Happy New Year 2022! + Sorting out gacha games

Happy new year everyone! Can you believe we’re already 10 days into the year? It feels like Christmas was only yesterday, but now it’s already time to go back to school/work. And so another year begins.

I had a lot of time to think about gaming over the new year break. Specifically why I’ve moved away from regular gaming to mobile/gacha ones so much these days. It boils down to a few simple reasons:

1. Bright happy colors. Self-explanatory. There are gacha games with duller palettes I’m sure, but I’m not attracted to those.

2. Quick thrills and cheap dopamine hits. Bosses everywhere, loot everywhere, new stuff to chase all the time, etc.

3. Fear of missing out. Free time-limited stuff like banners and events keep you coming back again and again.

4. JRPGs ain’t that great. I’ve played my fair share and most of the time it’s 60 hours of blah blah talking, go here, go there, then the ending is the same old “Mankind needs no gods!” and/or “The power of friendship triumphs over all” spiel I’ve seen a hundred times before. Nowadays I aim for interesting gameplay like exploration (e.g. dungeon crawlers), crafting, action-based combat or some other gimmick, and gacha games have all of that as well.

5. Gacha games never end. Until they suddenly do, but you know what I mean. With a regular JRPG, it may take 100 hours, but you’re still going to finish, roll credits, the end. Gacha games are designed to keep you playing for years if they can. And there are only so many hours in a day, so every neverending game you add to your list is another chunk of time out of your day. That’s less time to spend on work, sleep, food, other hobbies or other video games.

With that in mind, I’m not going to start any gacha games from now on. If I’m not already playing it, too bad. Moreover I’m going to definitively drop those that just aren’t “sparking joy” or that I hardly play any more.

Gacha games to drop

Shining Nikki – Already deleted. It was fun in its own way, but I wasn’t getting much out of it. The heavy focus on stats made collecting low-scoring clothes feel pointless, especially since the 3D look didn’t interest me. Meanwhile events were so expensive that an F2P has to save months to afford a full suit in a UR event. It’s not worth the effort.

Sdorica – Tried it briefly over the holidays. Lovely and unusual art style and character designs. Everything else I just didn’t like, especially the draggy story (how many monsters must we kill in the slums?), sluggish combat, lack of clear tier lists (this might be a plus for some people), the double-edged sword combat mechanics, etc etc. It’s just not my kind of thing.

Granblue Fantasy – It’s pretty much dropped already, but I did log in every day during the roulette because hey, free stuff. And I discovered how meaningless it is to get free stuff  you have no use for. I also discovered that it’s still possible GBF to rope me back in, but it would require a much faster internet connection than I currently have. As it is, the loading times drive me crazy and make everything from raids to story quests a huge chore. And you can’t even tab out and let things load, like seriously? As a bonus I was also able to delete Google Chrome since I only had it for GBF purposes.

Rakuen Seikatsu Hitsujimura – One of my longest-played online games. Now sadly in decline. The developers are putting much less effort into events – rerun upon rerun. They’re not fixing bugs or giving compensation for login problems any more. And they keep tightening the screws to make things less fun and less rewarding unless you spend money. It’s always been like that but now it’s totally blatant. Doomed game is doomed.

Guardian Tales – Really wanted to get into this because I think it’s cute. Unfortunately it doesn’t play nice with emulators. In the past two weeks I’ve only been able to get into the game three times. All other times, it gets stuck on the “Checking newly acquired resources” screen or the “Now loading” screen. I’m not going to put it on my phone no matter what, so unless it comes to Steam or gets a PC client, it’s not meant to be.

Gacha games on probation (not dropped but not playing regularly)

Genshin Impact – Great game when a new map comes out. Boring otherwise. Rather than stick out and complain or start to hate it, I plan to get Zhongli (or fail 50/50) when his banner returns and then relax until the next big map update. I know a smaller update with Enkanomiya came out a few days ago so I’ll check that out for a bit while getting Zhongli. After that, it’s the backburner for Genshin.

