Eiyuden Chronicle Rising
I just finished playing a game called Eiyuden Chronicle Rising.
This game was released in 2022 for all current major platforms. I played the Nintendo Switch version.
This game caught my attention because last week, it became free-to-try for 1 week for all subscribers to Nintendo Switch Online. I decided to give it a go. And then I saw that it was available on the eShop at a heavy discount, so after I had already gotten a decent ways into the game, I thought I might as well just buy it so I can continue playing past the trial period. ... haha, I guess they got me, huh?
Eiyuden Chronicle Rising is a strange case, because it is a spinoff. It's supposedly a companion piece for the "main" game, which is called "Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes".
So why did I play this before playing the main game then? Well, the main game isn't out yet. Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes comes out on April 23 2024. ...And today's April 20. It's out in three days! ...It's unusual that the spinoff came out years before the main game proper, huh?
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes has been getting a lot of attention online, as it was directed by Yoshitaka Murayama, the creator of Suikoden who has very very recently passed away. It's unfortunate that he isn't going to be able to see his new game released. :(
Well, I'll get to Hundred Heroes another time. For now, it's time to talk about Rising, the spinoff prequel.
Eiyuden Chronicle Rising follows the story of an energetic treasure-hunting girl named CJ. She arrives at the town of New Nevaeh, which is famous for its quarry and its barrows, which are full of treasures and secrets. During the story CJ teams up with two companions: a kangaroo mercenary named Garoo, and a young mage named Isha who is currently the acting mayor of New Nevaeh. The three of them delve deep into the barrows to uncover the truth of what lies beneath, and to hunt for treasure along the way.
The town of New Nevaeh is in disarray due to the anomalous activity occurring in the barrows beneath it, but as CJ completes tasks from the townsfolk and brings back materials from the caves, the town begins to rebuild itself anew, and eventually becomes bigger and livelier than it has ever been.
The game is a sidescrolling action game. It's strictly 2D, and you can run, jump, and attack. CJ attacks with a short-range slash, and she can also dash. Garoo has a huge heavy sword, and can also guard with a parry. Isha shoots projectiles, and she can also hover in the air.
At first your actions are very limited and rather clumsy, but as you upgrade your weapon, you become able to string more attacks together, and as you upgrade your armour, your special moves improve (CJ's dash distance increases, etc)
The main gameplay involves exploring through a roughly linear series of 2D rooms, attacking enemies and collecting resources as you go.
Most of the gameplay involves following quest markers to reach a specific spot, and then collecting or defeating whatever is in that spot in order to complete the quest.
The game has an abundance of quests in which the goal is to collect materials or to follow a quest marker. The game only has five locations to explore through, but because the game keeps sending you to go pick up items in specific spots again and again, you'll be going through these areas quite often.
The game does not give a great first impression - the first few hours of the game consist of literally nothing but menial fetch-quests, where you have to go pick up materials and bring them back to town. And you're not even allowed to fully explore the areas until you complete these quests. It's not that great to be honest. It's frustrating to explore a little bit of the first area, only to be told a few rooms in that you need to turn around and go back to town so you can have a cutscene with a shopkeeper, only to then be told to go back and continue exploring where you left off. There is a TON of back-and-forth in these opening hours of the game, and it does get pretty repetitive.
Later on in the game, it does let you explore at your own pace a bit more, which is good, but the fetch quests never stop. Every time you go back to town, you'll see more quest markers from NPCs telling you to pick up 5 ores, or 5 lumbers, or kill 10 slimes, or whatever. It's very tedious, but you have to do them because the quest rewards are too useful to miss out on.
As you complete sidequests, the town expands. You gain access to new shops, and the shops begin to stock new equipment. New weapon and armour upgrades become available, and all sorts of other things in town get unlocked as a direct result of completing these quests. In order to be equipped with the best gear, it is very necessary to complete all of these menial tasks...
At some point you unlock the ability to equip elemental runes to your characters. For CJ and Garoo, it just means your attacks have an elemental property that affects damage depending on enemy weakness and resistance - but for Isha, the equipped element also affects her projectile behaviour - with Earth she throws rocks in an arc, with Ice she sends shards flying horizontally, with Wind she creates close-range electric spheres, and with Fire she shoots homing fireballs. It's nice that they gave her some unique properties for her attacks, it gives you some more options for finding your preferred play style.
These elemental attacks are also the only way to destroy "elemental barriers" that block certain rooms in the areas. A brown barrier is destroyed by an Earth attack, a blue barrier by an Ice attack etc. I guess it's a way of making the areas seem more "replayable", since you can only unlock each element in a set order based on your story progress. So when you have to inevitably explore the same area again later on, there's at least one new room to find if you remember where the barriers were.
The game's story is fun, but nothing mindblowing. There's some strange goings-on going on under the town, and some ancient sorcery shenanigans that get uncovered as you keep exploring. Overall, the story works to drive the adventure forward, but it's not an amazing narrative by any means.
The characters are fun and have a lot of personality. CJ is energetic and treasure-obsessed (but of course she is heroic and good-natured underneath), Garoo is cynical and bad-tempered (but of course has a good heart underneath), and Isha is stoic and bureaucratic as a result of having to take up a leadership position at such a young age (but of course she is sensitive and caring underneath). Rather typical character archetypes, but they work well off of each other, and I do enjoy seeing their cutscenes.
My overall verdict on the game is...I don't think it's that good, honestly. ..... the gameplay is not that great. Switching between the three characters is a bit fiddly, and the combat is absolutely nothing to write home about. The fetch-quests are unrelenting and very repetitive, and overall I don't think it's actually all that fun to play on a moment-to-moment basis. Basically all you do in this game is complete fetch-quests, and this is true even if you wanted to ignore the sidequests and focus only on the main story. Because the main story quests are also mostly just fetch-quests too.
That being said, I didn't hate my time with this game. The characters are charming and the environments are nice enough to run around in. And sometimes I do enjoy filling out quests and expanding a town, just for the intrinsic satisfaction of completion.
I will say that the game does outstay its welcome. For a cute but shallow game like this, I would say it would be best if it were around 9 or so hours long. ... but this game took me 25 hours to fully 100% it. And by the end of it I was just so sick of running through the same forest and same quarry rooms over and over following quest markers. ...
So yeah. I'm glad I'm done with it. This game is not really worth replaying, but I didn't mind completing it one time through. It wasn't a terrible time, but it's definitely not a good game either.
I'm glad I played it anyway though, because apparently Hundred Heroes will check to see if it can find a Rising save file, and reward the player with a few goodies for having played the prequel beforehand. In true Suikoden-inspired tradition!
Anyway... even though Hundred Heroes is out in a few days, I'm not going to play it straight away. I'm still in the middle of a Suikoden III playthrough at the moment. Eiyuden Rising was good to have as a light adventure to play in between Suikoden III sessions, but Hundred Heroes is going to be its own huge thing, so I'm not gonna start it until I can dedicate myself to it properly.
So I guess it's back to playing more Suikoden III for me, then, huh?
