the game is really janky and stutters very frequently and theres really bad input delay and theres also some racism in there (for flavor of course) but listen. this review isnt about that. thats just there so you know im not reviewbombing. im coming here with a warning.

this game turns you insane. normal people dont play this game. its so much worse than even shit like League of Legends. three of my closest friends downloaded this game and suddenly, over the course of about 2 weeks, turned insanely toxic. in a chronically online way. one of them started complaining about how their friend invited them to go out because ranked matches were up. another friend starting faking DID. another started getting into kin discourse. theres so much more i could talk about but im not about to spill their personal details on Backloggd Dot Cum. but just take my word for it when i say they turned into actual cesspool sewage people. dont play this game. dont let your friends play this game. this shit makes me feel like a catholic looking at gay porn; i see only evil and darkness here.

While open world severely harms the souls formula, it would be wrong to not respect what was achieved here.

The views are phenomenal, but it was not worth bloating the game by dotting the same enemies and bosses around just to fill out the space. 90% of the extra dungeons and caves feel the same, have a repeated boss and lead nowhere. Your space is less limited in traversing around set pieces of enemies. It's not as harsh as you would expect a souls-like world to be, and therefore your interaction with it is reduced. You aren't gripped to engage with most of the challenges out there. It's clearly not an accident - the visuals are the focus in the open world areas and there are plenty of memorable and challenging exceptions - but it comes off sloppy and heavily diluted in quality.

Especially when you put bosses out in these open areas. They don't act like they know what they're doing in the space. They move over the landscape so awkwardly, and often they have attacks that reduce your engagement by stalling your advance. I couldn't be more bored of dragons. At least they don't tend to have the AOE-sphere-centred-on-themselves move that most other bosses seem to.

You should not play this game expecting Dark Souls (I'm talking about all 3). It is not worth exploring everything - I did it - it becomes stale. These areas look amazing, but mechanically there are few differences and therefore lack identity, and the space is reduced to filler between point of interest A and point of interest B. There are thousands of corners. Don't waste your time. They give you a magical horse, even, to reduce the time in filler. It even double jumps! Sounds great, how could this be problematic? But this horse highlights the greatest flaw with the game. With this one tool, all obstacles are trivialised. What does this add to the game? Platforming? Why? It doesn't fit. They wanted a world with huge scale, but the price was the immersive game loop that Dark Souls nailed. And then they can't apply the same scale to the cities as in Dark Souls. These are my main issues when comparing to FromSoft's previous work. I expected too much. Dark Souls is more purposeful, more intimate, more confident.

BUT

Just because it isn't Dark Souls doesn't mean it hasn't shifted focus in completely unwarranted ways. The main themes, the desire and corruption of the immortals and the resources that fuel them - there is so much incredible cohesive storytelling through every part of the world. The character design is insane, maybe even unmatched. You get the sense that despite the horror and the lengths these post-human beings have gone through to attain their stake, or their power or following, that you can climb to the same heights. They are falling apart. You feel born anew, ready to take the world by storm. Clear the stagnation. These aren't exactly different themes to Dark Souls, but for better or worse Elden Ring grants greater clarity and vision in your journey without being overbearing. And there's a lot more going on, so that's impressive.

The design philosophy of being able to reach any place you can see has to be respected. When you think you've seen it all, there is more. And as I mentioned above, there are memorable exceptions in the open world I love:
The forest of runebears, the haunting deathbird of prey, the accurate lobster missiles, and of course the chaos octopus. Iconic, unforgettable, simple.
Maybe it's the inconsequential dungeons and caves that are a result of the open world that I dislike more than the open world itself. I suppose part of the beauty of open world is you can find another way around. Still, I think they missed opportunities to add a lot of dynamics with this new approach.

