Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising Review Summary

Beautiful visuals, enjoyable core gameplay, and an engaging story are undermined by a repetitive loop, too many fetch quests, and overly simplistic, easy gameplay.

Beautiful Graphics and Visuals: The game's graphics are frequently praised as beautiful, gorgeous, and high quality. The animation and visual presentation consistently impress players.

Core Gameplay Is Enjoyable: Players consistently describe the game as fun, enjoyable, and fundamentally good despite some flaws. The core gameplay loop is widely praised as entertaining and worth playing.

Interesting and Engaging Story: The story is described as interesting, cool, and mysterious with funny dialogues. It keeps players engaged and motivated to follow the narrative.

Likable and Charismatic Characters: Characters are praised for being fun, charismatic, and full of personality. Their uniqueness and charm enhance the overall experience.

Satisfying Combat System: Combat is described as satisfying, fun, and fair with an excellent feel. The system is simple yet enjoyable, offering a pleasant challenge.

Repetitive gameplay loop: Many players find the core gameplay loop becomes repetitive and dull quickly, with little variation in tasks and escalating tedium.

Overabundance of fetch quests: The game is saturated with fetch quests, both in main story and side content, which are seen as tedious and meaningless.

Simplistic and easy gameplay: Combat and overall gameplay lack depth and challenge, often feeling too basic and easy.

Bland and forgettable story: The narrative is often described as bland, predictable, and unengaging, failing to captivate players.

Short main story padded with side content: The main story is very short, and the game's length is artificially extended by excessive, repetitive side quests.

Fetch quest heavy gameplay: Both main and side quests often involve fetching materials, delivering messages, or finding people, making fetch quests a core and repetitive part of the experience.

Town building through quests: Town development is a major mechanic where completing quests for townspeople gathers resources and stamps to build and improve the town, unlocking facilities.

Side-scrolling action combat: Combat is side-scrolling action with combo-based attacks, character switching, and a sense of speed, often described as hack-and-slash or beat 'em up style.

Three playable characters: Players control three unique characters (CJ, Garoo, and Isha) that can be switched during combat for combos and juggling enemies.

Side-scrolling perspective: The game is presented as a side-scroller with 2D or 2.5D visuals, combining platforming and dungeon exploration.

Strong Steam Deck performance: Multiple reviewers report the game runs at a consistent 60 fps on Steam Deck with high or maximum settings, with only occasional dips below 60. One notes it runs fine on a handheld running Steam OS.

Stable and crash-free: Reviewers experienced no crashes or freezes across Windows 11, CachyOS, and Steam Deck. Compatibility is solid on these platforms.

Occasional frame rate dips: A couple of areas show occasional frame rate dips, and the forest area is notably taxing on hardware. GPU load varies by location, which can cause instability at higher fps.

Runs on low-spec hardware: The game runs on very low-spec, potato-tier PC hardware. On a desktop PC it also ran at a locked frame rate matching the monitor's refresh rate.

Unity engine heat and fan noise: The Unity engine causes the GPU to run hot and fans to spin loudly despite stable framerates. This is a notable hardware-related drawback.

Buy only on sale: Many reviewers agree the game is not worth full price but becomes worthwhile at a discount. Multiple clusters emphasize waiting for a sale or deep discount before purchasing.

Not recommended overall: A significant portion of feedback outright does not recommend the game, even to those with free time. These reviewers suggest spending time on other games instead.

Strongly recommended by some: A vocal group of reviewers highly recommends the game, calling it wonderful and a favorite. They wholeheartedly endorse it without reservations.

Avoid if dislike fetch quests: Reviewers warn that the game contains over 100 fetch quests and is not suitable for players who cannot tolerate them. Many will quit within the first hour.

Good for action RPG fans: The game is recommended for fans of action RPGs and those seeking a light action RPG experience. It also suits players who are not skilled at Soulslike games.

Community fair range: $4.99 - $9.99.

Game completion: 20.0h.

Story completion: 6.0h.

Session length: 0.5h.

Endgame: 5.0h.

Players often must push through repetitive fetch quests, grinding, backtracking, and a slow opening before the game opens up and town/battle progression start to pay off. Many others find the repetition too persistent to enjoy.

Reported time to anchor: 7h.

Checklist Completionist Grinder: Repeats dungeons and fetch quests deliberately, optimizes money and EXP grind spots, hunts achievements and full completion. Motivation: The endorphin payoff of finishing tasks, filling checklists, and reaching 100% completion. Stance: buy.

Eiyuden Lore Devotee: Story- and lore-driven play, completing the prequel as preparation before moving on to the main title. Motivation: Getting to know the world, characters, and backstory that lead into the main game and its spiritual predecessors. Stance: buy.

Casual Breeze Seeker: Short casual sessions, low mental effort, ignores or skips optional side content, waits for discounts. Motivation: Relaxation and killing time with something easy and undemanding. Stance: sale.

Steam Deck: The reviews overwhelmingly indicate that the game runs well on Steam Deck with no crashes or compatibility problems. Only minor issues appear: a missing 16:10 display option and a speculative controller workaround involving a Proton version swap. No frequent crashes, unreadable UI, anti-cheat failures, external launcher problems, or required tinkering are confirmed.

Linux and Proton: The filtered reviews are overwhelmingly positive for Linux, SteamOS, and Steam Deck compatibility. Users report no crashes or compatibility issues on CachyOS, SteamOS, and Steam Deck, and several describe the game as running very well. The only Proton-related concern is a speculative controller workaround comment, with no confirmed launch, performance, or stability failure described.

Prequel to Hundred Heroes: Multiple clusters note that the game serves as a prequel or companion to Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes, setting up its world and story. It is described as an introduction that can be played in any order.

Short playtime around 10-20 hours: Many reviewers report the main story takes roughly 5-15 hours, with side content extending playtime to around 15-20 hours. A few mention up to 40 hours for full completion, but most agree it is a short experience.

Standalone story with ties to main game: The story is self-contained but includes references and connections to Hundred Heroes, providing background and world-building. Some note it has little direct connection but still teases the larger universe.

Not difficult or complex: The game is described as not difficult and light/simple, making it accessible and easy to play.

Decent start for Hundred Heroes: Some reviewers see the game as a decent start or strong foreshadowing for Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes, succeeding in its goals better than that game.