I could just say this game sucked, leave my review and move on, but there is much, much more to say

For those of you who don't know this game is touted as the spiritual successor of the Suikoden series. The studio who created this game is made up of several former suikoden developers including the creator, Yoshitaka Murayama. Since the actual Suikoden name is under Konami; they can only make an inspired game instead. Many fans of the Suikoden series backed this game on Kickstarter making it the 3rd most funded game in its history after Bloodstained and Shenmue 3

I played Suikoden 2 on release in 1998 and until today it is on my holy grail all time top 15 games ever. What I experienced in this game is a catastrophic disaster of unimaginable proportions and possibly the most disappointing gaming experience of my entire life

Let's start surface level; this game is kindergarten levels of corny. Suikoden is 27~ years old, it was mature and shocking. Your sister dies in your arms, there's a side story with Pilika a cheerful little kid who goes mute from the trauma of seeing people butchered in front of her (you see them die), your best friend betrays you for what seems like no reason, etc. I have aged 27 years and so have the devs, but somehow the targeted audience is much younger. Why are we playing a more G rated Nickelodeon game? How many people actually die in this entire game on screen? Like 3 and all uneventful?

The character models are all stiff. Once again Suikoden is from the 90s and the 2D animations were top notch, certain characters were animated in unique ways for unique situations, jumping fighting arguing and so on. This game is 2D as well and many times you have a bunch of characters on screen standing like cardboard cutouts. Now you might say " oh Konami had AAA money to animate and this studio is a small indie studio!" Dude.... We are going on 30 years into the future, we have games with graphic fidelity beyond the wildest 90s imaginations now, and Eiyuden chronicles is in the 90s style, you can't flesh out these animations for your game despite coming from the background of the originals? Unacceptable

Now for the most fatal sin of Eiyuden Chronicles, the writing. Oh my god the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ writing. This dialogue will give you cancer. This writing will give you Dysentery. You will die from cringe. You will kneel in front of your screen and commit seppuku from these insufferable morons yapping on and on in millennial writing but voiced over. I had physical manifestations in real life of cringe death ranging from shaking my head with my eyes closed to burying my head in a pillow. What were they thinking? We know japanese to English translations have had a history of being wonky (you spoony bard!) that is so minor, that is not the problem here. This is so much worse. This is like the final script was given to a freak reddit/discord mod to turn it into hip, cool and relatable English. There is detectable slime here from a indecipherable source, possibly Hell. I can't even tell who is guilty, the voice actors or the director who told the voice actors to dial it up to 11/10 full ♥♥♥♥♥♥. I guarantee you you cannot sit through this dialogue without your psyche being attacked. Whoever allowed this needs to not touch games again ever, and this mortal wound is what sunk this entire game. I don't know the forensics of if the Japanese version is just as bad, or I am right and some western outsourcing is responsible for this brutalization but the end result stands, an irredeemable offense to the senses

Let's not get into how about 1/5th of your "100 heroes" is the same person. A female zaney manic pixie girl look-at-me I'm so perfect/cute/smart/amazing :DDD along with chalkboard screeching voice actor to come with it. CJ Lian Momo Leene Carrie the list goes on it's all the same annoying person, another percentage of your 100 heroes are entirely forgettable, do you remember Galladur? Me neither I had to look him up. This was not the case for Suikoden

And finally on top of all of this we have a serious speculation to end on

Yoshitaka Murayama is deceased, he died I presume during the development of this game. Did he know his final game had this terrible writing? Was he satisfied with this? Was he even around to be asked? What did he work on exactly? Suikoden didn't have bad writing like this. I find it an absolute tragedy this great developer has his name tied to this awful game for his final work, his influence can be seen in it with the castle building and many recruitable characters, but it's all blueprint/scaffolding level, the actual flesh of the game is rotten. I find the truly horrifying chapter of this game to be that the creator is not here to be able to defend himself or even distance himself from the final release.

I will repeat that this is the most disappointing gaming experience in possibly my whole life, on the level of the new Star Wars laying waste to the original trilogy. I have cancelled any plans to play the DLC and I've changed my review from the Rising prequel now that I see where it all led.

The only positive I can add to this review is avoid this game and play the Suikoden remastered instead, it's on Steam now.

RIP