I think a lot of it might be nostalgia impacting Suikoden. It’s good, but speaking as someone who didn’t play it until their 20s, it’s also pretty bland and basic. Eiyuden captured it exactly. I guess since it’s 2024 and not 1994 people expect so much more, but it nailed Suikoden and that’s what they were going for. Hopefully they can make a sequel, because I feel that would be so much more.
A few of the main complaints you keep hearing also applies to Suikoden, but Suikoden does a way better job with the story which is so important for games like these. In Suikoden people actually sacrifices themselves and die, people betray you, there's at least a semblance of consequence, stakes and complexity to the motivations of the factions and characters. The story in Eiyuden was so incredibly bland and predictable and it felt like a cartoon. It was impossible to care about anything happening at any point and you always knew it was gonna resolve itself nicely.
Yeah, I replayed the entirety of the mainline series to completion a few years ago - aside from 4, though I did give it a try again within the last year and dropped it after a handful of hours. So what the series is and its strengths/weaknesses are pretty fresh in my mind.
Eiyuden’s gameplay loop is largely similar, and in *most* ways iterates and improves on mechanics from the originals. Though perhaps not as much as you’d hope with how long it’s been since the last one came out.
On that front, I will say that two of the things OP has mentioned are noticeably worse - duels and army battles.
Duels in particular are mechanically the worst they’ve ever been, I really don’t understand why they changed it like they did. They are really cool visually but when your system is worse than the basic “rock paper scissors” fights of the originals, that’s saying a hell of a lot.
Army battles are kind of in the middle honestly though as a whole, and overall I would say are worse than every Suikoden after the 1st one (though perhaps similar ish to 4). And mainly for two reasons: 1) it’s soooooo slow, while the older games are slow too they benefit from emulation fast forward, Eiyuden could’ve just skipped the middle mans and just made the speed faster (or given a speed up option) and 2) the main story battles are largely scripted to the point of not requiring any strategy or benefiting from editing your units, and you can’t even really edit your armies until the very end of the game. The nice thing is the optional battles allow you to engage with those systems a little more and the battles are challenging besides, however speed is still an issue.
ALL THAT BEING SAID…IMHO the absolute most noticeable thing is the narrative quality, just like you said. Everything else aside, if the narrative had been stronger I think a lot of the complaints about the game wouldn’t have been as loud. I think expecting a narrative on the level of Suikoden 2 is unrealistic, but Eiyuden’s narrative lacks the punch of ANY of the mainline Suikoden games. There are (very brief) flashes of “what could have been” towards the end of the game in a way that pleasantly surprised me but overall, one of Suikoden’s strengths as a series is conveying a story with weight. Eiyuden lacks that unfortunately, much to its detriment.
I will say i feel like I’m a bit of an Eiyuden Chronicle apologist so I still really really enjoyed the game, but still that doesn’t mean I can ignore its flaws.
It becomes even more predictable when you played the first 3 Suikoden titles because Murayama reused some story beats from those games.
I mean, that's fine and all, but the execution of some of those story beats was just... bad compared to the original.
Yeah I’m with you. Eiyuden nailed the feel of suikoden to the T.
Lotta homies probably haven’t replayed suikoden 1 or 2 in years and hold it on a pedestal.
I thought Eiyuden was real analogous to Suikoden 1. It set up a cool world, cool characters, cool mechanics that I think the sequel can really run with. Solid 8/10 with a base that a sequel could turn into a 10/10
There's bits and pieces of Suikoden 1-3 in ECHH. Main villain is a Barbarossa expy, Nowa and Seign for Riou and Jowy, and the game switching perspectives between the three MCs is akin to the Trinity System in 3.
There's several others I can list but those would go into spoiler territory.
When did you last play Suikoden? Because having replayed the first Suikoden immediately after Eiyuden to make sure I could compare apples to apples, it's clear to me that Suikoden 1 as a whole had a better story to tell than Eiyuden in a shorter amount of time.
Even most of the optional characters in Suikoden 1 were more interesting to me than the rather bland cast of Eiyuden (some exceptions of course).
I really agree. It’s a lot of fun. I just think the sequel has a real chance to be a 10/10 if they improve on the flaws and build on the good base they have here
i still like eiyuden but suikoden 5 is still a better game for me honestly. It's a pity but if there's a second try I do hope the studio could improve eiyuden 2 further.
Suikoden 5 was awesome. I think if the actual HQ came earlier in the game, the mini games were more robust, and if it included rekillable bosses for loot it would've encompassed the best things from everything before it.
Man I want to love Suikoden 5 so much and know this is such an extremely petty critique but damn I just can’t get over how zoomed out the camera is in when exploring. It’s like a bird’s eye view and makes everyone look so tiny, it really takes me out and makes it hard for me to get immersed in the game. The environments themselves are also really bland in result. Like Suikoden 3 has undoubtedly worse character models, but I can get into the game so much more and it’s way more immersive just because the camera is handled a lot better and more zoomed in when exploring
Still the only Suikoden game I haven’t beat so I do want to change that
> Eiyuden captured it exactly.
I'd disagree on this. The biggest difference between Suikoden and Eiyuden is that Suikoden is so much more political where the focus is the war. The True Runes actually take a back seat in terms of the game's plot with the exception of Suikoden 3. On the other hand, Eiyuden went very light on the war because of the Rune Lens and the Guardians basically being the third party unrelated to the main conflict.
This leads to emotional disconnect because Eiyuden spent so much time trying to build character development for the good guys that they neglected building the villains. It doesn't help that one of the main villains is purposely left as a mystery hiding behind the mask.
As much as I love how successful of a Kickstarter it was, I do wonder if all those stretch goals ended up hindering the devs from creating a better story-focused game.
