Eiyuden Chronicles: Hundred Heroes Review

thesixthaxis.com:

First days on the job are always hard to deal with, but Nowa is absolutely thrown in the deep end at the start of Eiyuden Chronicles: Hundred Heroes. Our hero is drafted into a joint military operation between their nation and the Empire, but before too long they’re raising an army for the resistance against imperial invasion. Along the way you’ll meet and recruit more than one hundred heroes (hence the name) to bolster said army.

Here lies the first problem with the game, and I’m gutted that I’ve reached grievances this early. The number of heroes sounds impressive, and it is, but it means losing depth with the characters. A handful of characters are fleshed out, such as the main trio and select others, but many of them are essentially just one-dimensional caricatures. I’ll fight anyone over Francesca though, as she is one of the most accurate depictions of a healer I’ve seen.

To play, Hundred Heroes is mostly typical JRPG fare complete with turn-based battles, lots of numbers and copious amounts of gear and items to manage. The battles follow a bar along the top of the screen letting the player know the current order of actions including the enemies, so you’re encouraged to use the turn order to avoid damage by eliminating or otherwise stopping enemies before they can attack.

Battles allow a party of six characters divided between two rows, with the enemies having the same configuration. Your characters have different attack ranges, so you need to be cautious of the placements within your party as if you have someone on the back row with short range, you aren’t going to be able to hit a single thing – something I definitely didn’t do on at least three occasions.

You select all of your party’s actions before playing them out in order with the enemies acting at their points in the sequence. Once you confirm those actions, it locks you into those choices until all turns are complete, which even includes healing and other defensive skills. Misjudge things and fail to keep