I should probably talk a little bit about the boss fighting, though it actually doesn't feel necessary. I've explained my problems with repeated occurrences and a trend of AOE attacks. I did tell myself they had put Sekiro bosses in a Souls game on multiple occasions, eager to attempt parrying some 7, 8, 9, 10-attack combos. But while I would have loved that opportunity, it would probably have meant sacrificing the build customisation which has much more merit. It's a strength in Dark Souls, and Elden Ring takes it and flies. Anyway, the fights are of course great. They'll challenge you one way, allow you to change things up and then bring about a whole new problem to overcome. A beautiful back and forth struggle where the advantage is fluid. Just as it ever was, this is the bread-and-butter of these games. However, I do think the cinematic feeling was injected slightly too heavily over pure engaging gameplay. A boss will do a long chain of attacks, but to compensate they stagger much too easily. Again, it is no accident - it's supposed to feel like defying the odds, especially when these characters are built up so much. I wouldn't change what they did. But there is a beauty in simplicity: Godskin Apostle was a favourite. Also don't worry, there are still normal enemies that will kill you on their own just fine.

Now I have seen it all, I feel more ready to have fun in the Lands Between. The intention doesn't feel like it was to collect everything - use everything - in one playthrough (yeah, this was one long run). Choose a direction and go. Use what you find, don't be afraid to miss tiny things. Head to the most eye-catching places. Another strength of the open world is that every individual can have a different journey. No two paths will be the same. There's more joy to be had in the variation, and missing things is a part of that journey. Maybe this is a life lesson.

Judging a book by its cover works well here: a post-apocalyptic RPG where the characters stand with a nuke going off in the background. Novel idea, guys, it has truly never been thought of before. The characters thoroughly lack distinguishing features that would communicate anything meaningful about the game, donning generic outfits and generic facial features (contrast this with Disco Elysium and its protagonist's design: we know we're getting into something whacky and off-kilter). It also looks like something drawn up in mere half an hour -- blurry and lacking detail. AI could spit out better art, ffs (why not go for art that would communicate something distinct about the setting -- something uniquely Australian? Just a thought).

With things looking quite dire before even launching the game, the game itself sprinkles promise: character creation prides the philosophical alignment system above all, wearing its Disco Elysium influence on its sleeves. Unfortunately, the game creators don't understand what nihilism means, mistaking it for simple egoism, lol.

The first hours of the game are just a series of inconsequential dialogues. We are introduced to multiple areas, meet multiple vendors (without having had a single combat encounter and thus not really knowing whether what -- or anything -- is needed at all). The game fails to establish a plot hook; it's all just the most generic post-apocalyptic stuff, sprinkled with philosophy quotes during loading screens, which comes off as nothing more than a projection of an intellectual veneer, at odds with the content of the game itself.

The characters blur into a mess. The settlements lack character. I fix myself my second cup of coffee to fight off the nausea but call it quits soon after; these hours were some of the most boring hours I've spent playing a CRPG.

Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes asks the important question, "What if you had an RPG with 120 party members", and answers that question to my knowledge the best that it could have given that challenging question. However, I still ask, was it worth it?

While the game boasts a large cast of mostly likeable characters where many of which end up serving a sizeable role in the story, most of these characters end up being one-dimensional save for a handful. As there is not enough time for them to change. Furthermore, most of these characters would have simply been put into NPC roles in a normal RPG if not for the fact that they now are NPCs... but also get to be in your party in a limited fashion. Still, it manages this fairly well in balancing them through having six main party slots, a support slot to allow non-combatant characters to join the party, as well as attendant slots if you don't want a plot relevant character to be in your primary party but still need to keep them around for the story. This all comes together giving a possible order of 10 party members which helps a lot in giving you space to experiment with them, and also to give them relevant party space compared to some other RPGs that attempted really large party sizes in that most of them were not able to give as much screen time and relevance as this game does even with significantly smaller casts. There are some creative ways to force the player to experiment and also to use more characters than a simple 6 from start to finish as well, which helps a lot in making you care about more than just your initial six. With so many to choose from, each player will settle into who they prefer.