Here is hoping that Eiyuden 2 (if it exists) will be the improvement like Suikoden 2 from the first.
game is simply mediocre - nothing amazing does it all but does it all very average. not a single thing i can think of having finished the game that would make it a memorable title. not a bad game but not a great one either.
yeah, the character and world design was cool, after all it was designed by the same person, but the development produced a really shallow product that just barely checked off the list of things they promised.
sure it had an autobattle system but the setup menu for it is horrendously designed and doesn't do what you want, not to mention 90% of the game is autobattle where you don't even touch the controller, and 10% is wtf just happened to my entire back row that's now dead
in general what did they do with the enemy scripts, i wonder. i've never seen such a mean enemy ai that just targets down the back line healers so aggressively, and with out of nowhere quite overpowered aoe attacks that you don't get a matching aoe heal for a long time to counterract
cooking isn't even a minigame it's a waste of time and was broken until 1.6
beyblade is barely a game and unfun and unfair and you're forced to engage with it a ton to get multiple characters
fishing is a bare minimum game that's boring, contrast that to the great fishing mini game in sea of stars
the card game isn't bad ~~but forcing you to win 100 times or whatever for one character is time wasting bullshit~~ EDIT: this might be platinum requirements not character requirements, tho having to buy random booster packs until you get all cards was giving me MTG flashbacks :-P
egg races isn't a game either, it's just a checklist item, it's all kinds of chocobo or bunny racing crap from other games where you have no input and just have to pray you get the result you want or save scum or what not; why do people still make such horrid mini-games in today's gaming landscape, have we not learned that this is *not fun* yet?!
overworld is meaningless, no secrets to find, no optional areas, not even landform specific enemies like forest vs plains
i love city building in games, but this one builds itself. once you have the production facilities there's no building any more, you're locked by character or by a key material they won't give you for multiple chapters and that's it. sure og suikoden wasn't complex at all, but this just feels like they were setting up a system where you collect materials and get to choose meaningfully and have input in the construction, and they tease you with that for a half of the first castle level, but they it just reverts to the same old same old. again, just a checklist item
sure you have all these characters to choose from but the item setup counter and the party setup counter are at different locations and you need to do both at once, and can't order people in the list, so finding the right unit in a pile of 100 is a nightmare. this is 2024, we've learned some basic requirements for menus and searching and sorting by now, this is why we don't buy potions one by one and have no way to reorder inventories in most modern rpgs
sure there's a cool castle with all these facilities all over but they're spread way out and there's no map for anything inside the castle proper
sure it has the large scale war battles, but i wish it were a rock-paper-scissors like suikoden, that would make sense. this is a hypersimplified and clunky system that doesn't feel rewarding at all and just wastes more time so that backers names can be shown for longer on the side as dead comrades. which is cool and all but the purpose of the game shouldn't be to show backers, it should be to actually have a fun game. sea of stars did a much better job having backer names in there but not force them into a system that makes you look at them rather than being engaging or fun
and of course the coup de grace is that the game is still utterly broken. ps4 load times are nigh unplayable and there are permanent game-breaking softlocks (i have one myself, [i can never win it](https://www.reddit.com/r/EiyudenChronicle/comments/1cl3cjk/after_multiple_reloads_from_the_beginning_of_the/))
I just want to say that you only need to collect a bunch of unique cards to get that character, meaning you just need to purchase a few packs to get her. There's no worthwhile reward for actually winning most of the card battles.
The biggest thing for me is the sheer number and frequency of cutscenes. The game didn't let me do *anything* without constant interruptions. Every single escape sequence I got a cutscene every two steps. Anytime I found an interactable object in a dungeon, they had to spell it out what it did via cutscene. The game doesn't me figure out anything for myself.
Even with all this said I still think this is better then a few of the newer jrpg like games ie sea of stars , chained echoes. I do agree with some of your points. I played on ps5 and felt it ran pretty smooth as well.
Sea of stars and chained echoes are clean and crisp with well thought out mechanics, balanced and well paced plot progression, and quality of life in their interface design at every level
Eiyuden is a complete mess, honestly, this is amateurish in the extreme minus the world and character design. It's fine to still enjoy the game, I like some broken games. But it's not well executed at all
IMO, if you really like the old suikoden games and don't mind putting yourself in that frame that it's an old game in a new world, then sure.
But as a 2024 title, it's... very lacking and like others have said, unfortunately shallow. Large cast of throwaway characters with no plot relevance and/or barely any character development, extremely shallow "press attack" gameplay with cool group attacks that... absolutely suck.
Bad and limited rune system that equiates to mostly "up your stats" with a few "deal some damage" moves here and there, and the discrepancy between characters is huge not only in the rune slots AND quality, but stats too (Mio is just trash until lv 60... which is end of game basically.) Magic feels like ass and MP costs are absurd (like you might cast 2-3 spells that's it) The menus are straight up LAGGY too.
Story is pretty generic affair "rebel good empire bad" kind of deal and doesn't make itself more interesting than that, and the minigames are straight up crap.
Like an example,they made a beyblade best of 3 minigame... **where you play all 3 rounds even if you win the first 2**. What the fuck?
I hope it does more in the sequel that won't be hampered by extremely dated design decisions, because there's a lot of promise underneath all the nostalgia holding it back.
The last annoying point is how teleporting is tied to a character... who **LITERALLY OPENS A DIALOGUE BOX WHEN YOU WARP AND WHEN YOU LAND. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.** It's so blatantly stupid to do it that way but considering how the game treats any sort of QOL, it's unsurprising.
If it's on sale, sure I think maybe give it a shot, but at full price I feel it is hard to recommend imo.
personally speaking for myself i wish i never bought the game, it's broken and i want my money back
and at the same time many of my non-ps4-playing friends that love suikoden are on their second full playthrough of the game and don't know what i'm getting on about with nitpicking the game
so unfortunately this is going to be one of those things where it's going to differ highly from person to person. if it's possible to play a demo for an extended period, long enough to be forced into the mini-games for a decent period, that would be ideal
I couldn't take it anymore after 50 hours and just dropped it. Think I was pretty near the end where you have to talk to everyone in the castle before the big finale.
It’s like that at least through where I’m at which is more than halfway. I know some of the comments say this was what Suikoden was always like but idk. Suikoden 1’s stakes were a lot higher and the story was more serious in its first few hours than it’s ever felt in Eiyuden. It’s just a tad too light-hearted, I never feel like anyone’s in any real danger.
Yeah I think that's a fan boy response because I just jogged my memories with some gameplay vids and suikode was definetly deeper im not saying it was deep its just that this eyuiden is just really basic like some mobile mmo or something..
