More than just an adventure in search of fate and truth!note
Eroica is a turn-based mobile gacha RPG developed by Korean developer FourThirtyThree* for iOS and Android. It was initially soft-launched in Southeast Asia and select regions on February 23, 2021, and would later officially launch worldwide around a year and a half later on August 11, 2022.
The players take on the role of Sei, an Ordinary High-School Student who found himself transported to another world while playing a futuristic role-playing board game with his sister Akari, who's nowhere to be seen. He's later taken in by Luna, princess of the Kingdom of Goldentor, and her retinue after her owl-like artifact Porrun bonded with Sei and considered him to be its true owner. Because Porrun is supposedly an artifact that proves a Goldentor royal's right to succession, Luna decides to have Sei join her party as they aim to rid the world of the escalating threat of monsters called the Dargon. Of course, there is more to the story than meets the eye...
Players traverse each level in a side-scrolling fashion similar to Another Eden. While in the field, they can interact with certain objects and utilize gadgets to reveal hidden spots or obtain normally-unreachable objects. Meanwhile, its battles and progression system plays out similarly to Epic Seven. Players take four characters to battle and engage in turn-based combat. Characters have access to a basic skill and two active skills, with the basic skill having no mana/cooldown limits and the active skills requiring cooldown or using mana points (shared with the whole party) to use. In addition, players also have a separate energy bar that allows them to either use special skills provided by equipped Pre-Cores or use the party's train, the Arkham, and its weapon systems to dish out damage to all enemies. Players will have to strategically manage these points if they want to clear out enemies effectively and efficiently.
Eroica provides examples of the following:
- Achievement System: The game has a set of achievements that reward the player with items and achievement points upon completion. Gather specific amounts of points and players are rewarded with 30 pellets.
- Action Girl: A significant portion of the playable roster are girls capable of defending themselves, and they can be quite the formidable fighters just as much as the men are.
- An Adventurer Is You: Heroes have specific roles they're assigned to, but players are free to select which stat build and tactics these characters specialize in.
- Anime Theme Song: Not exactly, but with the official release, the game received a new title screen
that emulates an anime opening when you boot up the game. - Anti-Frustration Features:
- The game gives players two avenues in which to grind stages in the game: Repeat, where they let the auto AI control the characters' actions for a set amount of times (maximum of ten repeats at once), and Sweep, where players can just use Sweep Tickets to instantly get that stage's loot (maximum of ten sweeps at once). Somewhat subverted for Adventure stages since you cannot sweep or repeat stages for items gathered in the field, in which a version of Porrun bought for 3000 Mileage points (basically having done 300 pulls) is needed.
- In Event stages, players can use Sweep to obtain rewards instantly while using it to boost the amount of event points obtained by setting up a party full of characters with point boosts. This is helpful for players whose event characters are either underleveled or have no allotted resources to raise them at that point in time. Nevertheless, players have to make sure they have a plentiful stock of sweep tickets first.
- Anti Poop-Socking: The game has a stamina system named "Wing Boots", which are required to enter Adventure stages and some Challenge stages like the equipment stages.
- Artificial Stupidity: The auto AI can sometimes activate Pre-cores' active skills without actually following what action is needed to actually use said skills, which ends up wasting both BP and the skill since you'll have to reactivate the Pre-core to use it again.
- Authority Equals Asskicking: Luna and Gaffs, who are the royal princess and prince of Goldentor respectively, know their way in a fight, and there are others like Orslaha* , Florence* , and Cascarson* .
- Barrier Warrior: There are a few characters that can generate shields for themselves, but the one that exemplifies this trope the most is the protagonist himself. Sei's normal version specializes in generating shields for the whole party based on his maximum HP, making him very useful in boss fights that have painful AoE attacks, especially when said AoE is cast quickly or early on.
- Battle Theme Music: The game contains 20 different battle themes that are used depending on the locale the battles take place. The field battle themes for the story mode are also accompanied by field exploration themes that allow for seamless transition between field to battle themes and vice versa. The fanfare, however, plays when you finish a stage instead of at the end of every battle.
- Can't Drop the Hero: Typical of a gacha game, players can practically bench Sei forever in favor of other characters, but unlike usual gacha MCs, (normal) Sei remains useful as a party shield generator, so he's usually seen being used even in PvP quite frequently.
- Cap: Experience levels cap out at Level 30 for 1-star units, up to Level 60 for 5-star units. Skill levels, on the other hand, cap out at Level 5. Equipment caps out at Tier 5 with the highest rarity having an enhancement cap of +20.
- Character Focus: Besides the event stories, over a dozen, but not all Heroes at the moment have side story episodes unlocked by raising their affinity.
