CJ on the left, Isha on the right, and a Cast of Snowflakes behind them
Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising is an Action RPG, developed by Natsume Atari and published by 505 Games. The game was originally planned as a spin-off to Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes, a game funded on Kickstarter that's headlined by the original writer of Suikoden, but Rising was released for PC and consoles first, on May 10, 2022.Drawn by the legends of treasures in the area known as Runebarrows, an aspiring treasure hunter named CJ learns that it has recently been struck by natural disasters. CJ decides to help while searching for a Lens big enough to make her parents proud, making strange allies and rebuilding a town along the way.
Tropes:
- 2½D: Action and exploration take place on a two-dimensional plane with three-dimensional environments.
- Advanced Ancient Acropolis: The Runebarrows are the remnants of an ancient civilization with understanding and control of magic beyond that of modern society.
- Ambidextrous Sprite: Garoo have a slightly odd case. Which hand carrying his sword while walking in dungeon is dependent on the direction he is heading, but his eyepatch remain on his right eye no matter what.
- Anti-Frustration Features:
- Gathering rare upgrade items can be tedious, as some are rare drops off enemies or gathering nodes while others are only dropped by bosses. In addition to accessories which boost drops rates, the Trading Post allows players to exchange lower tier items for higher tier ones.
- Meals, potions, and accessories are crafted by collecting specific ingredients from around the game world. However this is only necessary the first time; afterward you can either craft it again or pay a larger amount of money to skip the item requirements.
- Artistic License – Geology: One of the collectible items used for upgrades is ore - bronze, silver and gold, as well as generic "ore". There is no such thing as bronze ore, as bronze is an alloy of copper and tin rather than a naturally occurring metal.
- Attack Its Weak Point: Three of the bosses have weak points they will only expose for a brief period of time; attacking at other times will cause significantly less damage.
- BFS: Garoo's weapon of choice is a broadsword almost as long as he is tall, and he's the tallest member of the main trio.
- Bag of Holding:
- Garoo has a magical pouch he wears over his stomach which he uses to sheath his sword. Despite it's massive size, it completely disappears on being placed inside.
- The Resource Bag and Stowpack hold collected resources and potions, respectively. They can hold a significant amount each, and later in the game they can be upgraded to hold even more.
- Bittersweet Ending: The party saves New Naveah from the Sorcerer and CJ completes her rite of passage, but Isha's father is dead and she has yet to find a cure for her terminal condition while Garoo's daughter is terminally ill as well.
- Blessed with Suck: Isha has the Barrow's Blessing, which allows her to use magic without Rune-Lenses. It turns out that the Blessing was actually a curse that put a raw Lens inside her body, which will consume it in time. Everybody with the Blessing before her died young.
- Bragging Rights Reward: The Eternal Bonds item allows you to perform infinite Link Attacks, but it requires 160 stamps. Doing every quest as they appear will still leave players about 30 short when the main story ends, so this is only available in the post-game. By that point the party will be strong enough that only mini-bosses and two of the bosses won't die to a standard Link attack.
- To be fair though, it does help to get the achievements where you have to beat the bosses on hard difficulty.
- Broken Bridge: Several events during the story lock any further progression into the Barrows until a few additional quests have been completed, as with the Volcano entry below.
- Charged Attack: Garoo can charge his attack for a more powerful swing with a limited area blast while Isha can combine her attack charges into a single, more powerful attack based on her rune element.
- Chekhov's Volcano: Snowpeak, the mountain where much of the Runebarrows were built, is actually an active volcano. It erupts late in the game, temporarily derailing the plot as you have to wait for the activity to settle before returning to the ruins.
- Combination Attack: While the player can only control one at a time, the game's three protagonists are able to swap into combat at any time and chain their skills together to perform Link Attacks.
- Dead All Along:
- The Sorcerer said to be sealed in the ruins is revealed to have been killed long ago. Unfortunately his soul was still around.
- Isha's father died before the game started. His appearances in-game are the result of the sorcerer's soul puppeting his body.
- Disappeared Dad: Isha's motivation for joining the adventure, unlike CJ's hunt for treasure or Garoo's contract work, is to solve the mystery of her missing father.
- Do Not Call Me "Paul": In the ending, it's revealed that CJ's name is short for Crown Jewel, which goes back to her family tradition of naming kids with treasure-related namesnote . She's really embarrassed by the name, much to Isha's glee.
- Elemental Powers: By infusing elemental runes into mystic items called Lenses, the party can wield the elements of Earth, Ice, Lightning, and Fire, each of which will change their attacks' properties and can affect enemies differently.
- Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Each of the four elements takes less damage from, and inflicts more damage to, monsters of a particular element. Earth beats ice, ice beats fire, fire beats lightning, and lightning beats earth.
- Energy Ball: Isha has a limited number of attack charges represented by a series of silver orbs that float around her, disappearing as she attacks before recharging.
- Eyepatch of Power: Garoo's right eye is covered by multiple black straps due to an injury while working as a mercenary.
- False Flag Operation: The Lens bandits are eventually revealed to be disguised Empire agents who are trying to avoid being identified.
