I LOVE (note the present tense:-) Chrono Trigger. Chrono Cross is… not quite what I was hoping for in a sequel (it was not bad, it simply did not scratch that itch). I knew that Another Eden also would not be the same, yet it did seem the closest thing to it in spirit.
Thus when I started this game I decided that I wanted to be a completionist and grind my way through everything in it. So I went forward super slowly - I’m now >2.5 years in and I have not even started Main Story part 3 yet:-) - and like I got enough materials to upgrade every weapon and armor in the entire game, finishing out one dungeon entirely before moving on to the next, which I felt was true JRPG style even if it runs counter to how modern games are played. I even completed Otherlands before moving on to get grastas (mostly - I did take a bit of a break by overlapping them some). As you can see, that process took awhile to complete! Like, I did not move forward past PGAD until I had gotten all of the non-repeatable grastas from it, and same for AGAD, and so on.
So now it is very personally satisfying that I completed the final enemy kill achievement for content that existed when I first started. Every alarmed monster, every small mouse/gecko, every mob/horror/boss etc. I am considering Superbosses as a separate line of thinking although I am pretty sure that I accomplished that too - even without grastas I was able to tackle those, then with mere T2s I took on some more, then with T3s but no P/P or ores some more, and so on. I prioritized less the ones that were harder to access, like if it takes a minute to physically walk over to it, then it can wait!:-P Shout-out to the Power Creep chars that made that fairly painless: most often I completed them on the 1st, 2nd, or maybe 3rd try as a result, even as under-equipped as I was - like AS Tsubame cheesed all of the present & ancient Garulea demons that do not resist (or null or absorb) earth blunt, and ES Tsukiha 1TAF’d all the rest even without the opportunity to get into her more powerful form. Later I even managed to pull a modern DPS in Alma, but most often for the likes of e.g. Kudang or the emperor reborn from the first mythos she cannot even get into her Trance state yet before AS Clarte killed it already, no need even for AF, and AS Milsha completely (or mostly?) negated all of their damage plus Clarte innately has Hold Ground so… it was all super easy once I had pulled those gacha chars and decided to give the fight a try. Therefore I thought about going back to and re-doing those earlier ones with purely free characters, but there is always so much to do and that also is not a high priority - maybe one day!
In the meantime, the best part is that there is still so much content left to do!! By taking it slow like this, e.g. doing Otherlands and fishing and such, I still have much of the new content that has and continues to keep being added - like now that I have finished GoT2 I can complete the second Mythos that I was able to start but was not able to go beyond chapter 6 until finishing most of GoT2. And the the rest of harpooning awaits me, plus all of the cool new stuff (boating and sidekick gear and reforging and whatnot) presented along with Main Story part 3 - which by the time I start there may be a second wave of new content even:-) - and also I still have yet to visit (even once) the ADs for Purgatory, Iscariot, Sapient Complex: Midnight, Sea of Ice, Toto Theater World, Omegapolis (that one I need to finish all the non-repeatable grasta sets from Underworld first before I bother unlocking), and the latest one Warped Cochlea. The latter I think I will bump up to the top of the list b/c I am currently farming Nona so it fits.
I have definitely taken an unusual route through the game compared to most people it seems, but I am okay with that and I am enjoying what it has to offer. :-)
Edit: maybe you too would like to share your unique perspective on this game, to help get this community started? We do not have a post every day - and that is okay:-) - so we shall have to collectively figure out what we would like for it to be. Right now the small numbers offers both unique challenges as well as opportunities that would not have been possible at all with Reddit - like if 20k members were to post their personal stories it would have become quickly overwhelmed, plus multiple memes every single day, and the veritable TSUNAMI of questions (most of which could be solved by a 5-second lookup on the wiki) and bragging and salt - there would simply be multiple hundreds of posts (quite possibly over a thousand, no joke) every single day, but this place is different. The Kbin interface is buggy, the Federiverse is confusing, but we at least are here, so what shall we decide to do with it? :-D
I’m gonna try to answer the question about my perspective on the game. Playing a game I first and foremost must be at least interested in the character design and the world they live in. I love AE’s world. I am desperately waiting to see what Present and Future Zerberiya is going to be/look like.
And then I will see if I like the personalities of the characters. It’s very important when you want to do fanart lol. I actually really like the dynamic of our main cast (although there is a bit too many of them sometimes when they are all together in a scene). I am however, starting to get turned off by Aldo’s dense-ness. It’s one thing to be dense. But how come he is very intuitive when it comes to everyone else’s romantic endeavour (e.g Benedict’s) but clueless for his own? It’s almost then like he’s just acting, playing with these girls which doesn’t sit right with me.
This game is my first gacha game and I realize now I really cannot stomach the grinding in gacha games. And with the ever expanding roster of characters and evolving battle play, I also cannot keep up with that especially battle being my least favorite part of a game.
Then why play gacha game?? I know, I know… the world and the characters and the turn based system in this game is such a draw. Although even that is starting to slip away now.