Another Eden – Great JRPG, nice cast, interesting stories, highly recommended. Not your typical gacha game at all. However I ran into a massive difficulty spike against the final boss of the Western Mythos and it made me think “What am I doing with my life?” so I got mad and so I’m going to delete it. There’s slightly more to it than that, but not really. Difficulty spikes are annoying. Getting stuck and having to grind for gear is unpardonable.

More importantly, I want to reclaim my phone from videogames, so it definitely has to move. But since it’s actually pretty good, I’ll look into picking up where I left off on emulator or Steam. That will take a couple of months, though. First I gotta let this anger pass. Damned double-attack spamming crystal-using, cheating lying sunuva…

Gacha games to keep playing with great joy

Love Nikki – Almost caught up to the story. Should take another week or two to clear Volume 2 chapter 9 and then…???? Either I will enjoy crafting suits without being forced to by the story, or I will get bored with the lack of direction and reduce my playtime before too long. Most likely the former because the story is bogus and I’m well rid of it, but you never know.

Epic Seven – Started two weeks ago. Today is day 16 IIRC.

What I like most is that there’s auto-battling for when you just want to farm in the background. So convenient. Though you just know that any game with auto-battle is going to be super duper grindy. I’m at Abyss floor 46, level 8 in most hunts, for those familiar with the game. I’ll do a proper post on it one of these days, so no need to say much.

Happy Color & Water Sort Puzzle: My go-to casual games/apps for when I’m in an offline environment or just chilling mindlessly. Nothing much to say about them either.

Games to play in 2022

I’ve had success in the past assigning games to actual months so I know what to play at any given time. I’ll try it again this year and see if it gives gaming a much-needed shot in the arm. 6 months, 5 games (January is virtually over as far as I’m concerned). If it works out, I’ll do another batch to take me to December.

Jan/Feb – Undernauts: Labyrinth of Yomi. I’m already 10 hours in and it’s pretty good. If I finish it soon, I’ll try to get back into Ray Gigant. It would be nice if I could play all of Experience Inc.’s dungeon crawlers, I always tell myself.

March – Zwei: the Ilvard Insurrection. My mind tells me I like anime-style action RPGs, but for some reason I just can’t get into Ys. Maybe Zwei 2 will do the trick? If it doesn’t, I’ve been meaning to restart Dark Cloud 2 for the past little while, so I might go with that.

April – Atelier Lydie & Scumbag. I haven’t played any Atelier stuff in a while. I’m not missing it, but maybe I will be by April.

May – Final Fantasy XIII. Started it long ago, made some progress, got tired and quit. Time to give it a final try or just delete it from my PC once and for all. If I finish/quit it early, I’ll do the same for Tokyo Xanadu eX+. I can consider the FFXIII sequels if I really, really like the game by the end, but I’m not holding my breath.

June – The Caligula Effect: Overdose. I’ve enjoyed other JRPGs from Furyu Corporation, so despite the scathing reviews, I still want to try it. I’ll also use June as a “free month” to try other stuff I’ve been curious about as well as random stuff that happens to be on my hard drive.

And that’s it for new year’s resolutions this year. Hope you all had a great holiday! See you around!

Major Spoilers for Another Eden – Found out about the Cat beyond Time and Space

I’m still playing the same five games regularly: Rakuen Seikatsu Hitsujimura, Genshin Impact (once a week), Love Nikki, Shining Nikki and Another Eden. Apart from Another Eden, they’re all time-gated in some way or another, which means I can’t play them for very long every day. And Another Eden crashes without fail every ten minutes or so, so it’s practically the same. So does Shining Nikki, which means it’s probably my phone’s fault. I knew gaming on the mobile phone was a mistake. But it’s too much effort to migrate to emulator now, so I just treat it as a game meant to be played in 10-minute bursts.

Hmm, ask again.

So! Another Eden. My teams are an average of level 65, with the highest passing 71 recently. I kicked all the 4-stars out long ago, but they’re still present on the B-teams I use to farm extra points in the Episode quests. In one of my earlier posts I mistakenly said that 4-stars upgraded to 5-star aren’t as good as native 5-stars, but it’s not true. Good 5-star units are good regardless of the method you used to get them. It’s just supremely tedious to raise a 4-star to 5, so I have no intention of doing so for now.