- Color-Coded for Your Convenience: You get five Color-Coded Elements: Red for Fire, Blue for Water, Green for Grass, Yellow for Light and Purple for Dark. Your Heroes are likewise Color-Coded Characters to even match (like Sei wearing a green sweater as a Grass Hero, or Luna in red for Fire, and so on).
- Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Standard for a gacha game. Water beats Fire, Fire beats Grass, Grass beats Water, and Light and Dark counter each other.
- Evolutionary Levels: Ascensions, where players gather fragments of a character and use them to raise their star level and rarity, up to 5-star, raising their stats significantly and unlocking Ascension Passives that give players freedom on which stats they want raised further and which Secret Art each individual skill should use.
- Faking Amnesia: Sei is faking amnesia in order to get informed about how the parallel world he's now in works. Subverted as it's shown that it does seem like he has lost memories about this other world after all, judging from the figments of memories he apparently has with Orslaha. The opening cutscenes for Chapter 4 even straight out show Sei having ended up in this world before, but forgot due to unknown reasons.
- Gameplay and Story Segregation: No matter which hero you take in battle or the field, the story cutscenes will always default to the main cast.
- Hello, [Insert Name Here]: Averted for a gacha game. Characters do still refer to the protagonist by his actual name "Sei", meanwhile the name the player enters when starting the game is just their unique account nickname.
- Heroes Prefer Swords: Sei doesn't exactly use a sword as his main weapon is Porrun's shield form, but he does get to use one, made out of light no less, in his Guardian form, in which he is truly branded as the world's hero.
- Heroic Mime: Zigzagged. Sei is very talkative in the main story unlike some of his fellow MCs in the genre, but he does play this straight when it comes to the introductory cutscenes for Hero Quests, and especially in the Event Stories, where the players can decide what Sei says through dialogue choices.
- Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: The Red Sand Tribe's World's Strongest Man Chief Cascarson and his very young little sister Retinya count as one.
- 100% Completion: Each stage has three stars to obtain, in which players must achieve specific objectives to gain one. Exploration doesn't necessarily connect to this, but there are goodies to be found if you look around properly.
- Interface Spoiler: One can already see "Guardian Sei" in the list of playable characters within the Story Archives, a variant of the main character that's only obtained through finishing Chapter 4.
- Left-Justified Fantasy Map: The World Map, at least as it is until later updates, only show regions and nations situated on the continent of Arrier, where the four available story chapters of Eroica have taken place. Any regions further east aren't shown or are covered by dense clouds.
- Loading Screen: The game has plenty of them showing a random Hero, though if you unlocked a character's secret upon reaching Affinity 6 with them, that secret will also have a chance of being shown too.
- Loot Boxes: You can pull for heroes and Pre-cores in the gacha. There is an equipment gacha but it is deemed not too necessary unless you really want to obtain higher-tiered equips.
- Lore Codex: The game has an index that archives all story cutscenes, characters, Pre-Cores and whatnot in the Story section of the Lobby. Also featured is the Brilliant Tome, which expounds on the countries you explore in the main story.
- Meaningful Name: Despite how the title sounds and almost spells like, "Eroica" is an actual word: it's Italian for "heroic", which connects to the whole "isekai hero" premise of the story.
- Premium Currency: Called "Pellets" in the game, these are used when summoning for heroes and Pre-cores, as well as other goods in the game that can help with progression like the Battle Pass.
- Royals Who Actually Do Something: Luna, in particular, embodies this trope in the game. She actively participates in protecting the populace, and is on an adventure with Sei to alleviate, if not stop altogether, the Dargon problem while learning more about Porrun and why it chose Sei.
- Secret Art: Each hero has two variations of each of their battle skills, unlocked through raising their star level. These are unlocked upon reaching 2, 4, and 5 stars, and the unlock order varies between heroes.
- Skill Scores and Perks: The Rune system, where each character's stats are gradually raised by using upgrade materials related to their elements.
- Starter Mon: You receive Sei, Luna, and Marion almost immediately after starting the game. They fill up the expected roles of tank, DPS, and healer respectively.
- Stock Light-Novel Hero: Sei can appear as this, as it comes with the territory of being a protagonist of an isekai story, though his appearance is a departure from the usual Japanese everyman expected of the trope. He's a conventionally attractive young man that found himself in another world, gaining a power that he almost instantly mastered after gaining it, and is now on a world-saving adventure with a princess and her party. He also is a bit of a Chick Magnet, gathering the interests of a few girls in both the main crew and outside of it, particularly: Luna, Florence, Chloe, and Orslaha.
- A Taste of Power: You're given the opportunity to use Kipukirui in the tutorial battle, and she is obviously much stronger than the starter units you end up getting. After said battle, she doesn't become part of the starting line-up, instead requiring you to pull for her in the gacha or gathering enough of her fragments to obtain her for free.
- Trapped in Another World: The whole premise of the story, as well as the main point the marketing for the game uses to attract potential players.
