YMMV / Another Eden

• Accidental Innuendo: In the English dub, Miyu's Calling Your Attacks shouts include a shriek of "I'M COMIIIING!!!", which seems a poor tactical decision in addition to satisfying this trope.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • While Aldo is incredibly Oblivious to Love, some fans see it as the result of him possibly being asexual, or rather that as a cat, he may not intuitively pick up on romance the way humans/human-adjacent beings do.
  • From "Song of Sword and Wings of Lost Paradise": is the playable Clarte a separate entity from the Clarte from Ch. 1 (akin to a clone, absolving them of OG!Clarte's sins) or are they essentially the same but in a different body? On one hand, they're explicitly different physically, and Clarte treats the idea of regaining his original memories as rewriting who he is. On the other hand, Clarte seems to view his original self's deeds as his own, just forgotten, and a party member suggests copying him again in the finale to save him from death^note The idea is rejected only on the basis that a second copy would deterioriate anyway, implying that characters in-universe view copies as the same person. Fans will interpret the situation one of the two ways, with no clear consensus.
• Awesome Music: With a soundtrack composed by some of the folks from the Chrono games, there are bound to be some awesome tunes.
  • "Paradoxical Dreamers", one of the boss themes, gives a feel of a desperate battle, but still manages a hopeful tone.
  • The Part 1 final boss theme, "To Release the Paradise", has an excellent blend of somber piano and hard electric guitar parts.
  • "Painful Prayer" is an emotional piece befitting the dramatic conclusions to the IDA School Episodes.
  • "Alphecca", the vocal track Mildy sings at the Chrono Clan's concert, also plays over the boss fight with the Synth Drone V2. It makes the moment more dramatic as you work to stop KMS's terrorist attack while surrounded by thousands in the audience. You also get to listen to it when you challenge the Synth Drone in the Future Garulea Another Dungeon. Also worth noting that the track is sung by Kanako Kotera, formerly of the Falcom Sound Team JDK fame.
  • Considering the prominence of the Stifling Song in the Western Mythos, it's no surprise that it's a highly memorable song that never fails to heighten any scene it plays in—especially the ending.
  • Similar to the Stifling Song, Immaculate from the Future Mythos is an emotional song that serves well as the ending theme for each of the Mythos's chapters.
  • "Toki-No-Wasuremono-Tei" is the calming, nostalgic-sounding song that plays in the Spacetime Rift, as well as the occasional cutscene, meaning that players will be hearing it a lot. One might expect players to get sick of it, but instead it easily invokes the sense of returning home and plays a key part in solidifying the Spacetime Rift as the player's "base".
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
  • Some of the extremely difficult Horrors you find in corners of the game world don't have an explanation other than just being there as a challenge for postgame teams. The Imbrium Basin, Insula Ventorum, and Terra Nivium are especially weird, as they are large geometric shapes that don't fit in well with their environments. To add to the alien feeling, their names and attacks are all in English in the Japanese client. Successfully opening the Sealed Room in the Spirit Sanctuary of Western Mythos Chapter 8, however, provides more insight on what exactly they are - prototype artificial spirits created by the People of Paradise to be used as energy sources, which were dumped on the planet after they failed that role.
  • Aldo getting his face stolen by a yokai as part of the main storyline, and his subsequent efforts to get it back doesn't really affect the main plot.
• Breather Boss:
  • Gariyu's Chance Encounter quest line involves pursuing and fighting the Flame Eater all across the world. Defeating it for the fifth time unlocks one last duel with Gariyu before he joins the roster. Unlike the Flame Eater, Gariyu himself doesn't constantly summon flunkies, heal himself or resist a lot of damage sources, so he's not too big of an obstacle to his recruitment after the level 80 Flame Eater.
  • Amongst the Eight Spirits, Kodama is this, a Goddamned Boss and a Damage-Sponge Boss. His damage output is downright PATHETIC for a superboss, to the point where AS Gariyu + Miyu can easily reduce it to ZERO. In fact, an extremely F2P friendly and low-end team of Aldo, Miyu, AS Gariyu and Bivette can sit there forever (as long as you remember to cycle party members to the back to recharge MP, though Kodama does have a move where he prevents your frontline from swapping) and Kodama wouldn't be able to deal a single point of damage. His only 'threat' as a boss is his OBSCENE amount of HP that will take forever to get through (as in even top-tier meta choices have problems getting through it in one AF) but since you can heal and he can't, you can just win by endurance. Thank the Goddess of Time this loser is a superboss because the other one of the Eight Spirits weak to fire is the complete opposite of pathetic.
• Character Tiers: Characters with a higher star ranking are straight-up better than those of lower ranks due to greater base stats, more Ability Board spaces, and a higher level cap. When comparing characters of the same rank, though, that is when tier discussions become more subjective.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • For the tutorial encounter, the characters most recommended to pick were Miyu and Ciel as they have Other Tales content tied to them that would enable their 5-star upgrade, while the others didn't have that luxury. This recommendation pattern has since waned as more and more 4-star characters gain their own upgrades and Another Styles. After v2.2.6, Bivette replaced the others in this position, as her additional content is fun, yields a lot of Chronos Stones, and her upgraded form and personal weapon are on par with most other 5-star units.
  • If you are lucky enough to draw Mariel, you are recommended to never let the account go. She is considered to be not only one of the best healers, but one of the best characters to have overall. Over time, though, as additional healers were added to the game, Mariel's importance has dwindled.
  • With limited Key Cards, it's not unusual to see questions on how to optimize their use. Many players recommend using red Key Cards on a few specific dungeons to raise the Light/Shadow count for the corresponding story characters (Aldo, Amy and Guildna are popular candidates - and following the Western Mythos, Clarte), while green Key Cards are preferably used on Garulea Continent Another Dungeons. These are suggested for best amount of possible rewards per key spent; Garulea's Another Dungeons can give up to five different rewards on top of a chance to yield the ever-coveted Treatises and Chant Scripts. This is especially important for those who wish to keep Aldo around as damage dealer, since the power of his 5-star skills after a plot-relevant event in Chapter 83 are directly influenced by his Guiding Light accumulation.
