Video Game / Eden Eternal

Eden Eternal is a Free-to-Play MMORPG for PC, developed by Taiwanese developer X-Legend and released in October-November 2010 in the Chinese-speaking countries. An English-language server ran globally from June 16, 2011 to April 29, 2021. It makes its mark by borrowing and uniting successful features from a variety of popular older Eastern and Western titles and wrapping them in a Animesque art style, with the addition of a unique mechanic that allows a single character to switch between and level all of the game's classes at any time. Aeria Games provided the English service and did a relatively excellent job, with enough pop culture Shout Outs to make a drinking game.

The game takes place in a Fantasy Kitchen Sink where infighting between various species of Beast Men has been interrupted by the re-emergence of an ancient evil. The Player Characters are humans born from blue crystals, who have great powers that allow them to stand a chance against the enemy. However, the recent addition of the Zumi mouse-race has revealed that it is not merely humans but heroes of all races that are born into the land through the crystals. With most of the NPC races yet to be made playable, who knows how the rest of the legend will unfold?

Not to be confused with Eternal Eden, an indie RPG made using RPG Maker VX.

This game provides examples of:

• Action Bomb: The Engineer's Missile Destruction summons a small robot that follows the player around like a pet. When the player attacks it rushes the same target and explodes, dishing out tons of damage (up to 14 times the caster's base attack unless the player is especially well geared).
• Alice Allusion: Alice, the final boss of Mayor's Dream. Her subtitle is 'Dream Eater,' fitting as you're fighting her in the dreams of the Mayor she's trapped, and she appears as an adorable-looking child in lolita garb.
  • In the Trial version of the dungeon, Alice has a second form where she grows to a massive size.
• Alliterative Title
• All Your Powers Combined: The Mimic class.
  • Crazy-Prepared: A possible result of building this class to resist status effects.
• An Adventurer Is You: The system is rather generous, with 5 different archetypes of 3 classes each. Every archetype has a set of skills shared by all of its classes and each class has its own unique skills to differentiate from the rest of the archetype.
  • Defense specializes in gaining and holding aggro.
    • Warriors have high single target damage and aggro generation but can only generate group aggro in small bursts. They mitigate damage by reducing it through armor and buffs.
    • Knights have better area taunting ability and AOE damage. They mitigate damage by avoiding hits.
    • Templars are focused on the block stat and healing, with an instant self-heal that can outheal most Clerics.
    • Dragon Knights have the most offensive ability of the Defense classes and can take on dragon traits to enhance their skills.
  • Melee DMG specializes in doing damage up close.
    • Thieves have stealth and attacks which are enhanced when used from stealth as well as extreme single target DPS due to debuffs that double the damage an enemy receives.
    • Martial Artists are balanced and can achieve either massive single target DPS or solid damage mitigation (not both simultaneously) using stacking buffs.
    • Blade Dancers specialize in AOE damage and receive strong enhancements to many abilities from Bard buffs.
    • Samurai can combo their skills for additional damage and effects.
  • Ranged DMG specializes in hitting hard from afar.
    • Hunters are a pure DPS class that can summon a powerful tiger companion to tank for them and help deal damage.
    • Engineers can switch between a high DPS single target human form and an Iron Man Expy with good AOE and damage mitigation abilities.
    • Rangers are a varied ranged class, with an eagle summon, two triple-hit skills and a fear debuff.
  • Magic DMG focuses on elemental attacks.
    • Magicians are the AOE specialists and generally have the best damage output.
    • Illusionists focus on raising the damage potential of their allies while weakening the enemy and have a Robot Buddy to keep hostiles at bay.
    • Warlocks can summon a floating ball of eyes to aid them.
    • Luminaries are sword-using Magic Knights which use dark and holy spells to inflict powerful debuffs and crowd control on opponents, and can go into a powerful Super Mode.
  • Support specializes in healing and buffs.
    • Clerics have the best raid healing abilities and powerful long lasting buffs.
    • Bards have strong AOE healing and shorter lived but stronger buffs.
    • Shamans have a mix of party enhancement, DPS and healing capabilities. They rely on fragile Totems to provide either extra periodic healing or damage and aggro but these are mostly useful in solo play.
    • Sages have dual purpose spells that simultaneously hurt enemies and help allies.
• Badass Adorable: Alice, the boss of Mayor's Dream dungeon, definitely qualifies for this trope.
  • Justified by her power and ability in the Monster Arena.
• Badass Boast: Most members of enemy factions will tell you in gruesome detail what they plan to do with you.
• Bait-and-Switch Boss: There are several instances in the latter end of the game. They have to be taken out before the real boss appears, and they don't give you any material or achievement awards. They're also considered much harder than the bosses they're switched for. The first one is the boss Koos who is instantly replaced by Cruel Kasi in Federal Armory after defeat, and the other is Toroto 13, who is replaced by Zoet in Gristle Prison.
