Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes

[Niahak]

This game is out next week on Switch/PS/XBox/PC.

A classic-styled JRPG headed-up by some of the original Suikoden staff including the recently-passed Murayama, it's been receiving generally good impressions from the Kickstarter backers who received and are already playing physical copies (mostly in NA, some in Europe and Asia). Digital copies are now being sent out and, for at least some it appears to be an unlocked copy.

This isn't to be mistaken for Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising, a prequel-game that is an action RPG (sorta Ys3-ish) involving several characters that are set to appear in EC: Hundred Heroes.

Anyone else excited to dive in? I personally backed for physical/digital Switch, and although I might regret my platform choice for performance reasons, it's probably still the easiest way for me to enjoy the game.

[Kong Wen]

Anyone else excited to dive in? I personally backed for physical/digital Switch, and although I might regret my platform choice for performance reasons, it's probably still the easiest way for me to enjoy the game.

I'm planning on picking it up on PS5 (and probably playing it on the Portal a lot of the time), but knowing me, I'll just let it sit on the wishlist for a while till it goes on sale or I slow down my momentum on FF14.

Definitely keen to play it, though, and have been looking forward to it for a long time.

100% guarantee Kiwi will be playing it as well.

[Niahak]

I'm about 20 hours into EC Hundred Heroes, and I'd say so far it's been good but not overwhelming enjoyment.
Throwing my impressions into a spoiler list just in case people would rather go in totally fresh, but these are just impressions and contain no spoilers about anything but general tone so far (and I guess some suikoden staples)

Spoiler

• Graphics, especially characters, are pretty good
• Voicework has generally been really good (Lian is supposed to be annoying)
• Characters have been fun and colorful
• Base building is really fun but poorly explained (e.g. I'm getting resources from buildings... but how many and how often?)
• Loading / framerate is not great on the Switch, but it could be worse. Recent patch decreased encounter rate on Switch which makes things much better than they were.
• Combat is kind of boring and slow, and things are much better balanced* than in Suiko1&2
• Story has been good if cliche, but a fair bit more upbeat / traditional JRPG than Suikodens

*I'd argue that this decreases enjoyment; there are virtually no interesting runes/combos for the first 15 hours of the game, which is... about as long as all of Suikoden 1 where IIRC you can buy a fire rune in Gregminster and throw it on any of 3 people to drastically change your strategy. Magic is pretty underwhelming too, so there's little reason to mess with most runes.

I've seen the general tone of reviews/feedback turn sour on the game, but I'm trying to stay positive. So far it's better than Tierkreis (although Tierkreis has some great bits of tragedy), and honestly Tierkreis is a perfectly serviceable Suikoden game.

I'm not even sure what percentage of the game I'm at. Still kind of feels like it's early on.