Suikoden spiritual successor Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes, by Yoshitaka Murayama’s new studio Rabbit & Bear Studios and publisher 505 Games, had an appearance on the Microsoft + Bethesda 2021 showcase.
The upcoming JRPG, with a target release window of 2023, is looking gorgeous so far. You can see the mix of detailed 2D character sprites layered on top of a 3D world, which seems to be in vogue these days.
Not only that, the trailer also revealed a new companion game. Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising will be released first ahead of Hundred Heroes, and serves as a companion game.
Rising is set in the same world but tells the pre-war tales of the cast of characters you will meet later in Hundred Heroes. Instead of a turn-based JRPG, Rising will be an action RPG with “town-building mechanics and 2.5D platforming”.
“We’ve been working hard on the Eiyuden Chronicle franchise and love to see the amazing reactions from fans following our trailer at the Microsoft E3 event,” said Murayama. “We’re telling a rich story with the Eiyuden Chronicle franchise, so much so that we couldn’t possibly tell it all within the confines of a single game.”
Having a companion game of a different genre released to hype up the main game that was originally a Kickstarter project to make a spiritual successor game by a veteran and respected game developer sounds very familiar. 505 Games did the same thing for Bloodstained.
Wait, didn’t we pointed that out before?
Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising is targeting a 2022 release whilst the main game, Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes will be out in 2023. Both games will be coming to Xbox Game Pass on launch.