It's an okay game. And yet I'm surprisingly hyped for Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes after playing this. I know it may seem contradictory to some. I'll explain myself.
It feels like there's a lot of stuff here that if replicated and polished and applied to an actual long game could make ECHH have the same feel as Suikoden II. The vibe, the music, the graphics, the slow nurturing pace, the archetypal political players.
The main fear is in regards to the writing, but for now it's not as big of a concern to me as it seems to be for others. I saw a review here and another on Twitter saying that it overuses common fantasy archetypes/tropes. In my opinion, Suikoden II (possibly my favorite game) also used common archetypes and tropes a good amount of the time, it just executed them competently and at points excellently. Even the one storytelling aspect that seemed exotic at the time (recruiting the 108 stars of destiny) is not even that original once you are familiar with the medieval novel Water Margin that inspired Suikoden. Speaking as a Literature professor, not all texts (and games) must have the masterful prose of a Virginia Woolf or the gorgeous verbose dialogues of a Final Fantasy Tactics to be good. Simple dialogues can also be used to be told an incredible story.
Due to the particular nature and genre of Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising, dialogue does not get much of a chance to shine. Most of the characters are pragmatic mercenaries/treasure hunters or from a very small town where the action is set. Story is also quite simple because 1. this is not that long of a game, 2. with a short gameplay loop that requires repetitive dialogue because it's a town-building RPG. You just go out to dungeons to gather resources and see the settlement grow little by little, and repeat that like 30 times so there's not much room of the narrative twists of a Suikoden II.
As an aside, I enjoyed the basic action gameplay more than I thought I would, but turn-based play is where it's at for me.
I don't have that much of an issue with the personalities of the few characters we saw that will eventually become the 108 stars of destiny (Hogan, Mellore, Iugo, Squash, Frida, Garoo, Isha, CJ) with the exception of the armor vendor (she felt bland). Most characters in Suikoden are also basically an archetype template. Some are not explored much further beyond that, some are. I do feel that the town-building repetition aspect did hurt the personality aspect a bit too. I generally like the classic dynamic between characters like CJ and Isha, and I'm fine with the one between characters like CJ and Garoo. These are the two main interactions you'll see in ECR. Over and over again. And it got a bit old. That's what worries me about the main game. I hope that the dynamics between the main cast do not get repetitive. I assume they probably won't, since the main recurring cast in that game will surely be over 3 characters and will feature multiple locales, story turns and hopefully a good amount of character development.
In the last minutes of the game before the credits rolled is when I started to think: "Huh, so this is how these particular character's stories end up on for now, it's actually cool that in the main game we are probably going to recruit REDACTED while he's desperately searching for his REDACTED, and as for the other two they'll probably still be in REDACTED but they'll also be looking for a way to get rid of the REDACTED in her body, oh but also the town is near the Empire so I wonder if ECHH will do the usual Suikoden thing of devastating..." and so on.
Maybe the idea of what ECHH can be is more beautiful in my mind than it'll ever be in reality. We'll have to wait until then. But I am hyped for it for now.
