Board 8 > Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes Review Zone

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://opencritic.com/game/16605/eiyuden-chronicles-hundred-heroes
https://www.metacritic.com/game/eiyuden-chronicle-hundred-heroes/

The spiritual successor of Suikoden from the original creators is here! As with all kickstarter games you have to check your expectations at the door because sometimes you get a banger like Bloodstained, but then sometimes you get whatever Mighty No. 9 or Shenmue 3 were. In this case it's looking somewhere in the middle as we're averaging a 77% through 35 reviews thus far. The game launched for backers and early access members with some glitches that will be patched soon, but unfortunately that's also affected some of the reviews. Opinions on the story and characters seems mixed and expressed disappointment it doesn't quite live up to the likes of Suikoden 2, but the core gameplay seems to be solid. So yeah as long as you keep your expectations in check you'll probably find an enjoyable JRPG here. Also apparently the Switch version is very rough so beware there.

God is a Geek - 9.5/10
Like last years Sea of Stars, Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes feels like so much more than just a throwback JRPG. Its a modern game through and through, injected with the elements and mechanics that helped make the genre so phenomenally successful in the earlier years of console gaming. The abundance of heroes simply means theres an abundance of different playstyles and party builds to mess around with, and the music and storytelling combine to create a truly memorable experience that absolutely will stick with you when its over. Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is simply a wonderful way to underline Yoshitaka Murayamas lifes work.

Wccftech - 8.5/10
While its premise, story beats and main characters echo Suikoden II a little bit too much, Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes manages to stand on its own with a compelling tale, excellent characterization, classic JRPG gameplay and great presentation, which make it easy to look past some of its shortcomings, such as balancing and minor gameplay issues. The world of Allraan may never get into the spotlight again due to the unfortunate departure of its creator, but it is undeniable that it couldn't have been introduced to JRPG fans in a better way.

Game Informer - 8/10
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is a good reminder of why the RPG genre left some parts of its Golden Age behind. Its also a testimony to what makes the genre special and the power of good storytelling to move and inspire. Admittedly, rigid adherence to archaic structures makes those first impressions tough to look past, but a creative battle system, extensive party customization, and top-notch writing make up for the retro jank.

RPG Fan - 8/10
Indeed, Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is a JRPG through and through. But does it live up to its most obvious inspirations? Absolutely not. It lacks the heart and soul of the series that most obviously inspired it, and its messy around the edges. But its not all bad. The base building, character recruitment, and vibes, as the kids say, are right on. So, while Hundred Heroes might not have lived up to my admittedly sky-high expectations, if youre looking for an old-school JRPG experience with some modern conveniences, this is the place to go. Just dont expect greatness like I did. Youll just be disappointed.

Noisy Pixel - 7.5/10
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes emerges as a commendable homage to the beloved Suikoden series. It excels with a rich narrative full of intricate character dynamics and an engaging war story, supported by a vast character roster and beautiful, modern-traditional art design. Strategic gameplay elements add depth, though the games tendency to autopilot and underutilized open world might not satisfy players seeking a more interactive RPG experience.

IGN - 7/10
One you get past its slow start, Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes mostly succeeds in weaving the stories of multiple countries and characters together into a sprawling epic. Its turn-based combat system operates smoothly, even if other modes like its strategy RPG battles can encourage simplistic strategies over critical thinking. And while collecting and experimenting with its titular hundred heroes can be entertaining, you wont get to know the majority of them because of how much screen time they need to share with this bloated cast. Still, theres plenty of satisfying side quests and castle building to fill in the gaps, which makes Hundred Heroes eventually feel worth the journey.

NintendoLife - 6/10
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is the epitome of a flawed gem-the kind of game that does a lot of things right and we're sure will command a dedicated legion of fans, but has legitimate problems that are tough to overlook. The expansive narrative, gorgeous spritework, and addictive combat all help make it an easy recommendation to any classic JRPG fan, but bear in mind that it can feel dated in its design philosophy and that the Switch version has a lot of performance problems, at least at launch. If you can get past those issues, this is an enjoyable and immersive RPG that mostly achieves what it set out to do.

NintendoWorldReport - 5/10
Were I not reviewing the game I would have put it aside after a few hours and never thought about it again. Eiyuden Chronicle comes after scores and scores of excellent and successful turn-based RPGs from which it could draw inspiration. Instead, it neglects so many of the lessons learned throughout the years in favor of outdated, tedious gameplay.

and the Jason Schreier take

https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1782071760336081243?t=ZMTlV4Rtmy3LoR3D40fXbA&s=19

I'm not surprised at the ratings. I am a bit surprised to hear how "oldschool" (read: lack of modern conveniences) the game is.

