Forum - View topicGAME: Another Eden: The Cat Beyond Time and Space
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Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
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clambo
Posts: 1 |
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Yeah i dont want to be that guy but i son dont agree with that review far from it
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BlueAlf
 Posts: 1498 |
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My little sister is a huge fan of this game and I played it quite a bit in the past too.
As a gacha game, it's both really accessible and fair. I recognize the flaws the review points out. Yeah, the pacing is all over the place from the beginning. But when it's good, IMO it gets really good and I mean this both in story and game play. Considering the amount of content it has, how it's free, and how it gives a pretty solid JRPG experience, IMO Another Eden is nothing short of amazing. Also, the cats. We can collect cats in the game. But yeah, I understand not everyone would be into it. |
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FormX
Posts: 50 |
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FEH, BF and PAD are your gold standards for gacha... PAD sure, it's a classic, but attributing that to BF and especially FEH is quite laughable to be frank.
You state that AE fails to hold up to its mobile peers, yet state the opposite by the end of the review and instead evaluate AE with all Steam games. Are you really going to justify your negative review by assessing a mobile game as a full video game just because it has a Steam port? The mix of mobile and single player, story-driven JRPG experience does end up with mixed reception, as the gacha crowd thinks its not gacha enough and gamers in turn are turned off by it being mobile. It's easy to miss the point: it's not a tribute or spiritual successor to CT, but a tribute and spiritual successor designed as a free mobile game. You've already pointed out the obvious flaws, the relatively shallow gameplay and general limitations which are, unsurprisingly, due to AE being a mobile game released in 2017. However, the single player video game elements that set AE apart were largely discounted. No PvP or friends list. Nothing expires - no limited events and rewards, no limited characters, even the collaborations are permanent. This is virtually unheard of among gachas. It's a gacha that you can take up and put down at your own leisure, just like a regular video game. On the other hand, the benefit of being a gacha also means that the JRPG adventure continues, unlike a regular video game. Of course, this doesn't necessarily appeal to everyone, but maybe it wrong to expect a more objective review from ANN. From what you've said about the story and music, it honestly sound like you've only experienced a fraction of what the game has to offer. At least a few of the Episodes need to be played in order to experience the variety of flavors outside of the main story. Again, the writing stacks up against the best - from the perspective of mobile games, that is. |
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Ali07
 Posts: 3333 Location: Victoria, Australia |
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I may be wrong here, but as someone who has been playing AE from day 1 of the global release, this review reads as one from someone who may have played all or most of Part 1 of the main story.
To have the perspective that using all your high MP skill will get you through bosses, is likely true for the first 25 or so chapters of the first part of the story. The majority of the story units can be overpowered in Part 1, so as to not block off players who don't get the best gacha units (will address this in a moment), that is until you get to the chapter 26 boss. Where, you do need a strategy to beat it. Of course, if you're not someone who explores every map in a game, and you avoid spoilers, you'll run into some trouble. Then that also remains true from Ogre Wars onwards. To address what I said about gacha units, the game has what it calls Symphonies. Basically, they're just collabs with other game properties, which right now consist of Persona 5 Royal and Tales of characters. They're all 5*, and having a party that consists of level 40-50 characters (4* characters can reach level 60), you can play through the Symphonies in order to get these free 5* units. Ones you can get are Joker, Morgana, Violet, and Skull from P5R. Tales of are where you get Cress, Yuri, Milla, and Velvet. In getting Cress, you also get Slash Zone, which is basically a field effect there anyone who has slash based attacks will do extra damage, plus fill up the Another Force meter faster. Another Force is a fun simple mechanic, once you have half of it, you can use it to have a turn where you can let off multiple skills before the enemy attacks. In a Zone, it's more effective, as you can make it last longer. Zones consist of the elements (Fire, Wind, Water, Earth) and attack types (Slash, Blunt, Magic, Pierce, and a unique one called Flash Strike). There's also plenty of videos on YT that show that even some of the hardest bosses can be beaten with free units. Thing is, you have to be willing to grind through content. Strategy and which skills you use, become much more important after Part 1. There's still some bosses that you can smash through, but there's more where you need to either figure out their mechanic in order to win. Some will even mean the order of your team, from who starts on the front line to who is in reserves, can dictate if you're going to get through the fight or not. There's also unique character weapons called Manifests. Not all characters have them, but they enhance a 5* or AS unit's skills, either giving them additional effects or adding buffs to them for more damage. These consists of some of the harder fights in the game too, and only some of the older manifests have fights where you might be able to bash your way through. Now, in later parts, part of the grind will be getting Grasta...then it will be how you enhance them...all of which takes time. Onto why else I feel the review only stuck to Part 1 of the story is on the music side of things. I agree, the battle music does get repetitive, but there's also some nice pieces in specific maps. Most of them are maps from Ogre Wars onwards, and others from side stories like Dragon Palace and IDA, and even the collabs. Now, before I make this an even larger post than it already is, I'll touch on one more point that makes me think the review didn't go past Part 1. Well, didn't delve in much deeper than the main story in Part one, and that is on energy. Yes, AE is a game you could grind through all day if you wanted to. As long as you're not only playing to run Another Dungeons. You get 4 Red and 4 Green Keys per day, and you can hold a max of 5 Red and 9 Green, before the refresh won't give you any more Keys. There are ADs that require 1 Red Key, 1 Green Key, or 2 Green Keys to run. So, this does limit you to some of the grinding for the game. Remember my mentioning of Grasta? Well, to grind those out, you need to run ADs that require you use 2 Green Keys, which limits you to 2 runs of them per day. Of course, there's ways to get more runs done (for free) if you want, but I'm just blabbing on too much... There's a lot of story to get through for new players now, and some of the best story comes from side quests, collabs, and character quests. Each character (unless they're a 3*) has character quests. 4* have 2, 5* have 3, and some characters have Another Style forms, which gives them another quest. Some 4* have AS, which basically is their 5* form. And some 5* have AS too, which gives them alternate skills. In some cases, it changes how they can be used, or makes them more powerful. Alright, that's it. I could literally talk about AE almost all day, as there is so much to unpack now. If you've read this far, thank you. Nice to know my rambling may have been interesting enough that someone used their time to read through. 