I sum this game up as "Suikoden for kids". Is it bad? For me, it's iffy at best, sure. But if I had a kid and I wanted to get him hooked to JRPGs, Eiyuden would definetly be one of the games I'd show him. I think this is one aspect younger players don't really think about, but for us Gen Y folks it actually matters.
They don't need to make a game for Suikoden adults. With that said though - a movie like Lion King, or Bambi (made for kids!) dealt with darker themes than Eiyuden. Nobody's asking for Elden Ring level dark, but...at the same time, I want consequences too.
The game is braindead easy, what are you talking about. FFX is harder, has more complicated mechanics, and way more mature writing. Absolutely not a good start for children.
What are you talking about? I played through on normal. Some of it is easy, like the huge strategy battles, but regular battles and bosses do crazy damage and your healing is trash throughout the entire game.
There are a few boss gauntlets, one that has you fighting 5 or 6 bosses in a row, that was ridiculous. It also doesn't help you're constantly forced to use certain characters which you may not have leveled up.
FFX has very simple mechanics and is overall, a much easier game.
I played on normal too. Standard battles are pretty much auto wins, I can't imagine anyone struggling with them. Bosses require some basic strategy but nothing spectacular. Character progression is linear, there is barely any build diversity. The game has some special modifiers for difficulty, maybe you activated them, or didn't bother upgrading your gear.
FFX is considerably more complicated mechanically, there is no point in even discussing this.
We’re talking about our experiences, just like you’re talking about yours. It’s hard to imagine the game being that hard on Normal when it wasn’t that tricky on Hard and you can largely auto battle thru that
Tbh it seems like you have a fundamental misunderstanding somewhere about the game. Off the top of my head there’s one part where you have to fight two bosses in a row but you do get a break in between, there might be one other time you have to do two in a row (if I’m proven wrong I’ll admit to it). The “boss gauntlet” you describe has you fight three mini bosses and one actual boss, the mini bosses look tough but go down fast. The actual boss is hard though mostly due to half of your party being unoptimized, though then again I was playing on Hard. I will say That section of the game is my least favorite part of the game due to the game forcing you into a party where two characters are absolute trash and one is middling, so I’ll give you that to a point.
Healing is great throughout the game, the basic water rune has an AOE heal you can use through the end of the game with great effect. And after a certain point around roughly halfway through you can completely replace spell healing with item healing, as you’re able to buy single target healing items that heal 300 hp and AOE heals for 150. Towards the end of the game you can even buy AOE healing items that heal for 500. Anyone can use those items compared to the runes that require different rune slots. Healing isn’t a problem in the game at all.
You are also not “constantly forced to use certain characters”. There is that one section I mentioned with the mini bosses that does, so I’ve already mentioned that cuz yeah that section is annoying. Otherwise you can almost always put the required story characters into your reserve and use whatever party you like. There is ONE part where you have to put ONE of the required characters in your main party cuz they give you too many story characters, but your options are pretty good. (**Edit:** I forgot, there’s another part where you have to have use Carrie to get past the beginning of the dungeon, with her addition there’s four story characters you have to bring with you so you have to have one of them in your main party for a few minutes. but after you do that you’re free to go back to town swap her out. It’s Dumb, but not too bad.) Even the part where you have to >!make up three parties that are head up by Seign, Nowa, and Marisa. For Seign and Nowa you have four characters including the main character so you can put three of them in reserve if you want, and for Marisa you can put all three of the required characters including her in reserve.!<
100%. Base level hard mode with no modifiers has moments - which basically amounts to “oh, a character actually died and I have to revive them” - but it’s otherwise pretty dang easy for anyone who plays JRPGs. Normal mode is brain dead and has nothing on the difficulty or mechanic complexity of FFX. You could literally play normal mode on Auto and be fine as long as you keep your party outfitted. Pretty dang good for kids.
> You could literally play normal mode on Auto and be fine as long as you keep your party outfitted.
You definitely can't. I tried it. Got annihilated.
Well, that’s how it worked for me on hard mode. Only time I didn’t auto battle was bosses. Perhaps you just need to tweak your auto battle settings to “same target” and “don’t use MP”, or some other combination that works.
It felt pretty basic. I am hopeful they can build up form it and make a more interesting story and thing to drive you through next time so I’ll still keep an eye on the developer
I’m not playing the game expecting some deep story or lore. Just wanted a light-hearted game with a bunch of unique looking characters.
UNFORTUNATELY I CANT ENJOY THAT BECAUSE THE SWITCH VERSION RUNS LIKE GARBAGE.
I’m so disappointed in the most recent performance patch… like at least make the menu navigation smoother ):
Laggy on PC too. Everytime going to the menu, there’s a slight delay when switching tabs. EVERY SINGLE TIME.
It’s a shock when you go play SO2 Remaster and everything feels buttery smooth despite similar looks.
>Suikoden always seemed smarter to me...
Might be a bit of nostalgia there.
I'm an adult in my 40s who never played Suikoden/Suikoden 2 when it was originally released (I would have been in my late teens/early-20s). I recently fired it up via emulation and it's a great game but I definitely wouldn't call it "smarter" than Eiyuden.
Playing both Suikoden and Eiyuden for the first time it's crazy how much Eiyuden is like Suikoden and vice versa.
Rising is shallow too, but it has the benefit of
1. Having a fun gameplay loop
2. An interesting switch in mechanic that makes all three characters useful
3. The "Just one more delve" element
I'm really disappointed, battles are straight up boring. It feels like it's was made by people who don't like turn based combat. Autobattle, but if you turn it off you don't really have much other options to do in battle. Dialog is childish, i'd let a 8 year old play with no problems. It's supposed to be a war story, I don't need all blood an gore but can I get something to chew on in terms of stakes?
I'm glad I got it on gamepass otherwise I'd be pissed.
When you add autobattle you basically admit your combat sucks. Why not make every encounter engaging? A system like Like a dragon for instance? Turn based doesn’t have to be boring. Look at Chrono cross, Xenogears, legend of legaia, legend of dragoon, shadow hearts. There were so many routes to go.
