Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes

Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is a spiritual successor to the classic Suikoden series, created by many of its former developers, offering on PlayStation 5 a turn-based JRPG with a huge cast of over a hundred recruitable characters. The player builds their own fortress, gradually gaining specialists with various skills from blacksmiths to alchemists, leads an army into large-scale war campaigns that play out in a separate strategy mode, and at the same time resolves the personal stories of individual heroes in smaller, more intimate battles fought in parties of six, where the choice of lineup and the characters' relative positions on the battle line significantly affects the course of combat and which abilities get to come into play.

The visual style combines hand-drawn 2D characters with 3D environments, evoking classic 1990s JRPGs, but on PS5 it adds smoother animations, sharper textures, and faster loading between the many locations of the sprawling world and inside the ever-growing fortress, which gradually gains shops, minigames, and other amenities depending on how many specialists the player manages to recruit. The music lends the game a nostalgic yet fresh tone befitting a sprawling fantasy world full of political intrigue and rival factions, among which the player, as the young mercenary Nowa, seeks their own place and gradually builds a resistance movement against a powerful empire that rules the surrounding kingdoms with an iron fist.

The game was partly funded through crowdfunding, and fans had awaited it for years as a spiritual continuation of the beloved but long-discontinued Suikoden series. Upon release it received a mixed-to-positive reception, as the technical side and some animations fell slightly short of the project's ambitions, but the story, music, and scale of the cast confirmed that the Suikoden legacy still has its place — and its loyal, devoted audience — on modern consoles.

Why play it: For loyal fans of the Suikoden series who will appreciate the huge cast, the music, and the story despite minor technical shortcomings that fall slightly short of the project's ambitions.