I don't like bashing on games but when the crux of your gameplay is literally the paradigm x of y, then there is a problem. The sidequests are all the same, sequentially. No variety amongst them.

The only real positives I can give this game is the strength of its writing and the character designs. The experience was very bare bones, the narrative only got interesting half way through, the combat did get fleshed out somewhat but really wasn't much depth to it.

I played Rising in anticipation of Hundred Heroes and I hope that game has some substance to it. Only play this game if you're wanting to learn about the lore and the world building of Eiyuden Chronicles.

Esse jogo foi uma experiência interessante, porque enquanto eu jogava, ele melhorava em alguns pontos, em outros piorava. Por exemplo o combate, que no inicio me deixou um pouco incomodado, por ser meio cru demais, foi aos poucos adicionando camadas e nuances que achei até interessante, enquanto a história que no inicio parecia promissora, foi se perdendo num jogo que é LOTADO de "fetch quests" e um loop de gameplay que vai aos poucos ficando repetitivo. Mas uma coisa me conquistou do inicio ao fim, que são os lindos visuais do jogo, que ganham e se complementam na sua simplicidade de ser. É meio estranho essas comparações, mas em alguns momento da jogatina eu me lembrava da sensação de jogar Ys ou Grand Chase. E isso por si só, já é bem interessante sobre esse jogo.

Holy sidequests Batman! What should have been a fun short 5-8 hour romp was stretched to more than double that with seemingly endless fetch quests. And these aren't entirely optional either, they are how upgrades to your equipment are unlocked, so whether you want to or not, you will be running around doing menial tasks for people.

Now for the good. I liked the characters. CJ, Garoo and Isha have a fun dynamic both as characters, and in combat as classic rogue, tank, mage archetypes, though the tank role felt weak compared to the other two.

This game feels like a good intro to the world of Eiyuden Chronicles and makes me excited to see these characters again in the full game. I wish I could say I liked the game more, but what is there was adequate.

I decided to play Eiyuden Chronicle Rising in advance of playing Hundred Heroes, which recently released at the time of writing. Rising is a prequel, shorter JRPG that is only above 12-16 hours on average according to Howlongtobeat. That seems about right, and I'll give it credit for being easy to slip into a gaming schedule, unlike most JRPGs that are a huge time sink. Eiyuden has huge Suikoden influence but I had never played Suikoden prior so I went in entirely blind.

Going in entirely blind, I had no idea Eiyuden Chronicle had action-oriented combat as opposed to turn-based so that took me off guard. The combat is fine, but not particularly interesting and gets dull very quickly due to a lack of interesting additions to the mechanics. The main thing that bugs me is that touching enemies hurts you, as if you were playing Castlevania or Mario. I don't really see the point of that in an RPG, and CJ's dodge ability sometimes dodges you right into enemies and damages you, which is pretty annoying. You get two other party members as well, Garoo and Isha, who you can swap to via hitting the face buttons. If you swap to them mid-combat you can execute Link Attacks. You can chain Link Attacks together for big damage, and eventually, you'll get bigger chains as the town grows. Unfortunately, Link Attacks are the only interesting thing about the combat and aren't worth using against anything that isn't a Boss or higher-leveled enemy. There's no incentive to use them beyond the damage you get. Link Attacks also mean you don't really get party combat like other JRPGs, and only see one character on-screen at a time in dungeons. It drains some potential personality and flavor from the game. And since Garoo is too slow and Isha's kit is poorly designed due to only having 3 orbs at a time and a reload delay, along with useless traversal abilities, CJ is the only character worth using.

The Boss are a joke by the way. They're all easy, even the final one, and can easily be cheesed by spamming Link Attacks so long as you're around the same level. Even the annoying bosses that will juggle you with their attack spam like the Mantor Wyrm and final boss are still easily defeated if you have potions on you.

Potions and other items are easy to farm, making it easy to snowball your characters and max your weapons. CJ easily plowed through everything sent her way once I got her axe maxed out. I do like the upgrade system, since it reminds of Dark Souls a bit with how it's handled.