The characters also come into the base building, which can be enjoyable apart from how constricting it actually is compared to how it originally appears, as all future upgrade materials are locked behind locations that you only get after completing specific chapters. Carefully keeping players "balanced" to be at about the same level for base building until they can advance the story in order to unlock more materials to expand.

This is where the major problems come in however. Pacing is all over the place, as key parts of an RPG are locked behind getting characters into your party and recruiting them to unlock things at your base of operation. Fast travel for one, is something locked at the 15 hour mark for when you unlock a character that gives you this ability, which means if you do a lot of side content before getting her, you'll be doing a ridiculous amount of backtracking, which the game points out in its story as a problem that you have to solve with this character. At which point... Why couldn't you have unlocked them much sooner? There are many aspects of the game that feel tedious and time-wasting in the same way, like the beigoma minigame that is a ripoff and worse version of Beyblade (There were WAY BETTER Beyblade games on the Gamecube and they didn't even bother to learn why those games were decent before implementing this half-assed minigame that is required to be completed for the true ending). Beigoma are rare items dropped by enemies that are required for the minigame, but you cannot collect them even from enemies that would normally drop them until you reach a certain chapter and can unlock the minigame with the two party members associated with it, meaning you have to then backtrack to get the beigomas you didn't originally get because it wasn't possible to get them. The very boring cooking minigame (That is required to do for the true ending), has long load-screens and is mostly RNG apart from selecting meals that are bland in order to appease the most characters, with a 15 minute timer you have to wait between matches before you can continue the sidequest. Star items, of which some are required to fully experience some minigames are items that randomly can spawn in shops and if played the way the game is meant to be played, are a random chance you check back on every 30 minutes (Unless you savescum which is clearly not intentional). Not to mention the atrocious load times on Switch and Playstation 4 which cause you to waste even more time as most stores require a long loading screen, most minigames require a long loading screen, fast traveling requires a long loading screen, etc. And so much more random things to get in the way of your progress and cause tedium and pointless timewasting.

Speaking of the minigames and all the sidecontent itself... It is pretty poor. The best of the games, the card game and the theater are completely optional, with the card game not even being required to be played any more than the tutorial match since unlocking the related character is done through collecting 120 cards, which is done through purchasing card packs. There is no traveling to fight card opponents, they are all your characters in the base in a drab and boring menu, and you can easily just buy as many card packs as you want to win against all of them for pitifully weak rewards that range from potions to the equivalent of phoenix downs. So there is absolutely zero incentive to play the minigame beyond it being the funner one of the lot. The theater is surprisingly dense, with a ridiculous amount of effort put into it with every character being voiced for every theater role in a goofy way that allows you to see their characters shine which makes it the most entertaining minigame in the post game... And for what? You have to earn the theater scripts by doing the tedious savescumming at shops, and you don't earn anything meaningful by doing all the plays with S-ranks. Then, that leaves the egg-racing which is one of the worst of the breeding racing minigames in RPGs I have seen, with a requirement for you to have every egg race 6 times in races that last for 2 minutes (With long load times before start and finish) to get the option to feed them, and only after they are done being fed from 6 races, can you breed them... With another egg that also did 6 races. With S-rank eggs basically being required to get the actually good items you can't just farm, that are still not that significantly good or worth it for hours of wasted time on an unfun uninteractive horse-racing minigame. What about beigoma? The game that is pointless to do early on because all your combatants will have rank 2 beigoma, which decimate your starting beigoma no matter what strategy you put into it since the game is mostly just about stats and type-match ups vs. any player input. Making it questionable why they even bother letting you do it without letting you farm beigoma ahead of time. Or how to advance the beigoma storyline you need to win matches against worthless jobbers in every city before the story beigoma characters will even give you a chance to stretch it out as much as possible (Which I remind you, is required for the true ending). What about the cooking minigame? Which is just you picking the same two safe meal options with one that you think your specific contestants will like (They probably won't even like it even if you pick something that tastes similar to their favorite foods), and then mashing the X or A button for a minute and... That's it. The main challenge comes from the RNG of which of your characters get chosen as judges. Do it 15 times while having 15 minute increments between each of them for more pointless time wasting (Which is required for the true ending). These things shouldn't have been mandatory, and more than that, more time and effort should have been put into all of them if they were going to make it into the game period. So much effort was put into the theater which I love, which could have just been put into the other minigames to make them better and more enjoyable instead of slogs.

