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Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes
PC (Steam)
“SUCK-oden or Suiko-DONE.”
2/5 stars
Back in the Plague Year of 2020, we had to look hard and overturn every stone in order to find tidbits of good news. One of those tidbits was that Yoshitaka Murayama, the former Konami studio director behind the first two ‘Suikoden’ games was starting an Indie development studio called Rabbit and Bear, and that said studio’s first game would be a spiritual successor to ‘Suikoden’ called ‘Eiyuden Chronicle.’ RPG-starved Gamers rushed to back the game’s development on Kickstarter, blowing past ALL of the stretch goals and ultimately leaving “Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes” (“Hundred Heroes”) with the third-highest Kickstarter funding of all time (still, at time of writing).
I am a huge fan of the ‘Suikoden’ games Murayama worked on, with “Suikoden 2” standing amongst my all-time favorites, so the news that he was back on the scene with a new RPG project had my hopes high… but not high enough to throw money at a Kickstarter like a frivolous fool. Regardless, I was insanely excited to play “Hundred Heroes,” even after my increasing disappointment with the ‘Suikoden’ franchise after Murayama left Konami.
I waited for years with ‘bated breath as Rabbit and Bear dragged their feet and spent their enormous Kickstarter warchest, only to be shocked, appalled, and annoyed by the blandness of their appetizer course, a prologue to “Hundred Heroes” entitled “Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising,” which was not only NOT an RPG, but was the most boring and banal fetch-quest simulator the studio could have possibly assembled.
I held out hope that “Hundred Heroes” would still shine where “Rising” fell flat, even going so far as to buy the game at launch (though still on sale thanks to Greenman Gaming and their discounts on new releases), breaking my rule about allowing other people to beta test incomplete games before enjoying the actual finished product.
And for that misstep, I am filled with regret and sadness. Not only does “Hundred Heroes” not exceed “Rising” in general quality, but it is yet another RPG that I should, by all rights, love, but was such a boring, tedious, and uninteresting experience that I couldn’t force myself to sit down and actually finish it.
Presentation
Graphics and sound are generally where “Hundred Heroes” is at its best, though not without caveats. The art style is an upgraded vision of the HD2D style Square-Enix pioneered with “Octopath Traveler,” and it truly lives up to what I was expecting from a ‘Suikoden’ spiritual successor. All of the characters are represented by large, detailed, and well animated, but flat, sprites against a variety of 3D, pop-up book style backgrounds. In combat, enemies and allies employ a variety of flashy special attacks… that unfortunately tend to be a over-animated and longer than they should be.
Audio is likewise an excellent throwback to the style of the first two ‘Suikoden’ games, though I can’t say that I really remember any of the individual tunes. At least I enjoyed them in the moment… but I think true emotional investment with a game’s soundtrack requires the rest of the game to be good and memorable… which “Hundred Heroes” is NOT. On the flip-side of audio, while the soundtrack is good, the voice acting is… not. This is the type of game that could (read: should) have been left unvoiced with purely text-based dialog, but instead, we got all manner of cheesy, grating anime dubbers on the payroll to both waste Kickstarter money and drag down the final experience. While the voice acting isn’t quite as bad as, say, “Arc Rise Fantasia” on the Wii… it’s still very obnoxious.
Technically, “Hundred Heroes” is mostly good… except on the Switch (from what I hear). However, the game features numerous poorly designed menu interfaces that would have felt cumbersome and unintuitive in the ‘90s. To make matters worse, there are significant foundational issues in the game’s RPG mechanics, rendering things like magic and Hero Combos (the off-brand version of ‘Suikoden’s’ Unite Attacks) nearly useless due to faulty calculations.
Story
“Hundred Heroes” attempts to rekindle the exciting wartime drama of the ‘Suikoden’ franchise in an all-new world that is literally exactly the same. “Hundred Heroes” is set in a fantastical version of the South-Eastern hemisphere of Earth, where an Evil Empire and a Good League of Nations are constantly butting heads as they squabble over territory and resources. The resource they both want so desperately is Runes Lenses… which are often called Rune Lenses, a form of ancient lost technology that enables mere humans (and beastmen) to perform miraculous acts. While low-powered Lenses are relatively commonplace and easily manufactured, Primal Lenses possess far greater power and can typically only be found in ruins dubbed Rune Barrows.