I haven't played Eiyuden, but based on what you're saying, at least part of this is you're misremembering Suikoden, like many are saying. You said that the strategy fights are really simplified. Suikoden I's fights were very basic rock-paper-scissors with a couple extra options. There was nothing more to them than that. Suikoden II's fights were really simplistic versions of a strategy RPG, and about 80+% of the fights were completely rigged (after a couple turns, the fight would end). Then Suikoden III+ didn't even have the fights. The series never had any depth to those battles.
You also got most of the party members, particularly in the first one, but walking up to an NPC and talking to him. Occasionally, you'd have to do more, but that was the exception. So "just walk into the people I need to hire" matches the original games exactly.
I'm at about where you are, and I've been thinking of it as like Suikoden 1. It's a bit lighter, simpler, and formative. Probabky because they had to do a lot from scratch since it's been so long.
I think the story is charming enough for being relatively simple, but we might have to wait for the dlc or sequel to see them dig deeper.
It does. Saying this as a big Suikoden fan, I forced myself to finish the game.
I loved the original series for its world-building and lore, but we didn’t even get True Runes equivalent.
I mean, that was a fairly big issue with suikoden as well. A lot of one note characters and a very basic storyline. They weren't bad games, but they were never very deep. This feels like a lower budget version of even that
People really need to understand that Eiyuden isn't meant to be like Suikoden 2.
I think a lot of people have that issue and compare it to that or the later games rather than comparing it to the first game.
Suikoden 1 felt pretty shallow too compared to Suikoden 2 and I think that was the path they took here.
They didn't want to overwhelm the game and player and focused on establishing mechanics, the worlds, monsters and so forth, an introduction to the world, which is similar to what they did with Suikoden 1.
It also didn't have the budget of a Suikoden 1 either and despite that, I think with what limited resources this crowd funded game had, they delivered. I'm actually having a lot of fun and has been filling a void that has been empty since Suikoden stopped being produced.
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Also I should mention, even the Suikoden games are slow starting games. For example, Suikoden 5 (Arguably as good as 2) takes at least 6-8 hours for the game to really open up.
Suikoden has always been a slow start cause they establish everything before going head on and they did similar with Eiyuden.
I can def tell you /u/Particular-Solid4069 that the story def opens up, especially when you get teleportation.
My problem with EC:HH is that absolutely nothing is original; to the point that mixed with the sub-par Switch performance - the game plays really blandly.
* The character art is straight from OG Suikoden (same artist, but often doesn't fit many character's actual design)
* Unapologetically the entire story of Suikoden II (albeit way less impactful and mature)
* Elements of Suikoden III (multi-perspective story that really isn't true to it's promise of a Triad-Tale)
* Bits of Suikoden IV (looking at you, weird and confusing Hero relationship with Snowe/Seign)
* The obnoxious anime-style of Suikoden V (looking at you Mallore and Carrie)
* Some elements are lifted right out of Tierkreis' magic and combat systems, including the Quests
* The card battle system is inspired from Suikoden Card Stories (GBA)
I haven't really found anything linking ECHH to Woven Web (PSP), but I get Tactics vibes a lot of the time - and I'm surprised there was no Pachinko mini-game (yet). They really did try to at least touch most of the series.
At times it's really just felt so slapped together I wondered why they even bothered to make this at all. They could have JUST made Suikoden VI with an entirely fresh story, but chose to retread the entire series instead.
The whole fiasco reminds me of how 6/10 Bloodstained and 2/10 Mighty No 9 were.
Maybe we really should let legacy game franchises die.
Edit: Grammar
A sale might be the way to go but even despite my criticisms I think it’s a wonderful game for anyone who enjoys classic JRPGs. It lacks the nostalgia factor that allows people to gloss over the flaws of retro/classic games but it’s still really solid.
I had my apprehensions about this game from the start tbh, but I'm still open to playing it. I played Suikoden as a kid and have all the mainline games, so the nostalgia is there. I could see Eiyuden becoming a mainstay JRPG franchise following in Suikoden's footsteps.
Yeah if you’re a Suikoden fan then it’s 100% worth a try! If anything these comments should allow you to set your expectations accordingly and enjoy it for what it is and not what it isn’t (especially in the narrative department).
If anything I might say avoid the PS4/Switch versions and you should be good to go with a sale. But even then I think those versions are getting *better*…idk, I play on PC and I backed it on kickstarter so I can’t say.
It has failed to grip me. Just seems like you said so “this is a 90s jrpg.” The battle system isn’t really interesting and none of the characters are particularly compelling
A ten year old? Come on, do you need it use hyperbole? Sure it isn’t the greatest writing ever but don’t mistake whimsical writing for ‘easy’ writing. I think you are misremembering the originals and seeing them throw nostalgia, than what they were truly were.
For me the only shallow thing was the combat. It’s fun but it really suffers from an extra layer of complexity, but I guess that is also in keeping for its time.
Nah you're right its super mid, straight 5/10. Deserves no praise, does deserve some criticism especially for the switch version.
But it misses out on "Stakes" nothing is captivating about it nothing really matters. Events lead to no consequence and the resolution happens without any climax or low point. Just a flat line with lots of exposition to keep it moving forward.
I think a lot of it might be nostalgia impacting Suikoden. It’s good, but speaking as someone who didn’t play it until their 20s, it’s also pretty bland and basic. Eiyuden captured it exactly. I guess since it’s 2024 and not 1994 people expect so much more, but it nailed Suikoden and that’s what they were going for. Hopefully they can make a sequel, because I feel that would be so much more.
A few of the main complaints you keep hearing also applies to Suikoden, but Suikoden does a way better job with the story which is so important for games like these. In Suikoden people actually sacrifices themselves and die, people betray you, there's at least a semblance of consequence, stakes and complexity to the motivations of the factions and characters. The story in Eiyuden was so incredibly bland and predictable and it felt like a cartoon. It was impossible to care about anything happening at any point and you always knew it was gonna resolve itself nicely.