My current 5-star party consists of Tsukiha ES, Mighty, Victor, Heena and Zeviro, with Morgana as healer/debuffer. I also pulled Miyu AS, Hozuki, Laclair and Felmina recently so I’ll raise them on the side when I get the chance. Laclair is the only one I seriously need, because I have the feeling I’ll need an extra water character for an upcoming boss. I mistakenly said I had Isuka 5-star earlier, but she’s only 4.5-star. Pity, I really liked her.

I pull on the free banners whenever I can scrape together 1000 Chrono stones. Sometimes I’m lucky, most of the time… I still need solid Fire and Earth units to round out my roster, so I’ll keep trying to do a 10-pull on every new banner until I’m set. Unlike most gacha games, Another Eden doesn’t have a “pity” system where you’re guaranteed a particular unit after pulling for a while. That means there’s no point in saving stones unless there’s an upcoming banner you really really want (to be disappointed in).

Warning! Huge story spoilers follow!

Enough about the characters. Another Eden styles itself as a regular JRPG so let’s talk about the story! I found out who the “cat beyond time and space” is, so I’m here to report it as promised. The cat is…. *drumroll* the main character Aldo! …But he doesn’t really care about being a cat, so neither should you.

To give more details, there was a Professor named Chronos who sent his whole family hurtling to different time periods for a reason I’ve forgotten. Chronos went into the distant past, his wife Madoka is missing, their son Eden… well, shame about what happened to Eden. Their daughter Feinne/Cecile ended up near Baruoki together with the family cat Kyros. Baby Feinne/Cecile was so terrified at being left alone that she used her magic/Prisma powers to turn Kyros into a copy of her brother Eden. Kyros/Eden then grew up to be called Aldo. So he’s the cat, and he’s beyond time and space because he came from the future. Get it?

Simple enough. The writers probably expected me to be surprised by such a revelation but… I’ve seen it before. And I’ve said it before: there are RPGs where the main character turns out to have been dead or non-human all along, but it’s almost always treated as a non-event. Just something trivial in their backstory where everyone goes “Whoaaa!” and then the game just moves on. Besides, my official party contains a literal frog-man, a pink android and a purple cyborg, so the human-looking Aldo is actually one of the more “normal” ones.

Not to mention I have an actual talking cat (?) as my healer

Nobody dwells on his feline nature anyway. In fact Aldo doesn’t even have a feline nature. Apart from one brief and meaningless transformation, he never acts or thinks like a cat. He even says he can’t speak cat in one episode. In short, it was just a “shocking swerve” the writers added to make Another Eden stand out from the zillions of other JRPGs out there. Your mileage may vary on how successful it was.

BTW, Aldo/Kyros himself isn’t much of a cat, but there are many other cats dotting the landscape that you can befriend in the game. You can even go adventuring as Aldo’s pet cat Varuo. In that mode, you can collect items for forging kitty clothes then dress your companion cat up. AFAIK the effect is purely cosmetic. Too bad, I don’t do pure cosmetics in JRPGs. But who knows, if I run out of stuff to do in the main game I’ll give it some thought.

For the rest of the story so far, I’m at chapter 50 and my characters are really, really dumb. When a bad guy kidnaps your sister (another guy’s sister, not Feinne. The writers really like little sisters) and wants you to gather powerful weapons for him in exchange for her, maybe you should stop and think about whether it’s a good idea or not. You know, exercise the ol’ grey matter for just a few seconds. Is this baddie the kind of guy we want to hand super weapons to? (No.) Will he really let the girl go once we’ve done his bidding? (No. Duh.) Is there a way to storm his castle instead? (Yes.)

It was really stupid… After all the time wasted collecting the weapons and the resulting fallout, we had to spend waste more time storming the baddie’s castle anyway – wait, even before that we had to find the key to the castle, and to get that we had to go through like 10 different stages… The main story is such a hassle and it’s not even good. I’ve already forgotten what I’m supposed to be doing on the new continent I unlocked recently. Playing hide-and-seek with my companions, rescuing kidnapped kids, retrieving Aldo’s face… it’s all over the place.

