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.

After 11 days, I've finally, finally caught up to where I was before. I covered about a month's worth of progress in 11 days this second run. This is because I basically skipped over all the old dialogue as quickly as possible and didn't bother to click on the NPCs that I knew weren't important and were only there for flavor. Now I'm going to slow down again and just enjoy the story on a character level.

Sure, my gacha luck has been poor — my guaranteed 5-star pull gave me a piercing unit (SS tier) that has ZERO synergy with my current team *cries* — but the collab units have been pulling me through all the content. Including each other's collab content. LOL.

Anyhoo, now that I've caught up and I'm doing a bit more reading, I'd like to talk a little more about general Another Eden progression.

Before I go on, I'm going to recommend a roadmap by u/xPalox, which covers a lot of things that are still relevant. The major thing this doesn't cover is the Chrono Cross collab, as people are still spading the mechanics, so I'll mostly be talking about how Chrono Cross seem to fit into the roadmap during early-to-mid-game. I will also be mostly focusing on how to make a F2P life easier.

In addition, I recommend consulting the English wiki and Japanese wiki for extended guides. The Japanese wiki is more complete, but more difficult to use for the Global audience.

( Without further ado, let's get to it. )

And that...is the Another Eden experience. Phew!

So, I slept terribly last night, which means I'm gonna be blathering at you today. Currently, I've restarted Another Eden. As I've mentioned previously, due to some glitches with Bluestacks, I can't get my progress back, so I've effectively restarted a run through, this time without festival bonuses. I think this gives me a better idea of what kind of challenges a new player might face when not given special units to carry me through the game and having to make do with in-game characters.

Before I begin, check out my previous posts on this game (now with dedicated tag because I genuinely like this game and find it consumer friendly). Specifically, check out the intro to game mechanics entry and new player experience entry to get an idea of what I felt about the game when starting it during the promotional event.

Currently, I'm playing 2.11.200 version, which has some updates to the UI, such as increased skill slot at 80+ light/dark, but those changes are far off into the late-game future and not really that important for the beginner experience. With that said, onto the New-new player experience!

( New Player Experience blathering - this time without a 5-star to pull you through the opening chapters. )

I just spent the last two days playing Evolution Board Game mobile app and Oceans Board Game mobile app basically nonstop.

Both are created by North Star Games and fairly accurately reflect the game mechanics of the physical board game. In fact, I'm so enamored with the app that I'm seriously considering buying the game to take it with me to play with my parents.

...But then I remember that my parents don't really have the patience to read tiny text on cards and so I decided, never mind. (._.)

Anyway, two quickie reviews:

( Evolution Board Game )

( Oceans Board Game )

So there you have it. Two games that are free and quite fun. Go check them out!

*points to title*

Oh gaming industry, how far we've come from Gamer Gate. Review of an Otome game on a hard core gaming site? I'm surprised they even acknowledge the genre exists.

Pointing out that [n]ormalizing behaviors that trick others into romantic encounters, well intentioned or not, is hurtful to players who just want to follow the story? Holy shit, the reviewer is actively engaging on the plot level rather than bitching about the lack of gameplay in a visual novel! Wow! (Because, yes, a lot of Otome games are crap due to having crap stories.)

I probably shouldn't be so surprised that the gaming industry is finally acknowledging the existence of women in their ranks, but honestly, I have such a low opinions of gamers that any sign of basic decency comes as a surprise. Obviously, this doesn't mean that the gaming industry has fixed itself, but at least it's trending in the right direction now.

Meanwhile, I've been dumping more hours into Another Eden. I'm really impressed with the effort. This is the game that closest replicated a console JRPG experience on the smartphone and, more importantly, it doesn't fall into the usual trap of tricking you into micro-transactions. Despite the ream after ream of new characters and new tweaks and meta-updates, the game solidly focuses on the narrative experience. The four main characters (Aldo, Amy, Riica, Cyrus) get continuous updates to remain relevant. Bonus dungeons are exactly that, a bonus. Grinding is a completely viable way of getting your team equipped, no RNG prayer necessary. Sidequests are actually optional, and if you don't want to bother with them, you don't have to.

Character-based quests are more than just fetch quests. At least Miyu and Ciel (the two characters who the game gives to you for free at the start) have full blown story arcs that delve into who they are as actual characters instead of just being another unit in the vast array of units that you can potentially pull. Even the gacha units (at least the five-star ones) have stories that are actually interesting. Characters have relationships and interactions and there's a whole relationship web between different groups! And the collab units are true to their original form. The character quirks and personalities come across in the collab story arcs, respecting the IP it was sourced from.

Hell, even Tales of gaiden games don't always do a good job of preserving the character's personalities and backstory.

Also, I started off disliking the fishing mini-game, but now have gotten very much into the whole thing. It's quite soothing and I'm slowing working on increasing my fishing levels as I try to catch bigger and bigger fish. There's a little bit of strategy involved and not just mindless tapping, as resource management is key to progressing the fishing quest.

And as I've mentioned before, the entire thing is free and permanent, so there's no rush to get everything done nor worry about missing out. The game lets you progress as quickly or slowly as you prefer and there's no rush to keep up with the meta, as the game continues to give you all the resources you need to meet the new meta difficulties.

Finally, yes, the game is grindy, but it's a good kind of grind rather than the annoying kind. In most mobile games, the grind is there to gate access. Since access to events and items is timed, the grind serves as a way to induce you to spend money to get around the time commitment. In Another Eden, since there's no time gating, the grind returns to the process that is familiar from console JRPGs. That is, it's a meditative and ritualized process, where you repeat the same action over and over, allowing you to focus on spading the minute differences to work out the underlying mechanisms of the monsters and the units that you have until you can perfect your party into something that fits how you like to play.

TL;DR — Play Another Eden. It's a fun game.

I am currently very enamored with this game. I haven't gotten very far, but after four days of intense playing (I'm sequestering post-vaccination and am sore and unproductive), I can start to understand what people mean when they say that this is a gacha game where you do not need to play the gacha.

( Game mechanics and gacha system explained. )

As for the story, Another Eden starts off painfully slow. But, once you make your way past the first chapter and start the timey-wimey ball going, the story gets a lot better. I mean a lot better. The dialogue is better written, the story starts to build complex plot threads, and the characters start to really show...well, character.

I'm currently extremely fond of Riica, the android healer of the team. She's sneaky about her snark, then turns to I'm an android I don't know how humans work as an excuse when someone starts to catch on to her sarcasm. The main character, Aldo, is pretty generic, but that's almost a plus in these days of doom-gloom-dark-gritty cynicism. Aldo is a decent guy with some mysterious past that I'm interested in finding out. The antagonists cover an interesting array of gray to black, from psychotic evil to just misguided.

Then there's Cyrus, the samurai frog. Yes, he's a frog and he's a samurai and he lives in a swamp.

If all this is starting to sound a little familiar, it's because the writing staff is the same as the group behind Chrono Trigger. Am I getting Chrono Trigger flashbacks when playing this game? Yes. Is it a bad thing? Only if you despise the Chrono Trigger story.

Point is, I'm actually enjoying Another Eden a lot. If you have even the smallest fondness for JRPGs, I think you should give this game a whirl. Hey, it's free and you don't even have to pay to progress very far, what have you got to lose?