Stamp collecting got me by the damn throat.
An alright metroidvania type game that, at its base, plays well, but the sidequest aspect wasn't needed I feel. Most of them didn't add anything to the story and were just there to pad out time.
I tried it because the sequel was coming out. It convinced me that it wasn't my kind of game.
Very nice graphics, but it's basically side quests and more side quests. Even the story itself has more side quests, it's an endless loop.
I quit because I got tired of it.
Lo probé porque iba a salir la secuela. Me convenció que no era mi tipo de juego.
Gráficos muy bonitos, pero es básicamente misiones secundarias y más misiones secundarias. Hasta la propia historia tiene más misiones secundarias, es un bucle sin fin.
Lo deje por cansino.
Very nice graphics, but it's basically side quests and more side quests. Even the story itself has more side quests, it's an endless loop.
I quit because I got tired of it.
Lo probé porque iba a salir la secuela. Me convenció que no era mi tipo de juego.
Gráficos muy bonitos, pero es básicamente misiones secundarias y más misiones secundarias. Hasta la propia historia tiene más misiones secundarias, es un bucle sin fin.
Lo deje por cansino.
I decided to play Eiyuden Chronicle Rising in advance of playing Hundred Heroes, which recently released at the time of writing. Rising is a prequel, shorter JRPG that is only above 12-16 hours on average according to Howlongtobeat. That seems about right, and I'll give it credit for being easy to slip into a gaming schedule, unlike most JRPGs that are a huge time sink. Eiyuden has huge Suikoden influence but I had never played Suikoden prior so I went in entirely blind.
Going in entirely blind, I had no idea Eiyuden Chronicle had action-oriented combat as opposed to turn-based so that took me off guard. The combat is fine, but not particularly interesting and gets dull very quickly due to a lack of interesting additions to the mechanics. The main thing that bugs me is that touching enemies hurts you, as if you were playing Castlevania or Mario. I don't really see the point of that in an RPG, and CJ's dodge ability sometimes dodges you right into enemies and damages you, which is pretty annoying. You get two other party members as well, Garoo and Isha, who you can swap to via hitting the face buttons. If you swap to them mid-combat you can execute Link Attacks. You can chain Link Attacks together for big damage, and eventually, you'll get bigger chains as the town grows. Unfortunately, Link Attacks are the only interesting thing about the combat and aren't worth using against anything that isn't a Boss or higher-leveled enemy. There's no incentive to use them beyond the damage you get. Link Attacks also mean you don't really get party combat like other JRPGs, and only see one character on-screen at a time in dungeons. It drains some potential personality and flavor from the game. And since Garoo is too slow and Isha's kit is poorly designed due to only having 3 orbs at a time and a reload delay, along with useless traversal abilities, CJ is the only character worth using.
The Boss are a joke by the way. They're all easy, even the final one, and can easily be cheesed by spamming Link Attacks so long as you're around the same level. Even the annoying bosses that will juggle you with their attack spam like the Mantor Wyrm and final boss are still easily defeated if you have potions on you.
Potions and other items are easy to farm, making it easy to snowball your characters and max your weapons. CJ easily plowed through everything sent her way once I got her axe maxed out. I do like the upgrade system, since it reminds of Dark Souls a bit with how it's handled.
Let's talk about writing. CJ is a plucky protagonist as you may expect, Garoo is the gruff "Eh, I guess I'll come along" guy, and Isha is the soft but sometimes cold mage. They're fine on a base level, and they at least have personality, but the plot doesn't do them much justice. Much of the plot is railroaded near the end in the form of a diary as a plot device to drop exposition on you at a time that feels like its out of the blue. Why are you mentioning an Empire all of a sudden? The League of Nations? Like WWI? Where is all of this coming from? Why is this being mentioned NOW, right before the final dungeon? I get this game is supposed to be a small prequel but you need to build a plot more naturally than this. You can't just shove a plate of plot in front of me and tell me to dine on it. Give me an appetizer and some wine first, preferably. The plot just ends up being a mess and they try really hard to get you to feel something but it doesn't work as much as you'd maybe want it to. The game also ends very abruptly, and when the credits started rolling, I was genuinely a bit surprised that they did. "Oh, that's it? Okay then."
