Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes Review – Back to Simpler Times

“With our appreciation to all JRPG fans.” This is how Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes greets you. In this short moment, I pondered, what is it that I, as a fan, love about a JRPG? Is it the epic stories with endearing characters? Is it the iconic music? Or is it the strategic layer of each combat encounter? It must be, because Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes delivers on all these notes. It’s a trip back to simpler times when we didn’t need the most realistic graphics or a battle pass. We just needed a great story and a solid cast to have one of the best adventures you could wish for.

Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes Review

Before I get into every detail of the game, I must talk about the elephant in the room: Suikoden. For those who don’t know, Yoshitaka Murayama, the creator of the legendary Suikoden series, worked on Hundred Heroes. It was his last work before passing away in February 2024. I mention all this because fans of the aforementioned franchise will want to compare Eiyuden Chronicle to Suikoden, and I don’t blame them. In many ways, it is almost identical to Suikoden 2, which can be good or bad depending on the player. But if you’ve never played that series, let me tell you that you’re about to experience one of the genre’s most extraordinary and memorable adventures.

Story: A Threefold Tale

While the promotional material for Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes hints at a story spread evenly across three characters, you take control of Nowa, a boy who decides to leave his village to join the Watch. This group of adventurers protect the realm, seek adventure, and help those in need. In essence, it’s another situation centering on a protagonist with big dreams who wants to leave his mark on the world, and while he does so, it isn’t as impactful as I would’ve liked.

During his first task, he meets Seign, a boy from a noble house of the empire and the second pseudo-protagonist who accompanies him in search of a rare magical artifact. After the typical scene where the two meet, become friends and promise to see each other later, things get hairy. The empire betrays the nation and starts attacking everywhere, and Nowa and Seign become enemies. Seign decides to be loyal to his nation, and it falls to Nowa to step up and spearhead a rebellion who capture, I mean, recruit more than 100 heroes to fight oppression.

That’s as far as I’ll go without delving into spoiler territory. Instead, let me paint a bigger plot picture: it’s quite simple. Not in a bad way, but it just wasn’t as emotionally impactful as I was hoping it to be. Yes, it’s great to see Nowa go from a recruit to a rebellion leader, but his personality is extremely flat, at least in the main story. Furthermore, Seign and Marisa, the other two “main” characters, are pretty much wasted. They have such interesting conflicts that leaving their stories for a DLC is a borderline crime. Seign’s portion lasted two hours and gave me more feelings than the 40-hour adventure following Nowa across the map.

Characters Galore

On the other hand, filling up your Pokedex, excuse me, ally log with over a hundred characters is the bread and butter of Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes. At first, I thought every member would be forgettable. Let’s face it: you have 120 to recruit; how can we remember them all? I don’t know what narrative voodoo the people of Rabbit and Bear Studios pulled off, but I recall every single one. Whether it is the capybara in charge of the hot springs, the magical girl who is terrible at teleportation, or the Latino-inspired wrestler, they are all fantastic.

Furthermore, the recruitment process for each unit is full of engaging tasks that’ll test your patience in a good way. For example, you must learn to use the trading market to hire a certain character for your base. Without realizing it, I was playing the stock market selling black pepper, mirrors, and diamonds just to impress this lizard-like NPC. It took me three hours to recruit this trader, but it was worth it. Also, this was just for one character. Most other cast members give you different tasks that range from combat to dungeon-delving, fishing, and more.

However, it is important to note that not all heroes have deep recruitment quests. A few only require you to progress through the story; others are just waiting for you to approach them. Still, watching Nowa get scared by meeting a necromancer or scream his lungs out while helping a magical girl is amazing and the most memorable thing of Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes.

Overall, the plot is quite simple and can get a bit boring at times due to the slower pacing of the genre, but it definitely has more highs than lows. The best moments come from the whole cast, which, believe it or not, brings something new to the table regarding story and gameplay. While the main scenario lacks depth, the party members make up for it. Recruiting each one is extremely rewarding, and every hero brings something new to the narrative and gameplay.