Our hero is Nowa, a fresh-faced volunteer for the League of Nations Watch, who finds himself saddled with a variety of mundane tasks and annoying companions on his first day on the job. His training officer, a wolf-man named Garr, sees potential in him, though, and recommends him for promotion to temporary group leader quite quickly. Furthermore, during a joint operation between the League and the Empire, Nowa makes diplomatic inroads with a young imperial nobleman of roughly the same age, giving some hope that the two sides of the international divide can indeed find some common ground.
Of course, that diplomatic good will all gets trashed fairly quickly as a group of mysterious saboteurs burns down Nowa’s hometown and an imperial town on the other side of the border nearly simultaneously, inflaming both sides and allowing for a comically evil and completely un-nuanced imperial commander to seize control of the situation for his own gain. Nowa and company valiantly defend their assigned territory from an imperial incursion, but ultimately loose due to contrived plot reasons, forcing the Watch to transition from the official military of the League to an underground guerilla organization based in an excessively serendipitously located ruined castle, which Nowa’s team had recently ‘liberated’ from some not-particularly-dangerous-or-violent bandits (who, in true ‘Suikoden’ style, end up joining the cause).
None of the early world building or foundations of the plot struck me as particularly intriguing or interesting. The world doesn’t really have anything unique to make it stand out as particularly compelling. The conflict between an Empire and so-called Free States (which in this game are still feudal hell-holes ruled over by nobility) is incredibly tired and stale after being done so many times (and so much better) by other games. The allied characters are annoying, there are WAY too many of them (yeah, yeah, “Hundred Heroes”), the villains are cartoonishly evil, nobody’s actions on either side of the conflict really make sense, and there’s no sense of gravitas or pathos to really pull the player into Nowa’s perspective. As a result, I found my eyes glazing over during cutscenes all the time, and I never found a reason to care about any of the characters, their high-minded goals, or their petty little problems. Garr is about the only character I kind of liked, but primarily because he looks like my best boy, Barkley, standing on his hind legs and wearing pants.
There comes a point in time when you’re not enjoying a story to just cut and run. That point in “Hundred Heroes” hit me when I had to rescue the King of the Treants by running through an annoying obstacle course. I just kept thinking, “What does this have to do with the overarching narrative? Why are there so many new side characters? Why is everyone so stupid and annoying?” So I stopped. For a while I thought I might go back to “Hundred Heroes,” having reached what I’ve read is roughly the halfway point at roughly 15 hours of time investment… but I just don’t care.
Gameplay
It takes quite a bit of work to mess up the formula for classic-style Turn-Based RPGs… but Rabbit and Bear managed to do it with near 100% efficiency.
First the good news: The player gets to command a team of up to 6 active heroes in two ranks (front and rear), along with a non-combatant support character, and three ‘Attendant’ party slots that don’t have any combat bearing at all, but can house story-related party members, allowing the player to keep using their A team instead of having to make room for whatever new ‘tard wants to tag along for plot purposes. Furthermore, the classic ‘Suikoden’ scaling experience system is back, which allows for under-leveled party members to catch up VERY quickly.
But aside from that, everything else just feels like poorly-made copies of “stuff that was in ‘Suikoden,’” all crammed together with little thought to balance and polish. Of the huge roster of characters who can join up with Nowa’s Watch, there are definite winners and losers… and sadly the early game is filled with junk characters with sub-par performance, especially for magic users.
Magic itself is poorly balanced. Thankfully the Vancian slot-based system from ‘Suikoden’ has been replaced with a modern point-based system, but the MP costs for all of the spells are hilariously high, making relying of magical healing fall somewhere between ‘impractical’ and ‘impossible,’ with consumable items taking up all of that slack. Of course, since consumable items are actually good the number of them the party can carry at once is severely restricted, meaning that the party might have to throw away a perfectly cromulent stack of healing potions in order to pick up a shiny new Rune Lens… which can only be attached to a character at a shop back in town.