  • When asking for advice on Grasta loadouts, you're bound to hear some variation of "stack Pain Grastas". The "Power of Pain" and "Power of Poison" Grastas bonus damage stack multiplicatively, leading to some impressive damage multipliers on an enemy afflicted by those ailments. You'll also eventually find some manner of guaranteed infliction of these ailments to minimize setup time. This setup is great for DPS and can be applied to almost everyone. And in a game that rewards striking hard and fast, you'll never see anyone recommend using any of the Life or Support Grastas unless required for specific fights.
  • Ask around on how to defeat a superboss, and you're bound to find someone mention "Turn 2 Another Force". This is due to how powerful Zones are — the boons it gives for your Limit Break lets you blitz through a boss and effectively skip most of its attack pattern. This is also why later bosses have been programmed with damage stoppers at HP thresholds to prevent the player from winning so quickly. Mention that you don't have access to the right Zone, and you can expect fewer responses as not a lot of people plan for a longer, more defensive strategy.
  • Related to above, if you mention that you have Melissa or Hardy AS, expect to see people say "Turn 1 Another Force" thanks to the Flash Strike Zone that affects ALL forms of attack that's automatically deployed at the start of a fight.
• Complete Monster: The Phantom is a mysterious, interdimensional entity seeking the complete annihilation of all space and time. When the initial Armageddon of the multiverse is thwarted by Professor Chronos, Phantom tricks young hero Aldo into reverting what Chronos has done, once more kick-starting the end of all time. Phantom collides with Aldo several times throughout the game, always trying to see that his omnicidal goals reach fruition, and, when the Elementals sacrifice themselves to stop Phantom's master plan, Phantom orchestrates the unleashing of Chronos Menas, spurring the monstrous entity into devouring time itself and trying one final time to kill Aldo and solidify the annihilation of life across the cosmos, with Phantom's only motive ever given as a desire to "sit back and enjoy the show".
• Cry for the Devil: Emperor Schnaud is one of the most despicable villains in the game who had soared past the Moral Event Horizon before "Song of Sword and Wings of Lost Paradise" even began, but a number of fans found themselves pitying him when it's revealed that there isn't a single timeline in which his daughter lives, causing him to cross the Despair Event Horizon.
• Difficulty Spike: Like Azami and Cerrine, Gariyu is unlocked after a series of fights against a boss. Unlike them, where you can unleash Another Force to crush the opposition, the Flame Eater is one of the few bosses, aside from the superbosses, who can chew and spit out your party without a very precise strategy. This is done again with the boss fights needed to unlock his Another Style - the Ember Magic Dragon. The boss has very high damage, and can easily oneshot your party without mitigation.
• Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game: Within the gacha community, the story of Another Eden is usually treated as being comparable in story quality to Fate/Grand Order (another gacha praised for its story). This game's lack of a stamina system is seen as a plus that allows players to enjoy the story at their own pace, especially when events aren't time-limited. On the other hand, the core gameplay is far from perfect — the scarcity of Chronos Stones after exhausting story achievements, on top of low gacha rates and lack of a Bad Luck Mitigation Mechanic to offset it, make it difficult for a F2P to have a well-defined roster without buying in or playing for a long time. Especially unlucky players may find themselves forced to rely on and invest in the story characters just to advance.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Suzette is the poster girl of popularity in Another Eden, consistently ranking in the top ten in polls from the start (and consequently is often the first to receive any upgrades, such as Another Styles, Manifests, etc.). This can make it surprising to realize that she was essentially a random unit with no spotlight outside of her own quests until the release of "The Apex of Logic and Cardinal Scales", years into her popularity.
  • For an NPC whose only true role is to be an indirect Disc-One Final Boss for "Song of Sword and Wings of Lost Paradise", Johann is quite liked among the fandom for his good looks and snarky personality, as well as being an enigmatic and reasonable Well-Intentioned Extremist with sympathetic motives.
  • Moke is incredibly popular with the fandom, beating out most of the sapient cast in popularity polls despite largely being just Thillelille's Butt-Monkey pet. So popular that Moke was announced as a future sidekick alongside Thilelille's ES!
  • In the Japanese fanbase, at least, Yakumo's (and by extension, his sidekick Kumos) immediately developed a sizable fanbase the moment he was introduced in Chapter 6 of "Wanderer in the Vortex", owing to his story and his interactions with Kumos, many of which are both hilarious and heartwarming.
• Fan Nickname:
  • "3.5" and "4.5 Star" characters for three- and four-star characters that can promote to four and five stars, respectively.
  • The acronym "AS" is used to refer to the Another Style versions of some characters, and "ES" for Extra Styles. On the flip side, at least before the proper term was introduced^note NS, for Normal Style, "OG" is used for the original forms of AS characters.
  • "Alter", borrowed from Fate/Grand Order, is used to describe alternate versions of existing characters introduced in the "Apex of Logic and Cardinal Scales" Mythos.
  • The Japanese fanbase tends to collectively call the characters who are visibly enamored with Aldo as Aldo-gachi.
  • Alter Myunfa is such a Shrinking Violet that she gets nicknamed Bocchifa.
• Friendly Fandoms: If you're a big fan of Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross, then congrats at finding new friends in Another Eden! Another Eden shares many storylines and characters from the former two games, and 2022 would later have characters from Chrono Cross crossing over.
• Game-Breaker: See here for more details.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Some enemies possess attacks that put a character to sleep, rendering them unusable until the ailment is purged. If you lack any way to cure ailments, your one solace is that a sleeping character is immediately awoken when they take damage. The problem is that if they get struck by another sleep-inducing attack, there's a chance they'll remain asleep.
