Eiyuden Chronicles: Hundred Heroes Reviews
There are plenty of moments where Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes feels like a relic of the past. As if the game’s code was found in an old ’90s PC, polished and adapted to newer consoles. This is not to say that it is a bad thing, but a marvel of our time, baggage, and all. The way they were able to so clearly capture the essence of what a timeless JRPG is here will undoubtedly enrapture a certain kind of player yearning for those golden days when there wasn’t a care in the world and all we had were games.
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is a remarkable addition to the JRPG genre that serves as a bridge between the past and the present, offering a game that is both familiar and innovative. If you’re a fan of the genre or the old Suikoden games, then this game is a journey worth taking, filled with adventure, strategy, and a story that captures the imagination, but just know that it stakes its roots a little too much in nostalgia.
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes offers, despite its shallow main story, plenty of entertaining side activities, characters and fights to keep you engaged.
Review in Slovak | Read full review
Yes, the army battles were a bit confusing. The thing is, Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is chock full of content. It can keep me busy for hours upon hours before I start to get bored. From card games to spinning tops, I was very rarely not engaged.
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is so close to being the feel-good JRPG for 2024 but it still needs a bit of work before it can shine. If you can look past the issues, there’s a whole world to explore and a literal ton of heroes to recruit and experiment with. Let’s not forget the incredible story that you’ll get to experience too as things unfold while you’re exploring.
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is a great throwback JRPG. From the very first minute, I feel at home as an old Suikoden fan. The fun characters, exciting mini-games, dreamy landscapes and catchy soundtrack transport me back to the 90s. The story may not be earth-shattering, but it is still exciting and takes Suikoden as its template. On the other hand, I would have liked to see more innovation in the battle system compared to its spiritual predecessor. It feels outdated.
Review in German | Read full review
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is an old-school experience chock full of interesting storytelling, adorable weirdos, and tons of content to explore. Where it falters comes from needing just a bit more time in the oven and a few more modern conveniences.
With the Kickstarter long behind, Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes was easily worth the backing fee, my copy coming in just last Friday. I was skeptical, as stories with enormous casts don’t always fare well in pacing—but great combat, excellent visuals, and an entertaining story about rising from the ruins of warmongering makes for a fantastic turn-based time.
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.
It’s tough to find criticism with Eiyuden Chronicles: Hundred Heroes without leveling criticism at the genre itself. One thing that I found detrimental was the encounter rate of battles; at times I felt I hadn’t moved five steps without another battle occurring. There is an “auto” battle feature but I didn’t find it quite as helpful as it tended to select moves that wasted skill points or moves whereas I could have set it up to not even require half-a-turn. I wanted to learn more about the developing story but consistently had to wait for another battle to pass. And yet, I find it hard to critique that because experiencing random enemy battles is literally one of the cornerstones of the role-playing genre; it’s a benchmark. How does one fault that? It’s been said in the foodie world that to judge a pizza place, it all comes down to a slice of their cheese pizza. If that’s good, the rest will be too. Eiyuden Chronicles: Hundred Heroes is the RPG version of a slice of cheese pizza. It was good then, and it’s good now.
Eiyuden Chronicles: Hundred Heroes is a delight, with the Suikoden-inspirations perfectly implemented to make for a wonderfully memorable adventure. I loved recruiting characters, building up a homebase, and partaking in strategic showdowns with enemies, whilst the variety of mini-games that show up across the experience keep the action varied and exciting. Add to that the wonderful visual presentation and a stellar soundtrack, and you’ll quickly find that Eiyuden Chronicles: Hundred Heroes delivers more than enough to keep RPG fans very, VERY happy.
Devoid of a lot of modern conveniences found in other RPG’s nowadays, your tolerance for the experience that Eiyuden Chronicle sets out to deliver will likely hinge on your love of Suikoden (II specifically) or other RPGs from that era. As someone who basically grew up playing RPGs on the PlayStation 1 and earlier, I was willing to look past a lot of the issues, but this might not be the best way to spend your time if you’re coming into this with a fresh set of JRPG eyes.
To say I’m surprised by how much I’ve been enjoying Hundred Heroes is an understatement. Truly, I cannot wait to not only finish this game. I’m also really hoping the passing of the great Yoshitaka Murayama doesn’t slow Rabbit & Bear Studios down because I would really love to see more RPGs in this vein.
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is a love letter for all Suikoden fans; it embraces the classic essence and doesn’t succumb to modernity.
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is what classic RPG fans and especially Suikoden veterans are looking for. It has the gameplay, the soundtrack, and everything in between. It’s like reuniting with a long lost comrade and picking up where you left off, having a blast all over again. Welcome back, old friend, we missed you.
Eiyuden Chronicles: Hundred Heroes is designed to bring players a modern take on a classic JRPG experience. Get ready to lead 100+ playable characters through a war-torn world only you can save. Switch version reviewed. Review copy provided by company for testing purposes. On a PC, I imagine Eiyuden Chronicle might generally be fine, but on the Switch it is a mess.
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes was clearly made with dedication to deliver an epic experience about assembling a resistance army in the midst of an inglorious war. The narrative cannot give importance to such a vast cast, but, overall, it does a good job with what it has at hand, telling an engaging, well-written and well-voiced story. Translation does not follow the same level and several systems seem to be too close to the old productions on which they are based, missing the chance to modernize to allow for more efficient management. The end result is a good JRPG that suffers from limitations, which can still be resolved with changes here and there to systems, options and menus, bringing with it the potential to really shine in its environment.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is an RPG that actively strives to go against the market's quality of life efforts in pursuit of an old-school ideal. However, the result is a game that closes in on itself and caters only to the most die-hard fans of the genre. It's a shame, because even simple adjustments, like a mission menu and occasional changes to the menu, would be enough to maintain the challenge without the part that is purely inconvenient.
Review in Portuguese | Read full review
It won’t take long to fall in love with Nowa and his initial teammates on the Watch, and the bittersweet story beats come achingly fast in the first act of the game. Those who played the prologue game, Eiyuden Chronicles Rising, won’t have to wait long to meet some familiar faces and learn the answers to some of the questions left hanging there. From there, the journey is a comfortably familiar but emotional one, where power-hungry villains separate friends and family under the banner of a war that threatens to grow out of control. It’s a beefy game, too, with backers who already got their copy claiming that they’re clocking 60 hours on a fast-paced playthrough, and I’m suggesting that around 80 is going to be a fair hour count for most players. Chock full of stuff to do, things to explore, and characters to meet and collect; for some of us, this is the game we wanted when we were teens and still enjoying our last free summers. Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is a fantastic JRPG, wearing its old-school quirks like a badge of pride, with even its deliberate annoyances feeling like a wool flannel shirt. I can safely say it’s a terrific game and one its backers will welcome home with delight.
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes mainly delivers what the developers promised. It's a mostly very classical JRPG experience with beautiful graphics and great music. But while fans of the 90's JRPGs might get anything they love about these classics here, they also get nearly everything, that they might hate about them.
Review in German | Read full review