If you have read through, you might just be crazy enough to go through the Fishing in AE, which gets you a free 5* unit...but only the brave do it... |
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HoshizoranoUtage
Posts: 53 |
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I've only been playing the JP version for a week now, but I think it's really good for a gacha game. It feels more like a classic JRPG, and so far it hasn't punished me gameplay-wise for wanting to use all male characters in my party. There's only one male solo rate-up right now (Grambrell), and thankfully he's pretty handsome. It's nice that they actually had a male solo rateup in the first place. Yesterday I got him after trying every day since I started playing. The only thing I wish it had is a way to strengthen low rarity characters more, like FGO does. I want to strengthen Darunis, because I like him, but I'm on chapter 5 and it says I need to finish chapter 13 to give him a character quest which I think will make him into a 4-star. I can't make him into a pseudo-SSR like I can with characters in FGO. (Yes, I know that a maxed out, grailed low rarity servant is still not as good as an SSR in FGO. Still, my grailed low rarity servants have helped me through a lot of hard bosses.)
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Suxinn
 Posts: 243 |
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I feel like the reviewer should probably note how far he got into the game. I respect the opinion, and I do agree that combat is fairly mindless, particularly in Part 1 of the game, but team comps and strategy actually begins mattering in later story content. (It took me ages to beat the Cradle System, for instance, and I had to look up so many guides to do it.)
Like, I completely respect folks who play Another Eden and go, "Well, it's not for me," especially when compared to, you know, non-free JRPGs on steam. And while its writing definitely improves as the writers get more of a handle on what they want to say (the recent Mythos chapters have been really singularly good in all respects imo), I don't expect anyone to trudge through bog-standard story to get to the good stuff. I mean, I sure didn't with FGO. Though, as a gacha, I do think it's a bit remiss not to mention how Another Eden is unique in that it doesn't do any limited time things. Everything's in the game permanently, even crossovers (and crossover characters are all freely obtained through doing story quests -- no need to spend!) which might seem like a small thing to non-mobage players, but means a lot to us mobage fans. So, I guess I'm mixed on the decision to review it as a regular game. On one hand, it's on Steam now, so there's obviously an expectation of higher quality there, which I can understand. On the other hand, it's... well, a mobage. A really good mobage, and probably my favorite mobage of all time, but it's not going to replace my time with Tales of Symphonia or Trails in the Sky anytime soon, and I don't expect it to. |
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b-dragon
Posts: 449 |
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AE on steam really suffers from comparison- as in, what exactly do you compare it to? Mobile games are the obvious point of reference, but this is a review due to the steam version being released- and it doesn't compare well to much of that.
The game is also constantly at odds with itself- Its got a great deal of player friendliness- events and collabs don't expire, many 4* can be made 5* with time and effort, and many good-to-great 5* are free- and has a frankly awful gacha system to "compensate". Certainly the worst I've played (and I play FGO, so that is saying a bit). The plot and characters range from excellent to downright yawn inducing, with the lion's share of the latter coming in earlier-released content that you have to trudge through. And Aldo is a terrible MC, even though that makes sense- the rest of the initial core group honestly fares little better. The gameplay is like the writing- it doesn't truly come on line for a long while. And even then, your options in battle are just so limited. Its a large part of why I dropped the game midway through part 2- it was better, yes, but it still wasn't good. Its this spot where I don't know who I would recommend it to. At its best, the story/presentation are good- but you have to get there. At worst, its boring, with no interesting gameplay to back it up. And I'm not honestly sure, outside looking in, the pros outweigh the cons. |
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