My friend Gibbon got me on to this game, an indie RPG project that publicised the involvement of Chrono Trigger’s scenario writer Masato Kato and composer Yasunori Mitsuda. Turns out the link was strong indeed, with the game taking pains to insinuate itself as an instalment (technically unofficial) in the Chrono series. Apart from that it’s a nice RPG for the smart device platform, and free-to-play but not exploitative.
Let’s get the Chrono stuff out of the way first. There are lots of analogues, from the frog samurai (unsubtly named Cyrus), the three time periods you travel between, the flying timeship you find later on, even the “end of time” location is a very, very direct homage to the same location in CT. You could say there are elements from Chrono Cross here too, like a huge cast of unlockable party members, and the convoluted plot. Jk jk.
It’s not all slavish adherence though. For one thing, it looks very different with a lush, painterly style which combined with the marionette-like animation of the characters gives a very different feel. As I said, the character roster is gargantuan with a huge variety of archetypes, although many of the female characters have questionable outfit designs. They all fit into categories of weapon type, elemental alignment, skill tree etc, plus having star ratings, so it’s not too overwhelming to sort through them.
Overworld travel and battles are streamlined, well-suited to the mobile platform. Some of the touch targets in menus can be fiddly but it’s a game that’s very easy to play on a touchscreen; it’s also good at draining your battery. Speaking of mechanics common to mobile, I mentioned the game was free to play. This comes at a price of course, as yes this is a gacha game. However, the whole game can be easily played without spending money if you choose not to, and with enough random pulls that you earn normally you will get plenty of characters to pick your favourites from. The game has also been well supported with post-launch updates and freebies, with lots more content on the way. Sidenote: I noticed lots more typos and errors in the game script for the postlaunch content, because the main game is quite well localised.
I should note that I got to the first instance of the credits, an amount of gameplay that felt good for a full-length RPG and which came to a satisfying story conclusion; but this leads into more story episodes directly afterwards! So between that and the sidequests and optional hard dungeons, there is plenty to do in this game. I did feel the grind at certain points, and about halfway through I switched away from a “story characters“ party to a party culled from gacha drops, as the story peeps ran out of upgrade potential; but this felt better anyway as I’d hand-picked my little buddies. I’m very glad I played Another Eden; it’s well-made and spotting the tie-ins and connections to Chrono Trigger was fun too!
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