Carrie unlocks the fast travel system in , making returning to already-discovered towns and dungeons much easier. Some of the main quests require backtracking, and you may also want to shop at old locations.
27.04.2024 - 12:37 / digitaltrends.com / George Yang / Star Ocean
Plenty of modern games have tried to recapture the nostalgic retro vibes of early 1990s RPGs. And some are more successful than others.
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes, out now, is a spiritual successor to the popular Suikoden series. After all, the game was developed by Rabbit & Bear, a studio composed of previous Konami employees who worked on the Suikoden games. With the series having been dormant without any new entries since 2012, it was Hundred Heroes’ time to shine. It sports an excellent story and fantastic worldbuilding, along with a pixel art direction that invokes those feelings of nostalgia.
But with those strengths come some ’90s baggage. Its quality of life is lacking, with aggravating resource management, stingy healing options, and a glut of tired random encounters. Those issues hurt my playthrough, which I said was faithful to a fault in my review earlier this week. Hundred Heroes had the perfect opportunity to bring the spirit of Suikoden to the modern age, but it instead shows the pitfalls of sticking too close to old game design. The best retro revivals capture nostalgia while still pushing game design forward. And there’s no better counterpoint to Hundred Heroes than last year’s triumphant Sea of Stars.
RelatedAt a glance, Sea of Stars looks like it was pulled directly from the SNES era. It’s painted in faithful pixel art that doesn’t look that far off from Chrono Trigger. The more you dig into its gameplay, though, the more it differs from that game. It doesn’t have random enemy encounters; foes wander the screen and rush at players to initiate battles. While enemies are quite fast and will quickly chase you down if they spot you, at least I know when to anticipate a battle. In Hundred Heroes, I was praying that I wouldn’t trigger a battle when I was backtracking to an inn to restore my party’s health. It’s the kind of old-school design philosophy that video games have grown past for the better.
Sea of Stars does share some old design quirks with Hundred Heroes. Save points don’t restore HP and MP in the former, just the same as the latter. The big difference in Sea of Stars is that there’s usually a campsite within close proximity that can be used to restore stats. In Hundred Heroes, you’re often thrown into consecutive battles of up to four with no opportunities to heal in between. Some Sea of Stars bosses will actually fully heal your party up before you fight them. I wish the bosses in Hundred Heroes were that nice to me.
Little details like that, or the lack of them, add up. MP restoration is rare in Hundre
Carrie unlocks the fast travel system in , making returning to already-discovered towns and dungeons much easier. Some of the main quests require backtracking, and you may also want to shop at old locations.
Square Enix appears to have cancelled or at least rescoped the size of multiple unannounced games as a result of an internal review into its development process, with a «content disposal» loss totalling 22.1 billion yen, or $141 million. As a result of the investigation, the publisher shall «revise the Group’s approach to the development of high-definition (HD) games with the intention of being more selective and focused in the allocation of development resources».
Square Enix have announced 22.1 billion yen (around £112m) in "content abandonment losses" for the fiscal year ending March 2024. The loss is the result of the publisher being "more selective and focused in the allocation of development resources," suggesting they have cut funding to or cancelled undisclosed projects.
Square Enix today warned investors that its next earnings report will include a significant hit due to a number of cancelled projects.
Rabbit and Bear Studios’ Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes has seen a long journey since its 2020 Kickstarter (including the passing of director Yoshitaka Murayama), but is now finally playable. Unfortunately, the Nintendo Switch version has some issues, including a bug preventing a major character’s recruitment.
I can feel some kind of sore throat bug coming on. It must be the baleful influence of Creative Assembly's latest free update for bellowing strategy bonanza Total War: Warhammer 3. Out 30th April, the update introduces Epidemius, Proctor of Pestilence - a new Nurgle Legendary Lord who gains rewards based on how many ickle diseases you’ve spread to other factions (already my favourite aspect of playing Nurgle in the game). Does Epidemius also get buffs if the player is infected by something? I hope so. It would be a consolation to know that my ailing trachea is contributing to the Nurgle cause.
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is riddled with issues on Nintendo Switch but developer Rabbit & Bear has said it's aware of the problems and addressing them as a "maximum priority."
First days on the job are always hard to deal with, but Nowa is absolutely thrown in the deep end at the start of Eiyuden Chronicles: Hundred Heroes. Our hero is drafted into a joint military operation between their nation and the Empire, but before too long they’re raising an army for the resistance against imperial invasion. Along the way you’ll meet and recruit more than one hundred heroes (hence the name) to bolster said army.
, developed by Rabbit & Bear Studios and published by 505 Games, is a game that knows what it wants to do. A love letter to the series with the promise of more modern technology to produce it (even while deliberately sticking to the same familiar aesthetics and systems) sounds good on paper — in execution, however, it's a lot more of a mixed bag, with some downright maddening or baffling decisions that hamper an otherwise decent game.
Rabbit and Bear Studios’ Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes, a spiritual successor to the Suikoden series, is now available. It’s playable on Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PS4, PS5, Nintendo Switch and PC (along with Game Pass). Check out the launch trailer below, highlighting the different heroes and villains that players will encounter.
Every time you boot up Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes, you're met with a dedication that reads: «With our appreciation to all JRPG fans», which we take as a declaration of intent. Hundred Heroes is a triumphant return to the golden age of esoteric PS1 JRPGs; equipped with a few modern conveniences but designed for an old-school mindset. Visually stunning, with an incredibly vast cast of voiced characters to collect, the game nails the tension of a political thriller and epic of war, but the pace of play, and — at times — lack of direction, can sometimes grate.
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes MSRP $49.99 Score Details Pros