And it’s even more surprising that the main story is so brainless because the “episode” side stories range from “decent” to “actually really interesting.” They’re all like mini-RPG stories condensed into a few short hours. That means much less time-wasting and pointless detours and more focused story-telling. You won’t be able to avoid lengthy dungeon crawls, but at least there’s a clear short-term objective (usually). Plus you get to interact with more interesting characters than Aldo’s boring crew. I especially enjoyed the Mythos stage. It could be a full JRPG on its own if they fleshed it out. The Azure Rebel stage was good too. Much better than I’d expected.

The 1000 Year Ark sucked, but it unlocked the fishing minigame, so that’s cool. Fishing is fun! Much better than the garbage system in Genshin Impact which I will trash a little more next time I write about GI.

TL;DR when people say Another Eden has a good story, they’re probably not talking about the main story. Their perception might be clouded by the Episode quests, most of which are very good. If you ever wanted to “finish” an RPG story in a day or two and get good rewards to apply to other short “RPGs,” this is your game. I have more to say about the stories, the systems (just unlocked Grastas), my party, etc. but it’s been a long time since I wrote anything so I’m out of stamina. My next post will probably something quick on Undernauts. After that, maybe a Genshin Impact update before I take another break till Sumeru releases. After that we’ll see. Mata ne!

Shining Nikki – Just another grindy gacha game

Shining Nikki, the sequel to Love Nikki, launched globally on July 5th 2021. I’ve been playing since day one and have only missed a few logins here and there. It’s fun in its own way, but like Love Nikki it isn’t really about fashion. Shining Nikki is more fashionable in effect because of changes to the dress up system but for someone like me who doesn’t care about fashion and is more into fun and quirky gameplay, it’s a much more tedious and much less charming experience.

Shining Nikki‘s Story

Nikki and Momo go back to Miraland 680 years ago to save the world from destruction. Somehow something called “Designer’s Reflections” have something to do with it, so Nikki has been running around here and there spouting random crap about reflections. I’m not really motivated because I know the game will be running for years and Nikki will never be any closer to saving the world. It’s all about the friends we made along the way.

Shining Nikki is indeed considerably darker than Love Nikki and absolutely not something I would give to anyone under 15 to play. But a lot of the darkness feels forced and thrown in for shock factor. And it makes the gameplay feel even more jarring when Nikki has someone at gunpoint… then has to fight them in a dress-up battle wearing outfits that don’t fit the mood at all.

Characters and Interaction

Nikki and Momo are really annoying here, because if they’d really come from the Miraland of Love Nikki then they should be a whole lot smarter. Much less trusting, to boot. After the whole Bobo fiasco, they’re just going to let another random bubbly girl upend her whole lifestyle and tag along with them? And clue her in on their top-secret mission when they don’t even know her full name? And on and on it goes with their stupidity, it doesn’t even bear describing here.

Nikki will say “I’ve learned my lesson, I’m smarter now,” but then the next scene she will take a shortcut through a dark alley in an unfamiliar city, I’m like “Whaaaat?” She’s been led into a trap three times in the most recent Love Nikki chapters I’ve played, but she still followed someone suspicious to a deserted house and then drank the hot chocolate she was given. It would be forgiveable if this were her first rodeo, but she should really know better by now.

Some people like the ability to get under Nikki’s skin by “interacting” with her at home and in events, but that’s my least favorite part of the game. She’s just a game character. I don’t need to psychoanalyze her or hear about her many imaginary problems. And she’s so whiny and needy and indecisive, urghh. I preferred LN’s Nikki who just got down to business without whining on social media about eating cake.

Yeah anyway, the story is dumb so I just read it for lack of anything better to do. At least the localization is pretty good this time round.

Shining Nikki Gameplay

The core of my dissatisfaction…? I’m not really dissatisfied, but I’m not impressed either. In practical terms, Shining Nikki works like virtually any other gacha game. I could liken it to Granblue Fantasy. In GBF, you put your best weapons into the weapon pool for the element. In Shining Nikki, you pick your highest scoring clothes for the category (Fresh, Elegant, Sweet, Cool or Sexy).

