Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising Review

Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising is a great action RPG without missable achievements that also doesn’t overstay its welcome with around 18h to completion. It has a lot of fetch quests, which isn’t a bad thing, but good to know before you get it. Very enjoyable game!

Approximate amount of time to 100%: 18h
Estimated achievement difficulty: 2/10
Minimum number of playthroughs needed: 1
Is there a good guide available: Yes, but you won’t need a guide
Multiplayer achievements: No
Missable achievements: No
Grinding Achievements: Yes, getting to the max level is a little bit of a grind
DLC-Only achievements: No
Speedrun achievements: No
Time-gated achievements: No
RNG-achievements: No
Does difficulty affect achievements: Yes, but it only matters for a few achievements you have to do after completing the game, and by that time you can switch freely between normal and hard difficulty
Unobtainable/glitched achievements: No

Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising reminds me so much of Suikoden Tierkreis (The only Suikoden game I have played) and The Atelier series on the Playstation 2 (Haven’t had the opportunity to play any one of the later releases). That it reminds me of a Suikoden game isn’t surprising as both are made by the same creator “Yoshitaka Murayama”. I believe there are no ties with the Atelier series, but the structure of the game with many fetch quests reminded me of those games.

Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising is a great action RPG. It is a prequel to the upcoming “Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes”. As already stated above, it is important to know that the game has a lot of fetch quests, but that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Most of the time the main story takes you to the same area as the sidequests and if you have to go back to an earlier dungeon, it isn’t too much work because you’re higher level and also because it has an easy-to-access waypoint system using signposts to warp around between different spots in the dungeons.

One of the main things you’ll do in this game is collect stamps. You get them by completing quests. It is funny how one of the party members makes fun of the main character collecting stamps, but on the other hand, it felt like a nice progression bar for doing so many quests. It is crazy, but it also works good for how my brain works that loves progression bars ( achievements are kinda like progress bars :P)

You’ll start with one party member and very soon a second one will join. A bit later in the story, a third one will join. The game offers you the option between two different playstyles, one where you just smash the attack button and the game cycles between the characters, which is called the simple mode, or one where you have a different button for each character. While the simple mode worked at first, I found it more frustrating later on as you want to use specific attacks for specific enemies, and having to first switch characters and then attack felt a bit more annoying than just pressing the button for the character you want to use. Gameplay wise I didn’t like the attacks of the second party member as much as the third of the first one, but it is very useful against enemy shields. This is a personal preference, I just liked the standard attack of the third party member a lot, which is a ranged character.

Achievement-wise this game is great. It has no missable achievements, which I wish so many more RPGs would do as it makes playing them without worrying about the achievements so much better. It also doesn’t have any hardcore achievements, as the achievements for defeating the bosses on the hard difficulty are easily done after upgrading your characters to the max before beating them. Getting your gear to the max level might be a bit of a hassle but is very doable, and to make things easier there are websites online that list where to find which resource easily. I would recommend only going to grind for the max level after you have unlocked the achievement for having max gear, as working on that already will give you a ton of experience.

While nothing is missable, it is much easier to keep resources you find for quests and upgrades than to sell them. There are a few resources that can be sold without a problem, as they are meant to be sold and give a lot of money. They are always at the bottom of the list when in the pawnshop and those items are: Rare Stone, Monster Fossil, Ancient Scrap, Ancient Currency, Ancient Trinket, and Ancient Sculpture.

This review for Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising was written on 12 September 2022, based on the current Xbox version of the game which has 50 achievements at the time of writing this review. This information can be outdated, for example, when the developer adds or removes achievements or releases (new) DLC.