cashew | Note to self (Reply)

Newest Another Eden Road Map, current as of v3.0.500.

Tried the dungeon for the newest Tales collab (Dreaming Flower) and...ugh. Do not remember the first Tales collab dungeon being this difficult.

I already have a poor impression of the second Tales collab due to the fact that the story was kind of WTF. But now, as I'm playing around with the characters, I'm a bit annoyed that the second collab is so fire-focused. Unlike the first collab, where the free units technically came in four different elements (even if Milla was more of a neutral element than water), this second collab is super focused on fire damage. I can sort of understand, given that one of the units gives Fire Stance, thus it makes sense to promote a mono-fire team, but it also means that these new characters are locked into mono-fire and there's already a lot of competition from free units in the mono-fire position. Especially since there is already an existing free Fire Stance unit, so this just makes things even more monotonous.

All in all, I would say the second Tales collab was far less satisfying than the first collab. The later non-collab units are also far more useful to spreading out from the initial slash-heavy teams. I know that meta-wise mono-elements are far more effective, but I like having the flexibility of playing around with more than one element, especially since going through story dungeons requires more flexibility in the team composition.

Finally, having to grind more reward track points is annoying. I think I'll focus on on bringing in Lloyd and Colette for now, not because it makes sense, but because I actually like those characters and have no emotional attachment to Alphen and Shionne. Actually, I kind of resent that Tales of Arise got the collab instead of better Tales games, like Abyss or Eternia or Destiny.