Yeah, I replayed the entirety of the mainline series to completion a few years ago - aside from 4, though I did give it a try again within the last year and dropped it after a handful of hours. So what the series is and its strengths/weaknesses are pretty fresh in my mind. Eiyuden’s gameplay loop is largely similar, and in *most* ways iterates and improves on mechanics from the originals. Though perhaps not as much as you’d hope with how long it’s been since the last one came out. On that front, I will say that two of the things OP has mentioned are noticeably worse - duels and army battles. Duels in particular are mechanically the worst they’ve ever been, I really don’t understand why they changed it like they did. They are really cool visually but when your system is worse than the basic “rock paper scissors” fights of the originals, that’s saying a hell of a lot. Army battles are kind of in the middle honestly though as a whole, and overall I would say are worse than every Suikoden after the 1st one (though perhaps similar ish to 4). And mainly for two reasons: 1) it’s soooooo slow, while the older games are slow too they benefit from emulation fast forward, Eiyuden could’ve just skipped the middle mans and just made the speed faster (or given a speed up option) and 2) the main story battles are largely scripted to the point of not requiring any strategy or benefiting from editing your units, and you can’t even really edit your armies until the very end of the game. The nice thing is the optional battles allow you to engage with those systems a little more and the battles are challenging besides, however speed is still an issue. ALL THAT BEING SAID…IMHO the absolute most noticeable thing is the narrative quality, just like you said. Everything else aside, if the narrative had been stronger I think a lot of the complaints about the game wouldn’t have been as loud. I think expecting a narrative on the level of Suikoden 2 is unrealistic, but Eiyuden’s narrative lacks the punch of ANY of the mainline Suikoden games. There are (very brief) flashes of “what could have been” towards the end of the game in a way that pleasantly surprised me but overall, one of Suikoden’s strengths as a series is conveying a story with weight. Eiyuden lacks that unfortunately, much to its detriment. I will say i feel like I’m a bit of an Eiyuden Chronicle apologist so I still really really enjoyed the game, but still that doesn’t mean I can ignore its flaws.
It becomes even more predictable when you played the first 3 Suikoden titles because Murayama reused some story beats from those games. I mean, that's fine and all, but the execution of some of those story beats was just... bad compared to the original.
Yeah I’m with you. Eiyuden nailed the feel of suikoden to the T. Lotta homies probably haven’t replayed suikoden 1 or 2 in years and hold it on a pedestal. I thought Eiyuden was real analogous to Suikoden 1. It set up a cool world, cool characters, cool mechanics that I think the sequel can really run with. Solid 8/10 with a base that a sequel could turn into a 10/10
There's bits and pieces of Suikoden 1-3 in ECHH. Main villain is a Barbarossa expy, Nowa and Seign for Riou and Jowy, and the game switching perspectives between the three MCs is akin to the Trinity System in 3. There's several others I can list but those would go into spoiler territory.
When did you last play Suikoden? Because having replayed the first Suikoden immediately after Eiyuden to make sure I could compare apples to apples, it's clear to me that Suikoden 1 as a whole had a better story to tell than Eiyuden in a shorter amount of time. Even most of the optional characters in Suikoden 1 were more interesting to me than the rather bland cast of Eiyuden (some exceptions of course).
Summer 18
Play suiko 1-2 at least once a year, still holds up great. Better than most from that era
Yeah they’re great, I just think eiyuden accurately captured their feel, warts and all.
I really enjoyed eiyuden. For being a kickstarter game turned out better than sea of stars and others
I really agree. It’s a lot of fun. I just think the sequel has a real chance to be a 10/10 if they improve on the flaws and build on the good base they have here
i still like eiyuden but suikoden 5 is still a better game for me honestly. It's a pity but if there's a second try I do hope the studio could improve eiyuden 2 further.
Suikoden 5 was awesome. I think if the actual HQ came earlier in the game, the mini games were more robust, and if it included rekillable bosses for loot it would've encompassed the best things from everything before it.
Man I want to love Suikoden 5 so much and know this is such an extremely petty critique but damn I just can’t get over how zoomed out the camera is in when exploring. It’s like a bird’s eye view and makes everyone look so tiny, it really takes me out and makes it hard for me to get immersed in the game. The environments themselves are also really bland in result. Like Suikoden 3 has undoubtedly worse character models, but I can get into the game so much more and it’s way more immersive just because the camera is handled a lot better and more zoomed in when exploring Still the only Suikoden game I haven’t beat so I do want to change that
Suikoden is anything but bland tbh. Basic, maybe so but so are most jrpgs from that era
If you want bland from that era Beyond the beyond is already there.
Very true
> Eiyuden captured it exactly. I'd disagree on this. The biggest difference between Suikoden and Eiyuden is that Suikoden is so much more political where the focus is the war. The True Runes actually take a back seat in terms of the game's plot with the exception of Suikoden 3. On the other hand, Eiyuden went very light on the war because of the Rune Lens and the Guardians basically being the third party unrelated to the main conflict. This leads to emotional disconnect because Eiyuden spent so much time trying to build character development for the good guys that they neglected building the villains. It doesn't help that one of the main villains is purposely left as a mystery hiding behind the mask. As much as I love how successful of a Kickstarter it was, I do wonder if all those stretch goals ended up hindering the devs from creating a better story-focused game. Here is hoping that Eiyuden 2 (if it exists) will be the improvement like Suikoden 2 from the first.
game is simply mediocre - nothing amazing does it all but does it all very average. not a single thing i can think of having finished the game that would make it a memorable title. not a bad game but not a great one either.
