Eiyuden Chronicle Hundred Heroes is a turn-based JRPG that is the spiritual successor of the Suikoden series. Read our review to see what it did well, what it didn't do well, and if it's worth buying.
Eiyuden Chronicle Hundred Heroes Review Overview
What is Eiyuden Chronicle Hundred Heroes?
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is a turn-based JRPG that was developed by Rabbit & Bear Studios. The studio consists of veteran JRPG developers, Yoshitaka Murayama, Junko Kawano, Osamu Komuta, and Junichi Murakami. Both Murayama and Kawano worked on the cult-classic JRPG series Suikoden. The game stood as one of the top 3 games that was funded through Kickstarter back when the game was still a Kickstarter project in 2020 to 2021. It features classic turn-based JRPG combat with tons of recruitable characters with unique designs and strengths, as well as a gripping tale of an unlikely friendship and the realities of war.
Eiyuden Chronicle Hundred Heroes features:
⚫︎ Classic JRPG turn-based combat complete with magic, abilities, and combinations
⚫︎ Amazing "Modern retro" hand-drawn visuals
⚫︎ Better character customization and progression compared to spiritual predecessor
⚫︎ Fully voice-acted cutscenes with a star-studded cast for the JP voiceovers
⚫︎ Engrossing narrative of the politics and realities of war told through a JRPG
For more gameplay details, read everything we know about Eiyuden Chronicle Hundred Heroes's gameplay and story.
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Eiyuden Chronicle Hundred Heroes Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
 Amazing Hand-Drawn Visuals Classic JRPG Turn-Based Combat Spiritual Successor Done Right Colorful Cast of Characters Fully Voice-Acted |
Came with the Janky Baggage Lack of Investment in Nowa Erratic Pacing, Both In Gameplay and Story |
Eiyuden Chronicle Hundred Heroes Overall - 86/100
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is an amazing spiritual successor that many fans, including myself, have been waiting for. The game takes many beats from its predecessor, Suikoden, from the narrative, characters, and even its gameplay. Although it has some flaws on a story and pacing standpoint, it still delivers that nostalgia that Suiko-fans have been waiting for so long.
Eiyuden Chronicle Hundred Heroes Story - 8/10
True to its inspiration, the game is all about the realities of war, with all its politics, clashing ideals, betrayals, and more. To Suikoden veterans, they know this song and dance all too well, as the series has always been about the same theme, just with different settings and eras. While the theme and overall narrative are fine, the game doesn’t give you enough backstory or context to actually be invested in the main character, Nowa, which completely throws off the game’s pace.
Eiyuden Chronicle Hundred Heroes Gameplay - 9/10
The gameplay is straight out of the classic turn-based JRPG textbook with its own twist of unique character combinations and abilities. The game has a pretty good character progression system through the Rune-Lenses and also has a great twist of adding Gimmicks in boss fights to spice things up. However, the game does have its issues, like the abysmal encounter rate with huge maps and its slow animations in combat.
Eiyuden Chronicle Hundred Heroes Visuals - 8/10
Similar to the great modern-age JRPGs that embraced sprites, the game has breathtaking visuals from its distinct character designs and its vibrant backgrounds. While the game does look beautiful, the animations are very inconsistent. There are times when the animations move so quickly that they break immersion in serious cutscenes and look comical.
Eiyuden Chronicle Hundred Heroes Audio - 8/10
The music and sound effects are good enough to carry themselves without any noteworthy faults. Additionally, the voice acting is superb for both the English and Japanese voiceovers, with the latter having a star-studded cast.
Eiyuden Chronicle Hundred Heroes Value for Money - 10/10
Priced at the standard AA range at $49.99, the game offers a ton of content for you to explore and discover by yourself. I’d imagine that getting the 100+ recruitable characters would already be enough to pad at least more than 20 hours of backtracking and side content to do. If that’s not enough, the game follows the JRPG tradition of taking more than 30 hours to finish alone and double that for the side content to finish as well.
Eiyuden Chronicle Hundred Heroes Review: A Must-Play Comeback of a Classic JRPG
After waiting for what felt like decades for a new Suikoden title and hearing that the OG team of the series is making a new IP with their own studio, I simply had to immediately support the development of the game. To give you even more context, I have played every mainline Suikoden title, including some of the spin-offs. My patience is rewarded with a bomb of nostalgia from the themes and gameplay. It’s a must-play JRPG, and even more so to continue the late Yoshitaka Murayama’s wonderful legacy.
