a belated Suikoden creator Yoshitaka Murayama reassembled the crew for one last job in 2020: the crowdfunding campaign for the spiritual successor to the beloved Japanese role-playing game series has raised $4.5 million, the third most of any any Kickstarter game ever. Four years later, the Rabbit and Bear Studios team launched Eiyuden Chronicles: Hundred Heroesa neat-looking, somewhat flawed attempt to recapture the magic of sitting engrossed in front of a '90s CRT while blasting your way through turn-based battles, twisting dungeons, and arcades familiar fantasy.
Order Eiyuden Chronicles: Hundred Heroes: Amazon| Best buy |Modest package
I spent about 7 hours Eiyuden beam on PlayStation 5, despite the rough opening, the vibrant retro graphics and laid-back rhythm of PS1-era RPGs are starting to win me over. You play as Nowa, a young mercenary from a rural village whose penchant for doing the right thing eventually lands him in a geopolitical conflict with an evil empire. He bears an unacceptable resemblance to Tir McDohl in Suikoden 1 And 2as much of the rest of the world is building.
Remakes and sequels
While Murayama sadly passed away in February due to health complications, the rest of the team at Rabbit and Bear Studios said it plans to push forward with a sequel ARRIVE Eiyuden Chronicles. Konami is also working on its own remasters Suikoden 1 And 2although we haven't received any updates on the collection's release date since then. it was delayed last year.
I haven't played enough to say definitively whether Eiyuden Chronicles feels like a worthy successor to those classics, or a hollow facsimile born from an incomplete reunion tour fighting to turn back time. What I can say is that it captures the basics and charm in ways that many other contemporary attempts at imitation cannot. Combat is simple yet sharp, environments are bright and colorful, and pixelated graphics create bold contrast with the 3D backgrounds. Aside from its objective markers and autosave feature, it's extremely outdated, both in form and content.
Good, boring, bankrupt
Like Suikoden game, explore towns and chat with random NPCs to recruit dozens of characters to fight alongside you in turn-based battles. Fighters' stats and abilities are enhanced by equipment and runes, but battles largely revolve around managing damage dealt, healing, and deciding when to deploy special abilities. special and general attacks. Even past the standard random encounters, it's still incredibly satisfying to watch each of the six warriors you choose fight their way through mob after mob, clock in Their experience points will increase a little with each victory.
And while the story has been a cliché parade so far, some of the writing and character acting is surprisingly expressive. No one says too much, and when they do it's rarely over- or over-explained, even when what's said seems silly, sometimes intentionally so. Just a little vague personality was enough to help me develop an attachment to my growing list of medieval nerds, pranksters, and scoundrels.
Read more: Why should you play? Suikoden IIOne of the best RPGs ever created
My moment-to-moment experience was quite good on PS5. I haven't encountered any major bugs or performance hiccups other than some occasionally sticky controls, though there's still the annoying thing of having loading screens. These seem to be especially bad on the Switch version of the game Eiyuden Chronicles. While I haven't tried it there, Early review towards a lot of frame rate drops (the game only targets 30fps at the start), laggy menus, and overly long loading screens.
Some players have encountered critical errors, as before Kotaku editor Jason Schreier. A cooking mini-game is broken, random encounter rates are messed up, and characters cannot be recruited. just some of the problems he encountered on his PC. A representative for the game told me that some of these issues will be resolved in the day one patch, including a character recruitment issue that prevents players from getting the true ending. However, there doesn't appear to be a full roadmap for upcoming fixes yet.
I'm looking forward to going deeper Eiyuden Chronicles, collect more characters and see if there are any tricks to help lift it out of the shadows of the creative team's original RPG masterpieces. For now, it's a great comfort food, like playing a lost PS1 classic that's been translated by fans for the first time. And for a lifelong fan of those gems, that's enough.
Order Eiyuden Chronicles: Hundred Heroes: Amazon| Best buy |Modest package
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