What this means is that 99% of the clothes you will get throughout the game will be useless in terms of story progression or competitiveness. You will be wearing the same top-scoring clothes for MONTHS simply because yohaven’t found anything stronger. I know this for a fact because I’m been wearing the same Sweet Twinkle Twinkle SSR dress I was given on day one. I failed to get the Fox UR dress in the latest event, but if I had, I would probably have worn that thing for the next 12 months. That’s just the way this game works.

I only recently graduated from this disaster

So although Shining Nikki’s outfits are less outlandish because of limitations on wearable items (5 accessories max), the dress up portion is much less fun because there’s a much smaller number of categories. In LN, there’s all kinds of requirements like evening gowns, army gear, rainwear, sports gear, etc. on top of tags like Sexy or Mature. Zillions of them. And there are also tons of clothing items in all kinds of categories. If it’s Bohemian, I’ve got several pieces I can mix and match to clear the stage, even without listening to Momo’s tips.

Some categories occassionally pop up in Shining Nikki, but they can be safely ignored in favor of wearing your highest scoring outfit. I mentioned in the post on Love Nikki that LN is also about the highest scoring clothes. It’s just that what constitutes “highest scoring” varies a lot because of all the different tags and the weighting applied to them. In Shining Nikki it’s a pure numerical value. This dress is worth 2094 points, that accessory is worth 800 points. Like it or lump it.

The similarities to a regular gacha game don’t end there. Shining Nikki has “Designer’s Reflections” which you can think of as character cards or summons that you/Nikki have to grind to get, then grind to level up, then equip to boost your score. And each Designer’s Reflection must be equipped with Concepts, which you can think of as extra weapons. These must ALSO be grinded for and then grinded up in levels.

There’s also peripherals like the “Bond with Nikki” feature where you the player (not Nikki. Nikki isn’t even your avatar, she’s just a character you’re observing) give Nikki gifts every day to grind up her affection levels so she can give you tiny boosts to your stats.

You also have to boost your stats by grinding Makeup levels by doing boring guild quests every day. But wait, there’s more! You can, in fact, you must also boost your stats by doing the Stylist Academy stages every day. And most recently they introduced the Idea Lab, another way to increase your score through – you guessed it – more grinding!

I’m saying “grinding, grinding, grinding” like it’s a bad thing, but it’s not that bad. Yet. For one thing, all that stuff doesn’t take that long to do every day. About 15 minutes max, more if there’s an event going on. Moreover, Shining Nikki can save attempts for you, so instead of for example, logging once a day to do 10 Challenge stages, you could log in once every 3 days to do 30 stages at once. Good for the busy player. Plus the stat requirements to pass stages are not too high, so you don’t need to go all pedal to the metal on the dailies if you don’t want to.

Pay to play? Free to play

F2P for life. Not out of any high-falutin’ principles but because I’ve been spoiled by the permanent bonuses in Love Nikki. Shining Nikki also has a few, but it’s a few paltry gifts once a week. I’d probably forget to collect them anyway, so there’s no point. Besides, SN doesn’t lock a critical feature like “Done 10” behind a paywall like LN does, so it’s pretty convenient to play already.

There are other reasons as well. SN events are mostly gacha-dependent, and I don’t see the point in spending money for the “chance” to get something. I don’t do it in LN and I certainly won’t do it here. Especially since in the most recent Zither River Night event in SN, I spent 10,000 pink diamonds trying to pull the event dress and never got it. Paying money on top of that would be adding insult to injury. I prefer the different systems in LN, many of which allow you to outright buy the outfit you either with direct cash or diamonds.

Lousy drops don’t motivate me either

Also there’s just the fact that I’m not that into Shining Nikki compared to Love Nikki. SN is superior in a lot of ways, but the 3D aesthetic just doesn’t do it for me. Nikki looks small and emaciated, and the realistic approach means a lot of outfits look utterly ridiculous on her. Especially the Ruin suits, which look like bad cosplay.