The story immediately jumped out to me as a combination of the second, third, and fourth installments of Suikoden, with the focus of multiple protagonists forced into precarious positions to fight for their ideals and survival, as well as the opposing nation's intention in harnessing the magical armaments known as Rune-Lenses in the game. There are some JRPG tropes that are thrown here and there, but the story is a reminder of the great narrative that the past games had.
Sadly, the story isn’t perfect, as the erratic pacing and lack of context given to the main character made me not care so much about him. Nowa as the main character that you control for the majority of the game is definitely a miss, as just pushing everything to a character that you barely care or know about is, in my opinion, a missed opportunity. It may have been more beneficial to make Seign the main protagonist; with Nowa being the meddler, he calls himself so much to catch Seign in unfavorable positions to create more drama.
The gameplay is straight up Suikoden, but with the added gimmicks in boss fights, which really spice things up as these gimmicks could be harmful or beneficial to you. The idea of combining the Skill System and Runes as one thing in Eiyuden is bold, as it streamlines the character progression in the game. It proves to be a great addition to the gameplay loop, since it can potentially lead to different possible builds for the massive roster that the game has.
Of course, this sort of character progression could also lead to just reinforcing the issue of Suikoden’s power scaling where some characters just have better stat growths and overall stats than the rest, which leads to some useless and redundant members in the cast. However, with the game not exactly needing optimization for the most part, you could quite literally finish the game with characters that you like.
Aside from the combat, the exploration, gameplay loop, and even the shops are reminiscent of Suikoden. Hell, even the trading posts made a comeback, which is kind of like a manual in-game stock market where you buy cheap goods in a certain region and sell them at a higher price for profit in another region. It’s a treat for Suiko-fans and a wonderful introduction to the series despite being released in 2024.
Lastly, the visuals and audio of the game are stellar and superb. The former boasts the modern-retro look of hand-drawn designs being the highlight of the graphics in the game. With the visuals, the animations are the main problem, as they’re inconsistent with how they move. There are a ton of scenes that get ruined as the animation of how they quick walk/run is downright comical. The voice-acting in the game takes the highlight for the audio, as both the English and Japanese voiceovers are amazing.
All in all, this is the game the Suiko-fans have been waiting for. Even with just crumbs, we’d be happy if the series got mentioned or referenced somewhere. With Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes, it’s not just the rose-tinted glasses being offered; it’s a straight-up time machine to appreciate how far the series has come. Everyone should experience the greatness of Suikoden, especially the second installment, and Eiyuden can be the gateway drug for interested JRPG gamers out there.
Pros of Eiyuden Chronicle Hundred Heroes
| Things Eiyuden Chronicle Hundred Heroes Got Right |
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Amazing Hand-Drawn Visuals Classic JRPG Turn-Based Combat Spiritual Successor Done Right Colorful Cast of Characters Fully Voice-Acted |
Amazing Hand-Drawn Visuals
I’ve always been a fan of the trend of JRPGs re-embracing hand-drawn sprites, resulting in the modern-retro look that we’ve seen in Octopath Traveler, Sea of Stars, and other great modern JRPGs. Eiyuden follows suit with great character designs and colorful backgrounds to complement and contrast these designs.
Classic JRPG Turn-Based Combat
True to its Suikoden-inspired roots, the game is a classic 6-man turn-based JRPG with the added twist of giving characters certain exclusive skills and Rune-Lenses to distinguish themselves from the multitude of usable characters. There’s not much to say but that any fan of the older JRPG style of clicking multiple attack commands and watching them go to work, will like this type of gameplay.
Spiritual Successor Done Right
There are a lot of different things that remind me of Suikoden, and it works to its advantage, especially for people who have played a lot of the mainline games. First off, the main characters remind me of the main characters of the second installment of Suikoden, where two friends have clashing ideals and are forced to stand on separate sides of the battlefield due to responsibilities thrust upon them. The plot of the Rune-Lenses, specifically the Primal Lenses, reminds me of the plot of the fourth installment, where they aim to abuse the power of the Rune Cannons, where they create the ultimate weapon and assume dominance of the world.
Colorful Cast of Characters
With a massive cast of 100+ characters, it’s amazing that they were able to create many wonderful designs as well as very memorable ones. It’s also a great addition that some of the side characters actually make side comments during main missions, which makes you feel that they aren’t just mindless recruits. Don’t get me wrong, there are some tropes here and there, but most of the characters that I’ve encountered and used have been enjoyable and unique so far.
