Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes

Played Suikoden 1 and 2 as a kid. This was a great spiritual successor to it. The game is fun and feels old school with a lot of new QOL updates. Waited YEARS for this to come out and was excited. Have not played the DLC yet but will eventually. The heroes were fun and I liked the three protagonist plots that melded together and if you played Suikoden, you will greatly enjoy this.

Had to change to keyboard since my gamepad started registering left input as right... Man is the keyboard control scheme ♥♥♥♥♥♥. And no way to configure it yourself.

[i]Find more of my reviews on my curator page: [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/45817624-Kasurot-Recommends/]Kasurot Recommends[/url][/i] [h1]Short Summary[/h1] A "Monkey's Paw" wish for Suikoden fans: it resurrects the classic 90s structure, but drags the archaic pacing, high encounter rates, and clunky menus back from the grave along with it. [h3]Who Is This For?[/h3] Suikoden veterans craving the specific "Castle Building + 108 Stars" loop—a niche mechanic that polished contemporaries like [i]Octopath Traveler II[/i] do not offer. [h3]Who Is This Not For?[/h3] Modern JRPG fans who expect respect for their time, swift UI navigation, or a localization that takes itself seriously. [quote][h1]VERDICT: SALE DEPENDENT[/h1] [b]Recommendation Strategy:[/b] [list] [*] [b]The Enthusiast:[/b] Wait for 50% Off (The "Nostalgia Tax" is too high at full price) [*] [b]The Casual:[/b] Avoid (Play [i]Octopath Traveler II[/i] instead) [/list] While [i]Octopath Traveler II[/i] modernized the pixel-art JRPG with speed and polish, this title clings to the friction of the PS1 era without the narrative weight to justify the slog.[/quote] [table] [tr] [th]Pros[/th] [th]Cons[/th] [/tr] [tr] [td] [list] [*] Authentic 90s JRPG "Comfort Food" [*] Base building is genuinely satisfying [*] Visuals are a stunning 2.5D blend [/list] [/td] [td] [list] [*] Aggressive random encounter rate [*] "Memetic" localization breaks immersion [*] Inventory & Menu management is tedious [/list] [/td] [/tr] [tr] [th]Narrative[/th] [th]Mechanics[/th] [/tr] [tr] [td]Political War Drama | Ensemble Cast[/td] [td]Turn-Based Combat | [i]Hero Recruitment Loop[/i][/td] [/tr] [tr] [th]DRM / Account[/th] [th]Monetization[/th] [/tr] [tr] [td]Steam DRM (Standard)[/td] [td]Cosmetic / Season Pass[/td] [/tr] [tr] [th]Tech & Deck[/th] [th]Pacing Profile[/th] [/tr] [tr] [td]Verified / Great (40FPS lock recommended)[/td] [td]The Marathon (Slow Burn)[/td] [/tr] [/table] [h1]The Critique[/h1] [b]Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes[/b] is a game at war with its own identity. It succeeds brilliantly as a spiritual successor to [i]Suikoden[/i], capturing the addictive loop of recruiting a massive roster of misfits and watching your headquarters physically expand with every new ally. The [i]Hero Combo[/i] system and the visual spectacle of the 2.5D sprite work are genuine highlights, offering a hit of nostalgia that feels targeted with laser precision at 30-something JRPG veterans. When the loop works—recruiting a chef to open a restaurant, then a farmer to supply it—the game feels like a masterpiece of interconnected systems. However, the game demands a "Patience Premium" that is hard to justify in the modern era. The pacing is glacially slow, burdened by an encounter rate that feels punitive rather than engaging. You will spend hours fighting trash mobs that offer zero tactical challenge just to traverse a dungeon, a design philosophy that should have stayed in 1998. Worse, the UI is sluggish; simple tasks like managing equipment or checking your party status feel like wading through molasses. It lacks the "Snappiness" of modern peers like [i]Sea of Stars[/i], making the 60+ hour runtime feel artificially inflated by menu friction. The narrative also suffers from a tonal identity crisis, exacerbated by a localization that often prioritizes memes and modern slang over world-building consistency. While the core political drama attempts to be grounded, it is frequently undercut by dialogue that feels like it was written for a Discord server rather than a war room. This creates a jarring disconnect: the visuals and music promise a grand epic, but the script and the tedious moment-to-moment gameplay often deliver a generic anime romp. [h3]The Use Case[/h3] This is a "Podcast Game" for the Steam Deck. The turn-based nature and simple inputs make it perfect for half-attention play while watching a show or travelling. It runs beautifully on the Deck, sipping battery if capped at 40FPS. Treat it as a slow-burn checklist simulator rather than a gripping narrative thriller.

