Reseñas de Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes

Excelente ! Si jugaste Suikoden tienes que jugarlo.

Horas de diversión garantizadas, hay personajes para todos los gustos

First of all, I want to make clear this is my personal take on the game. And it’s not pretty. I appreciate very much the effort of everyone behind this project, but it's been a very bittersweet experience. In the end, more bitter than sweet. Generally speaking, it feels like a weird and decaf version of Suikoden II. .- Regarding graphics: to me, sprite characters and 3d scenarios feels like an awkward combination; sure, you get used to it, but I'd rather keep it full sprite, full 3D or go for an Octopath-like style. Also, the weird incomplete access inside some buildings / zones…? And the excessively shaking bubbles from the yelled comments, for me, were a powerful reason to keep characters like Lian or Francesca away from the main action. > Glitchy cutscenes.. I’m playing the Steam version, April 2025, and all of the duel finishing cutscenes glitched, all of them: characters repeating the same animation 2 or 3 times, out of place, a fact that led to action disconnected from voice lines. And the cutscene after the final fights, the very final cutscene? It got stuck, literally, so I had to skip it entirely after waiting for several minutes (!). .- Regarding voice acting: it feels overloaded at times. Like in combat when you use a group heal or a group buff, a simple "thanks!" from the whole group would feel much better than 5 different and barely distinguishable phrases jammed together. Or the comments post-battle, again a lot of mixed exclamations instead of a single phrase of a single character at a time, so it does not tire. > Special personal mention to Carries’ constant -perfect- comments: drilling and annoying to a fault; that simple and written “Shazam!” from Viki in Suikoden V whenever she sent you away was fine, no need to overdo. .- Regarding runes and magic. > Generic attack runes at low levels feel quite skippable, only characters’ own runes feel useful. The ones you get later in the game… except for “Reckless slash”, I don’t think I used them much. And the resistance-type runes (and accessories), for me, are entirely skippable: the combat is meant to be fast-paced, especially the regular encounters which are 80-90% of the game. > About magic… well, it’s already been commented that lower spells are very expensive for the little they do, like when you start having mana to use those first much needed aoe’s and you see the meager numbers… you want to cry. Or the first healing water spell: it’s a potion... really? And when you reach higher levels, because of the MP system, you will run dry after casting 3 or 4 powerful spells… and left depending on SP abilities (thank you for Isha and Milana) or auto attacks… which become absurdly powerful already midgame. Also absurdly powerful: rune shards. Whenever I got them available at the castle shop I would not buy regular healing items again, rune shards were cheaper and more powerful and efficient, although they took a little more inventory space; not a real problem if you keep up the party levels, you do not need that many items. I can imagine they tried to balance magic, since it was OP in the Suikoden series, but all this needs polishing. .- Regarding combat… several points here. > Information display. Please do not use vague terms for damage, it feels misleading and frustrating: give us base damage numbers (spells) and or multipliers (combos, rune attacks) so we can build an adequate strategy. > SP: I understand they were trying to prevent runes / combo abuse, but, again, in fast paced combat people will not wait for 5 turns every time, or regularly farm ingredients for SP foods. Maybe reduce the limit to 3 and balance damage accordingly? > Battle plan. Or gambit system, as I prefer to call it (yes, I’m using FFXII’s term, because it’s the first reference I thought of). I see two options here. Easiest: leave it in auto attack mode only, like in the Suikoden series. Especially since mages here have a very respectable auto attack by early-midgame already. Elaborate: just 1 plan for the whole party, no matter who is in it, and keep it simple and clear. Again, key words: “fast paced combat”. Also, 71 combat characters. It’s a bother having to program every single character we want to try in combat, and very frustrating when you forget and see them waste magic or precious items we want to reserve for boss fights. > Support characters. Make them so they always provide their abilities, but do not make them random, what’s the point?? I earned that character, so I earned the right to use the ability him/ her/ they provide. Make the non-missable characters less powerful, if you want, so people are enticed to look for the missable ones. The pre-combat animations can be left with a low frequency appereance: they can tire in the end. .- About mini games, big point here: it is very unwise, very much unwise, to lock a recruit behind a long quest that forces you to play a mini game. Mini games are supposed to be optional content because, unlike the main game, not everyone will want to play them consistently. E.g: I love the cook off competitions (since Suikoden II), but I did not like the rest of the mini games here, especially the spinning tops which I ended up hating (!). .- Dungeon design. Generally I felt them very big in size, yet quite empty. And some of them also felt too long, like the Abandoned mine or the last Castle. Special personal mention to the library, which I disliked a lot, although maybe because at that point I felt already fed up and was in a rush mood to finish my one and only run for this game. .- Major battles. Or war battles. Seems like they went for the Suikoden II system, which is the most unclear and frustrating of the lot. Suikoden I was very simple but yet effective and understandable, and you felt the power increase in your army the more people you recruited. Suikoden V was a very big improvement: while still based in a rock-paper-scissors system you could move around the map (to a certain extent) and you got items / pieces of equipment / runes for defeating enemy units, and the effects of all characters’ abilities were also clearly displayed. Generally, they feel more of a weirdly playable kind of cinematic than proper battles in Eiyuden. .- Last point: lore, world and character personalities. > I just don’t feel it organic, quite generic altogether. Why are primal runes so important, are they connected somehow to the world? I mean, we were already told in the very first Suikoden that True Runes shaped the world and represented forces related to it: creation, death, punishment & atonement, change… we knew they were very important stuff… quite unlike Pirmal Lenses. > Also, old books: in Suikoden series they would give you different amounts of information related to the game they were in, so the lore got expanded… What is their purpose here? > Character personalities. As in Suikoden series, you get a lot of characters so they try to make them different, but they were all contained in a high fantasy theme with a tad of machinery and very related to the world they were in, here we have some true oddities like magical girls and beyblade players that break the concept quite a lot…. And in most cases I can like the concept behind the character, but I have not felt attached to any of them. In conclusion, and as stated previously, I’ve done one run and it’s gonna be the only one. If there would be a second Eiuyuden at some point, I would wait quite a lot and read a lot of articles and reports about it before I would even consider buying.