Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes Embraces Silliness

There’s a single moment, roughly a quarter of the way through Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes, that perfectly encapsulates the spirit of the game. The party is delving into a mystical forest dungeon called the Proving Grounds. An enigmatic cloaked bandit known as Hurstwine cuts through the murky woods ahead of them, the heroes in hot pursuit.

Both the player characters and Hurstwine are seeking a primal lens, an ancient and powerful artifact that lies at the heart of the dungeon. It’s a race against time to see who can get their hands on it first.  After several grueling battles against the forest dungeon’s ancient guardians, the party and Hurstwine finally come face to face. The stage is set for an epic confrontation before the gaping mouth of a great chasm that sits at the heart of the Proving Grounds. Hurstwine villainously monologues about all of his evil deeds before being interrupted by Garro, a member of the player’s group, who drops what may be the strangest piece of video game dialogue of 2024:

“The hatred’s mutual, farthead!”

The tension of the scene is immediately and irrevocably punctured.  It’s not entirely clear the intended reaction to this piece of dialogue. Laughter, bemusement, and confusion are perhaps all equally appropriate. Whatever your response to this dialgoue, it is certainly memorable and encapsulates the silly tone of Eiyuden Chronicle perfectly.

The game never takes itself too seriously. It’s worth noting that Garoo, the character who drops this bizarre diss, is an anthropomorphic kangaroo warrior who uses a single hand to wield a greatsword that is as tall as he is. His name is also presumably “Garoo” because that’s the word kangaroo without its starting syllable.

This sort of bizarre comical tone is sprinkled throughout the game. At its best (and the above exchange is far from the best of Eiyuden Chronicle’s writing) the game offers some great laughs and interesting character moments. At its worst, the game’s script can feel a bit like it’s trying, and failing, to emulate the quippy dialogue you might see in a Marvel movie.

A comedic cast

Eiyuden’s massive cast of 100+ characters presents a variety of different angles for comedy. The game is very clearly familiar with role-playing game cliches and deliberately sets out to present its own spin on them.

At its best (and the above exchange is far from the best of Eiyuden Chronicle’s writing) the game offers some great laughs and interesting character moments.

For example, there’s Francesca, who initially appears to be an archetypal white mage in the vein of Aerith from Final Fantasy VII or Ophilia from Octopath Traveler.  Francesca is clearly designed to subvert the character archetype of the demure healer as, while she initially presents a polite exterior, she has a hidden angry streak and is clearly dealing with lots of suppressed rage. When she becomes enraged, Francesca flies into furious rants that are laden with all manner of strange insults. In one instance, she calls a gang of local troublemakers “pigeon-licking punks”. While these rants contain no actual explicit language, they are delivered with such sincerity by Francesca’s voice actress Ina Marie Smith, that they hit home and are often equal parts intimidating and hilarious.

This repressed rage also works into Francesca’s gameplay, as she has a surprisingly high physical strength stat, along with the ability to enter a state of “calm fury” which buffs her strength even higher.

It’s not just roleplaying game clichés at which Eiyuden Chronicle pokes fun. The game is also very interested in ribbing 90s anime tropes. The character Mellore is a magical girl, clearly designed to resemble Usagi from Sailor Moon. Unlike Usagi though Mellore’s adventures occur not in a 20th-century Japanese high school, but in a sword and sorcery fantasy setting. Her attacks all have cheesy names like “Magical Cutie Shot” which she proudly declares to the world whenever she uses them in combat. She also makes several wonderfully tacky speeches about how justice and friendship will always conquer evil. These speeches parody Sailor Moon perfectly, and seem as though they could have been lifted directly from the source material.

These are just two character concepts in a sea of other wacky ideas. You can also recruit a little girl with a massive Totoro-esque yeti best friend, a surprisingly affable lich, and a cowboy hat-wearing lizard with an entrepreneurial streak. The game features a very strong voice cast, who manage to take these ideas from potential cliches into fully realised gags.  There are few weak links in Eiyuden’s roster, and all the game’s dialogue is excellently delivered. 

