I give it a thumbs down even though I like it and consider it a decent JRPG because it fails to live up to Suikoden 2 in many quantifiable ways. Unlike most I'm going to list off some of the things Suikoden 2 does better and explain why it makes for a more compelling story.

Suikoden 2 starts you off with intrigue right at the start of the game, from the camp of a Border Scout unit called the Unicorn Brigade that's supposed be a safe job. Their mission ends soon and you can run around talking to troops who can't wait to return to their families. Unfortunately warmongers from within Highland launch a false flag operation in order to justify an invasion of neighboring Muse by slaughtering everyone in the Unicorn Brigade, except for the Player and Joey who escape by jumping off a cliff at a waterfall. Right before the plunge Joey makes a mark on the stone and invites the player to choose whether or not to make a promise to meet up there again once it's all over with if they're ever separated. This promise can affect the ending of the game.

Washed downstream and rescued, you're captured by a mercenary company who recognizes Highland that soldiers shouldn't be in that area. After a few odd jobs they start to trust you and send you out to do some chores, with a minder of course, you're still technically a captive.

You will pass through Ryube Village, a chaming small tranquil town where you will witness events and meet and recruit characters there early on. It's a serine little forest village at the base of a mountain, with a forest path behind it for fighting monsters and recruiting additional characters. This village will leave an impression on the player that will be relevant to later plot developments.

The players's childhood friend and squadmate Joey will come to rescue the player from captivity, they'll be paired together for much of the early portion of the game. Combined they have an unstoppable hero combo that makes short work of crowds of enemies, giving the player a gameplay reason in addition to a story reason to keep Joey in the party and feel attached to the character.

Joey and the Player return to Highland along with a travelling caravan containing two charming sisters and their... brother. Upon making it to the Highland the player and Joey reunite with family and you can do some exploring and talk to characters around town. Part of your agenda here is to clear your name after being falsely labeled a traitor. This humanizes the Highland and creates a sense of connection to it that will be relevant later. Highland isn't just some enemy, or it's leaders and army, it's where the player grew up, it's full of ordinary people living their lives.

The two main characters are captured and sentenced to death by a sub boss named Captain Rowd, a serviceable B villain that serves as a minor antagonist.

On their way to execution, they have an brief and interrupted encounter with the princess of highland, who stops and seems to take genuine interest in the plight of the boys, she can't interfere in military matters and Rowd is quick to silence the boys before they can plead their case, but this establishes her as a character of interest and further humanizes the Highland.

Rowd has the boys prepared for execution as the camera drifts up during his villain speech about the career advancement he expects following their deaths, while the Mercenary leaders sneak in and break them free.

The boys end up fleeing with the player's sister Nanami back to the mercenary fort, and the mercenary captains, Flik and Vik from Suikoden 1, are revealed to be total bad asses during the rescue.

Events unfold as the Highland makes moves towards war. We're introduce to Luca Blight, a character the player would have had to turn back to see was responsible for the slaughter of the Unicorn Brigade, burning Ryube Village. The player has had enough experience in Ryube enough to feel the gravity of it's loss. Villagers that player may have interacted with lay dead around them as Luca Blight cuts down a woman's husband and forces her to crawl around acting like a pig humiliating her before killing her. This firmly introduces Luca Blight as a major villain and creates a sense of stakes for what Highland Victory could mean.

He also lays waste to Toto village where Joey and the Player get their Sword and Shield runes from. You encounter a small child named Pilika from an earlier visit to the village. On the first encounter she was enthusiastic about a festival and excited to meet new friends, on this encounter the village was in ruins, everyone was dead, and she was mute from trauma, a co. Nanami adopts her and cares for her like a kid sister.

Events unfold towards Muse and Joey goes to meet with a Highland officer. Later you wait for him at the gates of Muse. The player can go on to bed but Nanami and Pilika stay up to wait for him. If you wait as well, despite being told to go to bed several times, it's a touching scene. It's also the last time Joey is with the player. After events further unfold the Highland attacks Muse and Joey assassinated the mayor of Muse as a Highland spy, switching over to the Highland side. This establishes Joey as a window into the Highland, it helps maintain a sense of intrigue.

Across the Inland Sea is where one of the Mercenary Leaders, Vic, has a showdown with the Vampire Lord Nekron from the previous game, it has it's own bitter sweet story about love, revenge, an unkillable monster, and an egotistical talking sword but at the end of it you get the ruins of his castle and fix them up.

This is barely the first quarter of the game and several Game of Thrones level developments have occurred, to many it's where the main game begins but everything before this was important to set the stage.

First there is no character like Luca Blight and there are no events like the burning of Ryube Village to create a sense of stakes. Any territory the Empire Controls seems relatively unharmed with no sense of stakes until halfway through the game when unethical human experimentation is revealed.

By contrast Luca Blight dies like a beast in an extremely satisfying trap Halfway Through Suikoden 2 and the game only gets MORE intriguing after. It takes that long for Eiyuden Chronicle to even give you a compelling reason to see the Dux as someone you couldn't just live with.

No one even dies when a nobody of a spy leads a false flag bandit attack on Noah's Village, buildings burn but everyone escapes and the village is rebuilt good as new so beyond a few scenes it doesn't have the impact it should.