  • Several enemies, especially those in Toto Dreamland, have the ability to confuse the entire party at once. If you have no way to cure ailments or your healer also gets tagged, you're now at the mercy of the Random Number God as you pray your party either shakes off the confusion, cures it through Cherry Tapping each other, or randomly chooses to attack the enemy and clear them out. Since confused characters pick their skills completely randomly, you can expect the ailment to drain off your frontliners' MP when they randomly choose to use their most expensive skills.
  • If the Wicked Aristocrat is killed without exploiting its weakness, it will, as a parting gift, drain 10% of your frontliners' MP. This serves to annoy players who would blindly brute-force most encounters.
• Goddamned Boss: Any Optional Boss that has Superboss levels of strength but has no fixed attack pattern becomes a nuisance to fight. Strategies to defeating them either involve using all your Game-Breaker elements to burst them down (on top of a building up a supercharged attack to smash past a stopper in the following turn) or layer on defenses and debuffs to basically neuter them and then beat them by attrition. EPS-014 "Leblanc" is a large pain in particular, combining Barrier Change Boss with phase changes and a random moveset — defeating it requires the use of five different elements at different phases of the fight.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In Cyrus' character quest, Ratchett noted that Cyrus' was a "ruggedly handsome" man in his original form before he got cursed. Come the Octopath Traveler crossover in December 2023, one of the playable characters is Cyrus Albright from the original game... who is depicted as Pretty Boy both in the original and AE's art styles.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships:
  • If the fanworks particularly in Japanese side are anything to go by, Aldo is shipped with a lot of the playable characters despite his chronic Oblivious to Love status, male and female alike. Some of the fairly popular ones are Guildna/Aldo, Dunarith/Aldo, Aldo/Shanie, and recently, Aldo/Nona as well.
  • Doubles as Ships That Pass in the Night — in the Japanese fanbase, it is not uncommon to see fanworks of Yakumo being paired not only with Kumos whom he has natural chemistry with, but also Noahxis and Cetie despite them not having any direct interactions so far.
• Low-Tier Letdown: Some 5-star characters are looked down upon for being too weak until they are rescued from this trope with a timely buff or two:
  • Anabel is designed as a tank, but her Draw Aggro and debuffing attacks are expensive and don't have a guaranteed infliction rate, which makes it hard to sustain with her small MP bar. Bertrand functions better in this role due to having a Valor Chant that's guaranteed to inflict Rage on all enemies, performing the tank role better and at little cost. Radias also outshines Anabel with a defensive buff that also inflicts guaranteed Rage on top of her ability to self-heal and still hit like a truck. Isuka (and Yuna, after v1.9.2) are also better in the debuff department; Isuka's Valor Chant gives a guaranteed PWR and INT debuff to all enemies at once, while Yuna's debuff skills are guaranteed and are as potent as Anabel's. Many are led to view Anabel as one of the worst 5-star characters, even after balance changes in v1.9.2 strengthened both her buff skills. She received a Manifest weapon in v2.2.3 to help remedy this, but her biggest issue of her Rage and debuff infliction not being guaranteed still holds.
  • Shion used to be one of the better Fire physical DPS characters due to a triple-hit Fire skill that was great for building and extending Another Force. However, he has suffered greatly from Power Creep with units like Renri AS, Akane AS, Tsukiha, and Radias overshadowing him in the Fire DPS department. The addition of Zones also downplayed the importance of multi-hit skills. While he did get a Manifest Weapon, the buffs from his improved skills don't last very long and cannot be used together, making him less popular than the competition. It took his personal True Manifest years later to finally fix the problems with his skills, which not only gives his buffs longer active time and gives his weapon an increased critical damage buff, but also ensures his "Phoenix Slash" attack to always land Critical Hit and making it stronger for each use, arguably putting him in Simple, yet Awesome category.
  • After getting a surprise 5* upgrade, Bria... honestly isn't very impressive. Her Valor Chant is very situational, only granting resistance to piercing attacks. One of her skills debuffs enemies' piercing resistance, and the effect gets enhanced if another member of The Order of the Fleareth is in the frontline (which, given that the Order is made up of Com Mons, isn't an especially good idea). Her other notable skill, Light of Vesta, is very expensive (costing 150 MP!), but it buffs physical resistance, grants HP regen and a Last Chance Hit Point effect... but the last effect is only once per battle, as she has no way to stack the resource needed to grant it. To rub salt in the wound, Bria's stats aren't exactly on par with your other 5-star units either, reducing her overall usefulness. The upgrade costs include a hefty 5 Chant Scripts which are better spent on your other characters.
    • Making this even worse is the arrival of 5* Prai, who simply does a much better job at keeping the party alive when surviving otherwise lethal attacks are concerned. Instead of giving a one-time-use Last Chance Hit Point, Prai gets to go first in the turn thanks to priority on Indulgence, redirect all attacks to himself, even AoE attacks, give him an inexhaustible Last Chance Hit Point for that entire turn, and be able to use it multiple times in a single battle so long as he has the MP. Sure, it stuns him for a turn afterwards and costs even more MP at 250, but the first problem isn't that much of a problem with a healer to heal Prai after his HP was reduced to 1 last turn, and the second is rectified by Prai having an MP pool large enough to cast it twice without having to retreat to refill with the right equipment.
  • Due to Another Eden's early battle system favoring multi-hit skills, characters with only single-hit attacks either make up for it with good support skills or a strong Valor Chant. Guildna has neither — all his attacks are single-hit, his one debuff skill is of moderate strength, and his Valor Chant isn't up to scratch with other 5-star units. Despite being a deuteragonist alongside Aldo, it's not unusual for many players to deem him the worst 5-star unit available. Only by v2.3.3 (almost a year after his debut) would Guildna receive an update that dramatically improves a lot of his skills, grants him his third-tier Valor Chant, and gives a personal Grasta that covers his biggest flaws (low speed and MP). All these goodies still require you to defeat several tough bosses, but his newfound power makes it worth the effort.