• Bears Are Bad News: There are both good and evil characters from the Ursun race but the enemy Ursun models are reserved for their Mighty Glacier roles.
• Beast Man: All the races besides humans and halfkins. Strangely enough there are no strong racial sentiments and both ally and enemy factions have members from multiple races.
• BFG: Engineers carry a man-portable Artillery Gun that is almost as large as themselves. The gun model is not rescaled for Zumi or Halfkin characters.
• BFS: The Greatswords. There is also one boss who uses a two-handed broadsword on a child model, which is about a third the size of the average player.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: The game even lampshades it at one point when telling you to come back at a later level.
  He stares at it for a time, then says, "I'm sorry for any harm I'm about to do to the fourth wall, but you'll have to come back later at level 21."
• Bribing Your Way to Victory: The game has an item shop as is typical of most fee-less MMORPGs. Most cash items can in turn be sold for in-game gold. However, there are enough paying players trying to make quick gold from such transactions that prices have been brought down to a reasonable level for non-payers.
• The Chosen One: The crystal-born. Formerly believed to only include humans, recent additions to the lore have indicated that heroes from all playable races are this as well.
• Combat Sadomasochist: Hans from Veninfang. And how. Just read what he says as you battle him...
• Counter-Attack: The signature skill of the Dragon Knight, Reverse Scale, class is this.
• Creepy Child: The final boss of the Mayor's Dream dungeon and the evil responsible for trapping the Mayor of Golden Plains City in his dream is an adorable little girl with Twin Tails and a black sword more than twice as tall as herself- who has a penchant for One-Hit Kill-ing tanks who are undergeared or not familiar with her skillset.
• Cute Bruiser: Alice qualifies. So does the Halfkin race. And to an extension, Zumis.
• Dark Is Not Evil: The Warlock class.
• Dual Boss: Juan and Angela, a humanoid frog and a humanoid turtle respectively. They are written as lovers.
  • Later on in the Manor dungeon is the fight with the Johnson brothers, Bob and Banks. They are notable as they inflict debuffs on the party that are removed by the other one's attacks, forcing many weaker parties to fight both together.
  • There's also Pross and Experiment 627, who wait for you at the end of Delphi Temple.
• Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: An interesting variant. Different elements and damage types are recognized in game but they do not affect raw damage done. Instead, an enemy's 'weakness' depletes a secondary value called 'Break Points', with 'Broken' enemies yielding superior loot- up to half of each boss's loot table is inaccessible unless it is 'Broken' before being killed.
• Enemy Mine: You're helping out Cruel Kasi and Sami in the Devastation Realm main quest - both were the bosses of the Federal Armory dungeon.
  • In the Malice Palice Trial, you have to help out Doubledoor after defeating him, though this is justified in that he was not himself.
• Everyone Is Bi: An option. The customary romance feature has no gender (or race) limitations. This implementation was probably intended to avoid the trouble of defining which matches are acceptable.
• Floating Continent: Durango Kingdom. Part of the overarching plot between Eloise Plains, Hayward Seavale and this location is trying to prevent a Colony Drop on Hayward.
• Forced Sleep: Several bosses have a skill that can do this to large groups of players; Most of them don't cancel even when attacked.
  • The Illusionist class gets a minor version that cancels out when the sleeper is attacked. Note that Damage-over-time effects bypass this.
• Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: The premise of the Slain dungeon is that someone is pulling a whole lot of these in from somewhere. The interior of the dungeon itself actually takes players into SPAAAAAACE.
  • The final boss of Trial: Slain is quite literally a giant insect that appears from nowhere after you defeat the second boss, Anderli.
• Green Aesop: Present in some segments of the main quest. Naturally, the enemy factions are the ones tearing things up and the player is recruited to fix them.
• Gadgeteer Genius: This is the Zumi hat and many of the game's technological facilities are run by them. You also aid a few Zumi Mad Scientists during the course of your main quest.
• Giant Enemy Crab: Hermit crabs, to be more precise.
• Guns Are Useless: Averted. Ranged weapon types have different power to speed ratios with guns being heavier on power. A lot of Hunters end up using guns despite the class bonus to bow damage due to their high natural Agility compensating for the lower weapon attack speed.
• Hidden Depths: The Flavor Text for some boss trophies shows them in their respective bosses. Among others, Alice is a Cosplay Otaku Girl, Bob Johnson wrote a children's book while in prison, and Charles wrote a document about Angellies.
• Hide Your Children: Sort of played straight. There are children in most cities but they are non-interactive parts of the backdrop, with one or two being NPCs. One boss does use a child model but she is implied to be an Eldritch Abomination.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: On the character actually. Several enemies have a reflect ability that returns damage that they take back at the player if they're not careful. This gets significantly worse if your critical rate is very high...