You've gotta think, if all these outlets that gave Sea of Stars raving 9/10+ reviews think this game is a 7/10, then oof, how bad is it?

I feel like I'll probably agree with Jason Schreier's take but I'm going to try it anyway.

Still willing to give it a chance.

Dels posted...

You've gotta think, if all these outlets that gave Sea of Stars raving 9/10+ reviews think this game is a 7/10, then oof, how bad is it?

And also still completely baffled by the critical reception of that game.

Dels posted...

You've gotta think, if all these outlets that gave Sea of Stars raving 9/10+ reviews think this game is a 7/10, then oof, how bad is it?

I didn't play Sea of Stars, but I don't quite understand what you mean by this. Wasn't SoS good?

ChaosTonyV4 posted...

I didn't play Sea of Stars, but I don't quite understand what you mean by this. Wasn't SoS good?

The implication is that it wasn't.

(I actually like Sea of Stars mostly, but it's got some major issues and isn't the masterpiece the reviews would make you think it is.)

Sea of Stars was a middling RPG with bad story and character, repetitive gameplay, and decent music.

The only explanation I can think of for it's critical reception is they just really, really liked the art and that it superficially reminded them of Chronic Trigger.

I have enormous problems with the back half of Chained Echoes, but that was a much better game.

I don't quite know what happened with Sea of Stars. It seemed to get a positive reception at launch, maybe before anyone but professional critics had given their evaluation, but since then I've seen it brought up pretty often as a go-to example of garbage. I didn't finish it. Wouldn't have called what I played terrible by any means, though.

I cannot comment on Sea of Stars as I did not play it

nor do I have any real desire to

Sea of Stars does at least have an amazing soundtrack and top tier art, so that helps it out a bit. I still like the game a good amount overall, but its reviews were much more glowing than they should've been - pretty bonkers that it reviewed better than Octopath 2!

It is quite nice-looking. Could probably be better on the "RPG" front, you know, combat, writing and all. The Messenger-style humor landed sometimes, and the dungeon design seemed like what people claim to like about Golden Sun, or maybe Wild ARMS.

Sea of Stars was fine but everything was just middle of the road. It didn't do anything particularly well but there also weren't any bad game design or frustrating elements either.

It wasn't bad, it was just forgettable.

Safe and bland is the best way to put it.

Also sub 30 hours (which isn't a problem).

Probably very appealing to the mainstream reviewer who has to finish 3 or more games a week.

My theory (for this Sea of Stars discussion thread) is that, yeah, reviewers have to play so many games, they probably don't, like, get fully enraptured by them anymore. So, Sea of Stars, on the surface, is beautiful, has nice music, cool character designs, good UI and combat feels good and looks flashy at first... and that first impression just carries them. The fact that the game sort of fails to hook you or really have the charm of the games it's inspired by, doesn't register for them because they play 3 games a week and don't get hooked like that anymore anyway so it's all the same to them. Like having dulled taste buds when you're sick. "Yeah, this game probably tastes good, because it's presentation is really great!"

While we're on the subject, I can't relate to bringing up specific examples to show the unreliability of critics on a genre, or saying hey, X got a worse score than Y, and Y wasn't even that good, so that's a bad sign for X, right? Critics are never reliable. A critic who likes something that isn't great might not like something that is great. Or they might like both things that you like and things that you dislike. And taking an aggregate of a bunch of critics won't tell you much at all.

Oh I don't really pay attention to critics at all usually. It was sort of a half-serious remark. I don't actually think I can glean anything from it.

What happened to Sea of Stars was an ending and back half that was half baked, and shoehorning Garl into everything like he's everybody's favorite mascot. Music was great though, but god. Shut about Garl for an hour, please...he was the "we totally wanted him to be the main" sort of vibe.

Eiyuden is a wait and see for me.

some of us literally played suikoden iv so we dgaf

Suikoden V also got a 77 on metacritic, and that was a good-ass game!

Granted I'm not expecting Eiyuden to be incredible or anything. I just want it to recreate at least half of the specific kind of feeling that past Suikoden games had.

Oof, too bad about the Switch version. Thanks for the heads up on that. Didnt buy this but may pick up later. I beat all the mainline Suikodens.

Played til second boss.

First Impression:

I like it. I no longer expect to agree with Jason Schreier.

