Suikoden may just be one of the most underrated Japanese Role-Playing Game series on the first two Playstation consoles.
Suikoden 2 especially has received critical acclaim from fans and critics. In fact, before its introduction into the Playstation store, prices for some copies reportedly reached over USD100.
If you haven't heard of Suikoden though, it might not be that much of a surprise. The main series stopped at Suikoden 5 for the Playstation 2 when it was released in 2006.
That's right, nearly 15 years.
Now the director and writer for the first two iterations of Suikoden, Yoshitaka Murayama, has teamed up with various other Suikoden alumni to come up with a "spiritual successor" to the Suikoden series, Eiyudin Chronicle.
One reason for the new series was that creators needed to own the intellectual property of the game itself to make the best game possible for their fans, which is perhaps why we might never get a Suikoden 6.
But moving on.
Here it is.
Here is a very quick gameplay teaser of Eiyudin Chronicle.
Longtime fans of the series might spot some similarities between the artwork of other Suikoden games. That might be due to Junko Kawano's influence, the lead artist of Suikoden 1 and 4.
And yes, runes will be part of the battle system in some way.
Check out some of the footage available.
The music.
Some of the initial character designs.
Here are the presumed main characters.
Perhaps it's nostalgia, but the two do have a bit of the Riou, Joey dynamic and colour scheme.
While details for the game are still being revealed, one very important aspect of the game has been confirmed.
Which harkens back to the good old Suikoden cat-catching recruitment drives.
Kickstarter
Which brings us to their Kickstarter.
Here's why they did it.
Here is their Kickstarter trailer.
Their goal was to hit US$500,000 in 30 days, and a stretch goal of a million to bring the game over to various platforms, including PS5.
While Suikoden has immense lore and a cult status both in Japan and overseas, there were some fears that a kickstarter campaign might not be the most successful thing ever.
Murayama had opined that perhaps other failed kickstarter projects might have taken the shine off backing a game from scratch. And also as earlier mentioned, it has also been nearly 15 years since Suikoden 5 came out.
There was no need to worry too much though, as they hit their 30-day goal a bit earlier than anticipated, two hours into the Kickstarter, they had accrued enough to hit their initial target of US$500,000.
But that's not the end of it.
In a stretch goal, they had offered the chance of the game being made for different consoles such as PS5, instead of just the current PC game.
Here are the funds raised at the time of writing.
Which means a potential console appearance, but, more importantly it also means this.
Yayyyy.
Image from Eiyudin Chronicle Kickstarter and Steam community page