And more importantly, because the way the scoring system works, as I explained at length above, you won’t use 99% of the stuff you pull for or craft anyway. Unless you are super into just dressing up and taking screenshots of virtual items, which doesn’t apply to me. Without appealing benefits for spending, F2P is best.

Let’s talk about some plusses

I realize I’ve been sounding a bit negative so far, so let’s tally up the reasons I’m still playing the game. I should have done this before writing everything above, because now I’m wondering, “Why am I playing this anyway?” The biggest thing is that it scratches my Love Nikki itch. LN veterans have already crafted everything and finished all the events, but the game is still new to me. When I run out of stamina after about 5 minutes, SN is like the LN-lite I while my time away with.

And the story may have irritating developments, but I’m still somewhat curious about where it’s going to go next. If it had more Momo in it I’d be even happier, but there’s no room for a comic relief character in a grimdark dressup game, so he hardly shows up. I’m sad.

And I like the Diamond Arena and seeing higher numbers every week. The usual “getting stronger” appeal of gacha games.

The Nail Salon was also fun for a week or two, before it fell into the same old “use the highest scoring item” situation as the rest of the game. There’s a nail art contest similar to the Competition in LN, but the rewards are meh and the scoring process is obscure so it’s not interesting.

…and… that’s it. Like I said, it’s just another grindy gacha game, and not particularly special to me. Still, it helps pass the time and it’s not actually bad so I’ll be playing it for a while longer.

Genshin Impact Update 2.1 – My little Baal can’t possibly be this weak! (mild story spoilers)

Yo! I hear today is Genshin Impact’s first anniversary. According to Paimon, my own first anniversary is 11/11/2020 so any looking back on the year will have to wait till then. Except I won’t do that because I’ve written about it many times before. Besides I’ll be busy still sinking my teeth into Genshin Impact‘s Inazuma updates. I kinda wish they had rationed out the islands so the Inazuma experience would last longer though. Seirai Island in particular could have been kept till the next patch.

I’m not really complaining though. It was good. It is still good. And it will be even better when they release the last island. I see a big bump in the world map next to Seirai Island where it might be located. Looking forward to it!

Quick thoughts on my experiences with patch 2.1 – 2.2

💎The major sidequests are a bit tedious but also kind of fun. Obviously I used a FAQ or guide for about 50% of them, and I’ve abandoned the more annoying ones. But the ones I’ve done so far like the Sakura tree quest and part of the Orobashi Legacy quest and Tatara tales quest feel rewarding because you’re actually changing terrain and making lasting differences. Or as lasting as a game that could go offline any day can be, anyway.

genshin impact anniversary theater

The anniversary theater was fun to watch.

💎I didn’t think much of the main archon quest, though. It all seemed a bit silly to be prancing around with Yoimiya and Ayaka and the resistance when Raiden Shogun could have wiped us all out in one go if she had wanted to. Worst parts of the quest were

1) Having to play Ayaka’s awfully boring character quest. What was that thing at the end, a mating dance? I cringed so hard.

2) Traveler getting all worked up over one generic NPC who was obviously forced on us just so he could die and make us “angry.” So obvious. It’s like animes have some random little girl give the MC a flower or something. You just know she’s going to get kidnapped so he can go save her.

Anyway, really glad to get the archon quests over with so I can get those primogems and get back to overworld exploration! Plus when Sumeru or The Chasm comes out I’ll be ready to dive straight in.

💎It’s insane the amount of AR EXP needed to level up ranks after AR55. I’ve been doing quest upon quest, opening chest upon chest and I’m still only halfway to AR56. I heard someone reached AR60 the other day. Whoa.

💎I pulled Baal or Beelzebub or Raiden Shogun or Ei or whatever you want to call her. I got her in 30 pulls so either I got really lucky or I may have had some pity built already. Probably the latter from my failed attempt to pull Zhongli. I’m saving for his eventual re-run or for the next must-have shielder character. That’s the only hole in my my lineup right now.

