Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising review - Errand adventures — Too Much Gaming

Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising is a side-scrolling action RPG featuring a lighthearted adventure, albeit with simple gameplay design that doesn’t evolve in a meaningful way. Set in the same world as Suikoden creator Yoshitaka Murayama’s next game, Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes – I never got a full grasp on the world Murayama was creating in this game, as this is an isolated adventure about the rise of a ruined village, all due to the help of an overly enthusiastic treasure hunter. At its peak, Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising has enough charm to keep me engaged with its story and gameplay, despite having a bunch of design choices that just didn’t work.

CJ, the first playable character, goes on a journey to a village called New Nevaeh in search of treasure. Finding treasure is her purpose in life, so much so that even if she's tasked with mundane tasks for the residents of New Nevaeh, she's willing to do them without question. She then meets Garoo, the great sword-wielding kangaroo mercenary, and Isha, the magic user that is currently the acting mayor of New Nevaeh. Together, they uncover the secrets of the town, while slowly gathering resources to rebuild the village, one shop at a time.

A slow burn

The gameplay of Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising only shines when the player has access to all three characters. Each character is associated with a single button in your control scheme, and pressing the appropriate button has you quickly switching to that character to dish out an attack. Each character has a specific role, with one providing mobility and fast attacks, another for toughness and defensive abilities, and one that does elemental attacks from a safe distance. It’s all about switching to the right character for the current situation, and utilizing the combo system that allows you to repeatedly swap from one character to another for efficient damage.

The town of New Nevaeh serves as the hub for players to upgrade and prepare for your next sortie, where you dungeon crawl through various locations in the outskirts of the village, gathering resources, finishing quests, and beating the occasional boss that blocks your path. The game is presented in a 2D plane with background rendered in 3D, and levels designed in a Metroidvania-style fashion, which encourages backtracking and exploration. Once you return to the village, most of what you picked up can be used to build key stores for the town, which in turn allows you to upgrade your characters to be more effective in battle.

For instance, helping to build a blacksmith improves your weapon’s damage, while having the armorsmith improves defense and unlocks new abilities, like allowing CJ to double jump or Garoo now able to parry incoming attacks. There’s limited customization through accessories, as most of Rising’s character progression is just you unlocking all of the abilities each character is designed to do.

Town building, simplified

The other part of Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising is the town building, which is also simple in design. You get a quest, gather the resources outside town, turn them in, and voila! You’ve unlocked a new shop. Rinse and repeat. There’s no complex decisions that go on in this aspect of the game as the town naturally comes to life by simply progressing through the game’s main story or completing one of the many side tasks that pop up in town. I was hoping for me, as the player, to be conflicted by the growth of the town but doing the errand of gathering the resources is all that was needed, apparently. I contributed, but not the way that I hoped.

Why do these quests exist?

This also applies to the player helping out the citizens of New Nevaeh as, CJ is a person that barely says no to any request and loves to collect stamps – the game’s unusual way of keeping track of how much help you’ve done for the people of the village. While the main quests push the narrative forward, these side objectives are just a long list of errands from people too lazy to do it themselves.

Everything that is not the main quest felt trivial. Some are gathering quests that most of the time I always have the right resources needed on hand, making me complete the quest on the spot. Others are just me looking to find/talk to a specific person in town. There’s even a quest from a mother asking me to tell her kid to go to her, or a quest to give a person food from a cafe because she’s heard good things about the food there. I felt like an errand boy with the inability to say no to these mundane tasks as nothing substantial came from these distractions. I did not see a single side of content that enriched my time with the game.

Thankfully, the main quest is a decent offering as the three playable characters and a few supporting characters make it a tolerable trek to the finish. CJ, with her strong personality fueled with optimism is something I enjoyed, especially when it bounces off Garoo and Isha, who are more grounded. Garoo is probably my favorite among the bunch as there’s a good mix of tough and wholesomeness for a kangaroo holding a greatsword. Sadly, there’s no strong antagonist to complement the party and the rest of the story, and typical motivations seen in other RPGs pop up in Rising, making the main story predictable, contributing to the finale falling flat.

I enjoyed my time with Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising but as I was playing more of it, which took around 12 hours to complete, I kept thinking that this is a game that can be so much more. For both the narrative, its town building, level design, and combat – each one has a solid foundation in place but never takes it up a notch.

When I sat there with the credits rolling, I took it all in and wondered if Eiyuden Chronicles: Rising made me excited for what is to come in the Eiyuden Chronicle series. Sadly, it didn’t, but it also didn’t make me less excited for the supposed Suikoden spiritual successor Eiyuden Chronicles: Hundred Heroes. It’s a palatable action RPG for sure , but we’ll only find out if the connections between the two games will bear fruit in the end.

Score: 7/10