Monday, June 24, 2024

Eden Eternal

Another very old anime MMO has made a recent comeback.  Eden Eternal was created by X-Legend and was originally hosted for the Western hemisphere by Aeria Games starting in 2011.  Aeria Games got bought by Gamigo Games, and they eventually shut down Eden Eternal in 2021.

X-Legend got their game back and launched their own server last year, in 2023.  This is the version I'm playing now.  Because of the gap in service, accounts from Aeria Games were not transferable like Aura Kingdoms, but they offered a good amount of new account rewards to help players start over.

Thursday, June 6, 2024

Revisiting Aura Kingdom

It's been about 3 years since I reviewed Aura Kingdom, and since then, it has changed hands in ownership from Aeria Games, to Gamigo Games, back to X-Legend, the original developers.  For a while I was unhappy with Gamigo, so I played Aura Kingdom on a private server, then I went back to the official server, then quit for a year because I had technical difficulty transferring my account to X-Legend.  Recently, I was able to overcome my technical difficulties and play again.  Much to my surprise, X-Legend has made several improvements since getting their game back.

For starters, auto-pathing had been improved.  You used to run through water and get dismounted.  Now the paths navigate the maps much more safely.  Also, apparently they've streamlined the leveling process to 99, because the game used to really drop off at 80.  Most specifically in my personal interest, they've rebalanced the classes, and Wizards are a lot more successful than they used to be.  Where I used to hit a wall and be unable to continue, now my current gear and stats are sufficient to complete story content.  And as an added bonus, they've increased the drop rates of gold and rewards in dungeons, so making money is easier too.

Cherry Magic Anime Review

Cherry Magic is a gay office romance that I was a huge fan of the manga for, so the anime had big shoes to fill.  Fortunately, the resulting anime was fantastic!    The animation was pretty, and very similar to the manga in design.  There was a little drama, but not enough to really peak my anxiety.  It had the right amount of silly and serious. 

The manga is still ongoing.  I thought volume 9 was gonna be the finale, but there's much more after!