Remember the days of playing Final Fantasy 7, Dragon Quest, or even Fire Emblem? Those were the days of spending hours on a JRPG that just keeps you hooked with its combat and story. Well, Rabbit & Bear Studios is a Japanese studio that had a vision to create something with a fun and retro feel but with a more modern feeling. However, nothing in life is ever free and their first release is a monster on its own. So, a few months after being founded in 2020, they started up a Kickstarter for some crowdfunding to get Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes off the ground.

Well, almost 4 years later, and with every Kickstarter tier funded, Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is officially ready to be released into the wild on 23 April. Lucky for us, we got to have a little sneak peek at this beast of a release and just how much work went into its creation. The very first thing to know is that Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is a JRPG down to its core, but it comes with a few incredible features and a huge roster of playable characters.

As for the world of Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes, it’s definitely a bit more on the wild side of things. The world is on the verge of a massive war between the Empire and the League, and you’ll be taking on the role of Nowa, a simple mercenary who wanted to join the Watch. However, his part in the war to come takes a massive turn after learning more about the Primal Rune Lenses and their power, along with their part in the coming war. Your main goal initially will be to recruit more people for the Watch and possibly put an end to the coming war.

Starting off with the biggest attraction in Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes, it’s the fact that the name is literal because you’ll be able to recruit well over 100 playable heroes and they all have their own unique quirks. However, it doesn’t mean you’ll be fighting with all of them at the same time, as chaotic and amazing as it would be though. For the most part, your party can consist of 6 heroes at a time, along with 3 extra slots for support but it’s unclear how this part works. The thing is, your party will be divided between front and rear with 3 hero slots for each, adding some complexity to the different hero archetypes and their placements. This works especially well because you can actually put your tougher heroes at the front to take more of the damage while your weaker or ranged heroes sit at the rear.

One thing to keep in mind when building your party is that the typical RPG archetypes don’t quite count with the heroes of Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes. Instead of Tank, DPS, and Heal, you’ll mostly have hybrids, this does complicate things a bit more but it also makes each character more versatile because you’ll have to consider things like Health, Damage, Defense, their abilities, and even their attack types. This is all for the sake of picking where to put each hero in the layouts but it’s a nice change of pace in the JRPG scene.

Another major aspect that’ll definitely intrigue anybody is that you can essentially set hero tactics for Auto fights, this is quite similar to what’s seen in Final Fantasy XII: Zodiac Age but with a bit more complexity. However, if going into the complexities of creating automated strategies isn’t your thing, you can just run with the defaults as well but they are quite rough. Granted, you don’t have to use Auto fights either, keeping your options fluid and choosing what to do for each round is sometimes the best way to ensure a win in just about every fight.

Moving on, fights in Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes aren’t quite what you’d expect. You’ll still have the usual basic attack, defensive move, and even item usage, but you won’t have access to skills or magic. Heroes will instead have Rune Lenses and each one comes with a passive or active skill ranging from attacks to healing and buffs. However, where you’ll need to keep a close eye on your party composition is when it comes to Hero Combos. These allow you to combine an attack from 2 or more heroes for a much harder blow to your opponent, this is honestly an odd but great feature to see in a JRPG due to the tactical side it adds to everything.

Getting into a fight in Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is actually quite easy, just walk around in a dungeon or the overworld and a fight will be randomly triggered. However, this isn’t exactly a new feature for the JRPG scene, it’s just how infrequent encounters are that make things a little tedious. The encounter frequency needs to be increased, or even better; roaming beasts that’ll start a fight when you walk into them would be the best option because it’ll also give a bit more life to the world.

Now, when you’re not out crushing anything that challenges you like a bug, you’ll probably need to visit the towns and buy some new gear, Rune Lenses, and maybe even consumable items, or maybe you’re just out exploring the towns. Buying new gear and such is a must-have for any RPG or JRPG but there is a slight annoyance in this regard… You’ll have zero camera control when you’re in a dungeon or town. It’s actually painfully annoying because you’ll have camera control while out in the overworld but nothing in a town, it makes no sense as to why it’s not part of both aside from wanting to save some time by not rendering the other sides of buildings, but Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is still technically a 2.5D and this should be possible.

Annoying camera issue aside, there is a side to the Rune Lenses that has some great appeal with how it’s set up. Each hero can unlock new Rune Lenses as they level up, but the biggest factor is that they actually also unlock the extra slots that can be filled with other Rune Lenses which can be bought or picked up as loot. Now, this naturally means that there are most definitely some really special Rune Lenses hidden throughout the world and they’re far from easy to come by or require some serious grinding to get.

Now, life isn’t just an endless hunt for new heroes or grinding in Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes, there are some puzzles and other interesting twists to encounter. You’ll have to think outside the box or pay attention in certain places, and recruiting more heroes isn’t as straightforward either as some of them will send you on a quest before they’ll join you. Unfortunately, there’s no way of tracking those quests and you’ll only be able to track your main quest. Being able to track multiple quests would have been great for this release but we can only hope it gets added in at a later stage.

Sadly, while there is so much good in Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes, there are some bad aspects too. The biggest one is the most bizarre issue regarding controller drift, even after setting deadlines and recalibrating, drift is still a major issue; almost as if the game overrides any external settings. This is likely the biggest issue you might face because scrolling through the menu comes with the typical tooltip sound, but hearing it on repeat when you’re just trying to use a quick item will drive you insane. To make matters worse, it’s starting to look like the developers aren’t paying attention to the endless requests to fix this issue in the discussions.

On the visual side of things in Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes, the way the 2.5D was implemented is interesting. All the characters are drawn with pixel art while the world is nearly 3D, it’s an odd contrast that actually works really well and there is nearly endless potential with how it can bring the world to life but the lack of life on the overworld and dungeons is a little sad. Normally, if you’re going to use random encounters, you’d need to give a lot more care to the world itself to keep it interesting but you won’t get that in Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes.

Right off the bat, you’ll be introduced to the voice acting in Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes and just how lively it can make everything. Each unique voice more than fits their respective characters and it’s honestly amazing how well each part was played. On the other hand, there is also the ‘to be expected’ background music that matches the different environments, but the sounds that play when scrolling through menus or advancing any dialogue get really old, really fast.

Overall, Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is so close to being the feel-good JRPG for 2024 but it still needs a bit of work before it can shine. If you can look past the issues, there’s a whole world to explore and a literal ton of heroes to recruit and experiment with. Let’s not forget the incredible story that you’ll get to experience too as things unfold while you’re exploring.
 

Jay Claassen (@R3GR3T_3NVY)
Senior Editor, NoobFeed