Another Eden Begins
Top Critic Average
Critics Recommend
Critic Reviews for Another Eden Begins
Another Eden Begins is a successful port, effectively adapting the mobile JRPG to a single-player journey, though the game experience was lukewarm.
Another Eden Begins is an odd game. On the surface it seems to have everything you'd want from a modern JRPG but there is so little happening beneath the surface that it never really leaves its disposable gatcha origins behind. The core mechanics are functional enough that I played it through to the end (on Steam Deck whilst commuting and/or watching TV) but it's hard to recommend at the full price – even less so with the extra content locked behind a further purchase.
It’s a brilliantly designed, if questionably balanced, system that unifies the game’s tactical battles, the grounded emotional reality of its characters, and the theme of different worlds colliding to both catastrophic and mutually beneficial effect. Which is to say, it’s classic Kato.
Despite its brutal release timing and several noteworthy shortcomings, this offline conversion of Another Eden is a fantastic game that plays beautifully with one of the coolest New Game+ modes that's been done in an RPG.
Maybe something was lost in translation, or maybe there was nothing there to begin with, but Another Eden Begins does not work on almost any level.
Another Eden Begins is a great JRPG from industry legends, taking the gacha game and evolving it into something entirely its own.
Despite its dated dungeon-crawling elements and uncertainty surrounding future DLC pricing, this stands as a masterclass in transforming a gacha game into a true single-player console RPG without a trace of disappointment.
Another Eden Begins is aggressively fine. The turn-based combat features a good amount of variety, but the game's light difficulty doesn't make it something you really need to get that in the weeds with. The story isn't that engrossing, but it's not bad. I just feel like I've seen Masato Kato tell that story in more interesting ways in Chrono Cross. It's cool that Another Eden will extend beyond my mobile phone, but it wasn't necessarily something Switch players were missing out on if they avoided gacha RPGs.