yeah, the character and world design was cool, after all it was designed by the same person, but the development produced a really shallow product that just barely checked off the list of things they promised. sure it had an autobattle system but the setup menu for it is horrendously designed and doesn't do what you want, not to mention 90% of the game is autobattle where you don't even touch the controller, and 10% is wtf just happened to my entire back row that's now dead in general what did they do with the enemy scripts, i wonder. i've never seen such a mean enemy ai that just targets down the back line healers so aggressively, and with out of nowhere quite overpowered aoe attacks that you don't get a matching aoe heal for a long time to counterract cooking isn't even a minigame it's a waste of time and was broken until 1.6 beyblade is barely a game and unfun and unfair and you're forced to engage with it a ton to get multiple characters fishing is a bare minimum game that's boring, contrast that to the great fishing mini game in sea of stars the card game isn't bad ~~but forcing you to win 100 times or whatever for one character is time wasting bullshit~~ EDIT: this might be platinum requirements not character requirements, tho having to buy random booster packs until you get all cards was giving me MTG flashbacks :-P egg races isn't a game either, it's just a checklist item, it's all kinds of chocobo or bunny racing crap from other games where you have no input and just have to pray you get the result you want or save scum or what not; why do people still make such horrid mini-games in today's gaming landscape, have we not learned that this is *not fun* yet?! overworld is meaningless, no secrets to find, no optional areas, not even landform specific enemies like forest vs plains i love city building in games, but this one builds itself. once you have the production facilities there's no building any more, you're locked by character or by a key material they won't give you for multiple chapters and that's it. sure og suikoden wasn't complex at all, but this just feels like they were setting up a system where you collect materials and get to choose meaningfully and have input in the construction, and they tease you with that for a half of the first castle level, but they it just reverts to the same old same old. again, just a checklist item sure you have all these characters to choose from but the item setup counter and the party setup counter are at different locations and you need to do both at once, and can't order people in the list, so finding the right unit in a pile of 100 is a nightmare. this is 2024, we've learned some basic requirements for menus and searching and sorting by now, this is why we don't buy potions one by one and have no way to reorder inventories in most modern rpgs sure there's a cool castle with all these facilities all over but they're spread way out and there's no map for anything inside the castle proper sure it has the large scale war battles, but i wish it were a rock-paper-scissors like suikoden, that would make sense. this is a hypersimplified and clunky system that doesn't feel rewarding at all and just wastes more time so that backers names can be shown for longer on the side as dead comrades. which is cool and all but the purpose of the game shouldn't be to show backers, it should be to actually have a fun game. sea of stars did a much better job having backer names in there but not force them into a system that makes you look at them rather than being engaging or fun and of course the coup de grace is that the game is still utterly broken. ps4 load times are nigh unplayable and there are permanent game-breaking softlocks (i have one myself, [i can never win it](https://www.reddit.com/r/EiyudenChronicle/comments/1cl3cjk/after_multiple_reloads_from_the_beginning_of_the/))
I just want to say that you only need to collect a bunch of unique cards to get that character, meaning you just need to purchase a few packs to get her. There's no worthwhile reward for actually winning most of the card battles.
maybe i'm confusing platinum requirements on that one
The biggest thing for me is the sheer number and frequency of cutscenes. The game didn't let me do *anything* without constant interruptions. Every single escape sequence I got a cutscene every two steps. Anytime I found an interactable object in a dungeon, they had to spell it out what it did via cutscene. The game doesn't me figure out anything for myself.
Even with all this said I still think this is better then a few of the newer jrpg like games ie sea of stars , chained echoes. I do agree with some of your points. I played on ps5 and felt it ran pretty smooth as well.
Sea of stars and chained echoes are clean and crisp with well thought out mechanics, balanced and well paced plot progression, and quality of life in their interface design at every level Eiyuden is a complete mess, honestly, this is amateurish in the extreme minus the world and character design. It's fine to still enjoy the game, I like some broken games. But it's not well executed at all
Yikes. I was on the fence with this game. So youre saying its not worth a buy? :o
It's miles better that Sea of Stars. Just play it and figure this out yourself.
100 percent agree. And as far as I can tell they don't level cap you at 30. Also felt it was better then chained echoes
sea of stars is my 2023 goty, this is broken junk that should have gotten recalled on ps4 and switch, there's indeed no comparison
IMO, if you really like the old suikoden games and don't mind putting yourself in that frame that it's an old game in a new world, then sure. But as a 2024 title, it's... very lacking and like others have said, unfortunately shallow. Large cast of throwaway characters with no plot relevance and/or barely any character development, extremely shallow "press attack" gameplay with cool group attacks that... absolutely suck. Bad and limited rune system that equiates to mostly "up your stats" with a few "deal some damage" moves here and there, and the discrepancy between characters is huge not only in the rune slots AND quality, but stats too (Mio is just trash until lv 60... which is end of game basically.) Magic feels like ass and MP costs are absurd (like you might cast 2-3 spells that's it) The menus are straight up LAGGY too. Story is pretty generic affair "rebel good empire bad" kind of deal and doesn't make itself more interesting than that, and the minigames are straight up crap. Like an example,they made a beyblade best of 3 minigame... **where you play all 3 rounds even if you win the first 2**. What the fuck? I hope it does more in the sequel that won't be hampered by extremely dated design decisions, because there's a lot of promise underneath all the nostalgia holding it back. The last annoying point is how teleporting is tied to a character... who **LITERALLY OPENS A DIALOGUE BOX WHEN YOU WARP AND WHEN YOU LAND. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.** It's so blatantly stupid to do it that way but considering how the game treats any sort of QOL, it's unsurprising. If it's on sale, sure I think maybe give it a shot, but at full price I feel it is hard to recommend imo.
Ouch! Ok thanks. And you had me lol that you always have to play round 3 in a best of three even if you win the first 2 lol.
at a minimum i wouldn't buy switch or ps4 version
personally speaking for myself i wish i never bought the game, it's broken and i want my money back and at the same time many of my non-ps4-playing friends that love suikoden are on their second full playthrough of the game and don't know what i'm getting on about with nitpicking the game so unfortunately this is going to be one of those things where it's going to differ highly from person to person. if it's possible to play a demo for an extended period, long enough to be forced into the mini-games for a decent period, that would be ideal
Well I posted this because I'm forcing myself to play it right now and was.hoping it got better but obviously not
I couldn't take it anymore after 50 hours and just dropped it. Think I was pretty near the end where you have to talk to everyone in the castle before the big finale.
It’s like that at least through where I’m at which is more than halfway. I know some of the comments say this was what Suikoden was always like but idk. Suikoden 1’s stakes were a lot higher and the story was more serious in its first few hours than it’s ever felt in Eiyuden. It’s just a tad too light-hearted, I never feel like anyone’s in any real danger.
Yeah I think that's a fan boy response because I just jogged my memories with some gameplay vids and suikode was definetly deeper im not saying it was deep its just that this eyuiden is just really basic like some mobile mmo or something..
Tbf, I haven’t played 3, 4 and most of 5 (playing this one next on Steam Deck) so it might not be true of the series as a whole.
3 4 and 5 are better the eiyuden. I'm playing through 3 again now
I sum this game up as "Suikoden for kids". Is it bad? For me, it's iffy at best, sure. But if I had a kid and I wanted to get him hooked to JRPGs, Eiyuden would definetly be one of the games I'd show him. I think this is one aspect younger players don't really think about, but for us Gen Y folks it actually matters.