  • Radica's major skills are all based on which card she will randomly draw, and are extremely difficult to consistently use without skills that allows her to alter the next card she draws, which vary in strength as well. Like Ilulu, Radica gets redeemed by an Another Style that can set a Fire Zone, has skills that have very little variance based on her card colors, and can make use of the Luck Stat which is otherwise wasted on mages. She later would get a Manifest weapon that alters her last skill into a healing spell on par with Mariel's Pure Cradle and forces her next card to be of all three colors, eliminating the randomness with her other skills and turning them into unique hybrid supports.
  • Ilulu's one of the worst Wind units in the game because a lot of her skills are AoE attacks, which are more expensive and less powerful to compensate for striking many enemies at once. This reduces her viability against boss fights where raw damage against a single target is favored. She's since been redeemed by an Another Style with very effective boss-killing attacks and another means to access Slash Zone, and eventually got her own Manifest weapon that gives her additional utility and amps her potential damage output.
• Memetic Badass:
  • Due to being useless Com Mons that you're guaranteed to pull half the time, the Rainbow Sisters are jokingly portrayed as the most powerful characters of the game by the fandom.
  • Because Aldo doesn't bother learning the names of various NPCs there's always someone named "Some Guy." The fans have taken to portraying Some Guy as such.
• Memetic Loser:
  • To keep them up with the ever-raising Power Creep, old characters would get upgrades, be it in the form of Another Styles, Manifests, and even Alter characters. Every 5-star character released up to end of 2020 has received one of the above so far... except for Lovely, who went for years without any upgrade until her Another Style and Manifest were added. Players used to joke that she was outright forgotten by the developers.
  • Galliard was made playable in the end of 2019, but despite being a story-based character, he didn't even get his 5-star upgrade until the Japanese version's 7th Anniversary, well over five years since his debut. Before that point, the enhanced version of his main skill remained locked behind an unrevealed quest, leading players to joke that he had been forgotten by the writers. Thankfully, this seems to have been put to rest with the release of "A Paradise of Imperfections" Episode, which also unlocks the Stellar Awakening for him and Helena to boot.
  • Shion was the butt of some jokes for years, since he was one of the first DPS units released and thus suffered hard when Power Creep led to him getting Overshadowed by Awesome. The game did issue him a Manifest and an Another Style to try and keep up, but those upgrades are still lackluster and didn't help him break out of this. It wasn't until his True Weapon Manifestation that this was put to rest and he once more became seen as a solid DPS.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Aldo, user of the Friend Zone / Aldo is the densest matter in the universe. ^Explanation Aldo attracts the quite obvious romantic attractions of many of the female cast members, but many of their character quests often end with him very explicitly calling them "friends", causing a great amount of frustration from the fanbase.
  • Waifu over meta^ExplanationAs per genre standards, there will be Power Creep that obsoletes older characters, even the ones you grow to love. However, the wide variety of characters available means that everyone still has a niche provided you can build your team well, and even if you miss the rate-up banner you can still work to side-grade someone through grinding Treatises and Codexes. For players with well-developed rosters that can comfortably handle most challenges, the advice on "who to pull for?" stops being about who's the strongest and more about whose design they like more.
• Moe: Some of the characters have utterly adorable Idle Animation that is guaranteed to bring you to smile from seeing it. A few examples include Mana (sitting down while looking up to the sky), Myrus (waving cheerfully to the player), and Altena (squatting while looking curiously at whatever in front of her).
• Player Punch: Melissa's character story is already Darker and Edgier as it is, but her third character quest gives a rather harsh instance of this. In the quest, it is revealed that she is nearing her "expiration date" - that is, a time set by her maker to note that she begins developing self-awareness and must be "discarded" to prevent her from ultimately rebelling. Playing as her, YOU are forced to "Execute Final Order" to destroy herself, and the fact that she repeatedly fails makes it worse as the player is prompted to stab Melissa over and over again.
• The Scrappy: Pom's Morally Ambiguous Doctorate and Love Freak behavior rubs a lot of players the wrong way and leaves her with few fans. Some consider her to be a terrible pull on par with the Com Mons even if she's a 4-star character.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Upgrading characters to 5-stars is a pain. The main bottleneck is gathering enough Chant Scripts to do so. They only appear in some of the hardest Another Dungeons, and even then they have a incredibly small chance of actually dropping. The Side Episodes do provide guaranteed Chant Scripts but they also come in limited supply. Don't expect to promote any characters for a long time through this method. Because of their sheer rarity, many players recommend you save your Chant Scripts for the Chance Encounter characters^note Azami, Gariyu, Cerrine and the Other Tales characters^note Miyu, Ciel, Bivette, whose final rank can only be unlocked this way. Update 1.5.1 relieves a bit of frustration with the addition of Tsubura Gems, which can be traded for Chant Scripts — players now can earn enough Orbs to trade for 1 Chant Script per month of Another Dungeon runs, rather than rely on a very tiny drop rate.
  • Unlocking the Another or Extra Style of a character needs you to obtain five Treatises or Codexes respectively in addition to spending 5 Chants. While Treatises or Codexes can also be traded for using Tsubura Gems, the shop only stocks two copies of each and never refills them, so you have to find the remaining three copies elsewhere. All Very Hard Another Dungeons can yield Treatises or Codexes on completion, but with a miniscule drop rate. You can try and pull that Style yourself, but the draw rate is 0.02% outside of their rate-up banner.
