Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising is the appetiser for Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes. It’s a prequel hack and slash side-scroller town builder game with fantastic background visuals and flashy effects. Set in the same world as the upcoming Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes, Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising from Natsume Atari and 505 Games definitely seems like it’s going to win some new players over and get them hyped for the full-fledged JRPG that’s set for release in 2023.
Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising The Review Starts Now
Players in Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising will take on the role of CJ, an adventuring “Honourable Scavenger”. As a tough 16-year-old girl, CJ strikes out on her own in search of New Neveah, a treasure rich location where an influx of adventurers has been spotted. On the way to the town, she encounters a reptilian trader named Hogan. Hogan is attacked by bandits and CJ saves him. The duo then head on over to New Neveah’s main town and CJ is introduced to the mayor.
Now you might be expecting some old guy to be the mayor but this isn’t the case in Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising. The mayor is a 16-year-old girl named Isha and she’s got work for you to do. She’s taken over her father’s job since he’s gone missing and she effectively scams you into doing the dirty work of the townsfolk. In order to gain permission to start treasure hunting, you’ll need to collect stamps. Stamps are earned by completing quests for the townsfolk and so begins your journey in Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising.
Story & Graphics
Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising’s story is fairly straightforward with the character interactions being the real star of the show here. After a conversation with a character, there’s a very cute emoji pop up that sometimes displays and this helps to convey their emotions to you as the player. This happens throughout the game and once you’ve got your full party of characters, the gameplay really kicks it up a notch. Without spoiling too much, this is a fast-paced side-scrolling adventure game with fantastic visuals.
The backgrounds and locations in Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising are a visual feast for the eyes and there are plenty of moments where you’ll just want to stare at the screen in awe of just how gorgeous the scenes look.
With that said though, the character sprites themselves look slightly out of place in contrast to the environments. It’s almost as if they are a tad too low resolution and not as crisp as they should be. This is a lot more noticeable when the backgrounds look so good. Character attacks however are excellent and extremely satisfying. It really is great seeing “CRITICAL” pop up when you land a powerful blow on an enemy. Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising’s 2.5D platforming adventure keeps you intrigued since you’ll want to adventure forward and see what gorgeous locale is up next.
Swapping between CJ’s quick and nimble attacks to Kangaroo sword wielder Garoo’s heavy sword in battles adds quite a bit of variation to the game’s combat. There’s another character that joins you later on too that’s a bit of a spoiler but her magic attacks flow in combat quite well together with CJ’s and Garoo’s. Players are able to instantly swap characters while out in battle and this lets you combine their attacks seamlessly. It’s quite well done and makes the combat in Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising incredibly fun.
Quests
Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising’s slight downfall however is quite noticeable. This lies with the fact that there are far too many quests which are simple fetch quests. This means that more often than not you’ll be adventuring out in the wild, obtaining a resource item and returning back to hand it to the respective quest giver. This will earn you a stamp or an upgrade and it just feels rather formulaic. This formulaic gameplay mechanic really lets fatigue set in when you’re blocked off from adventuring further by a wall, or some other object, and you’re forced to head back to town. For this particular reason, Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising is best played in bite-sized chunks.
The game also features boss fights which require memorising attack patterns and some skilful dodging to survive. If you do end up dying while out in the wild, you can simply reload your last save game. The game also implements a fast travel system by using signposts as save spots. Fast-travelling using these signposts alleviates a lot of the frustration you’ll have with adventuring through the same area over and over again thankfully.
SoundTrack
The soundtrack of Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising is great too with the main adventuring theme being extremely catchy. There isn’t any voice acting in the game though and that’s a bit of a let-down. The main characters definitely have quite a bit of personality which shows through a bit more thanks to the use of emojis in the game. If they were fully voiced, this would have been even better.
At its core, Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising is a great side-scroller action-adventure platformer that falls into the tried and trusted gameplay formula established by age-old video games from yesteryear. It might seem a bit too formulaic but the combat is addictive and once you’ve come across the more varied enemies and have your full party, it’s quite compelling. Combining attacks using all of your characters is immensely enjoyable and while this game might be quite a niche because of its anime-esque tropes and themes, we recommend picking this title up and giving it a try.
Publisher: 505 Games
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X and Series S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 5
Developers: NatsumeAtari, Natsume, Rabbit & Bear Studios Co., Ltd.
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