Fully Voice-Acted
This is a completely underrated addition to a JRPG with a lot of dialogue that you’ll have to sit through. It’s great enough that you get to hear the exchanges happening in cutscenes, but the best part is that even the side characters make side comments that make you feel like they were supposed to be part of the scene originally.
Cons of Eiyuden Chronicle Hundred Heroes
| Things That Eiyuden Chronicle Hundred Heroes Can Improve |
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Came with the Janky Baggage Lack of Investment in Nowa Erratic Pacing, Both In Gameplay and Story |
Came with the Janky Baggage
The game caters to a niche audience of people who are nostalgic for that era of JRPG and they do a good job of portraying that time. However we understand if people who are more accustomed to the QoL of modern RPGs are turned off by it. Modern JRPGs tend to have more streamlined systems and mechanics that will spoil everyone who plays them, and for a series like Suikoden that hasn't had a single mainline release in almost 20 years, you'd tend to gravitate to the newer things.
The inventory system is dated and is not a perfect system that I would recommend as a highlight of the past era; however, if the intention was to keep how it was before with how the inventory worked, then it worked because it is completely the same. The massive maps and areas combined with the abysmal encounter rate (which we’ll talk about later) mean there’s a lot of walking around, which also affects grinding and leveling characters as well. Lastly, the camera is uncontrollable in some areas yet rotatable in some sections. It’s not exactly clear when the camera is available to be moved, and it could be nauseating to see the game spin a lot.
Lack of Investment in Nowa
The biggest gripe I have with the story is the lack of character development and context for the main character, Nowa. So for context, Nowa is given the Suikoden main character treatment where he is thrown into the deep end abruptly, but at this point, the player won’t have any important information pertaining to Nowa to make you really care about him, and it makes everything look like a handout afterwards. In comparison, the past Suikoden main characters either have hints dropped about their true identities or have a fully fleshed backstory right when they lead an army. Without spoiling too much, there's only two to three details that point to who Nowa really is, and none of these things prove helpful as to why he's given the power in the first place. The narrative itself is fine; I just think that the game needed a little more time to flesh out his character to make me care more about him because it looks to me that he’s being handed power on a silver platter.
Even Seign, the other main character that disappears after the tutorial, has a more believable backstory that you could get behind. The classic "I'll change corruption from the inside" idealistic attitude is way better than Nowa's not-so compelling character.
Erratic Pacing, Both In Gameplay and Story
The game’s pacing is all over the place. In the gameplay aspect, the combat and exploration could feel sluggish due to the animations in the UI and battle, the abysmal encounter rate, and the large areas to explore. There’s not enough combat to satisfy the need to do something, as the Overworld doesn’t really have any other interesting things to do except go to other areas or fish. From a story standpoint, the story just completely takes an abrupt turn without setting up the context. The game does have its great moments, but with such a jarring change of pace combined with the lack of investment regarding Nowa himself, it definitely made me question if it was intentional or not.
Is Eiyuden Chronicle Hundred Heroes Worth It?
Absolutely. Completely Welcome to New and Old Suiko-fans.
The Suikoden series has never been a difficult JRPG, nor has it hit mainstream numbers except for the Kickstarter numbers that they had back in 2020. It’s time to continue Yoshitaka Murayama’s legacy of the Suikoden series with this banger of a game. It’s a great experience and a great gateway drug to what I consider as the greatest JRPG series of all time in Suikoden.
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Eiyuden Chronicle Hundred Heroes FAQ
When did Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes start development?
We can surmise that development started when the Kickstarter and the first announcement trailer was first publicized, which was on July 27, 2020.
Who developed Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes?
The studio responsible for creating Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is Rabbit & Bear Studio. Founded by the late Suikoden series creator, Yoshitaka Murayama, accompanied by Junko Kawano, Osamu Komuta, and Junichi Murakami.
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Eiyuden Chronicle Hundred Heroes Product Information
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| Title | EIYUDEN CHRONICLE: HUNDRED HEROES |
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| Release Date | April 23, 2024 |
| Developer | Rabbit and Bear Studios |
| Publisher | 505 Games |
| Supported Platforms | PC (Steam, GOG, Epic), PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch |
| Genre | Action, Adventure, Role-Playing |
| Number of Players | 1 |
| ESRB Rating | PEGI 12 |
| Official Website | Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes Website |
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