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Plenty of recent video games have tried to recapture the nostalgic retro vibes of early 1990s RPGs. And some are extra profitable than others.
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes, out now, is a non secular successor to the favored Suikoden collection. After all, the sport was developed by Rabbit & Bear, a studio composed of earlier Konami workers who labored on the Suikoden video games. With the collection having been dormant with none new entries since 2012, it was Hundred Heroes’ time to shine. It sports activities a superb story and unbelievable worldbuilding, together with a pixel artwork route that invokes these emotions of nostalgia.
But with these strengths come some ’90s baggage. Its high quality of life is missing, with aggravating useful resource administration, stingy therapeutic choices, and a glut of drained random encounters. Those points harm my playthrough, which I stated was trustworthy to a fault in my assessment earlier this week. Hundred Heroes had the right alternative to carry the spirit of Suikoden to the fashionable age, but it surely as an alternative exhibits the pitfalls of sticking too near outdated sport design. The finest retro revivals seize nostalgia whereas nonetheless pushing sport design ahead. And there’s no higher counterpoint to Hundred Heroes than final 12 months’s triumphant Sea of Stars.
Moving retro ahead
At a look, Sea of Stars appears to be like prefer it was pulled straight from the SNES period. It’s painted in trustworthy pixel artwork that doesn’t look that far off from Chrono Trigger. The extra you dig into its gameplay, although, the extra it differs from that sport. It doesn’t have random enemy encounters; foes wander the display screen and rush at gamers to provoke battles. While enemies are fairly quick and can rapidly chase you down in the event that they spot you, a minimum of I do know when to anticipate a battle. In Hundred Heroes, I used to be praying that I wouldn’t set off a battle once I was backtracking to an inn to revive my social gathering’s well being. It’s the sort of old-school design philosophy that video video games have grown previous for the higher.
Sea of Stars does share some outdated design quirks with Hundred Heroes. Save factors don’t restore HP and MP within the former, simply the identical because the latter. The large distinction in Sea of Stars is that there’s often a campsite inside shut proximity that can be utilized to revive stats. In Hundred Heroes, you’re usually thrown into consecutive battles of as much as 4 with no alternatives to heal in between. Some Sea of Stars bosses will really absolutely heal your social gathering up earlier than you combat them. I want the bosses in Hundred Heroes had been that good to me.
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Little particulars like that, or the shortage of them, add up. MP restoration is uncommon in Hundred Heroes, so I at all times really feel discouraged from utilizing any of my magical characters. There was no level in casting highly effective spells when my warriors may inflict extra injury than my mages. While I used to be in a position to purchase loads of therapeutic potions from outlets in preparation for lengthy dungeons and large battles, I wasn’t capable of finding MP-restoring ones in any shops. I solely obtained a couple of of them as merchandise drops from profitable battles.
It’s a design choice which may have been widespread in ’90s RPGs, however Sea of Stars’ extra artistic strategy exhibits the refined energy of innovation. In that sport, MP may be regained from attacking enemies with bodily strikes. It virtually looks like an concept born extra out of Doom (2016), the place gamers can solely heal by happening the offensive. This system provides a layer of technique to turn-based battles, the place I’d continuously swap between regular and MP-consuming assaults with a purpose to hit correct enemy weaknesses.
Accessibility calls for modifications
It’s not simply that these concepts make Sea of Stars really feel smoother to play with out sacrificing its retro vibe. Their largest boon is the accessibility and approachability they carry to a style that lacked these options within the 1990s. Relics, which may be discovered all through the sport, act as equipable accessibility choices that allow gamers tailor the gameplay to their wants. They may be toggled on and off at any time. For instance, the Amulet of Storytelling supplies 100% auto heal after fight, and the Guardian Aura reduces all incoming injury by 30%.
Some relics even make the sport more durable. The Dubious Dare will increase injury taken by 40%. These sorts of choices weren’t current in older RPGs, however their inclusion in Sea of Stars helps it attain out to larger audiences. Hundred Heroes has some modifiers of its personal, however all of them exist solely to make the sport more difficult, like not permitting therapeutic objects to be consumed throughout battle. Now that I’m older with grownup obligations, comfort is a a lot greater issue than once I was youthful.
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Players who grew up with these video games within the ’90s could also be in search of these nostalgic experiences, however that doesn’t imply that they’ll’t be modernized. In an interview with NPR, artistic director Thierry Boulanger stated that he didn’t need to replicate what made some retro video games irritating.
“If the audience were to go back and actually replay those games, they might think less fondly of them,” Boulanger defined. “The idea for Sea of Stars was to remove that tedium and get players to feel like they’re moving forward, all the time.”
With Konami planning to launch remasters of the primary two Suikoden video games in a single bundle quickly, the studio revealed that it’ll include new high quality of life options, together with the power to fast-forward battles. Ironically, Hundred Heroes doesn’t even have that characteristic, which is a disgrace. Perhaps Rabbit & Bear may replace Hundred Heroes by means of patches and embody some extra high quality of life options, however these is likely to be extra doubtless for a sequel (the studio has confirmed that it’s aiming to launch a follow-up). If you possibly can’t wait that lengthy, Sea of Stars provides you with that nostalgic retro repair with out the frustration.
Sea of Stars and Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes can be found on PC, PlayStation 4, PS5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. They’re additionally obtainable on Xbox Game Pass.
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