For those unaware, Eiyuden Chronicle is the spiritual successor to Suikoden. After a successful Kickstarter, they announced they would also be doing a companion game called Eiyuden Chronicle Rising. It takes place before the events of Eiyuden Chronicle, which will be released sometime next year. For starters, it's an Action RPG whereas the main game is to be a turn-based affair more in line with what you got out of the Suikoden games, and most importantly I think it's best, at least for this game, to kind of forget it's connected to a Suikoden Spiritual successor. I will get into that.
You play as CJ, a young girl who is trying to find a treasure larger than what her father found to fulfill a rite of her clan. She enters the Burrows hearing stories that it has been opened up to all sorts to explore. Joined by a Kangaroo Mercenary named Garoo, as well as a third character I will not reveal, all three have reasons to dive into the ruins. There is of course the older folks of town who are against diving into the Barrows in fear of releasing an evil sorcerer and the former mayor of the town who disappeared after diving in.
The story behind Garoo and the third member is interesting, but this is a small little story being told in this game. You have some fun interactions between the characters, and some interesting twists involving the world outside the little town, but at the end of the day, you get a really simple story of a small group coming together as they dive into some old ruins. It's a pretty fun story, but it needs to be stated that if you don't go into this knowing that this franchise is the successor of Suikoden you would probably never put it together. This does not feel like a Suikoden game in terms of either gameplay or story. Things are a lot more light and fun. Not a bad thing, but you really should go in knowing what to expect, I do think it's likely the next game will be the one that tries to catch the feel, but this is just a light-hearted adventure that sets up a lot of elements you will see come back later.
The gameplay is also pretty basic, but well done. You eventually get three characters, and you swap between them with three different attack buttons. It takes a moment to get used to as if you hit the wrong button to attack you end up switching characters, and unless you are stringing together a Link attack (Which has a cooldown) the attack doesn't happen instantly. It takes a little bit to get used to, but once you do it handles well. Beyond the link attacks, the whole thing is really basic. It's all about simple side-scrolling action, and it's handled well enough to be fun. Each character has enough going for them to make them fun to play. Again, nothing done is all that unique, but it's enough for what the game is wanting to do.
The main issue is how often you re-tread ground to finish all the quests you can take on. You will be constantly going back through the same areas and grinding out materials, and while a few spots have chances to give you differing encounters, it can start to feel like a drag pretty quickly. You easily could have cut a lot of that and not lost out on anything. The second time fighting a boss often will have some additional tweak added in, but it's not enough to kill the feeling of wasting time entirely.
I do think the price is important when talking about a game, and it really will affect my rating. What we have here is a game that is fifteen dollars, and tells you it's a prequel to a game that isn't released yet. So considering the price point you do get your money's worth, easy. And I'm not upset that there are some plot threads not tied, because they are going to lead into the next game, one we know is getting developed and made. If you are interested in a new Suikoden-style RPG from its original dev team, this game is worth picking up. If you have no interest in that, however, I don't know if you would care much to pick this one up.
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Indeed, Rising may not be for people who have no interest in the Suikoden/Eiyuden RPG game. I mostly see it as an appetizer, meant to distract fans while they wait 😅