FILLER EPISODE
AKA SKIP THIS ONE
Do you love fetch quests? You should if you want to enjoy the blood pumping, semen boiling action of walking around the same locations over and over again, telling kids to go back home for dinner and collecting junk to later give it away for experience and some money.
The gameplay loop never really changes or meaningfully evolves, you are experiencing the same fetch quest "how else can we make this game longer?" type of design philosophy for 10 hours and then the game ends. The story, what little of it is there, can be summarized in a single sentence, and the character writing never really becomes engaging or goes beyond your average fantasy archetypes. If the goal of the game was to hype up the main event, Curse of the Moon-style minimalist adventure would have done fine, and delivered a way more fun burst of experience than this slog.
From what I've heard about the main gamae, Rising is ultimately irrelevent as the main cast plays only a minor role there. Find a better way to spend these 10 hours: play Rance 01.
AKA SKIP THIS ONE
Do you love fetch quests? You should if you want to enjoy the blood pumping, semen boiling action of walking around the same locations over and over again, telling kids to go back home for dinner and collecting junk to later give it away for experience and some money.
The gameplay loop never really changes or meaningfully evolves, you are experiencing the same fetch quest "how else can we make this game longer?" type of design philosophy for 10 hours and then the game ends. The story, what little of it is there, can be summarized in a single sentence, and the character writing never really becomes engaging or goes beyond your average fantasy archetypes. If the goal of the game was to hype up the main event, Curse of the Moon-style minimalist adventure would have done fine, and delivered a way more fun burst of experience than this slog.
From what I've heard about the main gamae, Rising is ultimately irrelevent as the main cast plays only a minor role there. Find a better way to spend these 10 hours: play Rance 01.
podcast game
Fun and quick action rpg that has enough elements to keep you engaged. The main story is kind of nonsense given that the character that joins your party within the first hour doesn't reveal their motivations until the very last story quest. The combat is cool with chains and combos that get more powerful as you upgrade your town via the numerous sidequests. Most of the enemies can feel baby mode at times - so I could of used the Hard difficulty that only unlocks when you beat the game, being available as an option from the start. Evidently the game that follows is a traditional turn based RPG that is getting mixed reviews. Hopefully this gets revisited with a harder difficulty and better story.
This game got me into achievement collecting!
I really enjoyed this simple precursor to the largely anticipated Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes. With fun combat, a gorgeous art style and some quirky characters. This adds up to a really enjoyable experience. The game does reach a halt when more grinding comes into play with the new game+ post credits but the simple yet replayable level areas and bosses helped me breeze through this. Dialogue sometimes did go on for a little longer than needed and sometimes the quirkiness did overstep the boundaries of entertaining.
The only reason this took so long to finish was because I wasn't much of a completionist in games, I usually hit the credits and call it a day. The difference with this one was that I didn't stop thinking about it, so I just had to go back and play some more.
Would recommend if you're into metroidvania/hack n slash type games.
I really enjoyed this simple precursor to the largely anticipated Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes. With fun combat, a gorgeous art style and some quirky characters. This adds up to a really enjoyable experience. The game does reach a halt when more grinding comes into play with the new game+ post credits but the simple yet replayable level areas and bosses helped me breeze through this. Dialogue sometimes did go on for a little longer than needed and sometimes the quirkiness did overstep the boundaries of entertaining.
The only reason this took so long to finish was because I wasn't much of a completionist in games, I usually hit the credits and call it a day. The difference with this one was that I didn't stop thinking about it, so I just had to go back and play some more.
Would recommend if you're into metroidvania/hack n slash type games.
An additional game for eiyuden chronicles. While it is good story to welcome us to the real game later, i feel like the gameplay a bit too repetitive. But is till love it either way
An ARPG that is unfortunately bogged down by odd menu design and repetitive filler side quests (which have to be done to grind your levels up). However, despite all of this, I found myself really getting into the gameplay loop and wanted to see the story to the end, even if it was a bit disappointing.
The core gameplay in this one is a lot of fun. A 2d platformer mixed with an ARPG, how can you go wrong? Well, I'll tell you.
