100 heroes is unique in what level and at what levels a certain rune-lens can be equipped. One of the characters Yuthus, whom I used a lot, was equipped with rune-lens that increased both their health and defense. Then, I equipped him with a rune called “Firefly Rune” which makes him the one usually targeted by attacks with a single target. There are so many different combinations of things you can do that can provide countless unique playthroughs.
Get Invested in Mini-Games
Another thing that can draw me in is engaging mini-games. JRPGs are notorious for putting different mini-games within their games and I have been known to lose countless hours within them. The three mini-games I experienced during my playthrough were fishing, Beigoma, and Card Battle. However, there are plenty of other mini-games throughout the game too. Fishing allows you to get food materials for your town building and you might even have to catch a certain fish for someone named Huang. But the one I want to focus on is the mini-game Card Battle.
The mini-game I enjoyed the most though was Card Battle. Card Battle is a game in which you have four different colors of cards and you place different cards in three different areas of the board. The goal is to have the highest point total in these areas to win. Players can pick up card packs from shopkeepers to help build their deck to their liking. Some of these cards’ appearances and designs slightly change adding a uniqueness to your deck. Then you have different cards that have different abilities to help you reach your goal of winning matches. I loved everything about Card Battle because it was as in-depth as traditional TCG (trading card games).
Immersive Voice Actors
The voice acting in Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes has been some of the best I have experienced in a while. If you see a character and think they should sound a specific way chances are they do. Any mismatch could break immersion. There is a kangaroo in the game Garoo, and he sounds like you would picture he would sound. He has an Australian-sounding accent. So I feel they did an excellent job of making all the characters sound appropriate like they should. Another big thing is the majority of everything is voice-acted. Unless you are walking around talking to random NPCs, the chances are it’s voice acted.
There are over 100 recruitable characters in this game. So for the developers to take the time and write lines and record all those characters must have been a daunting task. And it was a task they excelled very well in doing. A couple that stood out were the English voice actors of Melridge (Brent Mukai) and Garoo (Tim Bentinck). Melridge is an intelligent strategist and the way Brent speaks shows off how intelligent and smart Melridge is. Moreover, Bentinck does an excellent job with the former kangaroo mercenary Garoo. All in all, the voice actors were all top-notch.
There was one aspect of the audio design that stood out in particular. There was a small scene taking place between some characters, one of them started to walk away and as they did the voice trailed off with them as they walked away. It was a clever and nice touch. Conversely, the “Theatre” mini-game is fully voiced as well. So all these characters you can throw into random plays completely voice act all their lines. No doubt it’s an impressive feat.
Emotion Evoking Music
Throughout the game, you will experience music that does a great job of pulling emotions out of the player. There were times when the music felt upbeat in certain situations. But then you go through a boss battle or something a little tragic and you know that’s how you are supposed to feel in those situations. I love a game that can pull emotions out of players and help people understand the importance of certain situations.
Flawless Performance
When it came to the performance of the game I didn’t experience any issues. That is due to its humble system requirements. My laptop had no issues running the game as it is powered by a Core i7 processor, with 32GB of RAM, and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 GPU.
When playing the game I had the resolution set at 2560 x 1440 at 60 FPS. I also had the “Depth of Field” option turned with the “Shadow Rendering” option set to high. I just wanted to have every setting I could set to the highest or turned on. As expected, the experience was flawless on my laptop.
Final Thoughts
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes does a great job of bridging JRPG fans of the past to the present day. It provides an engaging story that immerses the player and evokes different emotions. Every single character is detailed and designed with the utmost care. There is so much to do in this game that you can put hundreds of hours into it and the replayability is endless. As a huge Suikoden fan, this spiritual successor gets my stamp of approval. This was Yoshitake Murayama’s last project before he sadly passed away and he can be proud he created a gaming masterpiece and an all-time masterclass in JRPGs.