It’s difficult to follow such a successful year in terms of video games. However, the next twelve months give the feeling of taking advantage of the breath of 2023, especially with regard to RPGs, whether Western or from Asia. We only have to look at the calendar for big names in the genre to jump out at us. However, there is one that plays the outsider: Eiyuden Chronicles: Hundred Heroes. Unlike its counterparts, it certainly makes less noise on the sidelines of its release, but this is to better achieve a thunderous launch. In our opinion, it is already one of the flagship titles of 2024 and deserves to have its name shouted from the rooftops.
Suikoden’s legacy is in very good hands with Eiyuden Chronicle
It is very likely that the name ofEiyuden Chronicle doesn’t mean much to you. At least, at first glance because, since its announcement, it is considered to be the spiritual successor of the saga Suikoden. Although the original developers no longer have control over it – it is the publisher Konami which holds the rights and which should, in the coming months, market its remastered HD compilation of the first two opuses – this has not affected them. prevented from imagining an heir worthy of the name. Despite this desire, the company is not necessarily obvious to Yoshitaka Murayama, the creator of Suikoden I And IIwho then chose, in 2020, to set up a team and pitch his project to Internet users via a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign in July 2020.
Obviously, at a time when life seems very gloomy and worrying, such an initiative which smells of the role-playing games of yesteryear brings balm to the hearts of players. Neither one nor two, they mobilize and allow the Rabbit & Bear Studios teams to reach the union minimum to create Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes. A month later, after multiple discussions and updates posted on the project’s Kickstarter page, Murayama’s dream of continuing the legacy of Suikoden is assured. Better than that, it will be able to greatly exceed its expectations since 46,307 contributors have chosen to support their approach and give them, at the very end, a global check for 481,621,841 yen, or a little more than 3 million euros.
More than three years after the announcement and multiple postponements, where is it? Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes ? Well, if the release could not have been honored neither in October 2022 nor during the year 2023, the Nintendo Direct last September confirmed to us that the launch would indeed take place in 2024, and more precisely on April 23. Alongside this long-awaited milestone, the developers offered players around the world some very useful insight into the game’s universe, its mechanics and its history. More and more, Eiyuden Chronicle seems to us to be at the crossroads of all that is best in terms of RPGs for several yearsreferring to multiple titles at the same time like Octopath Traveler, Triangle Strategy, Star Ocean or even the Final Fantasy old.
Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising was just a taste, Hundred Heroes promises mountains and wonders
Even though Eiyuden Chronicle preferred to delay its release, this does not mean that the year 2023 passed without it. On various occasions over the past twelve months, the Rabbit & Bear Studios title has shown its face at multiple events : Nintendo Direct, Gamescom, Tokyo Game Show… A way to remind you that its release was getting closer, this time, quickly! However, we tend to forget it but the players were indeed entitled to a small dose ofEiyuden Chronicle…in 2022! In order to keep players around the world waiting, the Rabbit & Bear Studios teams worked on a prologue, called Eiyuden Chronicle: Risingwhich allowed us to meet three of the hundred heroes – everyone has their own goals and convictions – which we will encounter in the very judicious subtitled opus Hundred Heroes.
Yes, one of the ultimate promises ofEiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes consists of offering players the possibility of recruiting a hundred different characters to build a team of six fighters, but we will come back to that. In this case, the spin-off Rising (available in PlayStation Plus Extra, for those who are interested) reduced this scope and opted for gameplay choices that are very different from what the communication from Hundred Heroes. Here, the game leans more towards the role-playing version “ light » primarily action-based gameplay where each of the three characters corresponds to a key. In short, something slightly different from the main title which resulted in pleasant entertainment but sorely lacking in challenge. In Rising, the 2.5D dungeons are traversed by horizontal scrolling and take up the concept of a metroidvanianamely that portions are only unlocked according to the story and the increase in our abilities.
In short, all this to say that the first contact with the universe ofEiyuden Chronicle was auspicious, whether for positive or negative reasons. Pinpointing certain pitfalls (repetitiveness, filling, lack of variety) could only allow the teams to be more vigilant with regard to the gaps that potentially need to be corrected in Hundred Heroes. At first glance, if the final observation could seem mixed because it is both exciting and disconcerting, the recent communication around the main game made us think that we might have one of the rare pearls of the JRPG in 2024a title capable of plunging us back into the exhilarating sensations of the adventures of yesteryear, at a time when games of the caliber of Suikoden knew their golden age.
Eiyuden Chronicle Hundred Heroes, the (positive) madness of grandeur
“ A new high quality JRPG “, this is how this famous Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes and looking at the last images, we must say that this desire to raise the standards of the old-fashioned JRPG, in particular by reworking what made the series so special Suikodengreatly piqued our interest. Where we are used to a system of three or even four playable turn-based characters, Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes increase this number tenfold, bringing it to six! In the purest tradition of the genre, we find exploration with random fights and bosses, an action order system, skills linked to runic lenses and combos between several characters that we will collect and learn throughout the adventure, as well as experience, gold and items recovered at the end of the fight and many other things, such as its system which pushes you to take advantage of the environment to take advantage in combat. You can also get a good taste of it thanks to the video below.
The intention is therefore clear: take the standards, enhance their efficiency and make everything even more exhilarating and exciting to discover and browse. However, gameplay is not everything, which is why the Rabbit & Bear Studios teams intend to deliver an engaging storyas suggested by the trailer (available at the top of the article) which is supposed to summarize everything you need to know just over three months before the multimedia release. If we still know little about the plot, we feel the strong political and moral propensityespecially since, as explained by the little information we have, Seign and Nowa, who became friends by chance, will be trained “ in the heat of war, forcing them both to re-examine everything they believed to be right and true “. Although the duo is central, there is enough room on the poster for Hundred Heroes to insert the character of Marisa, a guardian who has sworn to protect the runic mounds.
With these new clarifications on Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroeswe realize that the work of Rabbit & Bear Studios is not limited to shimmering settings, mixing two elements that are currently causing havoc: 3D settings in which pixel art characters evolve. Beautiful, generous and, above all, complete: this is how we could summarize it ! Pure Japanese product, Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is also the reflection of a large number of influences from the land of the Rising Sun, and all this is felt in the plethora of content it contains. In addition to a quest that should occupy us for dozens and dozens of hours, Hundred Heroes expands its copy with a whole bunch of additional activities such as War Mode (a kind of alloy between the spectacular battles of musô and the tactical aspect of Fire Emblem), the management of its General Quarters which consists of developing its city (a bit as was the case with New Nevaeh in Rising) and mini-games galore (fishing, Beyblade-style top battle (?!), cooking, card game, etc.).
Really, on closer inspection, it is difficult to imagine thatEiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes are not on the lips of all role-playing game fans! Certainly, turn-based is no longer as all the rage but a shovelful of titles continue to give thanks to it, likeOctopath Traveler, and, for once, this major title from Rabbit & Bear Studios is overflowing with both love for the genre and ideas for dusting it off. Regardless, the first third of the year is shaping up to be a good time for JRPGs and Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes could be the biggest surprise of 2024. If there are big names who will also set down their bags this year, we must not underestimate this little gem which alone carries the legacy of Suikoden, a great name in RPGs once upon a time. .