後期沒在用的角色被硬推上去打怪, 沒等級、沒武器、沒裝備要怎麼打? 爛透了...

Tried to like this game after coming from the previous but...i just can't. Dialogue didn't bug me so much as others have feeling for but towards the end got so to be so annoying i just started to skip scenes. Some voiceovers are just absolutely horrendous like they are forced. Lots of mechanics are pretty barebones and feel like they are just thrown in to pad the game. Story going into the last chapter was the breaking point for me as it just devolves into like....why? Makes no sense and really makes you feel like nothing you did up to that point really mattered.

This game is like a rollercoaster. The first 10 to 20 hours it is one of the worst JRPGs I have ever played: annoying cutscene placement, boring gameplay, nothing to do. Then it becomes a very good game afterwards, after you unlock [spoiler]your own headquaters and fast travel[/spoiler]. Very nice gameplay, the cutscenes become nicer and you can do very many thing in this game. At last you finish the game and get into a kinda "postgame", where you just finish some minor things and try to do 100%. This is the worst grind ever. You have to complete every minor thing, have to do every minigame available (even the bad ones like trading) and collect every item/find every enemy etc. The game does not help you with that, so good luck finding any guides or using the wiki for these achievements. What is absolutely the worst: [spoiler]For getting the 120 heroes achievement, you need to get the true ending. How do you do that? Recruit the other 119 heroes before a certain point in the game. If you do not get that in time, you will have to replay 30-40 hours of this game to get the last hero.[/spoiler] So overall this game has its good times, but the early and end game are the worst ones out of every JRPG I have ever played.

Okay, okay, so, this game has many obvious technical issues. Gameplay balance, mechanical issues, built in RNG. Like, there is a very reasonable argument to be made about many issues with this game. I wish this game had gotten another, like, 6 months of QA and tuning. I really do. That said, if you like well-developed, interesting, and earnest characters? This game is a delight. Do you like political war plotlines where the nuance of what actually goes into a war is covered? Where there's shades of grey going on and the situation is a mess of telephone and different ways to spin a narrative? This game is a delight. I previously played this game all the way through on PS4, which, I will admit, was [i]rough[/i]. Mechanically the game is not well optimized, and it didn't lag, but every loading screen was [i]loooong[/i]. Navigating menus was long. It's significantly better on PC, but still has some issues. An occasional long pause when starting a dialogue with a shop vendor, maybe a weird graphical bug. Nothing terrible, but it does make playing it a bit more grating than I would prefer. But I still recommend this game for the characters and the narrative. Some of the English translation is a bit extra, but it does a decent job of getting across the sentiments of the Japanese, and it's quite strong at getting across the main plot and the nuances of the military conflict. You can't help but to like the characters and want to spend time with them. Building up your castle is fun. Some of the later narrative feels rushed and skipped over, but they do a good job with it overall. The key points are impactful. The music is well chosen. The sound effects match the situation and are timed well. The character animations are [i]delightful[/i]. This game could have absolutely used a bit more time to cook, but I'm glad I'm replaying it on PC. There are a number of technical issues, and I could nitpick aspect of the writing or story, but I'm still enjoying it, and I'm enjoying the characters and narrative so much. It's fun, and I feel it does a good job of balancing the serious elements with the lighthearted. So, tl;dr: It has some obvious technical failings, but has strong characters and some pretty solid maturity in the narrative that are delightful and interesting. It is not a well-polished game, but you can definitely still get a lot of fun with the characters and narrative.