The Dux has more of a corrupt noble feel than a true main villain feel, even as Emperor he seems more arrogant than menacing. He also seems to believe what he's doing is for the progress of mankind, and unfortunately, you have characters who will attack that goal automatically in dialogue. It's imbecilic, unethical human experimentation isn't the only path to progress, the Dux actually does have some good points lense tech could be used to plough fields as easily as make monsters, he ju

The story in Eiyuden Chronicle lacks the sense of stakes the burning of Ryube and Tito established, it lacks the intrigue the Sacrifice of the Unicorn Brigade or the Assassination of the Mayor of Muse established, it lacks the window into the other side that Joey provided.

Everything about Eiyuden Chronicle feels like it's going through the motions play acting parts of Suikoden 2 without understanding what made it compelling.

I have to stop here because of character limits, but I hope I've made my points well. I like Eiyuden Chronicle.

But it's being touted as a Suikoden successor and it fails to live up to that legacy in some crucial ways. The moral should be that if there's ever a successor to Eiyuden Chronicle learn from the things Suikoden 2 did better and make a better game.

i love the old school vibes, no DEI, great characters and interesting story. im only 2.5 hours in but this is shaping up to be a great game

This game has a horrible racing minigame that is REQUIRED FOR PLOT PROGRESS. DO NOT BUY THIS GARBAGE!!!!!!!!!!!

This racing minigame RUINS THE ENTIRE GAME!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Кайф!

It’s not a remake of suikoden but everything about this game reminds you of suikoden. Just like the suikoden, I liked it enough to burned some time with it but hated it enough not to finish it.

a Great RPG, that steps in the footsteps of the greats like Suikoden, the characters are Charming and it does not take long to find a character you will like most likely, even if some characters stats are subpar in a normal playthrough they can still be enjoyed or used.

Another fact I enjoy is that you are not enforced to use your Main characters in your party, atleast not actively. which is something I enjoy, though the main character Nowa, is very versatile and can usually fit in any team you want him too. so I never saw a reason to not include him.

the soundtrack is also fantastic. everytime a Battle starts I just enjoy the battle theme.

Overall as a fan of RPGs with tons of side content I would rate this game a really great 9/10

Hmmm...after browsing some of the user reviews, what else can be said, especially when I haven't beaten the game yet?

Well, I like it quite a bit and certainly recommend it as exactly what it's store blurb says it is ("a modern take on a classic JRPG experience"). And yes it is, through-and-through; those who didn't play ED Rising won't be lost at all, and anyone who played Rising and liked the setting and characters enough will want to keep going. Rising of course wasn't a prequel, it was a Metroidvania spin-off that came out before this main big game did. I like this universe and hope this franchise sticks around with other instalments and genre spin-offs set within it (let Final Fantasy keep starting from scratch with its settings).

So the only stuff I can add is that there's a few things haven't been mentioned in the reviews I've seen that ought to be:

1) It has a bit of a slow start. I'd say it doesn't get going until about 8-10 hours in and I'm all for letting a story breathe and not be rushed, you will have to wait a bit before it shifts gears. There's some padding at the start that I haven't found too bad later on(or "so far since then"), but that abandoned mineshaft that leads to the abandoned fortress is a DRAG and could've been cut in half with nothing lost.

2) If you liked the cast from EC: Rising and are anticipating that they come along ASAP, alter your expectations. I'm 32 hours in and I still haven't run into CJ, Garoo has popped up a couple times and just re-joined the party for the next big quest, etc. On that note...

3) With a cast that large, some of them you'll want to hang around, most are fine, and there'll be some you can't stand. Pick and choose who you like, they aren't all winners. Pretty much everyone loves the shi'arcs, of course, but Mellore shows up relatively early on, before the others from Rising (for some reason), and she's just as much of a blabbery bubblehead as she was in that game. Which leads to:

4) As you can probably tell from the art style and presentation, this is whimsy galore instead of grimdark. Depending on your liking of that sort of thing, some or even most of it lands, such as the aforementioned desert-dwelling sharks with their pirate-y speech patterns and hardcore scepticism that they ever had anything to do with water in their people's entire existence, and parts of it...really doesn't. Actual quote after a boss battle: "How could you defeat my monsters?!" "We have the power of JUSTICE on our side!" (UGH.) Thankfully I'd say it's more good than groan-worthy but YMMV.

5) You WILL have to play a mini-game or two to progress the plot; one review on here went negative over the desert race. The controls are a bit wonky and it took a few tries more than I'd have liked, but it can be done. It did bring things to a halt though and I think most of us hate it when that happens.

6) The story (so far) is only slightly-epic. Quality wise, it's fine; not the worst at all, but you can sort of see how it could be more grand. On the other hand they can't all be, let's say, FF6, and that one got rather dark at points, and EC really doesn't seem to want to go too far in that direction. Probably just as well, going too epic and dark can bring about its own faults and failings too.

Thankfully, classic-style inspiration aside the grind part isn't that bad; just fight most of your random battles as they pop up and you'll be fine. The devs were wise enough to have auto-saves and recruit-able characters who take out the tedium (one allows you to teleport to previously visited locations, one allows you to change your party at save points, etc.), and sometimes you won't actually have to get into a huge boss fight after getting smoked en route to the encounter with decimated party members (I'm strongly referring to the part with Seign infiltrating the rune-lens lab with the rune-tank).

Yes, recommended, and here's hoping the DLC and future stuff is legit good too!

Hello rabbit and bear studios, could you please fix the bug about fume? When I successfully recruited him, I cannot move. Is this a bug or not? Could you help me with it? thank you.