cashew | Time Mine Finished (not yet 100%) (Reply)

Finally, after over a week of dedicated mining, I've finished the story portion of the Time Mine sidequest. As a reward, I've finally unlocked "Twiggy", the Good Macky. (You get to choose its name from a list of fairly meh options, including the likes of "Meat", "Bababone", "Julion", and "Dusty Collin". I'm saddened the "Stumpy" option wasn't available, so Twiggy it is.)

Look at how cute he is! He's also a 4-star unit, so he's basically useless doing anything other than acting as the team mascot (*Varuo hissing noises*).

I originally wasn't going to go after Good Macky, but the quest line leading up to the character was so cute that I said, "EFF it. I'm going after this adorable tree stump monster. OMG, it's winking at me and trying to ply me with flattery. This is hilarious. Yes, yes, you can join my party. Please, you're so adorable."

After smelting literal thousands of ingots, I've finally obtained Twiggy. Who will now sit and rot in the party queue because I have no use for a wind-blunt 4-star unit.

I've still got about four caves to unlock, which means farming literal thousands of ore to make the necessary bombs (about 1k iron ore per bomb). This is gonna take ... I don't really wanna do the math. It's depressingly long.

Meanwhile, my main dungeoning team is almost at full 80 across the board. (Only Milla and Serge are still languishing at level 78.) I'm putting off finishing the last chapter of Main Story Part 1 as I finish up some more sidequests. (Finishing Part 1 means opening up even more grindy sidequests and I'd like to clear my quest list a bit.)

I've finally finished Ciel's personal story quest, but that was a bit...um...let's just say the story started off fun, but the last chapter's plot twist was disappointing. It definitely strikes an uncomfortable tone. The unintentional dismissal of refugee crises and the poorly narrated criticism of authoritarian regimes was clumsy and didn't sit well with me.

Granted, I probably shouldn't be expecting nuance from a game where the main conflict is Humans and Beastfolk are at war, and "both sides" are racist against each other (*cringe*). But it's especially disappointing when the set-up is interesting (the two nations are fighting over natural resources and thus their respective leaders have to juggle power politics) and some of the payoffs were well planned (e.g. Aldo's true origins). It's just the lack of that last bit of execution and sociopolitical awareness that trips the story up. And that's what causes the fairly engaging story to plunge into prime cringe material.

I'm just hoping the ending to Miyu's story doesn't also make me cringe. It's a bit upsetting when 90% of the story is genuinely entertaining, but then the entire thing ends on a sour note. Weirdly enough, so far my favorite story has been the IDA school series (except the evil scientist trope, I could've done without that). The story is at its best when the narrative is focused on the character rather than big concepts, like national interest and political ideology (no seriously, how does a pro-monarchy and anti-authoritarian message co-exist in this story?!).

Anyway, those are my rambling thoughts for Part 1 of Another Eden.