1995’s Chrono Trigger still stands at the top of most JRPG tierlists. The characters, the time-travelling narrative, and addictive turn-based combat have all aged spectacularly, and the SNES visuals still look fantastic (a point emphasised by terrible mobile ports of SNES games with flat graphical updates). So it’s no surprise that Another Eden Begins, a modern game penned by Chrono Trigger’s writer, Masato Kato, caught my attention.
I don’t really follow the world of mobile gaming, especially gacha titles, so hadn’t previously encountered Another Eden from its original release 9 years ago. The monetisation, random rewards, and chopped up narrative common to that style of game have never appealed to me. However, a native PC version with all the RNG and gacha stripped out would be just my cup of tea, right? Right? Well, the end result is a little more complicated.
The tale begins with Arlo, a young swordsman with a mysterious blade that cannot be unsheathed. He is woken by his sister and sets out to go on patrol in his sleepy village. Arlo’s world is soon ripped apart by a time portal that augurs the end of the universe. As the story develops it follows all the JRPG tropes to a tee, but in a way that managed to keep my attention throughout, until is abruptly ended, leaving ties through to future DLC and the continuing story of the mobile game original.
Another Eden Begins takes the story arc of the first season of the mobile game, The Cat Beyond Time and Space, with the potential for future DLC and content from later seasons to come. Somewhat inevitably, considering the shared
The storyline of Another Eden Begins feels like a tribute to Chrono Trigger, which isn’t too surprising given the shared writer. However, this tribute can often turn the corner into outright imitation with the time travelling, escalating sense of doom, and even a brave knight turned into a frog. I often felt like I was playing a version of the SNES classic run through several stages of Google Translate. That being said, if you’re going to replicate a game, at least make it an all-time classic.
Another Eden Begins takes the story arc of the first season of the mobile game, The Cat Beyond Time and Space, with the potential for future DLC and content from later seasons to come.
This single-player version takes the form of a 40-50 hour JRPG with extra endings tied behind NG+, so there is a lot of game here for your money. That’s just as well considering the game launched at a price comparable to the upcoming Final Fantasy Resonance and was accompanied by a Season Pass that cost more than the base game. It’s pretty clear that you can take the gacha out of the game but you can’t escape the pressure to monetise. If you don’t want the Season Pass then you can instead buy pairs of DLC characters for £10 – a bargain, I’m sure. I’ve not tried these characters out so can’t confirm if they give major gameplay boosts, but the cost of it all does not sit well with me.
Anyway, once you’ve paid your money and decided whether to go all in on the Season Pass what is the game itself like? Well, it plays pretty much exactly how I’d imagine a mobile JRPG would. The exploration is very basic, with a lot of backtracking across a limited map, the combat is quite simplistic for the most part, with only late game battles requiring much in the way of grinding or strategy. While there are eighteen companion characters, only six of them actually feature in the central story cutscenes, betraying the gacha game origins of the rest.
Each of the 18 characters you control along your journey has an individual set of skills and abilities. Some share weapon types, but all are unique. You find a number of them through the main storyline whereas others are encounters in the world maps. Your journal makes it clear when these encounters are available so none are missable (although one gap in the list is only filled at the beginning of NG+). This suggests a layer of strategy and team building that the game doesn’t really live up to, unfortunately.
You set up a party of 4 adventurers at first for battle, but as you progress you unlock the ability to have up to 4 separate lineups that you can switch between in battles. This sounds like an intriguing idea but again in actuality is only rarely needed. Fortunately, all characters in any team gain XP as you progress so they don’t get left behind. I only found the switching mechanic necessary in a handful of late-game encounters, though, with almost all other battles being just a matter of out-damaging your enemies.
Another Eden Begins looks fine, with colourful and distinctive backgrounds and some interesting enemy designs. The many characters are also very different, even if many of them stray too far towards fan service for my personal taste. Battle effects are suitably flashy, but general animation is choppy at times, though that looks to be a deliberate stylistic choice. Music and voice acting are good, with a lot of the main dialogue being fully acted.
The mobile origins of the game are also apparent through the general flow of the game. Area maps are tiny and linear, with every collectable and enemy being clearly marked. All quests, both main and secondary, involve warping between these areas to collect items or have quick (and sometimes not so quick) conversations before moving on again. The whole process is less a complete narrative than a series of stitched together moments and quests, perfectly designed to be played in 10-minute bursts either on a bus or the toilet.
