2024-03-18 16:00:00
I find it increasingly difficult as a player to get excited about new and massive JRPGs. There simply isn’t enough time to play games like Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, Persona 3 Reload, Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth, Unicorn Overlord, Dragon’s Dogma 2, and the list goes on and on. It’s this reason that puts a lot of pressure on Rabbit and Bear Studios’ upcoming Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes to stand out from its competitors. I recently had a chance to check out and play the game’s opening section, where I was wowed, but not completely captivated.
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is set in a fantasy world similar to Octopath Traveler. It’s medieval, but not gritty, and if anything, has something more fantastical and magical. This type of setting has the same types of conflicts and narrative threads we’ve come to expect, with conflicts and warring factions dividing the world, and a variety of uniquely designed and styled characters that impact and fit into the world in a variety of ways. Hundred Heroes is a completely unique game, but it’s also a very familiar one, especially if you’re very familiar with many JRPG trends and settings.
This also extends to the art style and graphics. Hundred Heroes has a beautiful combination of more realistic 2D-HD graphics and pixel sprite-like characters, and since this style has been successful in games like Octopath and even Live A Live, it does a great job bringing it to this universe as well. Huge talent and charisma.
But what sets Hundred Heroes apart from other games is primarily its combat and playable character roster. As the name suggests, there are over 100 characters to find and add to your team, which means variety in combat and strategy as well as tremendous depth in storytelling that’s often too deep if anything. When you have such a wide range of characters to incorporate, it can be difficult to make them stand out and feel important, and even in this preview build with about 10 characters to find and test, I’m starting to feel a little overwhelmed by the choices.Thankfully, combat is very simple, limiting the complexity of the extensive collection of characters
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In Hundred Heroes, combat is turn-based, but instead of spending time planning how and when your character will attack like a traditional RTS, you choose all of your commands here and see everything play out in one quick and Play a role in rapid movement, defined by a timeline of events. With six characters in your party at once, you choose what you want each character to do at the start of their turn, and then have it all play out over a series of seconds. This style promotes fast-paced and fluid action when you combine it with special attacks and abilities, some of which depend on the relationships your character develops, as well as unique combat gimmicks (e.g., hiding behind cover or Special attacks in boss encounters – one that’s a whack-a-mole type deal) and you can see the combat has been fine-tuned to great effect. However, it can get a little boring at times, including during boss encounters where you can’t see how you’re actually doing as the lack of health bars and information can make you feel like you’re treading water. However, I think there are more positives than negatives from these fights.
The same goes for narrative. On the one hand, there are some interesting elements and threads to follow, but at the same time, nothing here translates to a faster pace of combat. Every few minutes, your progress is paused to feature cinematic-style dialogue, and while I can appreciate fully voiced dialogue, the constant interruptions tend to make this game’s story feel more like a chore. Considering nearly every instance of dialogue beats taking the form of social media, such as the wall of dialogue in the lower right corner of the HUD, you have to wonder why there are so many frequent interruptions in the gameplay to explore mediocre and middling narrative excerpts.
You can also tell that the sheer scale of what Hundred Heroes wants to offer has influenced the intricacies and complexity along the way. The dungeons are unexciting to explore, with limited and fairly predictable additional paths to follow, often only leading to a treasure chest that can be interacted with for rewards. Cities and towns are similar in this regard too, with just a few extra places to explore. You won’t have that constant desire to peek behind curtains, wander off the beaten path, or enter every door you find. I do appreciate the idea of the world map being an overworld (similar to what was recently offered in Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands) where you can freely explore and quickly travel between dungeons and cities etc., but this map also It’s not completely crammed with detail, and it didn’t drive me to want to explore beyond the core objectives.
From what I’ve seen of Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes so far, I’m not a firm believer in the game. Sure, there were a lot of elements that stood out to me and reminded me of Suikoden, but at the same time, there were places and places that lost my attention and left me wanting more. As of right now, I’m not sure if this game will turn me away from some of the other JRPG projects currently available, but that doesn’t change the fact that if you live and breathe this type of game, you’ll undoubtedly be interested in this upcoming one Find something worth appreciating in the game.
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