One of my favorite JRPGs is Suikoden 2. This review is me comparing it to that.

This is a game that feels like it was made during that era of JRPGs. It ticks all the boxes. Tedious random encounters, not being able to save anywhere, archaic minimal hint based objectives.

I played through multiple 60+ hour jrpgs (FF7R2, Unicorn Overlord) this year and this is by far my favorite out of all of them.

Compared to Suikoden 2 though, the game Eiyuden is heavily based on.
This game just can't hold a candle to the PS1 classic.

The story feels like they played it safe, It's more heroic than S2's Dark Grim Crisis-filled story, While there's nothing wrong with something more lighthearted. I really wanted something that made me feel the same way as Luca Blight did in S2. This doesn't make the story bad though, just more predictable and cliche.

The character recruitments are one of the strongest points of Eiyuden. Suikoden 2 also has all the mundane very forgettable recruitments but I think that's just part of the charm. There's always a character for someone in this game.

The combat is awesome. A lot of people say the enemies are very spongy but if you experiment with some characters some of them turn out to be insanely good, to the point where some of them can 3-4 turn bosses by themselves. So ofcourse people are gonna struggle if they keep using the character that shines later and hits for 85 per attack instead of the character that comes out of the box doing 300 per turn. So I made sure to experiment with character combinations and that made the game much more deep for me, despite it being really simple.

Overall, If Suikoden 2 is a 10/10 for me. This game is an 8. I highly recommend it. There's nothing like this right now and with S2 Remaster in the horizon. There's no better time to enjoy this love letter to the franchise.

RIP Yoshitaka Muruyama, And thanks R&B, 505 games for this fun and amazing game.

I have been reading a lot of comments about players outright hating the English translation of the game and because of that, i decided to play in my native language (Spanish) and its a completely different story.
Getting that out of the way, this game is amazing, it looks beautiful, sounds really good, there are a few songs that are repeated a lot, specially in towns but that's ok.

The combat is fun, specially boss fights, which all have different ways to be approached to be beaten.
Theres a lot of characters so of course not all of them are gonna be balanced but i feel that that's ok, i wouldn't expect an army in real life to have people of the same skill in their troops. Its also worth remembering that this game was made by the creator of Suikoden and that game had unbalanced character and we loved them.

Overall, this a Suikoden game through and through and if you love Suikoden, you are gonna love this game just as much as i do, however if you can read in another language i definitely suggest playing this game in the language of your preference. The Spanish version so far has being respectful of the story and characters, status changes, attacks and such.

8/10 awesome Suikoden successor

As a hardcore Suikoden fan, this is an easy thumbs up. It's absolutely nowhere near the high point of the old series, but it's perfectly serviceable and hits the right spots for nostalgia to kick in.

But there's been very few points where I'd recommend it to anyone else. It's lows are REALLY bad and it's highs are just pretty good.

The plot is generic Suikoden. Evil empire, encouraged to start a resistance army, face off against your friend on the battlefield... y'know... the usual. I actually enjoyed most of the characters and the plot.

The dungeon design ranges from mediocre to absolutely dreadful. Mostly, it's a linear path with branches for chests. Mostly, it's more forgettable than bad but the low spots were hard-to-see hidden paths, long stretches of boring nothings, and doors locking behind you preventing you from resupplying...

Because this game LOVES to lock the metaphorical door behind you.. and I repeatedly found myself unable to switch party, buy supplies, free-roam, etc until I beat the rock wall that is the next boss/several bosses. After a few soft-lock risks, I found myself afraid to move forward until I was over-leveled and overstocked. This severely hurt the experience.

The combat system is deeper than it looks at first glance, and more importantly deeper than the useless tutorials teach you. It has a massive focus on initiative timing, multiple MECHANICALLY different damage types, unique defenses/dodges per characters, load of options, etc. There is alot here to love here... BUT...

Balance is non-existent. Some characters are amazing, some are useless, most hero combos are inferior to basic attacks, and I've found magic to be entirely worthless. One of the first bosses in the game took me 45 minutes due to an insane life pool, yet nothing has come close to that since. It's been a roller coaster of difficulty spikes. It NEEDS some balance patches.

This leads to the best/worst part of the game... bosses. Nearly every boss has a gimmick. Sometimes it's a literally battle "gimmick" such as having a random chance to hit the boss with a powerful attack or avoiding powerful attacks by hiding. Sometimes it's a non-labeled "gimmick" such as the boss countering certain attacks or having an ultra-attack every X activation. Learn the gimmick and you'll win the fight.

