As I may have mentioned before, I do love an RPG; a JRPG in particular. Having become the top supported game on Kickstarter way back in 2020, Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes has finally launched onto the Xbox. Coming from Rabbit & Bear Studios and 505 Games, this promises to be a sprawling JRPG that will keep our interest for a long time.
Indeed, I’ve picked up hints of the earlier Dragon Quest games as I’ve been playing, and so the promise is certainly there. The question is, can the game deliver?
I’ll kick off with the presentation of Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes, and here the news is largely good. With a Hundred Heroes to go at, you’d expect that there would be a few shortcuts here and there in the design, and yet that is far from the case, so much so that pretty much all of the recruitable characters not only has their own unique look, but very different personalities as well. Further to that, the voice acting for each one is superb. From the gruff lycan Garr through to the flamboyant hunter Pastole, the characters certainly drive the game on.
The backdrops of the various areas we find ourselves in are also very nice indeed, with a lovely hand drawn look that is extremely appealing. As we move our characters about on these backdrops, they are slightly overlaid and pixel art in style. The result is a game that looks great. Even the enemy design in the different areas are all varied, with certain enemies only living in specific areas. You can be sure that filling the bestiary is not going to be the work of a moment!
The sound is excellent in Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes too, with great music, battle sounds all as you’d expect, and the aforementioned brilliant voice acting – everything in the garden is rosy. Well, almost everything, for occasionally it can be hard to see where you are supposed to go as you explore; parts of the foreground completely hiding where you are stood. Having to use the mini map to try and stumble your way forward is a bit annoying.
What about a story then, why are we running around recruiting all these heroes? Well, the story starts with a young lad called Nowa joining the Watch in Eltisweiss. He and the rest of the team are sent out on a joint mission with the Empire of Galdeas soldiers, and after they succeed, the Empire begins to look for excuses to invade. Eltisweiss is a member of a league of nations type alliance, and as is usual, The Empire of Galdea begins to make up excuses for them to invade – there’s more than a faint echo of current world events here. After a battle, we are forced to flee and then it falls to Nowa to form a resistance, and this is where the game really starts to open up. Can we get an army together and take back back our homeland?
The actual gameplay in Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is largely good as well. I mean, there is a fishing mini game included, so that is an automatic tick. In fact, the developers have certainly thrown the kitchen sink at the gameplay, with a vast range of different things to do. We have regular exploring on a world map, various dungeons and areas to stompy through, material gathering, town building, fishing, strategic battles and party management.
Of course, the overarching theme remains that of finding recruits for our army, as there are certain buildings in your castle that can only be constructed when there is someone to run them, such as the quarry and the library. Going back to areas you have visited before is therefore vital, as often characters will appear in story related areas after you have cleared them – the abandoned mines being a good example. And often the characters you meet will want you to do something for them before they consider joining your cause, but not always – this keeps us on our toes.
Making the castle the best it can be is a big job, as is ensuring that you not only have the people, but the materials, you need to build various buildings. Materials can be found in the various dungeons, respawning after a certain length of time, so making sure you know where to go for specific things is a good idea as well.
Exploring leads to combat, as night leads to day, and so the scene is set for lots of turn based combat. You can make your heroes fight for themselves, and this is usually a pretty good tactic for the weaker, run of the mill foes you meet en route to the next boss. There are regular attacks, magic attacks using Rune Lenses, each character can defend and also use items.
However, one word of caution – when creating your party, pay attention to where you put people. At one stage I had a kangaroo called Garoo join my team, and I put him in the back row, which made him entirely useless. The next boss then roundly stomped my team, leading to having to retreat from the dungeon to an Inn where I could rearrange things. Taking control of your guys for the bigger fights is recommended, as the default auto battle is a bit gung-ho – my healer was much happier clouting enemies with her staff than actually healing, for instance. There are settings that can be tweaked in the menu, but you’ll probably find better results by attacking manually.
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is packed with stuff to do. While the story does stick pretty closely with the protagonist, there are a wide variety of characters who interact with him and each other in a way that feels very organic. Camera woes notwithstanding, what we have here is a very polished product that just deserves to be played.