Speaking of slogs, the gameplay: While I did enjoy the overall gameplay of the game, there was much to be left desired. Every character is viable, but certainly some will be a lot better than others, especially at different points of the game. Most characters are nearly identical apart from having maybe one unique skill on each character (If they're lucky), and none if they're unlucky. The most blessed ones have two or more unique skills, because SP is the name of the game up until the end game. Magic is nearly worthless until the end game with all magic doing pitiful damage and only being useful for healing. Until the end game where it becomes an unstoppable and overpowered force, meaning all your magic characters early on are weak, and endgame are your most busted. SP then is the game changer, where characters that have good SP skills are your champs, with the major thing to focus on being extremely powerful hero combos depending on team comp, and ignoring the ones that are useless since they do just about as much damage as a regular attack, same as early game magic. With so many characters and selecting their actions before each turn, there is some strategy and some fun ways to manipulate the system, but its still too slow. They did some smart techniques to make combat go faster, and it still isn't enough, as you'll want to be using the auto-battle through most of the game, which is not a good sign. Some of the boss fights are designed horrendously, with the worst ones at the start of the game, with one where the HP balancing felt off with one character having as much HP as mid game bosses in the second major boss fight, and the other having a complete RNG left or right choice that if you're unlucky means you have a very long drawn out fight. I really want to love the battle system, but it's poorly implemented even though it had good ideas for how to deal with having so many party members.

The game is also very buggy as of me writing. I had experienced over 20 crashes costing me progress, with 2 soft-locks on my PS4 version. With the auto-save being so slow with periods where it wouldn't autosave for 3 hours at a time, this was completely unacceptable.

Then... What's the point? I've been completely negative in this review until now, so why did I bother finishing this game? Well, primarily the presentation. The voice acting of every single character, the theater, the visuals, the animations (Albeit you can clearly see when they ran out of time with some cut scenes where the characters don't have running animations), and heart of this game kept me going. Its very pleasant to look at, to hear, and to experience in that way, and if not for that I would have stopped playing long ago. The duels while suffering the same problems as all the other minigames give cool one on one spectacle fights, same with the war scenarios which feel like you are leading armies even if it was rather slow and pretty thoughtless. As well, the story was alright.

The story is pretty generic, but with nice twists and turns, some nice political drama, and good character moments. I particularly enjoyed Perrielle through the story, and how each leader of the League of Nations were distinct in their failure against the fascistic Aldric who was a fun campy villain. My major complaint would just be the lack of commentary on some issues, while there is mention of racism against the animal folk of the game, its not really felt as much as it should be and could have been pushed more along with asking questions about the Alliance and Guardians instead of them being purely "good guys". Feels a bit too clean when we had drama of Seign overcoming his allegiances. As well... The end game feels a bit rushed, with a missing prince plotline that is mentioned but never elaborated on or seen beyond just being told it was done off screen. Similarly, at the start of the game when a villain has someone in their grasp they just let them go without question? You can feel where they ran out of time.

So, we return to that original question. "What if we had an RPG with 120 party members?" Well, the real answer is, we'd get an RPG where characters fight for screen time, at least half if not more will be required to dip out of the story and have no presence to avoid bloating, and we'll end up with a story where not very much of consequence can happen because that'd remove characters from that big 120 character selling point on the back of the box. I just don't think its worth it in the end, even if Eiyuden Chronicle did it in probably the best hypothetical way I could think of. This game isn't that bad, but the tedium and chore it is to play certainly drags it down a lot, especially with its technical problems. There is heart here, and I want to like it a lot more, but I can't bring myself to. I'm curious to see how the Suikoden series matches to this game, so I'll likely be looking at those games after playing this. All in all, a very low end 3/5.