• Humans Are Special: Played straight in the original intro where humans are hailed as the saviors of the land. Subverted in the Zumi expansion and possibly all future race expansions.
• Katanas Are Just Better: Averted. Katanas are a separate weapon type but have the same traits as all other weapons- i.e. a unique stat ratio (sacrificing attack power for speed), several artifact/crafted versions and an attack boost when used by Samurai.
• Kill the God: namely Galt, the last boss of Vortek.
• Lethal Lava Land: Averted completely. In Crooked vein, you can ACTUALLY walk around on the lava. It's toasty warm, but you don't lose any HP.
• Level Grinding: Definitely present but eased by the variety of legal ways it can be done, some of which would be borderline exploits in other games.
• Lost Technology: The theme of the Shale dungeon.
  • Part of this technology is later revealed to be the blueprints to upgrading your Engineer to Mecha Ares and Annihilator.
• Magic Music: The Bard class uses a combination guitar/lute to play songs for attacking enemies and giving teammates short buffs.
• Massive Race Selection: Seven planned to be playable with two already released and one on the way, plus one NPC only. All of these races already appear as either NPCs or enemies.
  • Humans: Need no explanation. The only race released at launch.
  • Zumi: A diminutive genderless mouse race with strong technological aptitude. Second race to be released.
  • Anuran: An entirely male frog race who are more in tune with the magical forces. Third race to be released.
  • Ursun: A brawny bear race. Fourth race to be released.
  • Halfkin: A playful race of diminutive humanoids. Fifth race to be released. They share their background, starting area and intro with Humans.
  • Tuskar: A pudgy boar race. NPC only.
  • Torturra: A hulking tortoise race. NPC only.
  • Orcs: Orcs. NPC only.
  • Drakai: A quadrupedal dragon race. NPC only.
• The Merchant Who Doesn't Sell Anything: Ziglar is nearly infamous for this. Since nearly the beginning of the game, he has stood in Aven under the label of Mount Merchant, and has never had any in stock.
  • As of the recent Reawakening patch, he now gives out gift boxes on a daily basis, and absolutely denies ever once being a mount merchant.
    • This only lasted until the end of summer.
• Mercy Invincibility: After some status effects (Stun, Fear, Sleep, Immobilize, Knockdown, and Charm) wear off or are removed, an invincibility status for that particular effect is given; this immunity applies to both allies and enemies.
• Mordor: Blackflame Peak. Interestingly the ash and lava have nothing to do with the enemies' plans.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Technically yes, no, subverted, and subverted, respectively. The thief class has several skills strikingly affiliated with ninjas. The warlock class is a close representation of a necromancer, though you don't summon any zombies (nor are one). Engineers aren't really robots, they're just the character Made of Iron.
  • This trope still qualifies, since the player is capable of switching between over 15 varieties of classes without any costs out of the same character.
• No Biological Sex: Zumi by Word of God.
• Powered Armor: Engineers' Cyber mode.
• Prestige Class: The Samurai, first class outside of the originally announced 15 to be released. Users of the katana weapon type who apparently specialize in linear AOE attacks.
  • Recently now includes the Sage and Dragon Knight classes.
  • Of the original 15, only 6 can be used without needing to have other classes at particular levels; all classes unlocked past character level 20 have prerequisite class level requirements.
• Purely Aesthetic Gender: The only influence it has is for certain Item Shop fashions (Male humans, Zumi and Anuran can wear outfits female humans cannot and vice versa), and most of these have opposite-gender counterparts.
• Rainbow Pimp Gear: If you get unlucky with your random dyes, you can end up falling into this.
• Reality Warper: Notoriously common in this world, to the point where it can be assumed that ass pulls are thoroughly abused. Many NPCs contain some item or method of tearing reality in order to drive the main quests forward.
  Kutin: Based on these terrain lines, this area here could be Witchcraft Forest, but it's hard to be sure. Ah, yes. I know. I'll give you this Dimension Stone. It will allow you to rip through the energy of time and space."
• Repeatable Quest: A very similar system to the World of Warcraft dailies, except with shorter cooldowns on the quests.
• Rule of Cute: The basic mount in the game is a fluffy alpaca, which many players are attached to despite more advanced mounts having a larger speed bonus.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: The Bane Prince.
• Single-Gender Species: The Anuran are all male and breed by taking wives from other races.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: Shiver Peak. And its first dungeon Windsnap Lair. However, there's nothing slippery.
• Smash Mook: Most dungeons will have a few of these patrolling the corridors. They hit MUCH harder and take MUCH more damage than the regular trash packs, to the point where pulling one by accident can kill the main tank in seconds.
• Shout-Out: Where to start? Notable examples:
  • Journeyman Kino. The achievement for killing this rare monster reads: "This world is not beautiful, Yet it is."
  • "It belongs in a museum!"