The problem is that too many gimmick fights make me feel like I'm exploiting the mechanics more than playing the game. Guess what... having the characters in the front blocking to avoid triggering the combo just isn't fun... neither is a party-wipe sleep spell before you can buy defenses for it.

This is made worse by many specific battle mechanics that end up feeling more tedious than challenging. Whether its enemies with "Intelligent targeting" that will all target one single hero repeatedly or being unable to revive since enemies will 100% of the time target a revived hero before they can heal... I found myself abusing the systems rather than playing the game. (For example, stocking up on revives to guarantee a wasted enemy action each turn)

Recruiting is fairer than the past games and easier to find heroes. On the other hand it's now a series of fetch quests which has lead to me spending hours grinding for rare drops for each of the different characters. I can understand if it's one or two characters.... but I've had to catch the rare fish, find multiple rare artifacts, find the rare lumbers/irons/bones, etc. It's reaching a point where things are just tedious. (I've probably spent 4 hours of my game so far trying to recruit 3 specific heroes due to trash my RNG)

All of my complaints are made worse by bugs in the recruiting, random battle rates, balance jank and potentially other hidden stuff. I've had a few crashes, I've had a few areas where things seemed to get locked, etc.

I do feel that this review is far too negative compared to my actual feelings... but these are the emotions that are standing out. I do like this game alot and that's why I'm giving it a thumbs up even now. But they still have work to do to make this anything close to a great game. (And I do have faith that they'll put in that work)

Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes (2024) represents a Japanese role-playing game (JRPG), developed by the company Rabbit and Bear Studios and published by the company 505 Games.

Pros & cons:

++ Meet the members of my dream team, straight from the mental asylum. Mighty Mellore, a delusional sorceress in a sailor moon costume with late-stage OCD for justice one liners. Youngling Yusuke, the misunderstood gangster with his hands glued to his pants and the tendency to kick his enemies into a bloody pulp. Fierce Franscesca, a stereotypical tsundere character with a split personality. And yes, I can fix her! Crazy Carrie, the petite blond who is one teleportation away from summoning a demonic creature from the immaterium or falling victim to the infamous turning-the-inside-out incident. Muscle mage Maureus, a beefcake with a severe concussion trauma believing muscle points (MP) are the most crucial metric for determining how much magical power a caster can draw from. Punisher Prunella, the last survivor of a dwarven commando unit likes to clean her massive bazooka, that I call Fatman, at the campfire while telling stories about past war crimes.

+ You will be buried under an avalanche of 71 playable characters, who you can assemble into a team of six to fight a power-hungry empire that threatens to annex your worthless fishing village. But you will abandon your main quest soon enough, because of the countless distractions in form of customizing your castle, cooking, fishing, playing cards, spinning tops, and starting a breeding program for pseudo-chocobos. And for the ambitious among us, enter a neverending dungeon with overpowered mobs to reach your final form. Then steamroll the rest of the campaign.

o The supposed challenge of the cooking mini-game confuses me. I simply served the unwashed masses fried eggs, omelets and apple cider soda every time, and effortlessly rose to the status of culinary godhood.

- Some scripted sequences have a massive delay before they continue, e.g. the first duel on the bridge, or the song with the shi’arc. It required the patience of a saint to sit through those lags.

-- Dear developers, where is my option to double or even triple the speed during combat sections? Just look at The Last Remnant (2009) for such a quality-of-life feature. Heresy, I hear you scream as you try to suppress your tears and clutch your little game codex. But, to quote my arch-enemy and grand illusionist Todd Howard: it just works.

Summary:

To roam the realm of Allraan with the farmer-turned-warlord-protagonist Nowa and my bizarre team of MIN/MAX characters, provoking encounters and hoarding ridiculous amounts of money and resources for the end game weaponry of mutually agreed mass destruction, constitutes my only purpose in this game.

Recommended for JRPG freaks eager to refill their nostalgia meter.

Achievements:

Estimated time for 100% completion: +150 hours

Singleplayer achievements: 56
Multiplayer achievements: none

Worth the $50 for 66 hours so far. If you like classic JRPG's and enjoy a classic kinda figure it out yourself character collecting game with some grind, this is the right game for you. If you want something deeper and more personal with a detailed lore/history and in-depth tutorials, its probably not the game for you.

Is it a perfect game? No. Is it enjoyable? Heck yes. Does it remind me of the Suikoden series? Heck yeah!!!! Is a carbon copy? No. Did the devs make mistakes? You bet. Do I regret my purchase/support? No.

Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes has its pros and cons like every other game. Below, I will review some pros and cons and some comparisons with the Suikoden series.

Story/Characters:
Pros
-Very similar Suikoden vibes.
-I like the diverse cast of characters in terms of how they look and different races/tribes of people. Thats always been something the Suikoden game excelled at so it was reminiscent of it. And yes there is a LGBT+ character in this game and its not that deep.
-The story makes subtle references to other places that you do not see at the end of the game. Such as a University known for education and its observatory. Even some characters are from this university or has been there in this game. This was similar to Suikoden I and II where they referenced other places and then introduced them later in the series.
-There are lots of heroes to collect and I believe there's about 120 characters.
-There are lots of minigames to play. My favorite is probably the card game. There is a beyblade-esque game too.
-Has a killer/catchy theme song that is mostly in Japanese but then goes "hundred heroes" which was awesome.
-They definitely acknowledged the backers that helped make this game and I thought it was cute seeing people on reddit say they found themselves in-game.
Cons:
-The story could have been written and told better. Everything was there for a reason. They did not focus on building the characters relationships with one another. Lets just say even the game itself had some scenes where you see a black screen and it just says 6 months later...a few weeks later...etc.
-They tried to copy the bond/rivalry of Suikoden II between Riou and Jowy but failed with Nowa and Seign. This made their duel anticlimatic because they knew each other for a day before war split them which as a reader/gamer, you did not feel the emotions they were suppose to feel.
-Localization could have improved but I understood what was going on just fine. The dialogue from certain characters was questionable. I found a lot of very annoying characters, mostly hyperactive/loud/obnoxious female characters but I think that's a JRPG trying to make them cute thing which I personally don't like.
-They skip over a lot of important lore or things that could have expanded the world. I'm not sure if this is due to them wanting to expand it later, but they missed a big opportunity here and this is probably why a lot of negative reviews says it feels rushed. They focused on the storyline and that was it.
-There are parts in the game where they just tell you to literally go find characters to recruit which doesn't flow well and seems forced.
-They released the game with a bug that caused you to be unable to recruit a character but they fixed it within the week of its release.

Battle/Turn-based Gameplay
Pros: They improved on the rune system in my opinion. Adding rune slots beyond the 3 from Suikoden's head/left/right arm was such a great improvement. This provided an opportunity to make some characters fit what you want them to do while still giving characters some uniqueness with exclusive runes and restrictions.
-Most characters will have at least one level 3 magic rune and a few stat enhancement or skill runes. Some even have an anything you want rune slot. One special character even has all of their runes at level 4 as anything you want.
-Removing rune charges for MP was also the best thing they could have done and having MP restore items and rune shards. This allowed you to kinda tinker characters stats and in this case you can adjust their MP should you want.
-The auto battle system works well for lazy people if you know how to set it up properly and pay attention to your characters speed/sp/mana management.
-Characters will learn and open up new rune slots as they level up. Some exclusive runes are learned this way instead of being found which Suikoden didn't offer and locked behind rune charges.
Cons:
-The instructions on battles can be confusing but once you know the basic, its actually quite fun.
-A lot of people will struggle with how SP is generated and the game does a poor job of explaining it. Basically SP is randomly generated based on the luck stat. Not all character will use SP or have the ability to do so. If you have high luck, you have more chance of gaining 1 or multiple SP after each round.
-Stats of some characters can be very random and unappealing such as a mage that has higher strength than a warrior or a mage with less MP than a warrior. The consistency seems a bit random and I'm not sure who worked on these numbers. Personally, it didn't get in the way of the overall enjoyment.
-They removed the dojo's/skill enhancer/grades which I really loved in Suikoden III/V. This means that many characters can hit multiple attack counts, but it doesn't seem to make any difference in terms of hit counts/overall damage. In fact, multiple hit counts are pointless and does not offer any incentive.
-The hero combos cost too many SP from each character and the damage is not worth the turn or SP cost.
-There are no range physical skills that are good which makes rangers inferior. Its a mage/warrior kind of game. There's like 3 useful tanks, but tanking and covering is all rng and luck based.

Dueling
Pros: The cutscenes during the duels throughout the games are pretty cool and fun to watch.
Cons: The combat itself is not enjoyable because it forces you to select certain options to continue with the animation so you can't just attack them to the end or use your special whenever. In previous Suikoden games you could do whatever you want and it made a big difference.