Of course, I haven't played Suikoden II, so I can't compare if it's lacking "heart and soul". But so far I like all the character designs, the voice acting, the writing. Battle animations are sick.

I have no clue why IGN says it has a slow start. When I hear slow start I think Persona, I think Suikoden V which takes hours to get to gameplay. This game has you in your first dungeon after a short 15-minute intro! And to the second dungeon shortly after! Maybe they mean it'll take a while before the grand epic military stuff starts.

Oh and I hate Lian.

I mean, if Jason Schrier didn't like it that's a bad sign since he's probably the most well-known spokesperson for suikoden in 2024

I bought this to support the idea of more suikodens but I also kind of expected it to be bad/disappointing. It's really hard to capture the magic of the old games

I'm curious where the board will collectively land on this game, given the big gap between critical and B8 consensus on Sea of Stars. (I consider this board the pre-eminent authority on JRPGs)

I don't think it's just a B8 thing, I see Sea of Stars gets plenty of flack, if my recommended video timeline is anything to go by (or maybe it's just the same videos repeating until I actually watch one of them lol).

yeah disliking sea of stars is kind of an everywhere thing in my experience

(i am a few hours further in to eiyuden now and i still really like it)

I'm waiting a few weeks to play Eiyuden just in case there's issues that patches will address. Standard operating procedure for any new game.

I thought Sea of Stars was good, I heard good things

with that said, was Suikoden regarded as good back in the day?

that gamebreaking glitch sounds like a scale tipper though

Suikoden II is generally the most well regarded one.

I personally adore Sui3 the most, and not just because it has the best video game OP it all time!

Punnyz posted...

was Suikoden regarded as good back in the day?

From what I remember, it was generally ignored but had its own fans who liked it, though I don't remember people talking about it much. I think people appreciated Suikoden 2 later on, well after it was out of print, hence it shooting up in price.

Suikoden 3 was kinda divisive since it departed a bit from 1&2, but personally my favorite.
Suikoden 4 was generally not well liked upon release.
Suikoden 5 was fairly well liked.

I heard of Suikoden only because 2 was so high in price back in the day so i started to try to keep an eye for it

then I got my hands on a copy of 1 and i Genuinely liked it but it was like early to mid 2000s at this point, so I definitely missed the boat, I wasn't there when it all got released

Has Sui4 received any kind of reassessment in hindight? I never even tried it because of universally panned it was.

UshiromiyaEva posted...

Has Sui4 received any kind of reassessment in hindight? I never even tried it because of universally panned it was.

None that I've seen

UshiromiyaEva posted...

I personally adore Sui3 the most, and not just because it has the best video game OP it all time!

Extremely good post

I finally got around to suiko 3-5 maybe about 7-8 years ago and the only part of Suiko4 that stuck with me was the sailing

so much sailing

Suikoden 1 is well regarded it's just sore of rough in some areas even considering it's already datedness. But it's short enough most of the problems it does have aren't that big of a deal.

Suikoden 2 is the most universal praised. I wouldn't say the gameplay is anything special (though it's fine and better than 1 as long as you don't HAVE to have challenge) but the story and characters are excellent, as well as the overall presentation and tone.

Suikoden 3 was, as said, divisive when it came out. I was not a huge fan at the time because it had a lot of changes from 2 and 2 was my favorite RPG (still might be), but I've come around on it a lot since then and consider it to be around the same quality as 2. Had, at the time, a very unique multiple view points system that wasn't much seen a the time, though it's much more common these days.

Suikoden 4 still kinda sucks honestly. It's not AWFUL or anything and emulators can sort of fix a lot of the problems with how slow it is, but I would heavily temper your expectations if you are playing through the series these days.

Suikoden 5 imo is just about as good as 2, though most people will say it's not. It basically is just gameplay wise going back to 2s style and doing a new story. It also has some issues with slowness in gameplay, but turbo helps. Story pacing also has issues, especially early on.

Tactics I remember being pretty fun but not much more than that and I never replayed it. It's no FFT and it's set in the Suikoden 4 setting/era which drags it down some but I am pretty sure I remember the plot being better than 4.

Tierkries gets a lot of flak for not being a real Suikoden 6 because it's not set in the same world or continue the meta plot after the huge wait for possibly another game, but it's honestly pretty good. I probably wouldn't say it's as good as 2, 3, or 5 but its worth playing if you are able to separate it from the name and treat it likes its own thing ala Eiyuden.

I never played any of the Japan only spinoffs though I think at least some have been fan translated now?

