Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising review – A new license that keeps its promises?

Many JRPG fans are familiar with the franchise’s iconic name. Suikoden. Despite the end of life of this license, the creators have come together to offer us a spiritual heir to the latter, an heir named Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes. Unfortunately, this title will not arrive until 2023 in our living rooms. But, as if to make us wait until then, the same team offers us Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising. Serving above all as an appetizer, this prequel allows us to discover the universe as well as some of the characters who will evolve in the universe that the developers want to present to us.

However, arriving on the video game market being considered the heir to a license as well known and appreciated as Suikoden was, this is a very difficult label to wear. This is why we are going to come back to this title released last May and see if it can boast of being as qualitative as its “ancestors”, while serving as a good introduction to a new license which intends to settle well for many years.

Test conditions: The test was carried out after approximately thirty hours of play, sufficient to reach the end of the game and discover the post-end content. The test was carried out with a PS5 copy of the title.

An interesting world to discover

Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising takes place on a remote island, affected by a major earthquake. It is in this context that CJ, the main character arrives in a small town in search of treasures hidden in the bowels of the earth, brought up by the movements of the ground. Of course, she is not the only one to come for the same reason since adventurers from all walks of life arrive on the island to discover many riches.

Unfortunately, CJ discovers that the inhabitants of the city where she has just arrived are sorely lacking in resources to rebuild the city and recover from the major earthquake they have just suffered. The young woman then decides to help them gather the necessary resources to get everything back on their feet, while exploring the island in order to discover some riches. In her adventure she will meet many allies, including Isha, mayor of the city, and Garoo, a gigantic man-beast.

Until then, nothing exceptional in the scenario, which is even rather basic for a J-RPG. The rest of the game isn’t much better either. The player spends a large majority of his time running around helping the townspeople, never really asking for a large investment from the player. The scenario remains like this for many hours before revealing a lot of things to us about the last five hours of play (allow 20 hours for the main campaign). Few dangers present themselves to the player, and the challenge is almost non-existent (which is not necessarily a bad thing and makesEiyuden Chronicle: Rising a rather relaxing title).

Indeed, the band of characters spend most of their time traveling the island in search of treasures while helping to put the city back on its feet. Then, all of a sudden, the “evil empire” appears, which will change things a bit, without making your task too difficult (in order not to spoil you, we won’t say too much about these antagonists who take their time to appear).

In addition, the characters are rather interesting to discover. While CJ’s motives are still a little unclear to the player, Isha and Garoo are getting some very good treatment. Their background as well as their motivations and powers are fairly well presented and the player discovers enough about them to become attached to them (or not).

In addition, the 2.5D graphics serve the general atmosphere of the title very well. Certainly, they remove the depth side of the fights and the platform phases, but they bring some nice and unique touches to this first title in the franchise.

A recipe to expand over time

Speaking of the fights, these are quite simple to understand. Each character is linked to a button on the controller (making the switch very simple) and each attack has an element. Enemies are weak to a particular element. To win, it is then necessary to chain the devastating combos by betting on the weaknesses of the various opponents.

However, this system of weaknesses does not have enough importance in combat to be really useful. Indeed, if they will suffer more damage, do without strategy and buggers is more than enough to win over most enemies. You would have understood it, Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising is nothing complicated and only the last bosses of the game represent a real challenge (and again, we cannot say that they are among the strongest seen to date in a J-RPG).

But this is not surprising since, as said above, your main task is to rebuild the city. This reconstruction is, moreover, necessary in order to be able to progress. Indeed, repairing the city will allow you to regularly unlock various buildings, and thus buy equipment or improve your characters. And, since the skills are linked to your equipment, it is essential to unlock the various shops in order to be able to improve your team.

Since then, Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising suffers from a problem often encountered in RPGs of its genre: it quickly becomes repetitive. Indeed, the player spends his time accepting and carrying out similar quests in order to obtain new resources and unlock new buildings. Fortunately, the position of each object and each objective is indicated on the map, thus avoiding searching for hours before farming even more! And the developers even added fast travel to limit unnecessary travel and allow the story to progress more quickly.

Besides these few flaws, Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising is visually very successful. The backgrounds are sublime and packed with detail. As for the characters, they are pretty well done too. A little less than the sets, but it’s still pretty well done. The same observation can be made for the sound environment which allows you to really get into the game and immerse yourself in the fighting. It is therefore a pity that the soundtrack of the title is so poor next door.

Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising presents itself as an excellent launch title for a new franchise. If its story would have benefited from being more worked, it nevertheless offers an interesting setting for the sequel, as well as a good entry point into the genre for newcomers. The rather charming visual aspect will also appeal to players’ retinas, while offering a universe that seems to have a lot to offer in terms of possibilities. It remains to be seen what the developers will offer us for the future!