Also, I have to say, the humor in this game just falls flat most of the time. I never laughed. Maybe it's not my type of humor, but the jokes range from just falling flat, being too cheesy, cliche, weird, or downright cringy.
And there are some WEIRD jokes in this game. There's one early about "toilet training" that was just weird. There were multiple jokes about Isha and CJ's dirty clothes being sniffed as well. There were jokes about CJ's outfit (the gal on the left in the cover image) and how revealing it is. I'm not sure if that's a mistranslation issue, a localization issue, or just simply the writers being... odd, but I do know that it made me uncomfortable. I usually have a high tolerance for that stuff, but need I mention that CJ and Isha are 16?
Don't believe me? Watch this to the end. Am I crazy for thinking that dialogue is really weird? https://www.youtube.com/watch?si=gTTpktA5xXRgqO5Q&t=110&v=DVA_7b4vO68&feature=youtu.be
There are some other mistranslations too. CJ after a rest says "One more time!" which doesn't quite make sense..? And I saw one character say "than more fool me" in dialogue.
Building the town is one of the things you're probably curious about, as a JRPG inspired by Suikoden. All of the quests that help build the town amount to fetch quests. They somehow manage to be boring and satisfying at the same time. Boring because, well, they're all fetch quests with barely any variation. Satisfying because it is nice to see the town advance and change over time, along with the shop stocks. The game's excellent fast travel mechanic makes it bearable, allowing you to teleport to specific points in dungeons and even the town itself. I will say that the first time I leveled up a shop I was confused, since it said "Level Up" on the screen. I didn't see my characters Level Up, so I then realized the game meant the shop leveled up. I wish there was a better distinction there. Because each time it happened I had to flick my eyes over to the top left to see if it meant my characters or the shop itself.
Is Eiyuden Chronicle Rising good? No.
Is Eiyuden Chronicle Rising bad? No.
Would I play it again? No.
Do I regret playing it? No.
It's an okay game. I wouldn't recommend playing it unless you really end up liking Hundred Heroes and want a little bit more of that world fleshed out, I guess, from the little lore it has. Otherwise, it's hard to recommend.
The music slaps though and honestly I didn't mind running through the Quarry or Forest just to hear it!
Score: 74
Going in entirely blind, I had no idea Eiyuden Chronicle had action-oriented combat as opposed to turn-based so that took me off guard. The combat is fine, but not particularly interesting and gets dull very quickly due to a lack of interesting additions to the mechanics. The main thing that bugs me is that touching enemies hurts you, as if you were playing Castlevania or Mario. I don't really see the point of that in an RPG, and CJ's dodge ability sometimes dodges you right into enemies and damages you, which is pretty annoying. You get two other party members as well, Garoo and Isha, who you can swap to via hitting the face buttons. If you swap to them mid-combat you can execute Link Attacks. You can chain Link Attacks together for big damage, and eventually, you'll get bigger chains as the town grows. Unfortunately, Link Attacks are the only interesting thing about the combat and aren't worth using against anything that isn't a Boss or higher-leveled enemy. There's no incentive to use them beyond the damage you get. Link Attacks also mean you don't really get party combat like other JRPGs, and only see one character on-screen at a time in dungeons. It drains some potential personality and flavor from the game. And since Garoo is too slow and Isha's kit is poorly designed due to only having 3 orbs at a time and a reload delay, along with useless traversal abilities, CJ is the only character worth using.
The Boss are a joke by the way. They're all easy, even the final one, and can easily be cheesed by spamming Link Attacks so long as you're around the same level. Even the annoying bosses that will juggle you with their attack spam like the Mantor Wyrm and final boss are still easily defeated if you have potions on you.
Potions and other items are easy to farm, making it easy to snowball your characters and max your weapons. CJ easily plowed through everything sent her way once I got her axe maxed out. I do like the upgrade system, since it reminds of Dark Souls a bit with how it's handled.
