Eiyuden Chronicle was first unveiled three and a half years ago, but players haven’t had many opportunities to get their hands on this fabled RPG. It was billed as a spiritual successor to Konami’s Suikoden series, the signature title from Rabbit & Bear Studios. To fill the void from the announcement until its inevitable release, Eiyuden Chronicle launched a spinoff action RPG known as Eiyuden Chronicle Rising to set the stage.
Part of the main draw to the Suikoden franchise lies in the number of recruitable characters, with the narrative itself billed around the 108 Stars of Destiny. Eiyuden Chronicle Hundred Heroes takes it more than ten percent beyond with a roster of more than 110 characters in total, and 505 Games teased that one will be very difficult to unlock. To accommodate the large roster of willing collaborators, players can bring up to ten people in their hunting party. This is broken down into three characters each in the front and rear rows, one support, and three attendants (which we didn’t get to take a look at given how few party members we had during the preview). Some characters can be eligible for both battle and support roles, while none of the original four characters recruited can be given a support role. 505 Games also mentioned offhand that there will be large characters that can take up two slots in the battle party. For Suikoden veterans, this would be reminiscent of exotic party members such as Abizboah the Kraken.
Eiyuden Chronicle Hundred Heroes opens with the main character Nowa being recruited by the League of Nations to do a bit of dungeon delving on a brief expedition. Accompanying him are Lian, a cocky martial artist with the same one-liners as a Marvel superhero, and others. The English dub can’t be spoken about as every spoken line was left with the same placeholder line, but the Japanese dub features an expressive cast that each speaks with a different level of intensity and pitch.
Venturing off into the woods, Nowa and his crew quickly get drawn into that same turn-based combat that Suikoden veterans have been itching for for years. Characters start their adventures with the bare minimum of stats, with Nowa and the party starting with a mere 30 HP and should ramp up fairly quickly if they’re using the stat growth from Suikoden 4 as a template. The various enemies can deal upwards of 10 to 15 damage per hit. These starting enemies are between various classes of rabbit wizards and knights before expanding into robots in the Northern Runebarrows that break the 2D sprites with their low-fidelity 3D models.
Crafting also appears to be an early feature of Eiyuden Chronicles Hundred Heroes but wasn’t unlocked to the player during the segment I played. Items and materials both had very limited counts and even materials could only be held fifteen at a time with the lowest rank of storage bag available to the player. Another option that wasn’t talked about in the preview but referenced in the player menus was the option to toggle asynchronous communication on/off. The game director recently talked about including a card game in the full release, but that would be played actively, not through async. If I had to wager a guess, it may be a way to test Nowa’s kingdom and potential against other players in the mass-scale war modes, but we’ll have to wait for an official announcement from the developers to talk about that particular feature.
If you’re seeking a more difficult journey, Eiyuden Chronicles Hundred Heroes features both a Normal and Hard mode but also a small variety of modifiers to the run. There wasn’t an option to limit EXP growth as seen in some other games, but they do offer the option to restrict earning Baqua (Eiyuden’s version of gold coins), prevent HP recovery items from being used in battle, doubling the consumption of MP/SP, and preventing escapes. Perhaps the one that stood out merely by name alone was the one that increased the prices at regular shops: Hyper Inflation. Perhaps I’m just a bit too internet-aware to consider the possibilities of that particular phrase.
Kickstarter backers might get their hands on the Suikoden-spiritual successor ahead of everyone else, but if you didn’t back the project when it was first revealed, Eiyuden Chronicles Hundred Heroes will be available for everyone on April 23rd, 2024 across both PlayStation platforms, Xbox One and Series S|X, Nintendo Switch, and PC (Steam, Epic Games Store and GOG). If you were a Kickstarter backer, keep an eye out for emails coming from 505 Games and Rabbit and Bear Studios to confirm your rewards and get a copy of the game in your hands as soon as possible.