  • There's a flying wolf elite called B.B.. The achievement for killing this one is a reference to MMO culture as well as the story.
  • Engineers reaching level 25 can turn into a steroid-pumped Iron Man. The male model is a mishmash of various suit designs, including the metal 'spine' from the movie-era Suitcase Armor, while some players believe the female model looks like a Gundam. The single animation for all the armor's attack skills is clearly a Kamehamehadoken.
  • In Malice Ruins, a wizard boss named Doubledoor, a pun off Dumbledore.
  • One summon boss is named Welles and the achievement for beating him is named "They're Better When You're Dead!".
  • There is a rare enemy around the west of the Garden in Valley of Kings with the title of Tomb Raider.
  • The whole Crooked Vein dungeon is a TMNT reference. Two random turtle bosses out of four spawn (named Michelangelo, Donatello, Raphael and Leonardo) in the last room, and when those are defeated players are met by a mouse boss.
  • Subtle one: In the Golden City area, there is a Frog Knight named Glenn.
  • One summon Boss awards you with the achievement "Don't Fear the Reaper".
  • The Achievement for reaching Level 60 on the Blade Dancer class is called "Just Dance".
  • "I see your schwartz is as big as mine" was the former flavor text on the Lifesaber costume. Now it is "Luke, I am your father! Nah, just kidding, we're not related..."
  • The achievement title for crafting all the Level 1-65 gems is "Collect 7 Gems May (or may not) Summon a Dragon."
  • There's one rare Mook in the Wetlands called Drybrush Creepwood.
  • The new Level 75 Awakened Gun kinda looks like the Enterprise. And it is awesome.
  • There's a particular furniture item called Ursun Gumshoe: Volume 3...its a mystery novel with a detective...guess who else fits that role?
  • For making all of the capes up to L63, you'll receive the achievement "The Comeback of Superman."
  • The Mutated Watchtower from Iyernafalo has a striking resemblance to the Eye of Sauron.
  • invokedThis game also has quite a few examples based on Memetic Mutations...
    • An NPC in Arid Wilds is named Derp.
    • After you give him the fragments to create an Eden Crystal, Secretary Waver will tell you that he was once an adventurer like you until he took an arrow to the knee.
• Scenery Porn: Many of the maps are packed with clever little design details that are off the beaten road (there are actual roads which are quite accurately outlined on each zone map) and the relatively long draw distance means that you'll often spot something interesting from far away. There are also plenty of elevation changes in even the most barren of landscapes.
  • Players are only allowed to access a blob-shaped portion of each map but the maps themselves are square with the unreachable areas having fully featured topography.
• Schizo Tech: Most of the areas are at a standard High Fantasy Medieval Stasis level. Then night falls in Aven and you see electric spotlights...
• Solo Class: Hunters can solo very efficiently due to having most of their DPS come from a powerful tiger companion that can be healed (they are sub-par against bosses that quickly kill or dispel their tiger). The class is exceptionally popular with botters for this reason.
• Spoony Bard: The not-so-spoony variety. The class has strong raid healing ability (although it has trouble dealing with large damage spikes) and can kite via a stacking AOE debuff and a hefty movespeed buff.
• The Dark Side: As of the 75 level cap, now includes the Destruction Eden (translated for the Northwest release as Devastation Realm), and hints at a group of evil counterparts of the Eternal children protagonists.
• Title Drop: The 'Eden' in the game's title seems to refer to the player controlled Guild Towns, which are officially called 'Edens'.
• Tuckerization: In the process of localization, there were a few items and NPCs named after former staff members (Retired Ranger Obspho from Searing Valley is a notable example for an NPC, as this NPC isn't based in Aven; there are costume items with such names as "aiM the Teddy" for this reason). One of the game masters was a noted Gundam fan and took their game master name from the series, so when they got an NPC in the form of FTS Merchant Exia this caused an inintentional Shout-Out.
• 20 Bear Asses: This is present throughout Eden Eternal, but especially so in the update that introduced Eloise Plains, Hayward Seavale and Durango Kingdom, where all of the repeatable fame sidequests for these areas take some form of this trope.
• Underground Monkey: While there are a relatively large number of basic models, most areas have local variations of the same enemy. Human and humanoid enemies seem to use the same character models as released or unreleased player races with various weapons, though it may be that the players themselves use modified enemy models.
• World of Pun: The achievement for raising your Knight class to level 20 is "A Hard Day's Knight."
  • This actually applies to nearly all of the achievements you can obtain in the game.
• Yin-Yang Bomb: The Luminary class, a Magic Knight with a focus on dark and light magic.
• You Are Already Dead: Though the trope itself is not invoked, one of the achievements (gained through killing a specific boss) has this name.
  • You can however, invoke the trope by using skills that do constant damage over a set period of time on a weakened enough monster.

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