Fwiw, imho it does not fit with Aldo’s personality to be leading people on like that. I am of the mindset that he is just the typical JRPG “silent protagonist” style: he is focused on literally saving the world, and he cannot allow himself to be distracted by anything else. Irl people would notice that and not throw themselves at someone displaying that level of focus, or if they did at least not expect a positive response while the military action is still ongoing, and yet drama sells gacha so… here we are:-P. “Everyone loves Aldo, yet Aldo will not commit to any one of them” is a HUGE part of the reason why teenagers especially boys will throw tens if not hundreds of USD towards the game manufacturers, seeing a bit of themselves in Aldo, and wanting to fill in the gaps with their own waifu of choice (or better yet, from the gacha perspective, with every new one that comes along? -> why would they ever want the gravy train to stop?:-P). As someone said about politicians somewhere (in relation to climate change): “It is very hard to explain something to someone when their (short-term financial) best interests depends on them not understanding it.”
As far as in-game cannon though, there is the… well, since there are no spoiler tags here, let us just say that his ah… “origins” especially in relation to his family’s pet cat when sent back in time when Feinne was a baby and her brother was a bit older, may explain why he seems so neutered when it comes to all the chars wanting to get all lovey-dovey with him.
AE’s world is amazing. Check out Chrono Trigger if you have not yet - it is 10/10 fantastic afa the aspect goes!:-D Also there is no grinding whatsoever required, unlike just about every other console JRPG game of its era, it was really unique.
The battle stuff… yeah I get that - it takes me HOURS to delve deeper into game mechanics that I had not studied before, like what effects does AS Clarte’s Lunatic confer, that you don’t get from AS Milsha offering “the effects of lunatic” via her songs, and which of that is personal to him, vs. conferred to the entire team, and of the former which is unique to that skill, vs. shared by all of his other skills, etc.? And a large part of that is the absolute necessity to do personal in-game testing, because the global wiki is sometimes outright misleading or at least inconsistent in its handling of things. e.g., Clarte’s Lunatic offers an increase in the weakness damage multiplier, which for other characters such as RCF that is stated explicitly, yet for Clarte that goes ignored. Actually even that I halfway understand, as a decision for the past when (a) no bosses existed that were weak to crystal, and then (b) even when multiple of those were added to the game, to a veteran player those bosses were “behind” the bleeding edge of new content (aka with end-game gear + a fantastic roster they were outright easy), thus there was less incentive to go back and help newer players catch up by acknowledging such facts. Except that Jet Tactician was a complete game-changer in that regard imho, and made AS Clarte’s increased damage upon weakness relevant again, especially for someone who chose to farm his AD for the purposes of his Shadow as well as all that wonderful Speed-controlling Lunar gear.
Speaking of doing testing, I noticed that Milsha’s “effects of lunatic” do not show up as any of (a) icon on the character portrait, (b) words in the status screen, nor © animation sparkly effect on the character. i.e., this is WFS’s fault that skills are so notoriously complicated, and while the wiki is insufficient to the task (again, imho) of explaining all of that to a casual player who does not want to spend hours each week pouring over stat sheets and the minutia of every single frigging skill in the entire game, ultimately they can only do so much to counteract the trend of WFS to obscure things by making such complicated game mechanics but offering good avenues to explain them. All that said, check out game-info.wiki’s character summaries b/c they are freaking amazing to describing in a very few words (unfortunately needing Google Translate and thus not perfect especially character names) what is worth more time investigating, and like pairs of characters that work well together e.g. ES Miyu + Orleya.
As far as grinding… yeah. :-) You might enjoy Jade or Saki’s ADs, or Underworld AD, b/c the music does not stop during battle thus leading to a more “immersive” experience, but even that you can only enjoy so much of before it starts to wear thin:-P.
Fwiw, AE is the only gacha - & also the only mobile - game that I allow myself to play. B/c of my love for Chrono Trigger, I gave this one a shot, and do not regret it, but I also cannot really get into those, so I feel you there.:-D
Yeah you have a strong point about why they did that there. A little bit of self insert (especially in that situation) always sells right? I don’t mind WHY Aldo isn’t interested in romantic relationships, I guess I just wished he would actually let these girls know. But yes I guess that would stop the gravy train as you said.
I played Chrono Cross before but not Chrono Trigger cos I didn’t have the game console it was on. But it’s in my Steam library now, I will probably get to it after I’m finished with Octopath Traveler :)
Yeah there’s always the future - like Shanie may gain an ES form and so they might fall in love then, if he did not outright reject the possibility? i.e., please spend on ES Shanie’s banner, not even to get her but for the slim chance at maybe pulling her, possibly, hopefully, and if not on the first pull, you can use paid CS to increase those odds (except not really) by continuing to pull her until your luck eventually catches up to where you think it should be, isn’t that how
gamblingga(t)cha works?Chrono Cross had much better graphics, and a very nice soundtrack while Chrono Trigger had an outdated graphical style even for the time period it came out in, plus also a fantastic soundtrack. But lore and gameplay wise, Chrono Trigger is easily 10-100x better than the already decent game Chrono Cross. It stands in a league all of its own, with little to compare it to at that level.