Warfare/Strategic Battles
Pros: You see (what I believe to be) random backers and their names being killed in battle lol. Besides that there aren't really any pros.
Cons: I found the war battles so boring and useless. You can't really edit your team. You select and move them and have little to no control otherwise besides some 1 use skill that can't be improved upon. Your characters stats doesn't matter so you can't just obliterate everything and can still die from something stupid. I'm not sure how this is calculated but this is the worse part of the game. I wish they stuck to Suikoden III and how you can still influence the map yet still choose what you want to do.

So yes, I wrote a lot, but I also enjoyed the game for what it is. Did it exceed my expectations? No. Was I happy with my purchase? Yes. Because I supported a game and it delivered a game that brought joy and memories. Can it improve? Absolutely. I hope people give it the chance to because there is so much to this game and I hope the dev's will listen and improve on these things.

after 70+ hours of play all i can say that this is the true successor to the original suikoden that we remember (specifically S1 & S2)

good things :
classic JRPG suikoden style for the fans
easy to grasp for new players
1v1 break fight cutscenes SO DAMN COOL!!
fans of collecting achievements would like this game
good main story (still can't top S2 though)
great characters & personality
good villains (but can anybody top Luca? i dont think so)
fully voice over dialogs
building castle with collected resources
lots of mini games to play (card game and egg race is my fav)
teleport from everywhere to anywhere is the goat

some "bad" things to note :
mini games are too simple (ex; fishing)
some total cringe lines and story on char quests (ex; beyblade & cook off)
wish the rune system is better balanced throughout all characters - some char are pure trash
cook off challenge is dumbed down (no extra customized ingredients like in S2)
war battlefield could've been much better (pacing too slow)
BGM need to be improve

although its not perfect, give the studio enough chance and we might get to see a better sequel to this series

This game is about scratching that pesky Suikoden VI itch. Ok, it does scratch that itch. That is why I recommend this game, but only IF YOU HAVE THAT ITCH.

This game is supposed to be a nostalgia trip, and that's fine. But gameplay from the late 90s / early 200s without any kind of effort put into improving it, however, is NOT.

It has it all: Ditzy teleporting magic girl, red and blue knights, the elven trio, you name what Suikoden had, this game has it.

THAT SAID, there are a few things to talk about.

Point 1: It's crazy to me that this game is published in 2024, and 90% of the characters you can put in your team are subpar. That was ok in the 90s, but this is NOT ok now. Either reduce the playable character pool or spend more time balancing the characters you choose to make playable.

Point 2: Game balance - a certain character whose name starts with an M basically trivializes all the content that comes after you obtain said character.

Point 3: Pick better translators. I don't care about the whole woke debate, but seriously, the English translation is at points too poor. At least you can easily patch that though (using a mod though).

Point 4: The cooking battles are a tradition, but you do not need something that feels like 20+ battles. Moreover, I won every single one by using poached egg / fried eggs and OMELETTE AS A DESSERT. That literally makes no sense, and again, it's just laziness on the programmers' part.

Point 5: At stage 4, building everything in the castle is gated behind getting items for construction that only appear each in ONE dungeon, and you can only get 6 per dungeon (with the support who increases the yield...) or through missions in the mission guild that, you guessed it, require those elements to actually be unblocked first.
And on top of that, you then have buildings which require an element that can ONLY be obtained through clearing missions. And missions last 30 minutes, with no way to speed them up.
Anyone saying "This is optional" obviously does not play JRPGs. It's not REALLY optional, unless you do not plan on finishing the game.
Again, this is 90s gameplay. Not ok in 2024.

Point 6: Tbh, the story itself is bland as hell, and that is because (I realized it at the end of the game), it does not have that true rune driving it Suikoden had. This is just a war story. The justification is mildly mystical, but in the end there is no real driving force. You talk about the empire, but you never do see an emperor, either.

If you take all this into account, I have two conclusions:
1. Are you a Suikoden fan? Buy it and enjoy it.
2. Are you a hardcore JRPG fan, and are used to this kind of formulaic gameplay? You might enjoy it.
3. If you are neither, then this game is a HARD pass.

A fine spiritual successor to Suikoden 2 that does not fall below expectations. I hope many Suikoden fans share a similar view.

The story is well-written. I find it quite interesting, above average. However, it contains excessively predictable plots, fewer dramatic events, and fewer surprisingly cunning tactics. The link with the prequel, Rising, turned out to be fine. It gives a feeling just like when Suikoden 1 continued its journey in Suikoden 2.

The graphics are a well-done combination of 2D pixel art and 3D-empowered objects, especially the world map and towns. While retaining the old-school style of visuals, it also allows players with older models of PCs to enjoy the game without spending extra money on hardware upgrades.