  • Related to above, unlocking Parallel Time Layer counterparts is even more frustrating. Whereas unlocking other forms using the scripts can be done as long as the player has the character and the game still provides two Treatises and Codexes for exchange to speed up the process, parallel characters need three Opus documents those can only be obtained from Another Dungeons and/or the Sensationalist in the Phantom Crystal Dimension. Worse, they need the character's Normal Style, and Normal Style only, meaning that if you only have the AS and/or ES, you need to spend extra five Chant Scripts to unlock the NS (or at least have the 4-star form of the NS) first before you can use the Opuses.
  • The daily Chrono Stones income has also been a point of criticism. When you take the Achievement System out of the equation, a player would get 30 free Chrono Stones each day, meaning they get a 10-pull every month or so. This does not match up well with the global client's weekly-to-fortnightly update schedule, and players have resolved to be very picky about the banners they pull on to maximize use of their Stones. From October 2020, the Chrono Stone income has been increased to at least 50 each day if you put up with some Ad Rewards, a change that is generally well received.
  • There is no way to dismantle, sell, or otherwise discard weapons and armor you own. This especially becomes a hassle once you gather a lot of them and have to sift through a long list to find the equipment you want.
  • In order to fully awaken a VC Grasta, you need Special Crystals. How do you get Special Crystals? By destroying an activated VC Grasta you already have, or rarely from the Underworld Another Dungeon. That means you need to do a ton of grinding in Another Dungeons to awaken even one VC Grasta, and lord help you if you want to get 3 copies of a VC Grasta so you can combine them into a True VC Grasta.
  • A few of the Geo Effects introduced in The Chronos Empire Strikes Back main story arc lead to frustrating battles due to the additional troubles they cause.
    • "Concentrated Oil" dramatically increases the evasion rate of all allies and enemies until that side takes any amount of fire damage, which results in potentially wasting a lot of turns because the attacks simply refused to land.
    • "Phantom Mist" dramatically reduces all party members and enemies' type attacks AND Critical Hit rates, turning the usual offensive powerhouses in your party into complete joke and potentially dragging the battle due to the significant damage reduction. Even worse, two of the Superbosses introduced in the chapter so far — already has a gigantic amount of HP at over 900 million — have to be fought in the area where this effect is permanently active, meaning that you need to prepare everything on the offensive to avoid triggering their further damage-reducing Aura or drag the battle for a very long time.
    • "Diamond Dust" randomly freezes combatants on either side. Though it can buy you breathers when the entire enemy side gets frozen, it becomes terribly infuriating when your entire frontline gets frozen through no fault of your own. Also there's a superboss to fight under those conditions, and you will need freeze resistance or immunity effects to keep yourself from getting screwed over by RNG.
  • The Stellar Awakening mechanic brings more power to characters new and old, but some of the Dream Encounter characters have too many good perks locked behind their Stellar skills and passives that even their non-Stellar 5-star can come off as a downgrade. The mechanics behind getting their Stellar Awakening is controversial, too — you can only get them Stellar Awakened right off the bat if you pull their 5-star form from only their rate-up banner. In all other cases, including getting the 5-star form from any other source, you will need to expend Starcharts which you acquire at a snail's pace — essentially only letting you Awaken one character every 3 months. So not only do you get additional fear-of-missing-out from the easy way to Stellar Awaken a character, you also have no guarantee with that one-off banner due to lack of a Bad Luck Mitigation Mechanic. The inclusion of Stellar Awakening also further reduces the value of a 4.5-star version since you'll need all that extra effort to realize the character's full potential.
• Scrappy Weapon:
  • The Otherlands weapons are infamous for the amount of effort and time investment needed to bring them to full power. At minimum, a total of 85 Otherlands runs (totaling to 190 Green Keys, or a little over 42 days' worth) is needed to gather the required materials to max them out. While their power is very hard to dispute, especially at the days of their release, later updates have introduced weapons and upgrades of similar calibre (especially Manifest weapons) that require significantly less investment, and Garulea Another Dungeons offer more attractive rewards at the same key cost. The third main story arc throws them a bone by reducing the upgrade tedium by 1/3 and adding a Reforge system to make a maxed-out Otherlands weapon even stronger, but the opportunity cost involved is still a hard-sell to most players.
  • Of the Otherlands weaponry, the Red Spider Lily is agreed to be the worst. Instead of perks like percentile damage or defense bonuses, the bow offers... the ability to inflict poison while attacking, and increased ailment damage. The infliction rates aren't very high, and the poison damage bonus is ineffectual due to Health/Damage Asymmetry. Even reforging the maxed weapon doesn't redeem it — its extra perk is one instance of Action Initiative which doesn't help with protracted battles.
  • The Little Glitter and Song of Hope, which are personal weapons for Miyu and Ciel respectively, require the player to spend time in their associated Another Dungeons to gather their upgrade materials. This also means having to kill Alarmed enemies before they flee. However, these personal weapons have middling stats and upgrade perks that don't synergize with their owners' skill set, and are seen as not worth the effort. Bivette's personal weapon, in comparison, is already fully upgraded when obtained and raises her offenses enough to contend with most other 5-star units despite its similarly low stats.
  • The Ultimania Hammer is an Evolving Weapon that levels up as you complete each of its monster-hunting objectives. It seems simple enough, but it has a whopping 27 levels and is very picky with its objectives — if it specifies a location to hunt a monster, you must be at that location, no exceptions, even if it means wasting a green keycard to enter a Hard Another Dungeon that you have no business visiting. Its final two levels require you to hunt horrors and final bosses of each of the Very Hard Otherlands, which will require a minimum investment of 24 green keys which can be better spent on, for instance, Garulea Another Dungeons. For all that effort to bring the Hammer to full power, it only bestows a +20 bonus to your defensive stats, which was a buff that got outclassed very quickly by other top-end hammers to come. It's easy to see why this gimmick did not appear on any other weapon.