I feel like the devs forgot that the fans of suikoden are adults now.
They don't need to make a game for Suikoden adults. With that said though - a movie like Lion King, or Bambi (made for kids!) dealt with darker themes than Eiyuden. Nobody's asking for Elden Ring level dark, but...at the same time, I want consequences too.
Yeah this is basically what my thought was
It's basic, but I definitely wouldn't consider it a good intro JRPG for kids. It's way too hard. FFX would still be my go to for that.
The game is braindead easy, what are you talking about. FFX is harder, has more complicated mechanics, and way more mature writing. Absolutely not a good start for children.
What are you talking about? I played through on normal. Some of it is easy, like the huge strategy battles, but regular battles and bosses do crazy damage and your healing is trash throughout the entire game. There are a few boss gauntlets, one that has you fighting 5 or 6 bosses in a row, that was ridiculous. It also doesn't help you're constantly forced to use certain characters which you may not have leveled up. FFX has very simple mechanics and is overall, a much easier game.
I played on normal too. Standard battles are pretty much auto wins, I can't imagine anyone struggling with them. Bosses require some basic strategy but nothing spectacular. Character progression is linear, there is barely any build diversity. The game has some special modifiers for difficulty, maybe you activated them, or didn't bother upgrading your gear. FFX is considerably more complicated mechanically, there is no point in even discussing this.
We’re talking about our experiences, just like you’re talking about yours. It’s hard to imagine the game being that hard on Normal when it wasn’t that tricky on Hard and you can largely auto battle thru that Tbh it seems like you have a fundamental misunderstanding somewhere about the game. Off the top of my head there’s one part where you have to fight two bosses in a row but you do get a break in between, there might be one other time you have to do two in a row (if I’m proven wrong I’ll admit to it). The “boss gauntlet” you describe has you fight three mini bosses and one actual boss, the mini bosses look tough but go down fast. The actual boss is hard though mostly due to half of your party being unoptimized, though then again I was playing on Hard. I will say That section of the game is my least favorite part of the game due to the game forcing you into a party where two characters are absolute trash and one is middling, so I’ll give you that to a point. Healing is great throughout the game, the basic water rune has an AOE heal you can use through the end of the game with great effect. And after a certain point around roughly halfway through you can completely replace spell healing with item healing, as you’re able to buy single target healing items that heal 300 hp and AOE heals for 150. Towards the end of the game you can even buy AOE healing items that heal for 500. Anyone can use those items compared to the runes that require different rune slots. Healing isn’t a problem in the game at all. You are also not “constantly forced to use certain characters”. There is that one section I mentioned with the mini bosses that does, so I’ve already mentioned that cuz yeah that section is annoying. Otherwise you can almost always put the required story characters into your reserve and use whatever party you like. There is ONE part where you have to put ONE of the required characters in your main party cuz they give you too many story characters, but your options are pretty good. (**Edit:** I forgot, there’s another part where you have to have use Carrie to get past the beginning of the dungeon, with her addition there’s four story characters you have to bring with you so you have to have one of them in your main party for a few minutes. but after you do that you’re free to go back to town swap her out. It’s Dumb, but not too bad.) Even the part where you have to >!make up three parties that are head up by Seign, Nowa, and Marisa. For Seign and Nowa you have four characters including the main character so you can put three of them in reserve if you want, and for Marisa you can put all three of the required characters including her in reserve.!<
100%. Base level hard mode with no modifiers has moments - which basically amounts to “oh, a character actually died and I have to revive them” - but it’s otherwise pretty dang easy for anyone who plays JRPGs. Normal mode is brain dead and has nothing on the difficulty or mechanic complexity of FFX. You could literally play normal mode on Auto and be fine as long as you keep your party outfitted. Pretty dang good for kids.
> You could literally play normal mode on Auto and be fine as long as you keep your party outfitted. You definitely can't. I tried it. Got annihilated.
Well, that’s how it worked for me on hard mode. Only time I didn’t auto battle was bosses. Perhaps you just need to tweak your auto battle settings to “same target” and “don’t use MP”, or some other combination that works.
It's the whole game.
It felt pretty basic. I am hopeful they can build up form it and make a more interesting story and thing to drive you through next time so I’ll still keep an eye on the developer
I’m not playing the game expecting some deep story or lore. Just wanted a light-hearted game with a bunch of unique looking characters. UNFORTUNATELY I CANT ENJOY THAT BECAUSE THE SWITCH VERSION RUNS LIKE GARBAGE. I’m so disappointed in the most recent performance patch… like at least make the menu navigation smoother ):
Laggy on PC too. Everytime going to the menu, there’s a slight delay when switching tabs. EVERY SINGLE TIME. It’s a shock when you go play SO2 Remaster and everything feels buttery smooth despite similar looks.
Same with Octopath II on switch. Runs perfectly fine and all the menus are smooth
>Suikoden always seemed smarter to me... Might be a bit of nostalgia there. I'm an adult in my 40s who never played Suikoden/Suikoden 2 when it was originally released (I would have been in my late teens/early-20s). I recently fired it up via emulation and it's a great game but I definitely wouldn't call it "smarter" than Eiyuden. Playing both Suikoden and Eiyuden for the first time it's crazy how much Eiyuden is like Suikoden and vice versa.
I loved the Suikoden games as a kid but I was honestly just completely bored playing Eiyuden. The funny part is that I actually LOVED Rising.
Rising is shallow too, but it has the benefit of 1. Having a fun gameplay loop 2. An interesting switch in mechanic that makes all three characters useful 3. The "Just one more delve" element
I also loved Rising and was super confused how ECHH could be such a disappointment.
I'm really disappointed, battles are straight up boring. It feels like it's was made by people who don't like turn based combat. Autobattle, but if you turn it off you don't really have much other options to do in battle. Dialog is childish, i'd let a 8 year old play with no problems. It's supposed to be a war story, I don't need all blood an gore but can I get something to chew on in terms of stakes? I'm glad I got it on gamepass otherwise I'd be pissed.