Silly side quests

Eiyuden Chronicle is absolutely packed full of additional content. As well as tracking down all of the members of the game’s vast cast, there are several side stories that players can pursue. The game uses a lot of these side quests as an opportunity to squeeze in some extra silliness. Beigoma are traditional Japanese spinning tops, and Eiyuden Chronicle allows the player to collect their own Beigoma and battle them against those of other “spinadeers” across the world. The Beigoma minigame derives very clear inspiration from Beyblade, complete with the tops triumphantly twirling out spinning super moves. These Beigoma are, of course, proudly decked out with pictures of dragons and are coated in so many shiny layers of colour they more closely resemble cupcakes than they do spinning tops.

Eiyuden Chronicle also features a card-battling mini-game. While it doesn’t have the complexity of something like Magic: the Gathering or Hearthstone, it’s an entertaining enough diversion. This card battling system allows the game to gently mock some more shonen anime tropes, this time light-heartedly laughing at Yu-Gi-Oh.

Probably the game’s most involved side quest is the “cooking battle” subplot. These battles serve as a call back to Suikoden which also featured a similar cook-off minigame. Recipes can be found throughout the world, from chests locked deep in dungeons to gifts from random townsfolks. These recipes can be used in “cooking battles” against the Dark Dragon Syndicate, a league of chefs who use the power of cookery for evil… whatever that means. There is a small story arc involving Kurtz, the chef in the player’s army, who has a history with the Dark Dragon syndicate and is searching for his missing wife. This story is deliberately goofy, and it’s loaded with some truly cheesy cooking puns, but overall it’s an appetising enough offering.

The cost of comedy

The light-hearted tone that Eiyuden Chronicles adopts doesn’t always serve it well. The game occasionally attempts to handle heavy themes like the human cost of war, the folly of blind patriotism, and where it is right to make sacrifices in the name of progress. The ability of Eiyuden Chronicle to grapple with serious subject matter like this is compromised by its constant comical tone. This problem is encapsulated by the arc of the character Seign Kesling.

Seign is one of the game’s three primary protagonists. He begins the story as a man of divided loyalties. He’s the heir to house Kesling, an aristocratic family with a strong military background.  Shortly after the game begins Seign’s homeland, the Galdean Empire, begins a ruthless campaign of expansion which he strongly objects to. Seign’s desire to serve the interests of his nation and his family comes into conflict with his sense of what is right and he begins to question if he is truly a just man.

The light-hearted tone that Eiyuden Chronicles adopts doesn’t always serve it well.

It sometimes feels as though Seign is a character that has been transplanted into Eiyuden Chronicle from a different story. He’s a brooding, quiet, and contemplative character in a cast full of flatulent kangaroos and Sailor Moon parodies. While this does make Seign an excellent foil to the game’s main protagonist Nowa, who is far more headstrong and rash, it does mean that Seign’s story doesn’t get the room to breathe that it may have received in a game with a more serious tone.

Seign’s internal conflict is resolved too quickly to be fully satisfying; he works his way through his issues before they have time to be fully explored by the narrative. This is a shame, but it’s not a major fault. Eiyuden Chronicle tells a simple, but compelling story. The game’s plot would be stronger if it delved a bit more deeply into some of its heavier themes, which it instead ends up skirting around.

Conclusion

Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is a very silly game, and this is both its greatest strength and its greatest weakness. The script is loaded full of laughs, and there are lots of lovable characters and slices of affectionate parody here. It's just a shame that all of this does sometimes undercut the game's pathos. Still, it's true that 40+ hour long RPGs like this can, at times, take themselves too seriously, and lose themselves in intricate plots about deicide and destiny. It's nice to have an alternative like Eiyuden Chronicle that presents you with an uncomplicated good time.

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