I have Diona, who is working hard but is still a bit squishy. I have Beidou but can’t figure out how to use her shield consistently. I don’t have C6 Noelle yet. So I’d love to pull Zhongli and just set-and-forget the shields. As a character he irritates me somehow, but his shields are the easiest to use of all the characters I’ve trialed.

💎Back to the topic of Baal, there was some controversy about how “weak” she is and when/if Mihoyo is going to buff her and the Electro element in general. There was a lot of squalling and crying and threats to quit the game etc. I didn’t follow the saga too closely, but apparently the main problem was that Mihoyo gave a skill description for her, offered a different skill and changed the description to match. It’s definitely a scummy move, but am I going to quit over it? Nah. And Mihoyo knows it, which is why they hunkered down until it all blew over. I need to keep that move in mind for real life applications…

💎So anyway, I got my Raiden Shogun. Leveled her up to 70/80. Got a basic set of Emblem artifacts for her. Even leveled up her talents a bit. There’s just one small problem: her weapon. Her best weapon can be gotten for “free” but the catch is that you have to do the horrible fishing minigame to get it. And not just once but over and over and over again. I normally love fishing in games, but in Genshin Impact it’s too tedious and goes against everything I enjoy about the game.

I won’t spend a lot of time describing it, but basically you can get locked into a lengthy battle of attrition with a single little fish. And then you have to do it again and again, hundreds of times. I want to say “I’ll never do it!” but maybe when I absolutely run out of stuff to do, I can drop a line here and there. But that will be a long time coming because when I play an open world action RPG, I want action. And when I run out of stuff to do, I’d rather drop the game for a while until it gets its act together again.

💎So how strong is my Baal? Lol, dunno. I haven’t tried her out yet. The title was misleading, just like what Mihoyo did with the character. I haven’t leveled up her artifacts much, and she’s holding a level 20 Favonius Lance, so there’s really nothing to see yet. My current teams can clear most content reliably, and whatever they can’t clear I simply won’t do so… yeah. But I played her story quest and she was pretty powerful + kinda cool. It will be fun when I can also hit all those big fancy numbers, pew pew pew.

💎Apart from Baal, I’m currently focused on building Ninguang. I tried out Childe, Yanfei, Ganyu and Ninguang during the Hyakunin Ikki event, but only Ninguang really blew me away. For a 4-star, her damage was no joke at all, and she was very easy to use unlike Ganyu and Childe. Plus I have her already, so why not build her? The only downside is farming that annoying Domain of Guyun with the flying Ruin enemy. I hate those guys.

💎As a matter of fact, I need to farm a lot of artifacts for everyone. From around AR45 to AR50 I worked hard to get everyone a basic, but not optimum set of artifacts. Now it’s time to go back and get the really good stuff. My main problem is getting enough Crit DMG without sacrificing Crit ATK. All my characters look like this when you look at their stats.

Great crtical hit rate, not enough damage. At all. Luckily I used barely any Fragile Resin during my artifact farming days, so I can pull them all out now. Even better, I’m strong enough to farm the domains by myself so I don’t have to depend on tedious co-op. Winning! Except… I get bored and tired after one or two runs of a domain so it’s going to take ages to get this done. I’ll think of it as a very long-term project for now.

Current and Future Teams

The biggest dilemma now. I have so many characters, and I’ve built many of them to 70/80. My 5-stars are Xiao, Venti, Mona, Keqing, Baal and I just pulled Qiqi on the standard banner. For 4-stars, I have them all except Sara, Sayu and… someone? I might be missing one. Otherwise I have pretty much all the 4-stars in the game.

I usually field a team of Xiao, Bennett, Xiangling and Fischl for reasons I explained last time. But lately I’ve been thinking of different teams as well. I tried the so-called “National” team of Bennett, Xiangling, Xingqiu and Sucrose, but without Xiao dishing out the big numbers, it was a DPS loss. I’m going to try the same team but with Xiao instead of Sucrose. But where can I fit in Fischl? Oz auto-ing away in the background is such an easy source of extra damage and reactions that I’m loath to put her away.