  • The Azul Scure is an upgradeable ax that increases Crystal damage... but there are no Crystal-based ax wielders unless you do some element alterations with Necoco's Another Style. The only other upside that's of use is a SPD bonus, but there are other axes that fare better in that department. Fortunately, reforging it gives it new purpose as it grants a tremendous boost to crystal, shade, and thunder all at once, so that Orleya has use for it, and Necoco (Another Style) can still use it outside of Crystal Zone.
• Self-Imposed Challenge:
  • Some players take a "no-gacha run" and attempt to play through as much of the story arcs as they can using only characters not obtained from the Dream Encounters system. It is fairly challenging, but there are plenty of free 5-star characters, especially those obtained from permanently available side events, to make it possible.
    • A lesser variant of the no-gacha run is to attempt a superboss using only free characters, typically to prove a point that with enough planning you can beat almost anything with the right team instead of needing to splurge to pull the latest, strongest powerhouse.
  • Alternatively, particularly in Japanese side of the fanbase, quite a number of players take the "waifu over meta" to the extreme by attempting to build their team to support their favorite character and make said character the primary damage dealer in postgame contents, regardless of the character's raw power by the time they run the challenge.
• Signature Series Arc:
  • From the main story, the first arc is widely considered the most memorable with the tightest writing. At the very least, it's the arc that introduces the majority of the main cast and drops what many fans view as the iconic twist of the game: namely, that Aldo is actually a cat.
  • From side stories, many fans would agree that "Song of Sword and Wings of Lost Paradise" boasts some of the best writing in the entirety of Another Eden, with it being ranked as #1 as a fan-favorite among side episodes in an official poll.
• That One Achievement:
  • "Warlord" and "Veteran Walker" are incredibly hard to get — the former requires victory in 1 million battles, and the latter requires the party to walk 10 million steps. You could play for months before even coming close to earning these achievements.
  • "Overcoming the True Form" is earned by beating the Final Boss of part 1 without defeating any of the prior Prime Elements. This means fighting it while it is regenerating at least 6000 health a turn, without an Another Force bar, while it's passively damaging your party, and while it alternates between absorbing physical and magic attacks, among other things. If your roster has a variety of mages and maybe a few 5-star characters, it's a little more tedious than difficult, but for a player without those luxuries it's quite the daunting task.
  • "Stroke of Luck" requires the player to make it to the final area of the Phantom Crystal Dimension. You can only access it with a White Key that has a 10% drop rate from Another Dungeon runs. You are then presented with a set of doors to pick from, one of which lets you advance to the next room containing chests with increasingly valuable prizes, while the others will end your journey, forcing you to leave with whatever you've found. The doors are randomized, so it's a Luck-Based Mission to get to the end.^note You effectively have a 0.9% chance of succeeding. If you do manage this achievement, though, you are also awarded the Dimension's ultimate prize, which is a lot of loot and money, including a guaranteed three Chant Scripts and a Treatise of your choice.
  • Every random encounter has a set of three achievements — one for your first kill, another for twenty, and a third for your hundredth. This also extends to the elusive Alarmed enemies, which are prone to running away at the first opportunity and mandate immediate use of Another Force to kill. Getting to 100 for these requires astounding amounts of luck, and is more or less a Bragging Rights Reward.
  • In the Fishing Minigame, every species of fish you can catch has a set of achievements for catching multiples of them, up to your 150th catch. This includes fishing enemies, strong Horrors, and even the Lake Lords. Some normal fish species like the Rinde Sunfish are also incredibly rare, which makes it very tedious to progress its achievement set. Catching 150 of these rare or tough fish is more or less a Bragging Rights Reward, and getting 150 of the more common fish easily nets you more than enough Fish Stones to fully upgrade all your fishing gear.
    
    The rare fishing Horrors and Lake Lords also have their own set of achievements for fighting them multiple times, when you normally just need to defeat them once for regular progress. You have two sets of annoying achievements for the price of one, on top of the tedium in repeatedly fighting what amounts to superbosses.
  • "Jump Rope Team Another Dimension" goes above and beyond all other Jump Rope minigame achievements, requiring one thousand consecutive jumps, which takes a lot of time and focus on the player's part.
  • "Eastern Culture Evangelist" is earned by buying out all the Nagsham festival souvenirs using Silver Tokens and giving them to Macminal in Unigan. Given how expensive some of the souvenirs get, there's a lot of grinding involved. Your reward is a disproportionately small five Chrono Stones.
• That One Attack:
  • The Insula Ventorum has "Event Horizon", which damages each unit equal to 70% of their maximum HP. If any of your frontliners are anywhere below top shape when that attack happens, they're instantly knocked out, buffs be damned, and any survivors will need a hefty amount of healing to be brought out of the red. And since the Insula Ventorum acts at random, it's entirely possible it uses Event Horizon two or three times in a row, which is hard for even Mariel to keep up.
  • Terra Nivium is even worse. Its "Gravitron" deals Max Hp-1 in damage, meaning it's a One-Hit Kill if you're not at max HP, and a HP to One if you're at max health. Have fun, since it will randomly inflict crippling INT debuffs so your healers heal for next to nothing.
  • Terra Nivium also has "Absolute Zero", a water spell it can randomly fire off that deals about 16,000 damage before (de)buffs and inflicts pain, which with the many other layers of 'screw-you' can easily wipe your team given its A.I. Roulette.
  • The Moonfire's "Dissolve Life" hits absurdly hard, so much that you need multiple layers of damage reduction just to survive it. After you've managed to hold out, its next few attacks are designed to reduce your party's fire resistance so that the next use of Dissolve Life is nearly impossible to survive. This makes the enemy stand out as a Rush Boss.
