Board 8 > Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes get

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/5/5bdf4180.jpg

oh ya thanks Kickstarter

wait isn't the release date for this still 10 days away? kickstarter backers get it that early?!

Yeah I believe it's 21st for digital and 23rd for physical

Anyway no trophies uploaded to the PSN servers yet so just going to poke around for now and not play for real until that happens

god bless you for kickstarting this game my brother

i ordered it on switch, but i guess theres delays or whatever. not sweating it

I should probably load up that prequel game soon.

mnk posted...

I should probably load up that prequel game soon.

it's surprisingly long (and only kind of fun)

I just realized that I never selected my platform for the Kickstarter? Shit, I dont see a backerkit email for it anywhere, either.

Heads up, backers who got the physical super early are being advised not to start until a pre-release patch is released. Apparently game breaking bugs, and save files from before the patch may still be corrupted. The patch should be in out in time for the 72-hour early access window.

https://twitter.com/eiyuden/status/1779013861821325670

Oh man oh man.
The distribution of this game is such a shitshow for the most part.
I'm just glad some backers are actually getting their copies already. Better earlier than later!

Sucks the release isn't going smoothly but this is still probably my most anticipated game of the year

They released a patch this morning that addressed "bugs with scenario progression" so I imagine it's safe to play now.

I feel like this is my last chance on trusting kickstarter in regards reliving my nostalgia of classic games I loved.

Looks like Armed Fantasia and Pennyblood are stuck in dev hell and I didn't like Sea of Stars/Crimson Echoes.

So, what's this about? I love games where I have a lot of different characters/monsters to use, so "Hundred Heroes" has me interested. I never played a Suikoden game. What's it like? Radiata Stories?

I took a look on the Nintendo eShop and I see there's an associated game - Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising. It's a side scrolling combat game where you restore a town as you help out the town folk and clear dungeons. Apparently it's billed as introducing some of the characters and story from the main game? It's $20 but its on sale 75% off until the main game comes out so I picked it up for like $5

Played for an hour and it was pretty charming. Just wrapped up Unicorn Overlord which I loved but was really disappointed with the trite and lifeless writing, but this felt pretty cute in comparison.

I *am* concerned about the god awful dub voice acting I hear in videos of the main game, but maybe I could just play it in Japanese with subtitles? Rising doesn't have voice acting

Haven't played Radiata. If this is anything like Suikoden, then not all 108 characters will be battle-playable - some of them will add functionalities to your home base, which is usually also a military base, and the JRPG gameplay will occasionally be interspersed with some, like, military/ship battles, and some 1v1 duel minigames I think?

But I mean, it seems you have the gist of what it's about, probably moreso than many people if you've actually played the spinoff, so idk what else there is to say. Battles will use 6 party members and you'll get various co-op attacks depending on which party members you use, I think. Been ages since I played a Suikoden game.

Rising is supposed to be pretty different from the main game. Most people seem to like that, except that it feels like a 10 hour game with an extra 20 hours of grinding.

I just unlocked Hogan's shop and did a spit take when I saw how many stamps some of the trades required. I'm only 3-4 hours in with 18 stamps and I already think the game is getting a little long for how simple and repetitive it is, and the most expensive trade requires 160 stamps?! How.

This will not be a game I try to be (quasi-)completionist about, lol.

Haha yeah. What does this mean for how grindy the main game will be?

Dels posted...

Battles will use 6 party members and you'll get various co-op attacks depending on which party members you use, I think. Been ages since I played a Suikoden game.

Hmm so is this an RPG with turn based combat where your party can combine to do special moves like in Chrono Trigger?

mnk posted...

I just unlocked Hogan's shop and did a spit take when I saw how many stamps some of the trades required. I'm only 3-4 hours in with 18 stamps and I already think the game is getting a little long for how simple and repetitive it is, and the most expensive trade requires 160 stamps?! How.

This will not be a game I try to be (quasi-)completionist about, lol.

that's about as far as i got as well, but i would say it's less that "it's getting a little long" and more like i'm still waiting for the game to start. every gameplay segment where you finally get to go into a dungeon lasts like <5 minutes before you're forced to go back to town and talk to more NPCs. just let me actually play for more than a couple of rooms!

CoolCly posted...

Haha yeah. What does this mean for how grindy the main game will be?

probably not much. this was a little side-project to drum up interest during the years-long wait for the game, so i'm guessing the idea was to use as few resources/dev time as possible to make something that would still last a decent amount of playtime. i'd be surprised if a modern casual-ish JRPG in 2024 will have that much grinding.

what i do wonder about, in the vein of how streamlined games in 2024 are, is how hard it will be to recruit all characters. in suikoden (and i've only played IV and V actually), it was basically impossible to do on a first playthrough without a walkthrough. y'know, classic "your window of time to recruit this character was by traveling back to the previous town after this one plot event and if you advance to the next plot event you're locked out, oh and there's no reason you'd ever travel back to that town anyway"

this doesn't really fly in modern game design anymore (missables in general, really) so i wonder if they'll cut the strict time windows or put big exclamation marks over people's heads or etc.

I'm looking forward to this, but I have a feeling all that it's going to do is make me boot up Suikoden III again to beat for the 4th time.

In their recent Q&A, when asked about missable characters, they answered:

A: We have not included any missable elements in this title that need a time limit or a major redo. This is something that Murayama was also concerned about when creating Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundered Heroes.