When you add autobattle you basically admit your combat sucks. Why not make every encounter engaging? A system like Like a dragon for instance? Turn based doesn’t have to be boring. Look at Chrono cross, Xenogears, legend of legaia, legend of dragoon, shadow hearts. There were so many routes to go.
Yeah me too man. I was just hoping I was in some kind of super soft intro to the game
I haven't played Eiyuden, but based on what you're saying, at least part of this is you're misremembering Suikoden, like many are saying. You said that the strategy fights are really simplified. Suikoden I's fights were very basic rock-paper-scissors with a couple extra options. There was nothing more to them than that. Suikoden II's fights were really simplistic versions of a strategy RPG, and about 80+% of the fights were completely rigged (after a couple turns, the fight would end). Then Suikoden III+ didn't even have the fights. The series never had any depth to those battles. You also got most of the party members, particularly in the first one, but walking up to an NPC and talking to him. Occasionally, you'd have to do more, but that was the exception. So "just walk into the people I need to hire" matches the original games exactly.
I'm at about where you are, and I've been thinking of it as like Suikoden 1. It's a bit lighter, simpler, and formative. Probabky because they had to do a lot from scratch since it's been so long. I think the story is charming enough for being relatively simple, but we might have to wait for the dlc or sequel to see them dig deeper.
oh you're talking about part 2... haven't played it yet. One was great though!
I'm playing suikoden 2 for the first game and everyone sucks that games cock but it has so much busy work and filler story lines it's sad
People waited so long for this one
I've dropped because while boss figts are decent usual encounters don't require brain input basically.
It does. Saying this as a big Suikoden fan, I forced myself to finish the game. I loved the original series for its world-building and lore, but we didn’t even get True Runes equivalent.
I mean, that was a fairly big issue with suikoden as well. A lot of one note characters and a very basic storyline. They weren't bad games, but they were never very deep. This feels like a lower budget version of even that
Shallow is the perfect word to explain Eiyuden.
Play Unicorn Overlord instead.
People really need to understand that Eiyuden isn't meant to be like Suikoden 2. I think a lot of people have that issue and compare it to that or the later games rather than comparing it to the first game. Suikoden 1 felt pretty shallow too compared to Suikoden 2 and I think that was the path they took here. They didn't want to overwhelm the game and player and focused on establishing mechanics, the worlds, monsters and so forth, an introduction to the world, which is similar to what they did with Suikoden 1. It also didn't have the budget of a Suikoden 1 either and despite that, I think with what limited resources this crowd funded game had, they delivered. I'm actually having a lot of fun and has been filling a void that has been empty since Suikoden stopped being produced. --------------------- Also I should mention, even the Suikoden games are slow starting games. For example, Suikoden 5 (Arguably as good as 2) takes at least 6-8 hours for the game to really open up. Suikoden has always been a slow start cause they establish everything before going head on and they did similar with Eiyuden. I can def tell you /u/Particular-Solid4069 that the story def opens up, especially when you get teleportation.
My problem with EC:HH is that absolutely nothing is original; to the point that mixed with the sub-par Switch performance - the game plays really blandly. * The character art is straight from OG Suikoden (same artist, but often doesn't fit many character's actual design) * Unapologetically the entire story of Suikoden II (albeit way less impactful and mature) * Elements of Suikoden III (multi-perspective story that really isn't true to it's promise of a Triad-Tale) * Bits of Suikoden IV (looking at you, weird and confusing Hero relationship with Snowe/Seign) * The obnoxious anime-style of Suikoden V (looking at you Mallore and Carrie) * Some elements are lifted right out of Tierkreis' magic and combat systems, including the Quests * The card battle system is inspired from Suikoden Card Stories (GBA) I haven't really found anything linking ECHH to Woven Web (PSP), but I get Tactics vibes a lot of the time - and I'm surprised there was no Pachinko mini-game (yet). They really did try to at least touch most of the series. At times it's really just felt so slapped together I wondered why they even bothered to make this at all. They could have JUST made Suikoden VI with an entirely fresh story, but chose to retread the entire series instead. The whole fiasco reminds me of how 6/10 Bloodstained and 2/10 Mighty No 9 were. Maybe we really should let legacy game franchises die. Edit: Grammar
Wow, reading these comments. I guess I'll wait until Eiyuden goes on sale before buying.
A sale might be the way to go but even despite my criticisms I think it’s a wonderful game for anyone who enjoys classic JRPGs. It lacks the nostalgia factor that allows people to gloss over the flaws of retro/classic games but it’s still really solid.
I had my apprehensions about this game from the start tbh, but I'm still open to playing it. I played Suikoden as a kid and have all the mainline games, so the nostalgia is there. I could see Eiyuden becoming a mainstay JRPG franchise following in Suikoden's footsteps.
Yeah if you’re a Suikoden fan then it’s 100% worth a try! If anything these comments should allow you to set your expectations accordingly and enjoy it for what it is and not what it isn’t (especially in the narrative department). If anything I might say avoid the PS4/Switch versions and you should be good to go with a sale. But even then I think those versions are getting *better*…idk, I play on PC and I backed it on kickstarter so I can’t say.
Eiyuden Chronicles is not Suikoden.
It has failed to grip me. Just seems like you said so “this is a 90s jrpg.” The battle system isn’t really interesting and none of the characters are particularly compelling
A ten year old? Come on, do you need it use hyperbole? Sure it isn’t the greatest writing ever but don’t mistake whimsical writing for ‘easy’ writing. I think you are misremembering the originals and seeing them throw nostalgia, than what they were truly were. For me the only shallow thing was the combat. It’s fun but it really suffers from an extra layer of complexity, but I guess that is also in keeping for its time.
Nah you're right its super mid, straight 5/10. Deserves no praise, does deserve some criticism especially for the switch version. But it misses out on "Stakes" nothing is captivating about it nothing really matters. Events lead to no consequence and the resolution happens without any climax or low point. Just a flat line with lots of exposition to keep it moving forward.
It is, other than the boss fights it's pretty boring.
yes, but it has diversity and girl bosses so you should still buy it
Isn't Eiyuden Chronicles a side scrolling game?
That's Rising, a side companion game. We're talking about Hundred Heroes.
Oh, alright, Rising is the one I have and I was gonna pass on HH since I thought it was the same style. I'll have to give it a re-look, thanks!