Shopping for and equipping the game’s huge roster is also painfully archaic and cumbersome, filled with numerous slow menu transitions, and no practical way to gear up characters who aren’t in the active party. The stat screens as presented are vague and unhelpful, making it difficult or impossible to determine which “skill” Lenses are compatible with any given character. Then, to make stats even more opaque there are actually hidden stats that are literally completely obscured, forcing the player to either trial-and-error or Guide, Dang It! their way through character builds and party composition.
If you manage to survive the cumbersome, poorly-designed, and not-terribly-informative menus and mechanical systems, you’ll eventually arrive at the combat… which is some of the most boring and lifeless turn-based combat I’ve ever experienced. Nearly every random battle can be won simply by hitting the ‘auto’ option, though characters WILL blow MP and consumables if you don’t set up their horribly cumbersome and confusing AI rules correctly. The player’s party has practically ZERO options for multi-target attacks through the first half of the game, while enemies start using full-party area-of-effect moves with impunity. The ranks in the player’s party, which are supposed to protect squishy casters and archers behind beefy martial artists and armored knights… simply doesn’t work, as the enemy AoE spam WILL one-shot casters all the time, and enemy single-target attacks just seem to consider party ranks as a ‘suggestion.’
While that might sound harrying and hectic, that’s only the case during boss battles. Random encounters, which occur at EXCESSIVE rates, are mindnumbingly simple, and I actually found myself falling asleep while grinding for some extra XP and money. Boss battles typically require the player to have a firm grasp on the game’s basic mechanics (which isn’t exactly a given, considering that ‘auto, auto, auto’ isn’t really engaging with the mechanics), but nearly always throw in some sort of a ‘gimmick.’ And, yes, they are literally called ‘gimmicks’ in-game. These range from bland to obtuse to downright aggravating (guess which one of two things to hit for extra damage to the boss and damage mitigation to the party… or just get biffed with an AoE), but never anywhere close to ‘engaging,’ ‘clever,’ or ‘fun.’
Outside of combat, “Hundred Heroes” has all the trapping of a ‘Suikoden’ game, but they all feel like they’re just crammed in willy nilly. There are a plethora of non-RPG mini-games ranging from the obligatory Card Game to a knock-off or Bey’Blade to the completely borked return of the Iron Chef mini-game from “Suikoden 2.” I didn’t engage with any of these… mostly because I hadn’t unlocked them before I got bored with the whole experience.
In addition to the completely-unrelated-to-anything mini-games, “Hundred Heroes” also brings back the extra combat modes from previous ‘Suikoden’ games: Duels and War Battles. Unfortunately, I hated the Duels in previous ‘Suikoden’ games, and “Hundred Heroes” introduces the mechanic with a Duel the player is almost guaranteed (and expected) to loose. Likewise, the War Battles have transitioned from the quick and fun Rock-Paper-Scissors affair from Murayama’s ‘Suikoden’ games to a poorly designed, poorly implemented, an poorly executed attempt at a stripped-down TRPG that just feels tedious, janky, and untested.
Overall
In the case of “Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes,” beauty is truly only skin deep. The HD2D styling and pleasant soundtrack are but a thin veneer of classic RPG goodness covering an internal structure of bland writing and poor mechanical design that is the equivalent of moldy particle board with completely blown-out pilot holes. The result is a game that looks good in screen captures, but is wholly lacking in the ability to capture the player with an intriguing narrative and engage the player with nuanced, balanced, and though provoking Role-Playing mechanics.
I wish it wasn’t the case, but the blandness of “Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising” was a far better predictor of the final experience I had with “Hundred Heroes” than either of the first two ‘Suikoden’ games. I guess it’s for the best that Murayama is no longer with us to see his final project turn out so dismally. I hope Rabbit and Bear don’t continue to try to make games without him, as it’s clear that nobody at the studio is up to the task.
Presentation: 4.5/5
Story: 1/5
Gameplay: 2/5
Overall (not an average): 2/5
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