- Fantasy Metals: Mithril and Orichalcum exist in-game but can only be found in limited quantities in the deepest parts of the Runebarrows.
- Fetch Quest: Most of the quests are this. Thankfully, Hogan runs a Trading Post that can be perused to trade for common monster drops so that the party doesn't have to go back and forth between dungeons that much.
- Fighter, Mage, Thief: Each member of the Power Trio corresponds with one of these roles: Garoo the Mercenary wields a massive broadsword capable of cleaving through boulders, Isha the Mage wields magic that can target distant foes or hit an area around her, and CJ the Treasure Hunter is capable of quick slices and dashing behind enemies.
- Fire-Forged Friendship: CJ, Garoo, and Isha joined up as a team due to necessity, but through the course of their adventures became genuine friends.
- Follow in My Footsteps: CJ is the youngest member of a family that's worked as scavengers for generations.
- Foreshadowing:
- For a gruff mercenary, Garoo can handle kids and little girls well. It turns out that he has a dying little daughter, and he's working as mercenary for money to help her live the rest of her life comfortably.
- The Lens bandits seem to know more about the Barrows than anyone else and are also unusually well-supplied and -geared. They're actually agents of the neighboring Empire who are after the Primal Lens.
- Taking side quests from the Lens Crafter has him theorize that the source of Isha's magic is a strange forcefield being generated beneath New Naveah. The field is the ritual spell created by the Sorcerer to induce the growth of Lenses in the people of Old Naveah. It's been functioning ever since, creating the Barrow's Blessing.
- Friendless Background: Isha's blue hair made her an outcast among the village children, only made worse by her need to hide her ability with magic. As a result she never had any friends growing up.
- Funny Animal: The world of Eiyuden Chronicle has these intermingling with humans. This game's most notable example is Garoo, one of the main three protagonists, who is a fully-dressed kangaroo.
- Hailfire Peaks: Snowpeak's summit is shrouded in perpetual snow, but it's also an active volcano. The volcanic region temporarily expands at one point, with lava flows passing through previously snow-covered areas.
- Head-in-the-Sand Management: The local margrave has refused to supply any funds or supplies to rebuild New Naveah after the quake and has little interest in exploting the Runebarrows despite the potential fortune within. An Empire noble likely threatened the margrave to ignore the situation, allowing the Empire to infiltrate.
- Hero Does Public Service: Isha requires adventurers to either pay an exorbitant license fee or perform a lot of public service around the village to fill up a stamp card. CJ, being flat broke, ends up working a card and starts to really enjoy gathering stamps.
- Hidden in Plain Sight: The deeper parts of the Barrows are accessed via teleportation menhirs. After finding a dead end, the party regroups to try and work out where the last menhir could be. It turns out the clock tower in the middle of town used the menhir as part of its foundation.
- Hot Springs Episode: No fanservice, but after the volcano erupts at the end of chapter 23, adventuring is put on pause for two chapters while you build a hot springs resort.
- Human Resources: The sorcerer used the people of Old Naveah to create Lenses with his ritual. They retaliated and killed him at the cost of their own lives. After escaping his prison, the sorcerer intended to repeat this with New Naveah.
- Insistent Terminology:
- When Garoo first meets CJ and compares her to a scavenging rat, CJ insists that she's a Treasure Hunter, and also that she's not dumb because she was potty trained at only one and a half years old.
- The elders created the term Barrow's Blessing because they didn't want to say its victims were cursed.
- Grand Theft Me: Isha's father is possessed by the long-dead sorcerer of the Barrows.
- Grumpy Old Man: Village elder Shiva constantly complains about everything, second-guesses any ideas, and is completely opposed to having any outlanders in the village. He changes his tune when he actually ends up in the Runebarrows, excitedly looking around and shyly asking if he's one of CJ's friends.
- A Lizard Named "Liz": Garoo is a talking Kangaroo. Take a guess as to where his name comes from. His daughter is Allaby, one letter off from wallaby.
- Lost Technology: The Barrows are the remnants of an advanced magical society which collapsed in the distant past. While CJ and other adventurers are mainly looking for treasure to sell, many townsfolk are interested in learning more about the magic to try and recreate it.
- Magical Girl: Mellorie is a self-proclaimed magical girl with an outfit and hairstyle to match. She backs up this claim with pink, heart-shaped spells capable of blastting holes in fortified barricades.
- Mighty Glacier: Garoo moves and jumps more sluggishly than the other characters, and he has the lowest number of hits per combo, but he hits hard with his broadsword.
- The Mole: Garoo is actually working for the Empire in return for a cure for his terminally ill daughter. However, he turns against the Empire because he isn't willing to sacrifice Isha, who is suffering from a terminal condition just like his daughter.
- Mutual Kill: The people of Old Naveah attacked the Sorcerer after realizing what he had done to them. The Sorcerer killed all but one of them, who used the last of his strength to kill the Sorcerer and seal his soul.
- Numerical Hard: Completing the game unlocks Hard Mode which just boosts the level of all enemies. While the player character have a level 50 cap, Hard mode enemies can scale into the 70s, ensuring they remain a threat.