Gameplay: A Little Bit of This, A Little Bit of That

Recently, one thing I’ve liked about modern Japanese-inspired roleplaying games is the addition of many features in one package. Take the Yakuza series as an example. You have a fleshed-out story, engaging combat mechanics, and a plethora of minigames. While Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes doesn’t have the depth of that series, it follows a similar design. You have the main scenario you can pursue, a strategic combat system, and a lot of side content that’ll keep you occupied for hours.

Let’s start with combat. It has the recent timeline mechanic that shows each character’s turn and a resource-building system similar to Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth that allows you to cast spells or perform skills after you fill up certain bars. At first, I thought it was simple, but that wasn’t the case. With its six-space grid formation, every encounter had a deep strategic layer that I enjoyed.

For example, in a regular encounter, you have three characters in the front and three in the rear. You choose what all your six characters will do simultaneously but must keep track of the timeline to see who goes first and last. In most cases, I had my fastest heroes defeat the first two enemies of a row and then let my slower party members fight the ones in the back or guard against enemy attacks.

Furthermore, the combat gets deeper thanks to Runes, which is the equivalent of Materia in Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes. Each character has personal runes, which are specific skills. This is something I loved because every hero played differently. My teleporting mage summoned barrels, anvils, and even rubber ducks to damage foes. One necromancer summoned skeletons, while my ninja created shadow clones a ‘la Naruto. If that wasn’t enough, you can grab elemental runes to give them spells, similar to FF7: Rebirth. Overall, building every playable character was great and always felt refreshing.

A Place To Call Home

Combat aside, there’s a lot of side content to do, and most of it takes place at your headquarters. After a while, Nowa will get a home base you can renovate as the game progresses. The important part about focusing on this area is all the benefits you get. Since not all characters are made for combat, a few you recruit unlock new buildings in your HQ, such as a card shop, hot springs, a restaurant, and even a theater. It was this feature I enjoyed the most because it gave me a sense of progression and even rewarded me for getting sidetracked to recruit new allies.

Beyond that, you unlock many mini-games, which are great time-sinks and excellent ways to make money. You have a race track, a restaurant with its own over-the-top cook-off questline. You can build a boss-rush room to try different team compositions, a training yard to try the war-like system and some good ol’ fishing spots to boot. I wish this place had allowed me to develop my relationships with all the characters, like in Unicorn Overlord, but that wasn’t the case. Still, it is a great system to have, and it is quite addictive once you learn the ropes.

Graphics and Audio: The Best of Two Worlds

Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes embraces the old pixel-art style of old JPRGs and transplants it into wonderful 3D scenes. Each town and city I visited was perfectly designed and enough to make my jaw drop. Whether it was the starting town, the desert town home to a shark culture, or the lush forests around your HQ, each zone was a marvel to explore. There’s also an overworld you can venture across, and while it’s nice, it doesn’t have the same details as the dungeons and cities. Still, it is there to provide some nice low-poly vistas anyone can enjoy.

Regarding audio, it is fantastic. This is where the game truly shines. It is rare when a new game of this genre makes me hum its songs after I put the controller down. Eiyuden Chronicle has a terrific soundtrack, with its combat music being the most memorable of all. Also, the voice acting is great. Being the weeb I am, I played it with a Japanese voice-over and found it extremely enjoyable. Each character brings a specific personality, which you can hear in every line they deliver.

Conclusion: Playing It Safe

If I had to describe Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes as a whole, I’d say it’s a game that plays everything safely. In what sense? It doesn’t quite innovate the genre in any meaningful way, but it doesn’t disappoint, either. It’s the spiritual successor of Suikoden and a love letter to old JRPGs. Its simple story, endearing characters, and engaging gameplay are enough to bring new players to the fray while appealing to veterans. While I would’ve loved to see more depth in certain systems and better character development for all protagonists instead of locking that behind DLC, every minute of my journey was memorable enough. I hope the studio sticks to this world because it is one I can’t wait to visit again.

Review copy given by Publisher.

Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is available for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and PC (Reviewed).