First days on the job are always hard to deal with, but Nowa is absolutely thrown in the deep end at the start of Eiyuden Chronicles: Hundred Heroes. Our hero is drafted into a joint military operation between their nation and the Empire, but before too long they’re raising an army for the resistance against imperial invasion. Along the way you’ll meet and recruit more than one hundred heroes (hence the name) to bolster said army.
Here lies the first problem with the game, and I’m gutted that I’ve reached grievances this early. The number of heroes sounds impressive, and it is, but it means losing depth with the characters. A handful of characters are fleshed out, such as the main trio and select others, but many of them are essentially just one-dimensional caricatures. I’ll fight anyone over Francesca though, as she is one of the most accurate depictions of a healer I’ve seen.
To play, Hundred Heroes is mostly typical JRPG fare complete with turn-based battles, lots of numbers and copious amounts of gear and items to manage. The battles follow a bar along the top of the screen letting the player know the current order of actions including the enemies, so you’re encouraged to use the turn order to avoid damage by eliminating or otherwise stopping enemies before they can attack.
Battles allow a party of six characters divided between two rows, with the enemies having the same configuration. Your characters have different attack ranges, so you need to be cautious of the placements within your party as if you have someone on the back row with short range, you aren’t going to be able to hit a single thing – something I definitely didn’t do on at least three occasions.
You select all of your party’s actions before playing them out in order with the enemies acting at their points in the sequence. Once you confirm those actions, it locks you into those choices until all turns are complete, which even includes healing and other defensive skills. Misjudge things and fail to keep an eye on those life bars and you will end up with some knocked out heroes before you know it.
Certain encounters will feature gimmicks to help you, such using a character’s turn to activate traps or manipulate the battlefield. This shakes up the combat considerably, giving some fun ways to take down the enemy. However, some of these gimmicks are not well realised, becoming more of a frustration than anything genuinely helpful – looking at you, Magical Girl hammers.
All party members can be augmented with Rune-Lenses to give them spells or boosts to their stats, and these can be changed at the stores where you buy them and select other places in the world such as your home base. As your characters gain levels, you can equip multiple Lenses to give additional bonuses, so this is something you need to check often to succeed.
If none of this sounds particularly groundbreaking, that’s because it isn’t. There are little glimpses of something fresh, such as the dynamic one-on-one dueIs at key narrative points, or the ability to place characters in a support row for battles, but these new features and mechanics are few and far between.
This said, the moment-to-moment gameplay overall is mechanically solid and incredibly satisfying at times, especially in the combat. This is probably because, as it’s intended to be a spiritual successor to the Suikoden series, the battles specifically [ay homage to the combat of classic JRPGs with enough modern conveniences and little touches to avoid feeling repetitive.
But, it’s not just adventuring and small scale battles, though. At certain points you enter into large skirmishes in which Nowa and the others are the captains of squadrons on the battlefield. Here you engage the enemy by entering the same square on the grid as them, with the victor pushing the other to retreat a square. These break up the standard gameplay, and are very interesting in concept, but are laboriously slow and clunky.
Then you have the base building. After a certain point in the story you can spend resources gathered out in the world to expand your base and gain perks. Sometimes these expansions will require the recruitment of a particular hero to run the new area, which will be indicated with a silhouette. You can’t design the rooms or anything, but this gives a fun little tangible reason to actually explore, beyond getting to open a few chests.
Easily one of the biggest draws of Eiyuden Chronicles: Hundred Heroes is the aesthetic, with some gorgeous visuals that blend 2D sprites with 3D surroundings to incredible effect. It’s not quite as seamless in this attempt as say Octopath Traveler, and to me feels more reminiscent of the original Final Fantasy VII. It’s beautiful, nonetheless.
The music and sound design also deserve praise as both are incredible, with the battle music itself being a particular highlight, but I’ve not heard a single bad track in the game. Also, with every main character having not only voice acting, but fantastic voice acting, it’s clear that the audio matches the visuals for quality. The only negative here is that I wanted more of it: more voice lines, more music, more sound effects, more everything.