Tierkreis is still the only one I've played, but I liked it well enough to finish it and collect all the characters.

I was thinking of holding off on this for a bit in case of quick QoL/polishing patches, but ultimately I saw it for $35 on CDKeys and figured what the hell. (also my first time buying from CDKeys so hopefully I'm not scammed somehow?)

Oh and yes anyone going into the series these days should be aware that yes, there is a connected plot going on in the background, but it is NOT as import as something like say Trails, and each game is much more stand alone than something like that.

But that said it doesn't have a proper conclusion and a few big plot threads just don't amount to anything because Konami abandoned the series and that still sucks and is disappointing.

Yea I always hear 4 is not good and tactics isn't great because its part of 4

the DS one I always hear its okay or its bad
and the weird voice acting doesn't help

I have owned that game 4 times and never played it, I always get turned off by multiple people saying its not that great and then I sell it . rinse and repeat lol

Interested in this, but Ive seen complaints about the localization giving bad AI translation vibes?

swordz9 posted...

Interested in this, but Ive seen complaints about the localization giving bad AI translation vibes?

I couldn't even begin to imagine where anyone would get that vibe from. Can you link to any of them...?

https://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/1cabplq/eiyuden_chronicle_hundred_heroes_localization/

Some say its AI and others say its just a very bad localization that takes way too many liberties to the point of even changing character personalities. A few are probably the usual wahhh woke bad that plagues what feels like every new game release these days. Some of the image examples posted in that topic seem to be fairly different from what the Japanese translation would be like

https://imgur.com/LHrN22Q

Those translations seem totally fine

Honestly, what you just posted makes me more excited to play the game because the stuff on the left is WAY better than the more literal translation.

That all looks fine to me.

I wasnt sure how much was just people getting their panties in a knot because at least a small crowd of JRPG fans lose their minds when translators take tons of liberties for whatever reason. Nothing Ive seen looks bad or anything at least even if the pigeon one kinda feels like a 12 year old came up with it so I guess it probably is just a minority being loud about it right now

swordz9 posted...

https://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/1cabplq/eiyuden_chronicle_hundred_heroes_localization/

Some say its AI and others say its just a very bad localization that takes way too many liberties to the point of even changing character personalities. A few are probably the usual wahhh woke bad that plagues what feels like every new game release these days. Some of the image examples posted in that topic seem to be fairly different from what the Japanese translation would be like

https://imgur.com/LHrN22Q

The subreddit you linked to is, like, entirely devoted to "wahh woke bad"

swordz9 posted...

I wasnt sure how much was just people getting their panties in a knot

its from the KiA Reddit. The answer is 100%

This sounds like these people are saying they want the game to be AI-translated (because they hate localizers), not that they think it is. Their issue is that it was clearly localized by humans.

These people don't understand that it's completely normal for game localization to "change" lines, because the same tone/intention from the japanese can't be conveyed by a literal translation, and certain expressions, when translated literally, won't sound natural.

Like if the best you can come up with (the #1 leading example they started their thread with) is dialogue where all the lines are the same except one of them has "rub-a-dub-dub" in it then you really don't have a case. Especially when they mistranslated one of the lines themselves.

People like this have taken the few cases where localizers did take extreme liberties or inject american politics into lines, and have gone crazy over it, now seeing red at every single localization change ever. Games from 15-20 years ago that were beloved for their localization, they'd hate if they saw it now, nitpicking every single line for not being enough of a literal translation.

Like, english has, what, hundreds, thousands probably, of phrases and sayings and terms that (of course) only exist in english. If you translate literally and only include phrases that are used in japanese, it's like you're painting a picture except you've removed dozens of shades of colors from your palette "because those shades don't exist in japan". But you can't translate the japan-specific expressions because they're not translatable to english, so you just end up with... less possible phrasings.

And you can't trust the guy making these pics anyway. Like, just looking at the japanese lines myself (as an amateur), it's clear to me that there are lots of nuances about the way the characters are speaking that are completely left out of the "literal translations" on the right. Like for example, in the last quote, the way she says "yo' hands" instead of "your hands"? Imagine if I gave a literal translation of that and I said she said "your hands". But she didn't, she said "yo' hands" which conveys a much rougher tone. That's what the "literal translations" are doing. She's slurring a lot of her words but it's coming out pristine in the "literal translation".

"Yo hands" feels bad in an appropriative way tbh. If they wanted to convey slurring they should've gone with "yr hands"

everything else is okay