Another Eden: The Cat Beyond Time and Space is now on PCs, bringing with it all of the charm the game has on mobile devices. While the game remains mostly the same, it offers a new experience for PC players that haven’t yet picked up the mobile version of the game. Another Eden offers an engrossing single-player story backed with competent writing and a beautiful score. However, it does have some drawbacks as a result of being a gacha game.
The visual style of Another Eden is vibrant and beautiful. Character models are round and reminiscent of a a style you might have seen in mobile games like Kingdom Hearts Union X. The illustrations are bursting with character and reflect the various time periods and scenarios players will jump into throughout the story. Aesthetically, it pulls a lot from more classic JRPGs, which falls in line with the story that serves as its inspiration. The music is gorgeous, with Yasunori Mitsuda’s scores immediately recognizable.
The story in Another Eden feels comparable to a JRPG from the mid-2000s. It’s a slow burn that concerns itself with mundane side-quests and requires time to get into the meat of the narrative. Saying it’s a spiritual successor to Chronos Cross wouldn’t be entirely incorrect, as you’re immediately jumping through different periods of history and meeting with various characters throughout these different points in time. You play as Adol, a young man trying to make it back to his own time period to find his sister. Each of these periods have their own unique towns and neighboring areas, along with enemies that provide a decent enough variety. What Another Eden offers isn’t an entirely unique experience, but those looking for a single player RPG that evokes nostalgia or a similar sort of air as Chrono Cross will more than likely enjoy what it has to offer. I was mostly indifferent to the story and, while I enjoyed its slow pace, I wasn’t too invested in what was being offered to me either.
One of my biggest gripes with the game though is the cutscenes, as you can’t skip them. That may feel counterproductive, considering it is so story-focused, but there were times when I really wish I could have just skipped a scene for a side story. If you plan on playing Another Eden on your PC, make sure you have time dedicated to sitting through it. While the length isn’t the worst thing in the world, it’s a simple quality-of-life feature the game feels like it’s outright missing.
The side-quests provide a bit of flavor text in each area. Sometimes you’re gathering parts of errant machinery to help out local children or you’re persuading a child in another period that having a dragon companion may not be the best idea. They’re short little snippets that are mostly inconsequential when it comes to the overall plot, but net the player some neat rewards to help purchase equipment or opportunities to gather materials to sell. This is how obtaining new weapons functions for the most part as well. You collect items found on the map by clicking sparkling points and then sell those items to the local weaponsmith to unlock more weapons.
While the story didn’t exactly hook me, the combat loop surprisingly did. It’s simple, yet effective. You have four primary members and two reserve members that make up your party. You can unlock skills by obtaining AP through leveling your party members up. This also allows for you to unlock passives for individual characters. Usually, I’m not very interested in these kinds of leveling systems, but Another Eden makes leveling up in the early game quick, which had me hooked when trying to build my characters as fast as possible. I wanted to make sure combat would be swift and that I would constantly be prepared for the next story segment or the dangerous monsters littered on the map. It was a nice and mindless grind, though later on grinding does become significantly more time consuming.
Combat is quick, especially if you net yourself a five-star character early in the game. However, the power-creep comes up quickly and if you solely focus on offense you’ll find yourself struggling. Characters with healing skills in Another Eden are invaluable, especially since you can swap characters in and out of combat with ease. I would make sure to have a healer in my reserves to switch in and heal my party during more arduous encounters. It was nice that characters slotted into my reserve line would receive experience as well, which meant less time leveling them up. That being said, the rate at which you can obtain five-stars, which in my opinion will impact how you play the game, is abysmal.
Another Eden is not a generous game. The rate for a five-star or even a four-star character is extremely low, and I suggest saving currency for a ten summon on any banner. While paid banners are available for a guaranteed five-star, it isn’t of your choosing. In my country of residence, a paid ten pull on a paid banner would cost me roughly $31, which isn’t cheap. I feel like this is something important to mention considering that, while Another Eden is a single player PC experience now, it still has a gacha mechanic tacked onto it.
Another Eden is an entirely functional PC port, and I can safely say that I had no issues with the game crashing at any given instance. However, there were a few moments in which the game would slow down and frame rate would dip significantly. This resolved itself after a few seconds, but would crop up occasionally. It wasn’t anything intrusive that prevented me from enjoying the game, but I felt like this is something that could potentially be resolved at a later date. Regarding voice options, the PC version of the game does not offer Japanese audio. So PC players will simply have to stick with English audio options while playin. The English voice acting isn’t terrible, but it isn’t anything to write home about either.
All-in-all, if you’re looking for another gacha game to burn some time with or mobile game that is more focused on a single player experience, Another Eden might just be what you’re looking for. It’s easy to pick up and put down, for the most part, and provides an interesting enough story to hold itself as a single player experience.
Another Eden: The Cat Beyond Time and Space is immediately available for Android devices, iOS devices, and the PC through the Steam storefront.
Published: Apr 4, 2021 09:00 am