When it comes to mobile gaming, I tend to gravitate towards very casual games, which usually leads to having half a dozen different match three or hidden object games to choose from.
However, for #MitsudaMarch, I downloaded something with a little more meat on its bones, and I’m really loving Another Eden so far. Sure, it’s pretty far outside what I normally play on any platform, and I am 100% bumbling through it.
I can’t tell you for certain how much time I’ve played it overall (I did poke at it when I first downloaded it last month, and I started playing it fairly regularly a couple of days early), but my iPhone’s Screen Time setting tells me I’ve already put in almost six hours this week.
I think what’s surprised me the most so far is how meaty the game feels. Just about everything you do earns you Chrono Stones, which can be spent in the Gallery of Dreams to unlock more characters for your party. A full party (including backline) is only six characters deep, so it doesn’t take that long to get a full party together as a free player.
The core game play is full of random encounters with simultaneous turn-based combat. It’s necessary to pre-select your party, and when you run into an enemy (or more often, a group of enemies), you can choose what each front-line party member does before activating your turn. It’s not a combat style I’ve overly familiar with, but I think it works well for a mobile game.
Another Eden looks great, it sounds great, and once you get into the swing of things, it plays great.
As with any free-to-play game, there are microtransactions, and things that can only be bought with premium currency. So far, I don’t feel like I’m at any sort of disadvantage by not spending, but I assume at some point, the story will run out, and making a purchase will be necessary to continue. At this point, that’s really just an assumption, though – so far it seems that the only things that cost to unlock are additional characters. Based on the prices of Chrono Stones in the app, and the costs of character unlocks with free Chrono Stones, it looks like you can expect to spend anywhere from $2.40 to $5 to unlock a single premium character.
Overall, this is a nifty little package of fun, and I’m grateful to the folks at The Community Game Along for #MitsudaMarch, because I never would have discovered this little mobile gaming gem otherwise.
Nerd Girl Thoughts 