It's worded in a way that suggests maybe there are some missables, but not in a "if you didn't backtrack to this obscure place at this specific time" kind of way. So maybe just story choice-based missables? And that also doesn't necessarily mean there are no convoluted recruitment methods, just that any character like that won't be missable.

Also Famitsu gave it a 33/40 (I think it was a combo of 10/8/8/7), which is kinda low for them. Hmm...

mnk posted...

Also Famitsu gave it a 33/40 (I think it was a combo of 10/8/8/7), which is kinda low for them. Hmm...

I feel like I've asked this before but have any of these "veteran dev returns after many years to make spiritual successor" games done well? I don't think they have a very good track record. Even Bloodstained, which seems like it turned out okay (I haven't played it yet) didn't seem particularly beloved.

Bloodstained is awesome. Better than any portable Castlevania.

Torment seems fairly well liked too. I think the hit rate has been pretty decent. Have there even been that many?

Yeah I think people are generally pretty high on Bloodstained (despite its performance being god awful when I played it).

People didn't like Shenmue 3 right? I've never played a Shenmue game. Obviously M#9 was a dumpster fire.

I read one review already that was complaining about Eiyuden feeling like an old Jrpg. Which, hello? Come on.

It has proper "old school" JRPG dungeons, with random encounters, save points, and they don't give you free heals when you level up or reach the save point. They talked about the importance of resource management during the Q&A. It's definitely not going to make everyone happy.

Back when they first showed some gameplay clips of the player walking and getting into a battle, I saw numerous people say random encounters were a deal breaker for them.

I didn't know the game had random encounters.

..........I mean it's 2024. Old games you just accept it, but not really willing to give a new game a pass on it. Every other old-school nostalgia push I can conceed to, sure, but that....

I've recently played through FF1-9 and DQ1-5, many of those games for the first time, and it was a lot of fun seeing how mechanics like random encounters and save points evolve

Honestly, I'm kinda down to see how a more modern game uses these elements. I feel like a lot of games have streamlined things for the better, but some positive things have been lost in that attempt. Maybe there's a balance to be struck. Their comment of resource management speaks to me.

Undertale had random encounters, right?

Hmm I was excited to try this game on Game Pass but random encounters is bad news.

MacArrowny posted...

Undertale had random encounters, right?

Undertale is 5 hour long game if you take your time.

And if you do decide to do the other game path on a replay, the random encounters are actually a core mechanic of the narrative!

Depends on how high the encounter rate is. SMTIV technically doesn't have random encounters but the encounter rate is one of the most obnoxious I've ever played.

I think Octopath did random encounters well.

random encounters are fine as long as the encounter rate isn't too high. I'm of the opinion that games should have a turn off encounter toggle, or a "press x to skip battle" function (Wild Arms 2 style), or a bravely style slider or something.

From what I heard of the demo, most people were saying the encounter rate was actually too low.

The digital codes going out today are not locked, btw. Can play as soon as you download. It was believed they were gonna be gated until the 72 hour period like the Digital Deluxe, but apparently not.

Jason Schreirer says there's still a bug preventing one of the characters from being recruited that's supposed to be patched by tomorrow. And that the review embargo is up on the 21st.

I'm still playing Rising. It got a lot better once the third party member joined. A lot more focus on switching characters and using link attacks, plus they stop funneling you back to town every five minutes.

...and now I'm at 105 stamps so maybe I'll be a completionist after all.

I've played it for a few hours now. Yeah it's pretty much Suikoden 1/2 with a different name and glossy coat of paint. I'm not the hugest fan of those games, but it's mostly from the story and characters. Eiyuden Chronicle having a voiced protagonist immediately improves it over Suikoden by a long shot. The game has a bench for story characters if you don't like them, including the main character, so you can play with favorites.

There's definately a lot of quality of live features that modern RPGs have that this doesn't. Namely fast travel at the moment, but Suikoden's whole gimmick of fast travel is tied to a party member so maybe it will be the same here.

Game plays pretty well on Steam Deck so far without changing any settings. I did turn off depth of field, but only because I thought the effect was too much.

1.004 update is starting to roll out. Supposed to fix the recruitment bug, the cooking competition bug (something about judges not reacting like they should), and the framerate encounter bug (higher refresh rate = lower encounter rate).

They also say they're working on improving Switch performance, but so far they haven't acknowledged the PS5 version only running at 1080p.

Yay patch went live on Steam. Doesn't mention it in the notes, but apparently it does fix the encounter rate bug. I largely thought the encounter rate was good on Steam Deck with default settings, so I hope this isn't actually a negative for me.

I just got my castle last night. Woohoo!

Im still very early

but the great part of this games menus being so obtuse is that you dont want to spend any time in them

so you can just play instead of optimizing everything

like the opposite of Star Ocean 2

Im about 20 hours in about.

Having a pretty good time! Theres a few flaws for sure but overall Im definitely enjoying myself much more than Unicorn Overlord.

It helps that I enjoy the dialog and banter between characters so much more than whatever UO gave us.

If there's anything this game desperately needs, it's more tool tips. It is so sparse on explaining stats and mechanics. The tutorial for Beigoma doesn't tell you shit about how anything works. How can you tell what a good match up is?

And also, what is Dexterity good for? Is the Focus Armband any good?

So many questions.

I can answer some of those!

As the biggest Suikoden fan on this board... it definitely has a very Suikoden feel to it. Especially the loading screens. Though it just makes me wish we could get the suikoden remasters with voice acting. Also a Suikoden V remaster.

Wow I'm not trusted, Ulti?

:((((((