Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes Launch Trailer

[setsuna16]

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Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes officially launches across several platforms tomorrow! Some purchases allowed buyers to play 72 hours before the official launch date, while some people, like myself, who Kickstarted the game and selected the physical option, may have been able to play well before that. IGN gave it a 7, and I saw another view of the Switch version that said it has massive performance issues, so if you're thinking of getting it for Switch I would recommend otherwise. I played on the PS5.

I just finished the game about an hour ago and I will say that I greatly enjoyed my time with it, but I can also say that there were things about the game that let me down. For one, there was a bug in the game programming that refused to allow me to recruit one character and it was never patched, so I wasn't able to get all of the characters and probably see the "true" ending if that's a thing that happens since it happens in Suikoden. Not that big of a deal, as I intend on going through the game again since I enjoyed it enough to play through it again.



The story structure is kind of plodding. There were at least three instances where the goal of the game at that point was to just recruit more members to the alliance, which creates some kind of annoying pacing issues. If one were to ignore those moments, the story is relatively interesting. Much like Suikoden, you really only get a chance to really see about a quarter of the cast doing much of anything of merit.

Magic in the game, until probably the last quarter of the game, is kind of useless overall. And a lot of the characters up to that point in the game who one would consider to be the "mages" based on their magic stat, actually aren't that effective at being mages. Eventually, some characters come in that are much better at playing that role and make magic far more appealing, but even then most of the time I was just attacking with weapons and combos instead of using spells, which is very unfortunate in a game where the main conflict has to do with the source of magic in some ways.

Graphically, the game is a mixed bag. The sprites are amazing, beyond the fact that they don't have mouths and all that. The backgrounds of the cities aren't that bad, either. But the fact that the monsters are 3D and the characters are 2D is a choice that isn't very appealing. Also, there were some noticeable graphical issues that ranged from merely being annoying to actually being distracting. One of the puzzle portions in the later part of the game would basically have the entire background blip out for a second each time a portion of the puzzle was solved and that's just insane for a finished product in my estimation.

The music is pleasant and solid enough. It doesn't reach the heights of Suikoden I or Suikoden II, which is unfortunate, but it's never actively bad.

My biggest issue with the game is the localization. There were simply too many errors in the localization for a game that is made in 2024. I expect the kind of errors that I saw back when Suikoden I and II were released, I suppose, but now? Now it's just not excusable. The biggest culprit is the silent side conversations that your party can have in the lower right of the screen. One character was written like they spoke like Elmo in the text that was displayed during those sequences, but when you have the core story sequences, where the dialog is voice acted, the character is written as being able to speak in complete sentences. I really, really did not like that.

Overall, though, I'm glad that the game is finally out (excluding announced DLC and all that). I've been excited for this game ever since the Kickstarter launched and it was really cool to see my name in the credits as one of the backers. Plus, it's good to know that the series will be continuing. It's unfortunate that it will be continuing without the creator, as he passed away before this game released, but the team has said that they spoke with him and he gave them a lot of information on his vision, so I am hopeful and I will be buying the next game in the series.

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