Let's talk about writing. CJ is a plucky protagonist as you may expect, Garoo is the gruff "Eh, I guess I'll come along" guy, and Isha is the soft but sometimes cold mage. They're fine on a base level, and they at least have personality, but the plot doesn't do them much justice. Much of the plot is railroaded near the end in the form of a diary as a plot device to drop exposition on you at a time that feels like its out of the blue. Why are you mentioning an Empire all of a sudden? The League of Nations? Like WWI? Where is all of this coming from? Why is this being mentioned NOW, right before the final dungeon? I get this game is supposed to be a small prequel but you need to build a plot more naturally than this. You can't just shove a plate of plot in front of me and tell me to dine on it. Give me an appetizer and some wine first, preferably. The plot just ends up being a mess and they try really hard to get you to feel something but it doesn't work as much as you'd maybe want it to. The game also ends very abruptly, and when the credits started rolling, I was genuinely a bit surprised that they did. "Oh, that's it? Okay then."

Also, I have to say, the humor in this game just falls flat most of the time. I never laughed. Maybe it's not my type of humor, but the jokes range from just falling flat, being too cheesy, cliche, weird, or downright cringy.

And there are some WEIRD jokes in this game. There's one early about "toilet training" that was just weird. There were multiple jokes about Isha and CJ's dirty clothes being sniffed as well. There were jokes about CJ's outfit (the gal on the left in the cover image) and how revealing it is. I'm not sure if that's a mistranslation issue, a localization issue, or just simply the writers being... odd, but I do know that it made me uncomfortable. I usually have a high tolerance for that stuff, but need I mention that CJ and Isha are 16?

Don't believe me? Watch this to the end. Am I crazy for thinking that dialogue is really weird? https://www.youtube.com/watch?si=gTTpktA5xXRgqO5Q&t=110&v=DVA_7b4vO68&feature=youtu.be

There are some other mistranslations too. CJ after a rest says "One more time!" which doesn't quite make sense..? And I saw one character say "than more fool me" in dialogue.

Building the town is one of the things you're probably curious about, as a JRPG inspired by Suikoden. All of the quests that help build the town amount to fetch quests. They somehow manage to be boring and satisfying at the same time. Boring because, well, they're all fetch quests with barely any variation. Satisfying because it is nice to see the town advance and change over time, along with the shop stocks. The game's excellent fast travel mechanic makes it bearable, allowing you to teleport to specific points in dungeons and even the town itself. I will say that the first time I leveled up a shop I was confused, since it said "Level Up" on the screen. I didn't see my characters Level Up, so I then realized the game meant the shop leveled up. I wish there was a better distinction there. Because each time it happened I had to flick my eyes over to the top left to see if it meant my characters or the shop itself.

Is Eiyuden Chronicle Rising good? No.
Is Eiyuden Chronicle Rising bad? No.
Would I play it again? No.
Do I regret playing it? No.

It's an okay game. I wouldn't recommend playing it unless you really end up liking Hundred Heroes and want a little bit more of that world fleshed out, I guess, from the little lore it has. Otherwise, it's hard to recommend.

The music slaps though and honestly I didn't mind running through the Quarry or Forest just to hear it!

Score: 74

Eiyuden Chronicles Rising is an action RPG town building thing, sold as a prequel snack for upcoming JRPG. I am surprised how much I liked this game in the end, seeing as it has pretty simple and repetitive fetch quests and simple gameplay. The action is indeed simple enough that you can play it as cozy city building following some story lines and all that, the plot is ok and characters are quite fun and memorable, which shouldn't come as a surprise since this is a prequel to a character-heavy JRPG. There some overarching quality in the game that makes it seem more like an indie title than anything, most being the graphics, they're quite messy and it's hard to tell things you can interact from backgrounds and worst of all it has foreground stuff blocking the view, which I absolutely hate.

Eiyuden Chronicle: Risng Fetch Quest Hell.

This is one of those dangerous unfortunate cases where overall gameplay loop can fundamentally ruined, a visually charming game.
The characters, visuals may are excellent, but the gameplay loop is one of the worst I've ever experienced in quite some time.

Almost every mission is a fetch quest of some kind, even if the game tries to hide it at times.
Now I don't mind doing side quests in my games especially JRPGs and Open Worlds, but they to be interesting, diverse let alone rewarding such as special gear, character bond increase etc.

Eiyuden Chronicle Risng fails in every point as the game designer's that made these fetch quest have no idea of what fun and rewarding is.
You just do a bunch of basic crap such mining Ores, picking up plants, looks of a person lost items, kill a suboss, to my personal favourite, make a sandwich.
That is frankly insulting to the player.
This issue only amplifies with the cunky controls from a otherwise braindead easy game and lack of exploration freedom.
What could have been a charming relaxing game, just ended being a overpriced, unsatisfying chore.