Despite the fact that there are aspects of this game that are addictive and very enjoyable, the menu, map and quest system are very clunky and don't work well together. Like the maps only show marks for the main quest and only one selected side quest at a time. Once you finish that selected side quest, you have to then select another in the quest menu, then back out to the main game and then to map again to see where it is. and back and forth, back and forth and it sucks.
This also applies to the fast traveling. You use sign posts in the dungeons to fast travel around however, there is a map screen and the location selection screen. However the map doesn't list the names of the locations, so you're taking a guess as to which sign post location will take you where. Why didn't they put it all on the map just to make it easier!? It makes no sense at all and it becomes a nightmare in a couple areas because there are entrances and exits all over the place on the map!
There are also a million shops to upgrade your characters at (okay, it's more like 20, but it's still a lot!). One person does armor, one person does blades, one person upgrades your armor and blades, one person upgrades your runes, one person upgrades your tools, one person upgrades your bags... was it really necessary to have so many different vendors for upgrades!? It's really overkill...
This could've earned a much higher rating if they would've fixed some of these quality of life issues, but here we are.
Oh and the side quests. Good god the side quests. There has to be over a hundred side quests and while there are a few inventive and/or adventurous ones, a lot are repeat quests and others are literally filler.
Some quests will have you fetch a material only later to have you get the exact same quest again from the same or another person and you're collecting the exact same material! Then there are the filler quests which are like, go talk to this person who is a screen over. DONE. Turn In. Why bother with this!?
On another note, the visual design is also strange where the environments are 3d and gorgeously done but the characters are in 2d and have this very jaunty animation to them. It doesn't meld for me as the characters don't feel like they're in the same world.
And I have to also mention that I did have it happen about 3 times where I went to save and the game just hung. I had to restart the game each of those times and lost a bit of progress each time. VERY annoying.
Not a terrible game in the slightest but there are just too many bad design decisions that it's really hard to ignore them here.
The core gameplay in this one is a lot of fun. A 2d platformer mixed with an ARPG, how can you go wrong? Well, I'll tell you.
Despite the fact that there are aspects of this game that are addictive and very enjoyable, the menu, map and quest system are very clunky and don't work well together. Like the maps only show marks for the main quest and only one selected side quest at a time. Once you finish that selected side quest, you have to then select another in the quest menu, then back out to the main game and then to map again to see where it is. and back and forth, back and forth and it sucks.
This also applies to the fast traveling. You use sign posts in the dungeons to fast travel around however, there is a map screen and the location selection screen. However the map doesn't list the names of the locations, so you're taking a guess as to which sign post location will take you where. Why didn't they put it all on the map just to make it easier!? It makes no sense at all and it becomes a nightmare in a couple areas because there are entrances and exits all over the place on the map!
There are also a million shops to upgrade your characters at (okay, it's more like 20, but it's still a lot!). One person does armor, one person does blades, one person upgrades your armor and blades, one person upgrades your runes, one person upgrades your tools, one person upgrades your bags... was it really necessary to have so many different vendors for upgrades!? It's really overkill...
This could've earned a much higher rating if they would've fixed some of these quality of life issues, but here we are.
Oh and the side quests. Good god the side quests. There has to be over a hundred side quests and while there are a few inventive and/or adventurous ones, a lot are repeat quests and others are literally filler.
Some quests will have you fetch a material only later to have you get the exact same quest again from the same or another person and you're collecting the exact same material! Then there are the filler quests which are like, go talk to this person who is a screen over. DONE. Turn In. Why bother with this!?
On another note, the visual design is also strange where the environments are 3d and gorgeously done but the characters are in 2d and have this very jaunty animation to them. It doesn't meld for me as the characters don't feel like they're in the same world.
And I have to also mention that I did have it happen about 3 times where I went to save and the game just hung. I had to restart the game each of those times and lost a bit of progress each time. VERY annoying.
Not a terrible game in the slightest but there are just too many bad design decisions that it's really hard to ignore them here.
While the repetitive grind for materials and money among the simple questing gets old fast, it's a nice, concise introduction to the game's world and characters that did get me pumped to play Hundred Heroes.