Does Not Obey the Laws of Physics

So, Another Eden is no longer working on Bluestacks. Nor can I get it working on LDPlayer. And frankly, I'm not too optimistic about any other emulator. I tried to get it installed on my phone, natively, but the download crapped out repeatedly and after the 5th reinstall, I threw in the towel and concede that I'll probably not be able to play the game again.

With this new wrinkle, I'll have to take back my recommendation for Another Eden. While I enjoyed the game when I'm playing it and I do think its monetization program is more reasonable than many other gacha games out there (the fact that you can enjoy 90% of the game without ever touching the gacha because the game gives you top tier free units to get you through most of the story content is very fair I think for the amount of content the game delivers), none of this matters if you can't actually play the game.

Thus, RIP. It was fun while it lasted, but in the end, if I can't get the game up and running, then there's nothing to recommend. Part of me suspects the amount of content released has bloated the software to a point where it's impossible to really manage on a mobile platform. But not building in a partial download feature to deal with having to download nearly 10Gs worth of data before being able to play the game is also unacceptable. On a computer, where programs multitasking is the norm, this is not a problem. On a phone, where any app in the background is suspended, this feature is absolutely detrimental. But that's just speculation on my part.

Anyway, a new year means new hobbies. Now that I've been forced to leave Another Eden behind, maybe I'll spend that time on something more productive. (Granted, I've been also working through the holidays and my brain is a bit mushy at the moment, so... ╮(╯-╰)╭)

In other news: I finally got a mouse so I can stop using the trackpad on my laptop. Yay!

So, I took a slight break from packing to play a bit more of Another Eden. (See tag for previous entries.) Recently, the game is doing a campaign that gives a random guaranteed 5-star pull if you complete the first three chapters of the Wanderer in the Vortex sidequest. And since I progressed enough of the story to open the first three chapters, I naturally went and attempted to get through the chapters as quickly as possible.

After three days of dedicated rushing through story (which were actually pretty fun little romps and far less disappointing than the Ciel sidequest), I finally got my reward and pulled...

...a Hismena AS. I'm not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, since my first ever 5-star unit was a Piercing Stance unit, getting another piercing unit means one less character to grind for the pierce team. On the other hand...I'm not very fond of this character design, so I'm not really inspired to use her. Like...at all.

Since I barely progressed in this game for about a year, I'm still more-or-less where I was the last time I updated. At least I finished both IDA school sidequests and have completed the newest Tales Collab, gaining four more freebie units. The more recent units are far more powerful than the original, but I find myself still going back to Milla. Like, I just can't help it, Milla's kind of awesome. I like how flexible she is, so I basically bring her whenever I have a slash team, which is pretty much all the time, because I haven't built any other team that can deal with the challenges thrown my way.

Anyway, point is, I'm mildly amused that there's more voice acting for the most recent four Tales Collab units, although Colette breaks the game and causes so much lag. Thanks to the lag, I'm usually better off using Lloyd during AF, which kind of sucks because I feel like Lloyd and Colette should be used together as much as possible. Upon consideration, though, a Milla-Kid-Lloyd-Serge front line is a pretty sick AF DPS spike, and having Harle-Colette in the backline for rotational healing should give me enough sustain through most story challenges. Although I'm sure there are people who insist that Alphen, with fire zone, is a better option, I prefer having Milla because she's already level 80 and because I'm not really running a fire-team at the moment. I'm sure when I get ready to put together my fire team, I'll need to drop Milla for Alphen. But until then, Milla is my team leader.

I'm also finding that I'm not using Joker as much now. In order to use Joker effectively, he needs to be paired with another P5 unit, otherwise his damage isn't enough to actually take out mobs. And that translates to having one less spot on my team to level characters. I'll probably go back to using Joker more regularly once I finish leveling the 10 or so freebie characters I'm still trying to get to level 80.

Anyway, time to go back to packing.

OK, you're probably thinking, "cashew, weren't you playing Another Eden not two months ago?".

You are correct.

I've completed part 1 of Another Eden and decided to take a break (signing in only long enough to collect my gacha gems — and sometimes not even), got sucked back into Ace Attorney, and now I'm taking a break from that to do some mindless grinding in Ni no Kuni: Cross Worlds, the newest mobile MMO.

TL;DR — I'm so disappointed. For a game that had art from Studio Ghibli and music from Joe Hisashi, it fails completely to live up to the hype.

Now, for the long version.

( The Gacha Hell of Netmarble )

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.

So, in my last two pulls in Another Eden, I got Myunfa AS and Ewan AS.

Between these two, Amy, Skull (who I'm slowly working towards), Prai, and Riica, I guess it's time to build a blunt damage team. (May turns out to DPS with piercing damage WTF why you use hammer child?!) So many hammers. 😵 And braces. I was hoping for at least one glove user to get away from the five billion braces I'd need to share between the hammer and sword users (thank you Yuri for equipping rings), but I guess that's not to be.

Thank goodness for Skull having a personal weapon. That's one less hammer that I have to farm. (This is the superiority of slash-based teams; P5 and Tales collab units all come with level 60 weapons, and thus don't require me to slowly farm up the necessary materials to make the same weapons over and over. Urgh. I only need to find enough braces to cover everyone — plus a ring for Yuri.)

At least having Ewan means I can get bonus points in both the mining and seeker side-quests. That's always a plus.

(BTW: the mining side-quest is painfully slow. After speed-grinding through the first half so I can get Amy's 4-star tome, my progress have dropped to a snail's pace because...well, there's just so many other things for me to do.)

The one good thing about Ewan is that at least his DPS skill changes its attack type based on the stance deployed. That means he can get a bonus from the magic-slash stance from Serge despite being a hammer user.

And once again, Serge continues to carry my progress. Him and FukuJun Joker are the MVPs of dungeon grinding. Too bad one of them is shadow and the other is light. If only they were of the same alignment. It'd make my dungeon grinding so much easier.

Everyone else is a leech. (Except Yuri and Milla who are love. 💖)

Also finally pulled a 4-star Miyu. I guess I'm going to have to go unlock her story now. Ffffff. (At this point, I'm not convinced Miyu nor Ciel are really worth grinding to 5-stars, since it's probably better to work towards their AS form instead, as their normal 5-star form has been out-paced by power creep. But their stories are seriously fun to play, so...)

Why do I even pull on the gacha when I prefer playing with my free units anyway?

Also, also...

My first 5-star was Tsukiha ES...which is just pain, because I have no functional piercing units right now. I'm working slowly towards getting Sheila AS (need to progress so much story to even begin farming Sheila AS), and have a headache just thinking about trying to unlock Jade's 5-star form. And then my options are...

• Farming Ciel AS form forever in Very Hard ADs

• Use Joker's Triple Shot as a sub-optimal filler

• Farming Foran AS form forever more in Very Hard ADs

• Work on Cerrine as a filler, who is also a much better blunt DPS unit to go on Myunfa's team

• Complete May's 5-star and use her hammer for piercing DPS b/c this game is counter-intuitive

So anyway, point is, a lot of units, a lot of options, need to figure out how to build my non-slash teams while I slowly farm dungeons.

Also fish.