The only saving grace of this outside the admittedly strong character and retro aesthetics is that you the game is free on Xbox Game Pass and Playstation Plus Extra subscriptions.
Imagine paying over £30 for this just to find out it's a fetch quest simulator.
That would be outrageously awful.

I hope the developers for Eiyuden Chronicle; Hundred Heroes will learn from this misake.
Side quests should be fun rewarding and interesting, not boring, pointless, unrewarding filler slogfeasts.

Só vim ter ciência desse jogo após ter terminando o Hundred Heroes, é uma prequel muito interessante que foge um pouco do gênero do jogo base e expande a história de vários personagens. O jogo principal tem muito o que aprender no quesito desenvolvimento de grupo com esse aqui, inclusive a evolução do trio (Garoo, Isha e CJ) é bem melhor do que de qualquer grupo do HH. Você cria um apego pelo time e as interações são muito boas e bem mais genuínas.

É um RPG de ação com elementos de desenvolvimento de cidade que funciona por meio de carimbos recebidos por tarefa concluída, a cada x carimbos Nova Novaeh fica mais e mais bonita. Gostei bastante das fases e dos chefes, o level design cria um tom de exploração muito interessante.

O lado negativo é a repetição, são mais de 160 side quests para conseguir os carimbos e quase todas seguem a fórmula "pegue isso, leve isso até canto y, me traga z" e na reta final da jogatina enjoei dessa dinâmica e deixei de lado. São questões intimamente ligadas ao fato de esse ser um jogo "brinde" lançado pela desenvolvedora, bem mais cru e menos trabalhado, mas, para quem gostou de HH, é indispensável.

Análise da Campanha de Eiyuden Chronicle Rising

Pontos Positivos:

História envolvente: A campanha de Eiyuden Chronicle Rising é elogiada por sua história cativante, que serve como um prelúdio para o mundo de Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes.
Mecânicas de construção de cidades: O jogo apresenta mecânicas interessantes de construção e melhoria de cidades, o que adiciona uma camada extra de profundidade ao gameplay.
Combate rápido: O sistema de combate é rápido e considerado emocionante, proporcionando uma experiência de ação gratificante.

Pontos Negativos:

Repetitividade: Alguns jogadores acham o jogo repetitivo, especialmente no início da campanha, onde a história demora a se desenvolver.
Slog inicial: A primeira metade do jogo pode ser um pouco arrastada até que a história realmente comece a se desenrolar.

Jogos Semelhantes:

Jogos como CrossCode, Secrets of Grindea, e Salt and Sanctuary são frequentemente comparados a Eiyuden Chronicle Rising por suas mecânicas de RPG de ação e elementos visuais marcantes.

Duração do Jogo:

A duração média da campanha principal é de cerca de 12 horas. Para jogadores que buscam completar todos os aspectos do jogo, é provável que gastem em torno de 19½ horas para obter 100% de conclusão.

Campanha:

A campanha segue os heróis em uma aventura por ruínas antigas enquanto ajudam na reconstrução de uma cidade afetada por terremotos. O conflito entre aqueles que desejam explorar as ruínas e os residentes que são contra essa exploração impulsiona a narrativa.

Vale a Pena?

Se você é fã de RPGs de ação e gosta de histórias ricas e mecânicas de construção de cidades, Eiyuden Chronicle Rising pode ser uma boa escolha. Apesar de alguns pontos negativos, como a repetitividade, a experiência geral é positiva, especialmente para aqueles interessados na história e no mundo de Eiyuden Chronicle. A decisão final, no entanto, depende das preferências pessoais de cada jogador.

I would probably never have played this if the sequel hadn’t received so many positive reviews. I admit, I got curious, but first I wanted to give this shorter prequel a try, to get a feel for the series, especially the combat system, as I’m not very good at this active/metroidvania style of gameplay.

Well, now that I’m done, I have mixed feelings, but mostly negative ones, I’m afraid. The graphics and soundtrack are nice, in my opinion. I really like this “2.5D” approach with 3D environments and the 2D, pixel-art characters, I think it looks gorgeous, and the music is OK, too (don’t expect any voiced texts, though). Also, the story is… hm, fine, I guess? There wasn’t really anything memorable in it, no huge twists, but it served its purpose, more or less. The characters, however, including the protagonists, are quite bland, if you ask me (except for Garoo – I mean, come on, he’s a cool, one-eyed kangaroo mercenary with a giant sword as his weapon, you simply can’t get more badass than that!).

