Originally a mobile game, Another Eden Begins has some serious pedigree behind it. With members of the teams who brought the world Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross and Xenogears, this level of personnel sets expectations fairly high. Given this is a remake of the beginning chapter of the mobile game, it’s definitely interesting to see how it plays out as a full, traditional RPG experience.
Another Eden Begins stars Aldo, who, after a fairly predictable series of events, is thrust through time, meeting with new friends and trying to save his sister. For a time travelling story, it’s pretty fun, and once the reins are off and you spend time bouncing between multiple time periods, the story manages to handle itself pretty well.
There are several characters who join Aldo on his quest, and it’s a bit disappointing how much exposition some get while others are mostly hidden in extraneous quests. While characters like Riica and Cyrus get a lot of time to showcase their characters and personality, you don’t get the same level of care when it comes to someone like Mariel or Suzette. Mind you, they are both optional, but characters like Yuna, who is mandatory, doesn’t even appear in all cutscenes, even though she’s in the party.
The good news is everyone feels different enough in combat to justify padding those numbers out, at least a little. Aldo is a traditional knight style character, whereas Riica has some support to go along with her array of attacks, giving her more of a monk feel. Everyone can have four basic moves, which can be customised into a rather simple loadout selection, and then a Chain Skill, which auto performs after a certain number of attacks. You learn many of these moves from an excellent, if not extremely simple, ability list. Sadly, this is where some of the combat issues start cropping up.
For the record, Another Eden Begins isn’t very hard. Enemies don’t level with you, so it’s pretty easy to plow your way through mobs of enemies as you revisit areas. Even when first visiting a location, though, the game is very generous in terms of enemy damage output and HP, meaning most fights feel very one-sided, with you maiming enemies that are struggling to stack similar numbers on you. The few times death did come during regular combat, it was because of not paying attention and not healing people after several battles.
This really drives home the power fantasy, but Another Eden Begins fails to stick the landing here by preventing you from doing some basic genre conventions. The most obvious is the inability to use items in battle. Some allies can heal, which is nice and usually is all you need. However, if a character is wiped out, there’s little recourse until you unlock resurrection abilities very far into one character’s ability list. Worse yet, you can’t use abilities outside of combat, meaning once someone is resurrected naturally after a fight (and they come back with very little health), you have to wait till the next fight to actually heal them – or you can go to an inn, but in the middle of a dungeon, that’s sort of a pain.
Speaking of inns, towns and cities are nice little hubs to, as you’d expect, meet other NPCs, buy weapons and crafting materials, or even allocate friendships with stray cats. The time spent in cities is a bit confusing, though, thanks to the way that levels are laid out. The map only helps so much, as it doesn’t give any indication what taking a certain path will lead to, just that it will take you to another location. The design of the various maps helps find things like enemies, treasure chests or even cats, but makes navigating the world at large much less convenient.
As mentioned before, there is a crafting system, but it’s not very organised. You also have to be camping to use it, which is only possible in certain preordained locations. You can use these spots to eat meals (which give temporary boosts at the beginning of each turn, many of which further negate any challenge the game offers) and give gifts to your teammates. Given how sparse these locations are, it is really easy to forget these mechanics even exist, though.
Now, for the elephant in the room, the graphics. Honestly, the player sprites are really off-putting at first, but they grow on you over time, and the character portraits are gorgeous. From an aesthetic standpoint, Another Eden Begins is ultimately at its best, showcasing a solid art direction that only takes a little while to grasp your attention and hold onto it.
