Gamepass Gambols 9: Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising is a fun 2D Metroidvania action RPG bursting with side content.
By bigsocrates 1 Comments
The Game Pass Gambols is my chronicle of attempting to at least sample every game released on Game Pass in 2022.
Game: Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising
Game Type: 2D Metroidvania action RPG
Time Played: 20-25 hours
Completion level: All achievements earned
Approachability: High. It's light and breezy action with a very gentle difficulty curve.
Should You Try It?: If you have a fondness for the 32-bit era RPG aesthetic and lighthearted simple storytelling then absolutely yes.
Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising is an interesting game. It’s a sort of precursor game to a larger and more traditional JRPG that’s planned for release next year, but unlike many precursor games like Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon or The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit it is neither 8-bit in presentation or particularly short. Instead it takes the form of a 2D platformer style action RPG that tells the story of a young treasure hunter named CJ who comes to a mining town to explore some ruins that have been discovered and where adventurers are going to seek treasure and adventure, with a substantial kick back to the townsfolk for allowing them to find and take the valuable artifacts.
The basic gameplay is that of a standard melee focused Metroidvania, where you run and jump across the environment while slashing enemies with your weapons and slowly acquiring upgrades that let you get to places you couldn’t previously access. The focus here is more on combat than platforming and overall gameplay is relatively simple and not overly difficult, with a very generous difficulty level, and even bosses require only the most basic pattern recognition. The game adds a little bit of depth when you pick up some additional party members and are able to swap between them while attacking, opening up a combo system for massive damage and forcing you to manage health, equipment, and stats for multiple characters, but even then there’s not much to it.
What the game lacks in base complexity, though, it makes up for in frills and additional systems. Despite being a $15 precursor game for a larger project Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising is positively bursting with side content. There’s a quest system based around collecting stamps for your adventurer card that sees you getting well over a hundred quests that range from collecting crafting components to killing certain monsters to finding specific fish in the fishing minigame to going to specific locations in a dungeon to fight an optional encounter. You do need to collect a certain number of stamps to advance past certain parts in the story but there are far more missions than are necessary to finish the game, and after you finish the hand-crafted missions the game will continue to randomly generate quests for you presumably forever. You will also build and upgrade shops to improve the town, buy, craft, and upgrade equipment, meals, and potions, and even buy and upgrade items you use to gather resources. It’s an extreme level of these kinds of frills for this type of game, almost rivaling something like Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, and while it can be a bit overwhelming and you end up spending too much time in town running errands and upgrading your characters’ armor and loadouts, it also serve to make the adventure feel bigger and more substantial than it would otherwise. The handful of dungeons in the game are reasonably big and diverse, but the quest and crafting systems give you reasons to go back and revisit them and make the game feel a bit more expansive and substantial than it really is, without feeling too much like unnecessary padding (though there definitely is a fair amount of that.)
Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising is meant to set up an upcoming game but it’s hard to say how successful it is at that without playing that game. CJ and her companions are supposed to make appearances in that game so it may be that a lot of seeds are planted here that will pay off there, but taken on its own merits Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising tells a competent but unremarkable story with fairly by the book cast of characters straight out of a lighthearted RPG from the 32-bit era. CJ is a plucky young adventurer with an optimistic can-do attitude and no fear even when things get pretty dire. The town includes characters like greedy, scheming, merchants and nervous elders who are hiding a powerful secret. You’ll meet a gruff and hardened mercenary who is an anthropomorphic kangaroo for some reason, a young woman forced into a position of authority after the disappearance of her father, and her henchman, the world’s laziest samurai. Is there an ancient evil hiding within these ruin that the adventurers are so happily plundering? Dear reader, if you can’t figure that out for yourself I don’t know how you found yourself on a website about video games. Even if the story is predictable at least the writing is mostly sharp and funny in a 90s way reminiscent of a toned down Working Designs type localization.
If I make Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising sound by the numbers that’s because it more or less is. It feels like it could be a modern remake of a Japanese game from the late 90s. While the graphics are very nice by modern indie standards and are at a fidelity level that the PlayStation and Saturn could never have hoped to match, the game has a look that recalls the style popular back then. Since the larger upcoming game is explicitly modeled after Suikoden it shouldn’t be a big surprise that the Suikoden series serves as an obvious inspiration for the characters and backgrounds. The music is also quite nice though it’s not at the absolute top notch of modern retro-inspired soundtracks like the aforementioned Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. It’s pleasant enough while you’re playing but it won’t stick with you after.
And that’s a fair assessment of Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising as a whole. I played it when it came to Game Pass a couple of months ago and while I certainly remember it I can’t say that it left a huge impression. I liked it enough at the time to unlock every achievement, including doing things I usually don’t bother with like beating all the bosses in hard mode (you don’t have to replay the whole game to do that or I absolutely would not have) but I don’t think it will be in my top 5 games of the year and may not even break the top 10. It’s compulsively playable and goes down smooth but nothing about it really stands out strongly. That’s enough to make it quite a good game though. It does everything well with no major flaws and it feels polished and well-designed in a way that portends good things for the more ambitious follow up. For a game meant to whet one’s appetite it has a surprisingly large amount of content and a ton of depth to the town building and crafting aspect. It feels like a fully featured game that could sell for well over the $15 asking price, let alone the $0 I paid for it on Game Pass.
Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising is an easy recommendation for people who like Metroidvanias and 32-bit JRPGs. It’s maybe a bit too simple and easy in its main game play for its own good, but there’s plenty to do and see and it has a relaxed and pleasant feel that I think too few games of this style are willing to indulge in with such an emphasis on challenge in modern game design. If you’re in the mood for a breezy throwback with some modern touches it’s well worth your time.
GAME PASS GAMBOLS RATING(out of 5):
Game Pass Gambols 1: The Pedestrian
Game Pass Gambols 3: Mighty Goose
Game Pass Gambols 4: Nobody Saves The World
Game Pass Gambols 5: Pupperazzi
Game Pass Gambols 6: Trek to Yomi