Focusing only on the main questline, it’s surprisingly short for a JRPG. That said, if you’re a completionist like me, and want to get the max level weapons and armours, well, then get ready for an insane amount of side-quests. I’m not kidding, you can finish the game in about 10-15 hours, and you’ll have to spend half, or probably even more of this time doing extremely boring, repetitive side-quests. “Go there and talk to this person”, “go there and get x amount of this”, stuff like that. And I swear, the quest-givers kept asking for the same two or three resources all the time! Always that stupid hardwood lumber and high-purity ore, God… I must admit, after a few hours I just simply skipped all the dialogues involving side-quests, I lost all my patience for them.

I don’t think I’ll start Hundred Heroes anytime soon, even if it’s much better. I’ve had enough of this world for a while.

I tried it because the sequel was coming out. It convinced me that it wasn't my kind of game.

Very nice graphics, but it's basically side quests and more side quests. Even the story itself has more side quests, it's an endless loop.

I quit because I got tired of it.

Lo probé porque iba a salir la secuela. Me convenció que no era mi tipo de juego.

Gráficos muy bonitos, pero es básicamente misiones secundarias y más misiones secundarias. Hasta la propia historia tiene más misiones secundarias, es un bucle sin fin.

Lo deje por cansino.

Does a decent job at capturing the feeling of a classic JRPG with the charming characters and basic plot. The story is there to serve as a reason to gather the three protagonists, but it's clear it wasn't really the main focus. The twists were predictable and even the main villain seemed like such an afterthought. Instead, I was enjoying doing the small sidequests and meeting all these NPCs with their unique personalities and fun dialogue. After a while they get really tiresome and repetitive, however.

The ones asking to gather materials are fine (it's the sort of thing you'd expect), but when they ask you to just find another NPC I'm like... okay, there's no reason not to do it since the game tells you where to go, but is it really the best they could've done? And you can't simply find the NPC, no, you also have to go back to the person who asked you so you can get your stamp. It's the back and forth that really gets on my nerves. And sometimes the person you're supposed to find is only a few meters away! Is the game mocking me?

The combat is... inoffensive. The character switch mechanic is a cool idea and it'd be pretty boring without it. The small portions of platforming were fun as well. Yes, the game is very easy, but I think it'd be really annoying gathering materials for quests if the enemies were too much of a hassle. After beating the final boss you unlock the hard difficulty, which makes some enemies more dangerous than usual, at least to the point of forcing me to use potions. It's a much better experience and I wish that was the standard difficulty.

I never played Suikoden before, but I love character focused RPGs, so I'm eager to play Hundred Heroes after it's released. Until then, Rising served as a good appetizer for what's to come.

Gameplay: C
Story: D
Characters: C
Visuals: A
Music: C
Difficulty: Easy

Eiyuden Chronicle Rising is a game propelled by charm. Charming characters, charming artwork, a charming soundtrack -- one I often found myself humming along to. On the surface, it does a lot right. Dig beyond the topsoil, though, and all you'll find is an idle clicker RPG with an action game bolted onto it.

In fairness, the game does seem to be aware of its own mundanity. You spend most of your time completing fetch quests for villagers, who give you worthless stamps in return, and the main character, CJ, absolutely loves collecting stamps. In a way it almost feels like the developers are calling me out -- like CJ, I'm completing in-game tasks merely for the sake of completing tasks. Next round of gold stars is on me!

The action-based combat is fairly simple, but it's not all bad. The midgame, from about the 2-hour mark to the 6-hour mark, is a high point, as you gradually gain new abilities and integrate new characters into your party. But by the time the game is only at the halfway mark it completely stops evolving. The steady drip of new mechanics dries up, leaving you with little to look forward to besides elemental re-skins of enemies you've already faced.

Despite all my misgivings, however, I was happy to spend some time with this one, and I do look forward to the real, actual Suikoden-inspired game that's dropping later this month. Rising only hints at the political intrigue and struggle that Hundred Heroes is sure to deliver. Hopefully all the little personal touches I added to my weapons and items make the transition intact.