What I’d Like to See in Eiyuden Chronicle 2

The stunning and lengthy Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes does a solid job of capturing the feel and style of Konami’s Suikoden series. Well, at least on PC that is. With the high likelihood of a sequel in the future — sadly without Yoshitaka Murayama — here is what I want to see in the possible Eiyuden Chronicle 2 sequel.

For all that the first game gets right, it has some major issues. To be honest, most of these come from too much emphasis on nostalgia, and less inclusion of modern features we expect from a JRPG in 2024. As such, most of the changes and improvements that need to happen come from this lack of quality-of-life. Making those adjustments could improve the experience on all platforms.

For instance, I’d love to see fast travel unlock much more quickly in Eiyuden Chronicle 2. It took me roughly 15 hours in-game to unlock fast travel. It felt way too late at that point. Even a major character joked about its absence. A huge chunk of that time up until that point was spent backtracking, and that wasn’t necessary. Rather, it pointlessly padded out the experience. Fast travel should always be reserved for places you’ve already been to, so adding it in after the prologue wouldn’t hurt the game’s progression.

In the same vein, it is high time for a proper quest log in a possible Eiyuden Chronicle sequel. Despite having more than 100 heroes to collect, there is no reliable way to keep track of their sidequests. For example, someone might ask you to collect 10 of a certain material for them. But if you happen to walk away and forget what they asked for or where to get it, you’d have to search online. It’s this type of frustrating system that makes the game less fun than it should be.

At the same time, it would be nice to see legitimate side quests. The only quests in the first game stem from the recruitments. There are no proper additional missions outside of these. Give the player the chance to get to know some of the heroes on a deeper level. Heck, give us a proper relationship and bonding system. This could lead to romance options, optional dungeons, and exclusive rewards. While it isn’t necessary to romance every character in Eiyuden Chronicle 2, having a dozen or so with their own separate storylines would be nice.

The best part about the first game is it laid a fantastic foundation. The combat, world, visual style, and everything already exists. It is now time to just build upon that with features speeding up fights. In this first game, things can take quite some time. A little more efficiency, or even just a 2x speed, would make a world of difference.

In addition, terrible launch state of Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes should never happen again. The state of some platforms at release, such as Nintendo Switch, is downright unacceptable. I get not wanting to make backers wait longer, but a few more months is a better outcome than shipping a broken game. Ideally with this Eiyuden Chronicle sequel, more focus can, hopefully, be spent on tightening up the experience. The overwhelming number of bugs, performance issues, and more don’t need to be as prevalent. Instead, the Rabbit & Bear Studios can focus on providing an optimal gameplay experience.

After all, Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is far from a bad game. It has a solid cinematic prologue sequence. The story is pretty decent if you get far enough into it. But little changes here and there will make the potential Eiyuden Chronicle 2 a significantly more memorable experience. One, in fact, that could be truly worthy of succeeding Suikoden.

Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes is available right now for Nintendo Switch, PS5, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.