The SNES era is absolutely packed to the brim with underrated gems, legendarily good games, and classics trapped in time begging to be remade. So, any time a developer from that era, or merely one fond of it, brings the quality of writing and level of ingenuity that pervaded throughout most SNES titles to a modern experience, I get extremely excited. From Sea of Stars to Undertale, there are plenty of exceptional games that have pulled off this premise flawlessly and showcased exactly how it should be done.
Videos by ComicBook.com
So, you can imagine my delight and surprise when, nestled between massive reveals during the February 2026 Nintendo Direct, Another Eden Begins was announced. Touted as being a spiritual successor to Chrono Trigger, one of the greatest SNES games ever made, Another Eden Begins should have me excited beyond belief. However, there is something fundamental about it that is not only preventing me from falling head over heels for it, but that makes me all the more frustrated that a true Chrono Trigger remake seems like little more than a pipedream.
Another Eden Begins’ Mobile Game Origins Could Hurt It
Another Eden Begins appears, at first glance, to be following in the footsteps of WFS’s previous mobile gacha title, Another Eden: The Cat Beyond Time and Space. Created by Masato Kato, one of the original writers on Chrono Trigger and Xenogears, and with a main theme (that is pretty exceptional) by Xenoblade Chronicles composer Yasunori Mitsuda, Another Eden is a fairly popular mobile JRPG with a sizable following of loyal fans, despite the game’s obvious flaws, grindy mechanics, and predatory microtransactions. That level of pedigree, however, when committed to an offline single-player JRPG not burdened by the greed associated with mobile-only titles, could create something truly excellent.
Unfortunately, it appears that Another Eden Begins is merely an offline version of the mobile game’s first arc, featuring 18 of the game’s principal cast members, and lacking, at least one would assume, the gacha mechanics that plague the original. This is, of course, exactly what the surprisingly successful Octopath Traveler 0 did, a game that took what worked about its mobile counterpart and frankensteined it into a playable single-player experience. However, unlike Octopath Traveler 0, which was still blessed by the mainline series’ gorgeous art style, Another Eden Begins screams that it is a port of a mobile title.
As much as I don’t mind the overall art style for WFS’s latest JRPG, the basic animations, overly vibrant color palette, and simplistic level design create a distinctly un-premium feeling experience that one can only really imagine working on a small mobile device. The original mobile game is also packed with antiquated game design that’s meant to gate content in order to push the player to pay for better characters via its gacha mechanics. This includes frustrating random encounters and overly powerful enemies that punish the player into submission unless they’ve brought along a party packed with unreasonably powerful characters for that section of the game.
This level of artificial challenge is what Another Eden’s combat is built around, the inherent unfairness baked into the strategy players need to adopt in order to win. One cannot simply cut that out, as it would otherwise leave combat an easily exploitable and unenjoyable mess. The entire experience would need to be reworked, at which point WFS may as well have reworked other core aspects, such as the aforementioned art style, animations, and level design. Even if combat has been better balanced to accommodate the removal of predatory monetization, the apparent lack of other meaningful fixes makes Another Eden Begins feel a little lazy.
Another Eden Begins Could Fix The Mobile Game’s Issues
Of course, there is also every chance that Another Eden Begins could fix a lot of the major issues found in the mobile version. Naturally, a lot of the design choices built around bringing in as much money as possible would be rendered moot by Another Eden Begin’s one-time-purchase payment model. This, as previously mentioned, means that the purposefully challenging and frustrating mechanics can be stripped out and, ideally, replaced with more engaging and nuanced ideas. This worked with Octopath Traveler 0 to an extent, even if it is a largely lazy repurposing of existing content fans have enjoyed for years.
More importantly, Another Eden Begins preserves the Another Eden experience forever. Unlike the mobile version, which could be pulled from storefronts and taken offline at a moment’s notice, Another Eden Begins is designed to be a single-player experience. While it only encapsulates a small portion of that monolithic game, it is nevertheless an admirable way of ensuring that the art and craftsmanship that went into creating it are saved.
However, as much as that sounds potentially exciting, I can’t help but feel like Another Eden Begins is somewhat disappointing. The talent behind it is immense, and the idea of a spiritual successor to one of the greatest turn-based JRPG games ever made is tantalizing to say the least. Yet, I can’t help but feel like this truncated mobile version feels a tad lacklustre in its vision. I haven’t played through all of the original Another Eden, and I’ve been told its characters (who are all voice-acted) and its story are great and maybe even rival Kato’s older writing. I sincerely hope that’s the case, as without an exceptional story akin to Chrono Trigger, Another Eden Begins’ rote combat and simplistic exploration leave little else of note to offer.
I suspect Another Eden Begins will serve as a case study in how best to transition a mobile experience to a full-price single-player game, or, indeed, whether or not one should bother in the first place. If Another Eden Begins is successful in meaningfully translating the best aspects of the mobile game and adding brand-new features to help it appeal to an entirely different audience, then we’ll likely see a lot more of these ports. However, as much as I’d quite like Another Eden Begins to succeed, I fear this Chrono Trigger spiritual successor may fall flat, leaving us twiddling our thumbs as we desperately wait for the long-rumored Chrono Trigger remake.
Are you excited for Another Eden Begins? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!
Most Viewed
-
Image courtesy of Tor Books/Macmillan -
Image courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios
