Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes (2024)

Haven't been playing as heavily since about mid-week last week, but I'm essentially at the end game. I'm apparently at the point of no return for getting any of the heroes that you don't collect in the last segment. This means having to finish up the cooking battles (which have been overall okay, and I have three left), and defeating a bunch of people in beigoma in order to get two other characters, which has been much less okay. You start with absolute garbage and basically have to traverse the world map and dungeons to get beigoma drops from specific monsters in order to have a fighting chance against even the first opponent. This is not retroactive, so you will have zero of these drops before starting the questline for these characters. It's killed almost all of my momentum and desire to play, but I'm hoping to push through that this evening and maybe even wrap up the main game.

There are still upgrades to complete in my Castle HQ, but I can't access a few specific items for this, which are apparently in the last area or so.

I've really been enjoying my time with this so far, but there are definitely some QOL issues to note:

The inventory space is ABYSMAL. You have 30 slots, and different items stack at different, completely ridiculous rates. Your medicinal herbs stack up to 6, so if you have 7-12, that's two of your 30 slots. Revival herbs only stack to 2, so when I first bought like 10 thinking that would last me a while, that was FIVE MORE SLOTS GONE. The main bag also holds any equipment and accessories that you've got on hand, as well as runes. Runes don't stack at all, even when they're the exact same kind, so that's even more space gone in no time. I was in a dungeon for like two hours yesterday (prob some idle time in there), and had to keep wasting herbs on characters who were barely missing HP, or tossing shit. There's no fast travel yet and I was so far into this place before I pondered using the escape rune thing that I couldn't be bothered to use that and travel aaaalll the way back to where I was.

You also can't change your party or equip runes anywhere but your base/an inn or the rune shop. It's 2024. I don't care if this is a spiritual successor to a much older game that had similar mechanics (I've never played any Suikoden) or if that's a typical thing in games with so many party member options. It's a horrendous decision, ESPECIALLY since simply being able to throw whatever runes on my party would mean freeing up that precious inventory space while in a long dungeon. These early-game runes are just like, "add 5% strength" or whatever. It's not like they're SUPER DUPER SPECIAL GAME-BREAKING pieces of equipment that require a bit more effort to equip or something. Just let me throw them on my characters so I have some more bag space, fuck.

After playing again for 30 minutes yesterday, I've decided to pause my playthrough. This game just does not respect my time and I'm not looking forward to playing it anymore. Maybe I'll return to it in 6 months if/when the performance and bugs are all ironed out.

Does anyone have any recommendations for a retro/retro-styled RPG to play? Spring is my favorite season to play these kinds of games. I've played and loved things like Chrono Trigger, Seiken Densetsu 3, Phantasy Star IV, FF VII, Earthbound, the whole gamut of RPG classics.

I decided to be the moron that buys the Switch version of this on the day of release. The things you've heard about the frame rate and loading times are basically true, if a little exaggerated. I've definitely noticed the issues while playing today, but they by no means render the game unplayable.

In fact, barring the technical issues, my first impressions of this game are very good, though I'll definitely need more than an hour of playtime to comment on it much further. I will say that I really like that the game doesn't frontload a bunch of worldbuilding cutscenes right at the beginning. I also think the voice acting is pretty good thus far.

Anyway, if you can afford to play this game on another platform (or wait for a patch!), I definitely would. My only consolation is that I used my Nintendo coins or whatever to purchase it and didn't spend any real money.

second ruins dungeon was fun - i felt very accomplished for keeping track of the maze-like structure and shifting paths and therefore finding multiple optional items. hopefully they're actually good (it was a rune of quick slash and a rune of sidewinder... and i don't know what they do until i get back to town!)

the boss absolutely wrecked me. i won't turn off hard mode just yet but i had to use every single item i still had, including constantly reviving my back row just so that they could immediately die again before you can heal them lol. the 3 back row characters stayed dead at the end after using up 10 revive items and i barely won. the front row characters gained 2 levels worth of exp and the back row got nothing :(

now, if this were a modern game, i would have trusted it that i could just run to the next room because the game won't screw me over with another boss battle without saving, the next room will just have a cutscene or something, right? but i went back and saved first just in case and i'm glad i did, because yes, there's another boss, so if you didn't run back and save and die to this boss, you'd have to redo 'em both! because this is not a modern game, it's a PSX JRPG lol.

i can't fight this boss now, obviously, with zero items remaining and half my party at 1 HP, so i do have to return to town to heal and stock up, which is a bit anticlimactic huh.

(and now that i'm back in town... none of my characters have a rune slot that can take quick slash/sidewinder????????? fine, i'll wait until i get back to the castle and see who can use these... they better be worth it!)

marin's herb ability restores... 12 hp? what even is the point?????? (for context, the basic starting heal item from the start of the game heals 40... and characters at this point have 160hp with enemy attacks usually dealing 40-60dmg...) the only upside is that its "free" (aka uses up her turn, just not any MP or SP) but you may as well just do nothing

that said, taking marin into the forest dungeon worked out i guess because the miniboss here seems to counterattack everything except hero combos, and her and her brother having a hero combo that can be used every turn means avoiding that.

Yes. I fought the canyon boss without a healer and had to use up all my healing items so yes the watch is looking for a healer, please join.

That said, I feel like I was supposed to find a third recruit in the starting town rather than venturing out here, so I probably missed something. That boss would've been easier with a full party of 6, whoops!

Speaking things that made me feel dumb - The first boss in the ruins - They give you this tutorial written for 5-year olds about how "If the boss is charging its attack, you should hide behind the rocks!" Then the boss aims its laser at my two characters in the middle row. But only the characters in the side rows had the option to hide behind rocks! So the attack goes off and I get hit and the characters are like "Oof! We said to hide behind rocks! You weren't supposed to get hit by that!!!" and I'm just like ????? What did you expect me to do?!?! Am I less intelligent than a 5-year old?!

first impression: i like it!

and i didn't expect to like it, since i feel "modern game based on retro JRPG" and "kickstarter game from veteran designer" are two game types that tend to be somewhat inconsistent. (btw i should note i've never played suikoden I or II)

similar to octopath, whose art style i found awkward in screenshots but nice in-game, i really like the 3d background/2d sprite mix when actually playing it. running around feels good, the UI is nice, i like the voice acting, the character portraits are all great and i like all the character designs. in other words, presentation-wise, this game is just very pleasant to live in. and the battle animations are really sick.

plot and writing-wise... honestly, i feel like ever since sea of stars and chained echoes, my bar for this has lowered? any time i play a game where the dialogue is more interesting than sea of stars', i'm just like "wow, this is so refreshingly good!" i saw some criticisms that the game is anime trope-y but honestly i feel i have a low tolerance for anime tropes (i hate legend of heroes dialogue) and i don't feel that way about this game. it feels like the characters have depth beyond their gimmicks, right from the start. big thumbs up for me.

also am i the only one who feels the two leads have huge romantic chemistry...? like they met 10 minutes ago and they're already constantly giggling at each other and being like "ah, thanks so much for helping me, hehe..." "you really are very talented..." and bickering with each other about who should sacrifice their life to save the other one. i can't tell if JRPG protagonist duos were always like this and i never noticed or if i'm just imagining it. i ship it either way.

also i hate lian, and perielle (did i get the name right?) is waifu.