I’ll see your shonen hero and raise you a weaponised kangaroo
If you have no idea what Suikoden is - or why I’m yelling at myself – it’s an acclaimed if slightly forgotten RPG series from Konami and Hudson Soft, whose core gimmick is that you can recruit scores of named characters, and pit them against each other in both party-based battle and full-on army combat. It’s also known for having sumptuous writing, even by RPG standards. Suikoden 2 especially is one ofFinal Fantasy 7’s greatest rivals. Or so I’m told.
Hundred Heroes – which followsiffy action-RPG prequel Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising– is pretty much a Suikoden sequel with the labels torn off. It’s directed by Suikoden’s original writer and designer Yoshitaka Murayama, and is the story of three youngsters raising a posse to save a world’s worth of warring empires and unspecified mystical calamities.
The hundred heroes in question cover several anime subtypes, from serious to silly. You’ve got brooding swordswomen on the one hand, and prancing magic girls on the other. There’s a shark in a pirate costume in there, and some kind of gritty mercenary kangaroo. The graphics are a balance of lush 2D pixelart characters and some nice, if not breathtaking 3D environments.
The turn-based party combat looks pretty standard for an RPG, with the exception of a terrain mechanic that lets you cower behind rocks to avoid big boss attacks. The army battles, meanwhile, are sort of lo-fi Total War meets Advance Wars, with battalions of 3D troops spread across a grid.
Between quests and skirmishes, you’ll return to a home castle that expands for every character you add to your retinue. Aside from customisation options, it houses minigames such as card-battling, fishing, cooking and everybody’s favourite, Puffy Anime Critter Derby. I approve of all this almost as much as I disapprove of myself for letting the original Suikoden 2 slip through my adolescent clutches. Curse my wayward youth! Wait, what do you mean ‘there’s anHD remaster coming to Steam’?