The gameplay is fairly enjoyable, which means there are not many differences from the archetype. Despite this, the duel scenes and the warfare battles are deemed praiseworthy. While the duel scenes turn out to be more exciting cinematic shows than thrilling fights, the warfare battles offer unsophisticated tactical war play but can produce excitement through a Total War-like environment and characters' dialogues while engaging in combat.

The effort of the voice actors is highly commendable. Despite the large scale of characters, most dialogues are amazingly fully voiced, which, as a consequence, greatly raises the quality of the RPG game.

The vast diversity and quantity of mini-games offered in the game are hard to go unmentioned. In fact, there are so many of them available that only true hardcore players would willingly put in the time and effort to finish them all. However, the good thing is that normal players are only required to partially participate in mini-games as a requirement for story completion. The rest are considered optional. My favorites are the Theatre and Card Game.

The Theatre mini-game, however, is the most commendable one. As the player should have learned the personality and characteristics of each character from the dialogues and events, it is quite fun to assign them roles that are deemed to suit them well and expect to produce good results. The most thrilling part is that all theatre-performable characters have their own lines in every show and every dialogue, with varying levels of acting proficiency, and they are all voiced! In my experience, this is the most amazing aspect of this game.

Obviously, the English language used in the game is still sesquipedalian. The developer's English translator overused synonyms in the townsfolk conversations, which ruined the natural flow of spoken language and resulted in bizarre dialogue. This issue persists from the Rising prequel, which could indicate that the same translators continued their work on this game as well.

Several BGMs (Background Music tracks) are well-composed and memorable, especially those with chorus, which effectively add emotional value to the story.

As a backer, I am impressed and satisfied with this Kickstarter project so far. In comparison with the most-acclaimed Suikoden 2, even though several core elements may still be considered inferior to the magnum opus, the game surprisingly surpasses its inspiring masterpiece in many aspects. Thanks to the great effort of all the developer teams. Even as a humble backer, I am proud to participate in the birth of this emerging great franchise, and I look forward to supporting any interesting projects in the future.

I'll take Francesca out of my party when I'm cold and dead in the ground.

I'll have to say, the English translation is a bit disappointing(?), the JP dub and the English text are not similar at all in some cases(note: I'm not fluent in both languages), I know that it doesn't have to be a literal translation of what the person is saying, but this is far too distant (?) idk how to explain it
this is an example from the game after the team beat the first boss (a golem) Nowa said something like "we did it/beat it!" in JP and the translation of it is "Got him!" which is totally fine and then in the next dialogue Mio said something like "But what is this huge thing?" but the English translation of it is "you sure it's a he?" and this is just one of them, because of this some character's expressions are too exaggerated. it's like the translator is trying to make their own story or narrative. if your native language is available I'd recommend you change it to that. for me, because I can kinda understand Japanese a little bit I'm mostly fine with it, I think that's the only complaint I have for the game for now, I know you're wondering why this is a positive review, it's because I know the game has a lot more to offer down the road that I love, like improving our own castle and recruiting characters to improve the QoL of the game etc. and I just love the Suikoden series, so I'm really happy they're making more similar game to Suikoden.

The hard difficulty is really challenging in early to mid-game, I don't recommend it for newcomers who never played Suikoden, late-game is quite easy you can one-shot an entire 6 enemies with Chandra or mage units if you know what you're doing.
Almost everything else aside from the translation is fantastic, managed to recruit all 120 characters and finished some of the mini-games it was a fun experience, and I've been craving for Suikoden 6 for so long. This is a good substitute although sadly the story is so-so for me and the execution of some of the epic moments definitely could have been done better (not every Suikoden's story is great either, I don't like Suiko 4) . this game for me is like a 7/10 while Suikoden 2 is like 9.5/10. a little bit of a spoiler I was hoping they would develop the Primal lens (True Runes) story deeper but sadly they did not.. what's so fun about Suikoden is about their 27 True Runes and all of their logos, the Primal lens here doesn't have a logo at all, all of them looks the same or just plain, it doesn't feel special and unique at all , now music.. the music doesn't have the Suikoden feels to it but some of them are really good but most of them are just so-so nothing too bad tho.

why am I comparing this to Suikoden so much? Because this is a spiritual successor of the series and almost all the teams behind this game are the same team who made Suikoden

I hope this review is helpful for some of you.

R.I.P Yoshitaka Murayama thank you for providing us with Suikoden and now Eiyuden