- Old Save Bonus: One of the game's selling points is that there are perks for linking the game with Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes, including what gear CJ, Isha and Garoo start with in Hundred Heroes.
- Parental Abandonment: A child reveals her father was a quarry worker, but after the quake stopped all mining he turned to mercenary work and left town, telling her to stay here. Until CJ stumbles hears her story, nobody in town knew she was effectively an orphan.
- Point of No Return: Using the menhir hidden in the clock tower kicks off the end of the game, and you will not be able to fast travel anywhere or return to town until everything is over.
- Power Dyes Your Hair: Isha is the only known person capable of using magic naturally without a Lens and also has unnaturally blue hair. The hair color is a side effect of the sorcerer's spell which caused a Lens to grow inside Isha's body, which she instinctively uses to cast magic.
- Powerful Pick: CJ's weapons are a pair of pickaxes.
- Power Trio: The game has three main protagonists, who work together in order to hunt treasures and uncover Runebarrows' mysteries: CJ, Garoo, and Isha.
- Ragnarök Proofing: The Runebarrows have suffered heavy structural damage, though whether this is due to age or the recent quake is not clear. However most of the mechanisms inside, such as magitek holograms and the teleportations menhirs, remain intact and functional. As does the Sorcerer's spell, whose Lens-creating ritual circle has been constantly generating a field over New Naveah since his death.
- Reasonable Authority Figure:
- Isha's father was a reasonable mayor dedicated to his town, and his daughter is doing the best she can to follow in his footsteps.
- Gocteau is very focused on profit but is also heavily invested in keeping the town happy. He is typically coming up with compromises to conflicts, listening to issues the villagers have, and acknowledges that CJ is responsible for the town's upkeep.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: CJ is the Red Oni, an energetic go-getter focused on physical combat wearing a set of red hot pants. Isha is the Blue Oni, a calm and level-headed planner characterized by her blue hair.
- Rite of Passage: CJ's family has a tradition that at fifteen, each child of the family has to go adventuring and not come back until they find a treasure more impressive than what the previous generation found. Since CJ's dad has an enormous Lens, she has a big job ahead of her. It later turns out that her father's Lens is an heirloom forgery, and the real treasure he found was CJ's mother. Similarly, the treasure CJ decides on is the town she helped rebuild.
- Running Gag: People calling Isha "rapacious" for her rather cutthroat business practices and her getting offended, resulting in a Verbal Backspace by the other character.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: According to legend, an evil Sorcerer is sealed in the Runebarrows. The elders wanted to seal the ruins for fear of him returning to curse the land. The people of Old Naveah had killed the Sorcerer and sealed his soul in a vessel, but the earthquake which opened the ruins also destroyed the vessel, freeing him.
- Sequel Hook: The ending leaves a few plot threads to be resolved in "Hundred Heroes": The political tensions between the League of Nations and the Empire, the search for a cure to Isha's conditions, and the objectives of the "Mighty Dux" commanding the lens bandits.
- Shop Fodder: The vast majority of items in the game have some use in upgrades, cooking, crafting, and quests. Only a handful have no use aside from being sold to vendors, with their description explicitly noting they're only valuable to collectors or scholars.
- So Proud of You: CJ's father sends her a letter in the epilogue stating how proud he is that she discovered her own "treasure" in the people of New Naveah and that she can come home any time she wants.
- Taxman Takes the Winnings: In addition to charging adventurers an exorbitant entry fee for the Runebarrows, Isha also charges thirty percent tax on any treasure retrieved, and at one point, as a condition of joining your party, she charges your party in particular a sixty percent tax (though she eventually relents and brings it down to thirty percent).
- Tennis Boss: Garoo has the ability to bounce back certain enemy projectiles. The second and fourth boss almost require this as it stuns the boss, allowing for a Link attack, and in the second boss's case expose a weak point.
- The Main Characters Do Everything: While there are various other adventurers in the town, they rarely are seen making any progress. CJ is entirely responsible for the town's various improvements, better reputation, and stimulated economy.
- Tomboy and Girly Girl: CJ is a rough and tumble tomboy while Isha is a very reserved lady who is often flustered by CJ's antics.
- Town with a Dark Secret: New Naveah's elders and mayor have hidden the existence of the Barrow's Blessing, where once every generation a child is born with blue hair and the ability to use magic only to die before reaching adulthood.
- Underground Monkey: There are four elemental versions of Gargoyles, Cotton Flies, Slimes, and Sorcerers. Hellhounds and Yetis have two elemental versions.
- Unexpected Successor: Isha is the daughter of New Naveah's mayor, but when he is lost in the Barrows she's forced to take over for him.
- Worthless Treasure Twist: CJ needs to acquire the humongous Lens from the Runebarrows in order to beat her father's own massive Lens. The Runebarrows Lens actually does exist, but she's forced to destroy it. When CJ sends a letter to her father explaining this, he reveals the Lens he showed her was actually a fake. The entire point of the family's rite of passage is for the children to discover what they value most.
