I’ve been excited for Hundred Heroes since I played Rising back in 2022 and subsequently, some Suikoden games to tide me over. When the preview build came in I couldn’t install it fast enough and while the game felt very bare bones (it is a beta preview, after all) it was cool to finally be playing Hundred Heroes. Notably, it was also nice to be playing a regular-ass turn-based JRPG again. We’ve had a slew of action RPGs come out this year and since I drew the short straw and didn’t get to play Infinite Wealth or Persona 3 Reload, I’ve been in Action/Tactical town. I was glad to be playing Hundred Heroes.
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes starts with our protagonist Nowa joining the watch. He arrived two days later than the latest recruit, Lian, and she never lets him forget that. Immediately the voice work stands out to me. Both the direction and the performances are incredible. Lian is enthusiastic, headstrong, and ready for anything and while the writing occasionally leaves something to be desired, the performances are stellar. Along with Lian, we have Garr the captain of the party, he’s a no nonsense Lycanthrope, and Mio a mysterious swordswoman. The initial party rounds out nicely and everyone plays their part perfectly.
The watch is participating with the empire in a joint effort to find a primal lens in the runebarrows nearby. So Nowa and friends team up with some Lieutenant guy and his attendant and head off to the runebarrows. Battles are very reminiscent of Suikoden where you’ve got 6 people on the battlefield and they all take turns but are snappy about it. If multiple people on your team are attacking in a row, expect them to quickly go one after the other. Unfortunately, if your team isn’t attacking in a row, battles take longer and the pacing is a little jarring. While the primal lens is a big deal, regular rune lenses seem rather prolific as everyone in the party has one. They provide stats and usually a special ability. Real basic JRPG stuff, you’ve got SP that replenishes every round and MP that requires an item to replenish. More importantly, there’s an auto-battle feature that’s actually really solid. More on that later. There are also friendship combos you can eventually use that will unlock as you grow closer to your party members.
As the party moves on they discover the primal lens, people get separated, there’s some dialogue between unlikely allies, etc… Sadly, while the proper nouns are all different, the story’s beginning is relatively by-the-numbers. There’s really nothing that special here. We do a six-month time skip and Nowa becomes captain of the watch and is tasked with recruiting more people for the watch. Hooray! This is what I’ve been waiting for. The first person I come across is Mellore, a magical girl with long blonde pigtails and a sailor moon outfit. She’s fun, and I’m not a stick in the mud yet, so I go with it. Again, the voice work is incredible. It’s a little hammy and leaning a little too into the magical girl thing, but truly, we don’t get enough magical girls in JRPGs.
Eventually, we get to the boss battle while helping Mellore and we’re introduced to our second gimmick. Let’s talk about gimmicks. In the first big boss battle, there’s a gimmick introduced where there is some rubble around the battlefield, and when the big boss begins charging up, you can use the gimmick button (which is just the attack menu selection) to select rubble on the battlefield and those teammates that participate avoid damage entirely. The big bad’s big attack is clearly telegraphed and it’s easy to figure out when you should use the gimmick. I hope you can see where this is going.
Mellore’s boss is a giant mole and when he appears she summons two large grimoires that sit on opposite sides of the battlefield. The gimmick is that if you hit the grimoire on the side of the battlefield the mole is in, it summons a rocket hammer that whacks the mole in the head, deals big damage, and stuns them for the round. Unfortunately, the mole goes underground when you set up attacks and you have no way of knowing which side of the battlefield he’ll pop out of. It’s not telegraphed whatsoever which side he’s going to pop out of. If there’s a pattern, I didn’t pick up on it. This was extremely frustrating. Of the over 20 rounds of fighting this boss, I managed to correctly guess the side they were on once. For reference, I reloaded my save went into the battle, and set it to auto-battle immediately and it won in 16 turns without using the gimmick.
One of Hundred Heroes successes is the artistic direction. I couldn’t put my finger on why I liked it so much until I realized what the team at Rabbit & Bear Studios was trying to accomplish. Hundred Heroes looks how I thought games looked when I played them in the 90s. It’s incredible they’ve managed to capture the style of the late-90s Playstation-era graphics while shifting that style into modern fidelity. It looks good and it also sounds good. The musical cues and soundtrack, while limited in what I’ve heard so far, are very good. Hundred Heroes stimulates both the eyes and ears with it’s soundtrack and visual style. Particularly of note is the field music with it’s steady beat and wandering strings, I absolutely felt like I was embarking on a heroic adventure with that tune blasting through my headphones.
I enjoyed most of what I played with Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes. We have a callback to 90s JRPGs with some modern niceties. It did not run very well on my Steamdeck, but this is a preview beta build so I’m withholding some of my criticism of the performance. While half of the bosses I played didn’t make good use of the gimmick system, the other half did. Overall, I want to say that my excitement for Hundred Heroes has slightly waned. While I’m still excited to play it, that second boss battle left a sour taste in my mouth and I’m really hoping the full game isn’t littered with bosses that don’t use the gimmick system well. Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes releases on April 23rd, 2024.