  • The first thing the Yasuzume does is use "Destruction - Emptiness", which empties out the MP of your frontliners, leaving everyone helpless if you don't see it coming. It's also absurdly fast so it's very likely that's the first thing to happen in the fight. Even if you do see it coming, your only option to counter it is to switch your frontline with your backline, forcing you to fight with 2 party members until everyone else has regenerated enough MP. It also does this every five turns.
  • The Akadenchu uses "Corpse", which does a fixed 99999 damage on one party member, practically killing them unless they have a Last Chance Hit Point effect. It does this every five turns, and if you don't have any way to counter it your only choice is to burst it down before it claims too many of your party members.
  • During Verweil's awakening fight, upon the main boss being reduced to half HP, Paladin Deirdre will use an HP to One attack the very next turn, while Verweil will inflict pain, a DOT status effect that usually deals about 2000+ damage in this fight to your whole party. So unless you are nuking the boss down before this, expect a wipe if you're unprepared. Oh, and mind you, when they reach half health, they are actually setting their attack patterns to cause HP to One and Status Infliction Attacks to overlap on the same turn, meaning they will do this every attack cycle if not killed first. Have fun.
  • The Final Boss of Chrono Cross crossover storyline, FATE, has "Dark Energy" attack that can inflict Confuse on the party, potentially turning the fight into a Total Party Kill if an afflicted party member ends up attacking the party instead. It is also a preemptive move, meaning that it will always gain priority unless the party has Falcon's Blessing grasta or another preemptive move in order that can counteract it. The player also need to fight it in Another Dungeon to raise Serge's light points, which means they need to be prepared for the worst for their AD run.
• That One Boss:
  • The Flame Eater is the recurring boss you fight during Gariyu's Chance Encounter questline, and it's a lot harder than the other Chance Encounter bosses. It has no weaknesses, resists four damage types, and constantly summons flunkies that rain fire area damage on your party. The first three fights can put you on your toes, and its level 70 to 80 fights are especially long and difficult. It's advised that you don't even go after it unless you have a 5-star DPS character and Mariel.
    • There's an even stronger level 90 variant, but in contrast to the other ones, who are required to unlock Gariyu, this one is purely optional.
  • Unlike the Flame Eater above, Leviathan has a weakness to Earth. But it also can wipe a full 5-star party without several buffs and debuffs. The one piece of advice you'll get if you don't have at least Mariel and Toova for his fight is "Give up".
  • Suzaku, fought at the end of Chapter 55, is the last obstacle to overcome before unlocking the Present Garulea Another Dungeon. Despite having a weakness to water, he can still give a dedicated water team a run for their money, with plenty of HP and damage stoppers at thresholds to prevent a player from bursting him down. His main gimmick involves Wave of Embers, which deals a lot of Fire damage to the party, but can be interrupted if they do enough damage to him in 6 turns. However, in the lead-up he stacks a few PWR buffs on himself, and these buffs erase themselves only if he successfully fires off Waves, so interrupting the attack means he can snowball out of control. There's just one problem. When he hits 75% HP in his One-Winged Angel phase, he immediately gets to fire it off... after erasing all debuffs on himself. Wave of Embers is more than capable of wiping your team out here before the main gimmick even kicks in. He's also one of the possible end bosses of Present Garulea Another Dungeon, but that Another Dungeon encourages having a wide variety of attack types available instead of specializing for the boss's weaknesses. Thankfully that last part can be avoided if you're willing to fight Karakuri or Mizuchi instead since you're given two out of three potential bosses to fight.
  • Scattered across Garulea (both present and antiquity) are hidden superbosses. Yasuzume in antiquity probably takes the cake for being one of the most difficult bosses in the game, as it's very fast, and its first move is to completely drain your frontline's MP. Not only that, but it constantly applies poison to your frontline at the end of the turn.
  • Teyul Menas is the Final Boss of the "Sword and Wings" Mythos chapter, and is your final obstacle to unlock Clarte's final skill and Another Style. He starts with three wings, each one with a weakness to each of Thunder, Shade, and Crystal, and takes no damage while those wings are active. It will take some effort to whittle down the wings' health even if you're exploiting their weaknesses at every turn, and in the meantime he's showering your team with a near-constant barrage of damage that can be difficult to weather, even with debuffs on your side. You may actually find yourself reaching for the Anti-Crystal equipment for the sake of not dying to this boss.
  • Lavoger is your final obstacle to getting Serge's personal weapon, but it's a pain to fight. Lavoger starts with 10 personal stacks which fuel a barrier that gives it full damage reduction and massive self-healing. To damage it you must defeat its endlessly respawning minions one at a time, upon which its stacks go down, and so will its healing and defenses. If you kill both minions at once, it fully refills its stacks, easily undoing all your hard work. Also, it's got a HP stopper at the 50% mark so you can't burst it down easily once its defenses are down. In the meantime, the minions will harass you with attacks that threaten to put the party to sleep. The battle is tailored to show off Starky's supportive skill set, but you'll need to put in a lot of legwork to ensure your damage output is up to snuff or you'll lose the battle of attrition.
  • Of the four-star bounty superbosses in Platonos, the Ice Field Master is easily one of the worst ones to fight. The Below Freezing environment randomly freezes your party unless you come prepared with Freeze immunity, but if you attack the boss with any element that isn't earth or Non-Elemental, your freeze resistance is erased and you're exposed to the elements! Also, it's got five health bars, and each time you deplete one, it will instantly kill one of your party members, with no way to prevent that (but you're allowed to revive them). All this, while trying to weather its powerful attacks, makes for an incredibly difficult fight that can go awry through no fault of your own.
• That One Component: Chant Scripts, the rarest of the "Script" items used to change class. They are very rare drops in Another Dungeons (odds are half a percent), awards for some high-difficulty sidequests, or can be purchased with dungeon-completion currency at a rate of about one a month. And you need five for a five-star upgrade of any style.