I wanted to like this game so bad, at times I really did like it, but it falls so flat where story is concerned.

Its combat and progression is deeply engaging, its world is gorgeous and well designed, its skill system and party make up is so well balanced. The game is incredible to play when you’re running through dungeons or fighting bosses. The issue is that a game like this needs a story that propels you through the gameplay, a context you care about and that keeps you going, but it just doesn’t. There is no main plot or main story, it’s just 8 separate and disconnected character stories that are of no real interest or importance to anything outside of those very specific events for the stories to take place. I couldn’t engage with any of them beyond Agnea. The messages felt flawed and cack-handed; a man who wants to create a land of equality by coming a monarch? A man who wants to end poverty through capitalism? A woman who wants to kill her abusive parental figures and escape from a life of pain, only to go back on that for no logical reason? This game’s story is just simply broken, it’s a slog, it has no real point of investment and it’s a huge shame.

Where the Final Fantasy games these are obviously directly spiritual successors to used their enthralling plot as a means to make you care about everything you do, the stories here feel like a total after thought, just something that vaguely exists to give you an excuse to play it. But it’s not enough and the game suffers for it.

I’ve been trying to play this one and off for almost a year and the gameplay is so damn fun, the music and atmosphere are tremendous but the crux of the game, its story and characters, are empty, disconnected and messy as all hell. I want to try the first game to see if it has the same issues and I hope they make a third to fix some of these flaws and improve on a game premise that has such shining potential to be incredible.

There are heaps of interesting tactical decisions to make in designing your units to decimate the swordfodder obstacles in the way of you becoming The Nicest King Ever, but at least a quarter of the “skill” i built to play this game was “shuffling around pieces in your unit pre-fight to get a better RNG roll on the battle”. The preview screen holds a death grip on the entire combat experience: the information you are given is neither ‘perfect’ enough to do your own work, nor vague enough to allow improvisation and confidence to be your weapons, and so you ultimately have a black box simulator to press Go on when the numbers are good. I didn’t hate playing it, but from a theory perspective, this thing is not working to its potential.

And while I still have some qualms with 13 Sentinels’ plot despite enjoying it overall – considering its intricacy, I didn’t expect most every beat of Unicorn Overlord to be as complex as a butter sandwich. It is so, so flatly incurious about its characters’ interiority that it’s actually shocking. Every support conversation I saw was like a grey-boxed version of a scene that could be formulaic, but maybe charming too, if it were fleshed out – but they aren’t! The whole reading experience is at a level of cathexis and fidelity similar to a cheap flavored sparkling water.

The art’s execution is unsurprisingly good, though the character designs’ gender dimorphism is offputtingly consistent. Like, listen, I love Yahna’s b-cups, I’m not a joyless dyke, but if the women get to be this flamboyant and cheesecakey then why the hell do the men have no asses and stand like it’s their turn to play the xbox? Like at least give Ithillion some cheeks. It’s right there. Cowards. Anyway the HD2D by way of ‘overworld sprites illustrated like they could be pixelized but are left at full resolution’ is surprisingly good looking as well. also the mining minigame is weirdly satisfying. Overall I just feel worn down by the constant, tectonic level of friction between what the game could be, and what they actually did with it. (played on highest default difficulty, approx 130 hour final time)

I can't believe how much praise this game got, because this game is one of the most mid games to ever mid. The story was boring, but not as boring as the main characters. And while some of the moves made for some fun gameplay the first time you do them, the overall combat is so repetitive. Sure, it's a great looking game as far as pixel art goes, but this is about as bland as you can get for one of these games.

I actually had to do the dreaded mid-gameplay google of "When does Sea of Stars get good", which is pretty much a death sentence for any game. When I saw many people saying that the story never gets better and the combat continues to be shallow, even in late-game, I had to make the decision to stop right here.