Bennett and Xiangling power each other + give pyro resonance so I want to keep them both. But I’d like to have Xingqiu for the vaporize and additional heals… And then I’ve heard good things about Mona so I built her up a bit, but where to fit her in… instead of Xingqiu? What about Beidou who is supposed to be really good? And what do I do with Baal and Ningguang once they’re ready for the big show? Decisions, decisions…

Don’t mind me, it’s a good sign that I’m engaging with the game a little more. I will actively try out new teams going forward, if only because I’m sick of hearing the same voice lines all the time. I had a good time with a freeze-melt team of Xiao, Bennett, Xingqiu and Diona last time I played so there’s still fun to be had in Genshin Impact yet.

As for other games… yeah haha. I’m going well in Another Eden, Shining Nikki and Love Nikki, at least. I’ll just think of 2021 as “the year I took a break from regular games.”

Another Eden: The Cat beyond Time and Space – Grindier than I’d thought

As I’d thought, there’s always a catch in these supposedly stamina-free mobile RPGs. Another Eden: The Cat beyond Time and Space bills itself as a JRPG that just happens to be on mobile platforms. But you’d be crazy to think you can just zoom from story point to story point freely. I mean you can, but you’ll get your heiney handed to you. You’re supposed to fight and grind levels and ability points. Plus also collect enemy drops to make new weapons Etrian Odyssey-style. If you run out of materials, you have to go back and fight some more.

cyrus from another edenSpeaking of Etrian Odyssey, this game also has high-level F.O.E.-like enemies littering the maps that you have to dodge until you’re strong enough to take them on. Some of them are also gatekeeping more powerful weapons in either chests or drops because hey, why not?

All that is normal grindy RPG stuff, I don’t mind it too much. What I draw the line at is grinding to rank up characters. Specifically story-important characters like the main character Aldo and his sidekick Riica. After a very early point, their ability board is locked because they’re stuck as 3-stars. You have to go through some very tedious stages known as “Another Dungeon” to farm enough items to rank them up to 4-star.

For Aldo, I need one Swordsman tome, 30 Murmur Scripts and 10 Prayer Scripts. If you’re very lucky, one run through Another Dungeon will drop two (2) measly Murmur Scripts. Usually just one. Veeery occasionally you will get a Prayer Script. I still haven’t seen a Swordsman tome in all the days I’ve been playing.

30 Murmur Scripts = 30 dungeon runs, another 10 for prayer scripts if the RNG smiles on you… ugh, I’m annoyed just typing it, but it’s doable. It’s just tedious as hell, why is why I haven’t actually unlocked Aldo and Riica’s ranks yet. Instead I’ve benched them in favor of gacha characters. Right now I have three 5-stars: Tsukiha, Mighty and Isuka. A whole bunch of 4-stars as well. Elemental and weapon weaknesses are very much a thing in Another Eden, so you need to build a couple of teams for various situations. But that’s still going to be a 4-5 star affair, so who needs measly 3-stars?

All that said, I’m still making some progress here and there with the main story. I just finished chapter 16 and learned of Aldo and Feinne’s true origins. I appreciate not being made to wait all the way to the end of the game for some clarity like many RPGs would do. There are several sidequests and side stories available that I’m tempted to dive into, but I’m largely restraining myself until I’ve gotten a little further in the story. I know I won’t be able to avoid Another Dungeon forever so I’m trying to unlock the “Very Hard” option with better drops to reduce the tediousness somewhat.

Last note for today – I mentioned last time that Another Eden ran very well on my phone. Past tense: ran. For the past few days, it has been shutting down unexpectedly after about 10 minutes of play. It’s very annoying and a real buzzkill. It doesn’t even get hot or laggy, just goes off. I tried to free up space on the phone, I tried to close all other apps while it is running. No such luck with the problem, so I’m going to see if there are updates available that hopefully fix the problem. I’ll also check if I’ve enabled some settings on my phone that shut down apps that consume too much memory or something crazy like that.

If all fails, I might have to move to playing on an emulator, but I really don’t want to do that. It worked for Atelier Online because I really wanted to play it, but Another Eden isn’t that great. I’d rather quit than spend another 5GB+ downloading it again. Will keep you guys posted if anything interesting happens, but don’t expect much.