• That One Level:
  • Nadara Volcano isn't too hard given that it's an early dungeon. But a lot of sidequests involve trekking all the way through the dungeon to reach its peak, and repeated trips there become very tedious without an option to quick-travel.
  • Snake Neck Igoma is visually beautiful and with a quiet but pleasant score... And is also a labyrinth full of powerful enemies who all resist at least two damage types and can inflict Pain (a similar effect to Poison, but based off strength instead of intelligence), fast and strong Horrors that run around the map and home to the components needed for the Cruel Angel gear, meaning you'll have to do a Pixel Hunt in this place to get it. And you will need to go there to access Snake Dream for the first time.
  • Toto Dreamland is full of enemies who can confuse the entire party, and another Pixel Hunt to get new weapons! Its Another Dungeon is one of the hardest as well, with its Very Hard difficulty recommending a level 76 party and yielding drops that are only used for upgrading the Elemental Arms. There's no surprise when many players recommend trading 300 Tsubura's Gems for Amy's Brawler Psalms rather than grind on Toto Dreamland (Very Hard) for them.
  • For Side Episodes:
    • "The 1000 Year Ark of the Ocean Palace" episode is one of the most tedious to complete, as the additional multipliers for everyone who isn't Nagi are not very high, making it difficult to raise your Atlantis Pearl yield per Another Dungeon run. Not helping matters is that you also have to go hunting for black pearls in Dragon Palace (Very Hard) for a separate set of rewards, meaning you'll have to dedicate a significant amount of red keys to it.
    • "The Celestial Tower and the Shadow Witch" is second most tedious — while it has plenty of characters that offer a bonus multiplier to Dark Residue collection, there's still a pretty big gap between each prize's Residue threshold, and the Another Dungeons don't yield a lot of Dark Residue. This episode used to be even more tedious before v1.9.2 as the bonus multipliers were even lower then, and practically mandated Radica or Ilulu (both of which are Low-Tier Letdown, explained above) to expedite progress.
  • From the perspective of the Fishing Minigame, the Last Island is one of the last places recommended for the player to fish at. The fish there will only bite at special bait that require a non-trivial amount of Git to stock, and prior to v1.9.2 they offered a pittance of fishing experience, so it was the worst place to raise your fishing level at. If you're hunting Zwei for their drops in making the Rill Spear, know that the bait for them might reel in a Kelpie instead, making it very hard to target the Zwei without needing to prepare for the worst.
  • The White Night Cocoon in the final chapter of the "Wanderer in the Binding Night" episode forces the player into an Unexpected Gameplay Change to a Strategy RPG format with Required Party Members in separate squads. Although the game is no stranger to splitting the party at this point, the strategy RPG elements feel very clunky and the fights are watered-down versions of the usual battle system. The only praised element is the side conversations between the Apocrypha characters as you use their special skills, but the game mode as a whole was not well-received. Fortunately, you only have to do this three times at any difficulty to finish the episode, and you don't need to revisit it.
• That One Sidequest: Both Fishing Minigames are infamous for being incredibly grindy and occasionally luck-based. It'll take a lot of time to upgrade your fishing gear enough to consistently catch rare fish (including the Lake Lords and other powerful Fishing Horrors) and each individual level you gain for your rod/harpoon or each upgrade part you purchase doesn't make an appreciable improvement to your performance to give a palpable sense of progression. Not helping matters is that the 3000 Year Ark episode forces the player to go harpoon fishing at several points to obtain the key items needed to advance, meaning that players cannot simply ignore the minigame if they seek to complete the episode.
• Unexpected Character:
  • v2.3.1 introduces a 5-star upgrade to Bria of all people. Very few players expected one of the game's filler units to receive this treatment.
  • For most part, the global client has kept its updates in the same order as that of the Japanese client, occasionally merging two consecutive smaller updates into one to help catch up. But nobody expected Yipha to become playable in v2.4.3 — her estimated date of arrival, based on past update patterns, was early 2021; she's arrived three months earlier than scheduled!
  • Up till 2021, every new character would first debut in the Japanese version of the game before their update arrives in the Global client a few months later. For the Global client's 2nd Anniversary, Melissa was abruptly announced and then added straight to the Global roster, way before she would debut JP side. The practice of using Japanese updates to predict future Global updates has since become more inaccurate than before, even when accounting for past deviations from schedule.
  • Absolutely no one expected that the game would do a collab with Chrono Cross considering it's often overshadowed by its predecessor. Moreover, while Serge, Kid and Harle were obviously going to be playable characters, who would expect Starky to be the fourth one?
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: In "The Celestial Tower and the Shadow Witch," you get to bear witness to the tragic love story between Rildy and Setaka, where in an effort to save Rildy's life, Rildy is transformed into a immortal Medusa and accidentally petrifies her lover. She later petrifies her other loved ones so that she won't have to spend an eternity alone. Her life ends far into the future, when you put her out of her misery. When Aldo and co get the chance to change history by showing Setaka what'll happen if he makes a deal with Reptires, he... ignores their warnings and forges on to see the witch. He refuses to tell Rildy what he saw because he knew she'd refuse Reptires's help and he couldn't bear to see Rildy die. Even though, you know, she probably wouldn't like being an immortal snake monster that ends up imprisoned with no one but her frozen victims as company. Needless to say, having to live with the fact that his love decides to petrify herself so she doesn't harm others isn't tragic as it is karmic for his hubris.
• Unpopular Popular Character:
  • Moke is treated as a Butt-Monkey in the game and regarded as kind of ugly, at least in comparison to Noah and the party cat. The fanbase, however, finds Moke utterly adorable, and he's one of the most popular characters despite just being a Team Pet. The devs listened and Moke is planned to be a sidekick to be released with Thililele's ES.
  • In-universe, Shigure is notoriously unpopular with women. This does not translate to the playerbase, where the JP 3rd anniversary's popularity poll had him rank in the top 3 for the female demographic.