Let's talk about writing. CJ is a plucky protagonist as you may expect, Garoo is the gruff "Eh, I guess I'll come along" guy, and Isha is the soft but sometimes cold mage. They're fine on a base level, and they at least have personality, but the plot doesn't do them much justice. Much of the plot is railroaded near the end in the form of a diary as a plot device to drop exposition on you at a time that feels like its out of the blue. Why are you mentioning an Empire all of a sudden? The League of Nations? Like WWI? Where is all of this coming from? Why is this being mentioned NOW, right before the final dungeon? I get this game is supposed to be a small prequel but you need to build a plot more naturally than this. You can't just shove a plate of plot in front of me and tell me to dine on it. Give me an appetizer and some wine first, preferably. The plot just ends up being a mess and they try really hard to get you to feel something but it doesn't work as much as you'd maybe want it to. The game also ends very abruptly, and when the credits started rolling, I was genuinely a bit surprised that they did. "Oh, that's it? Okay then."
Also, I have to say, the humor in this game just falls flat most of the time. I never laughed. Maybe it's not my type of humor, but the jokes range from just falling flat, being too cheesy, cliche, weird, or downright cringy.
And there are some WEIRD jokes in this game. There's one early about "toilet training" that was just weird. There were multiple jokes about Isha and CJ's dirty clothes being sniffed as well. There were jokes about CJ's outfit (the gal on the left in the cover image) and how revealing it is. I'm not sure if that's a mistranslation issue, a localization issue, or just simply the writers being... odd, but I do know that it made me uncomfortable. I usually have a high tolerance for that stuff, but need I mention that CJ and Isha are 16?
Don't believe me? Watch this to the end. Am I crazy for thinking that dialogue is really weird? https://www.youtube.com/watch?si=gTTpktA5xXRgqO5Q&t=110&v=DVA_7b4vO68&feature=youtu.be
There are some other mistranslations too. CJ after a rest says "One more time!" which doesn't quite make sense..? And I saw one character say "than more fool me" in dialogue.
Building the town is one of the things you're probably curious about, as a JRPG inspired by Suikoden. All of the quests that help build the town amount to fetch quests. They somehow manage to be boring and satisfying at the same time. Boring because, well, they're all fetch quests with barely any variation. Satisfying because it is nice to see the town advance and change over time, along with the shop stocks. The game's excellent fast travel mechanic makes it bearable, allowing you to teleport to specific points in dungeons and even the town itself. I will say that the first time I leveled up a shop I was confused, since it said "Level Up" on the screen. I didn't see my characters Level Up, so I then realized the game meant the shop leveled up. I wish there was a better distinction there. Because each time it happened I had to flick my eyes over to the top left to see if it meant my characters or the shop itself.
Is Eiyuden Chronicle Rising good? No.
Is Eiyuden Chronicle Rising bad? No.
Would I play it again? No.
Do I regret playing it? No.
It's an okay game. I wouldn't recommend playing it unless you really end up liking Hundred Heroes and want a little bit more of that world fleshed out, I guess, from the little lore it has. Otherwise, it's hard to recommend.
The music slaps though and honestly I didn't mind running through the Quarry or Forest just to hear it!
Score: 74
Holy sidequests Batman! What should have been a fun short 5-8 hour romp was stretched to more than double that with seemingly endless fetch quests. And these aren't entirely optional either, they are how upgrades to your equipment are unlocked, so whether you want to or not, you will be running around doing menial tasks for people.
Now for the good. I liked the characters. CJ, Garoo and Isha have a fun dynamic both as characters, and in combat as classic rogue, tank, mage archetypes, though the tank role felt weak compared to the other two.
This game feels like a good intro to the world of Eiyuden Chronicles and makes me excited to see these characters again in the full game. I wish I could say I liked the game more, but what is there was adequate.
Now for the good. I liked the characters. CJ, Garoo and Isha have a fun dynamic both as characters, and in combat as classic rogue, tank, mage archetypes, though the tank role felt weak compared to the other two.
This game feels like a good intro to the world of Eiyuden Chronicles and makes me excited to see these characters again in the full game. I wish I could say I liked the game more, but what is there was adequate.