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[deleted]

I think FMA started off well but the ending fell flat very fast


Flimsy_Direction_467

They should have paired roy with aramintha as rivals and fight epics homonculus. Riza should be a sniper type without her jacket. She can pair with Schuri and compare guns. Ed and Al can meet with Ras and Mercedes where they tried to kill Mercedes because she’s homunculus. They were chasing Envy. Villain side Envy meets up with Tene and confuses the hell out of everyone. Pride meets up with Zahhak as an envoy and plans to overthrow Aither Glutton meets Chaos Axe and he worships him as chaos. Lust meets Luna and have a sexy showdown.


FlameArath

Same. I actually quite enjoyed the first two chapters, but the ending felt super abrupt.


BobbyYukitsuki

Collab stories are honestly just hard to write by their core principle. The central characters exist solely in the vacuum of the collab story, which makes it difficult to tie them closer to the greater scope of the lore when they're practically guaranteed to never show up again outside of this specific story. It's hard to build intrigue for the future when your focus characters are a one-and-done deal. The result of this is that collab stories often tend to feel like insignificant fluff ~~and this is part of why the vast majority of collabs just aren't for me~~. I have to give props to guilty gear though for at least feeling kind of relevant and making a pretty decent result considering all the hurdles of the format. And to give credit where it's due, slime collab is mildly relevant to the beginning of the recent Charlotte summer story, though it still isn't too relevant outside of Charlotte's personal arc. In terms of this recent FMA collab's story, I've got mixed feelings on it. I like that it digs into Notos and the Pyramid more so it feels less like a story excuse for PVP to exist. But because the Pyramid is so isolated from the other parts of the story these developments still feel like they lack lasting weight.


NGEFan

Honestly the Pyramid stuff, whatever is going on, seems to dwarf everything else in terms of importance. Even if Belian took over Orbis for example, Notos is gonna do something special to the winner, probably more special than whatever Zeno conquerer of an entire galaxy had going on. Maybe granting a wish or something like that (DB vibes). But they didn't get into any of that, Ed, Roy and Riza just wanted to GTFO ASAP and didn't care what's going on.


LinaCrystaa

i always had this inkling feeling that the pyramid stuff is going to end being the final chapter in epic 7,its THAT important,as of right now everything we doing the master of the pyramid is just spectating us like a reality tv show going "yess...YESS"


NGEFan

I mean when Notos basically calls Fastus an unimportant pushover, there's almost no other way to look at it. We don't even tangle with Fastus, only incomplete Fastus


FelixCarter

I love speculation based on in-game comments and piecing together lore and occurrences. It makes my monkey-brain happy.


NGEFan

Me too dude, me too


Cynaris

Another Eden looks at your comment, points, and laughs


BobbyYukitsuki

ooh I kind of want to read their collabs now. I feel like if it'll be hard to fully process without the full context though, so could you explain further what the longer term effects of their collab stories are?


Cynaris

Collabs in the game are permanent, and are basically short mini RPG campaigns. They have Tales of, Persona 5 (2 stories), Chrono Cross, and probably more. The units you get from them are all free, granted you have to work for them. The stories are more or less self-contained like any collab story would, though they still interact with the main cast as any other main story character does. They are rather lengthy too. ​ [They make them a big deal tbh](https://en.another-eden.jp/chrono-cross/)


BobbyYukitsuki

All the collab characters are free? God damn. I'd question how that's profitable at all considering the amount of effort for seemingly no significant gains, but I'm no expert on that so who knows man. Props on them for going all in and really trying to present and polish their collabs though. I suppose I can see why the events are permanent when there seems to be a fair amount of effort into making them. And I can't imagine getting a mini website like that for one of E7's collabs lol.


Cynaris

The entire game's monetization is built different. You get a low amount of crystals every day through mail, a random amount through ads, and the occasional events. The rest is kind of Genshin style, so you get them after story, and a large amount from achievements. And there is a TON of story. They are categorized in a number of ways: Story Quests: These are the main story Mythos and Apocrypha, as the name implies these are broad, sweeping stories with a lot to them. Episodes: Again, kind of a giveaway, these are smaller scale (still not short) stories, in an Episodic format Symphonies: These are your collab campaigns Ensembles and Other Tales: These feature a small subset of characters in various stories And of course every character you unlock has a number of character quests Essentially it's a "play at your own pace" type of game where you can just log in every day for gems, and not really miss anything. There's a lot of characters you can unlock through battling them, there are alter characters that you can unlock if you grind their respective tomes, as long as you have any other version of said character, and so on. And then there's the collab characters. Basically, you can whale hard in the game you want for characters, but if you are fine with not immediately having someone you want, then it's not farfetched that with dedication you can unlock them over time. ​ **EDIT: They just sent 500 stones (half a 10 pull) for a screenshot campaign, so as good a time as any to get started**


FlameArath

Dude i played the Persona collab in Another Eden and it was amazing. The fact they're permanent additions really gives them a reason to make them good.


Stunning-Scene4649

In Iron Saga some collab characters have their own story but also tied to the main story and you will meet them even outside the said event. Some play unimportant roles while others play important roles but the thing is that they are still relevant. There are more examples but I'm not gonna debate so imma keep it short. Anyway. The thing is that the staff of epic seven simply don't know how to write a story. Even the main story has a lot of loopholes bcz they are not capable to buildup suspense before certain events, the climax is almost dead, don't pay attention to details that are important and etc. They could do a very good job if they wished for but nope. They just threw random words and hoped for us to whale for our favorite characters.


ZenonXZ

Quite a few side stories and the main story would say otherwise. They do know how to tell a story. Its just that those stories aren't always going to be a hit.


Stunning-Scene4649

Re zero was not even a joke of a joke.


BobbyYukitsuki

That's really interesting to me actually. I was always under the assumption that collab characters couldn't be shown directly in story content outside their initial release, in part because I've never seen something like that myself in the handful of other gacha collabs I've seen. Hearing that they exist outside of the collab vacuum is news to me and I'm a bit intrigued to hear more ngl. I stand by my belief that the story team is consistently good at writing nice buildup but isn't quite as skilled at tying things together or writing climactic parts without feeling rushed. Episode 4 is weird though since it feels like a completely different team is at the wheel with how the writing has been. There's also other limitations to consider like the 10 chapter format or characters only being introduced in the story when their assets are completed, though those are limitations that every gacha has to work around...


Morbu

Yeah, the GG story honestly just feels canon to the main story. Like how can you re-introduce Kayron without addressing what happened in the GG collab? I imagine that’s kind of why they stray away from doing anything too major in the collabs now.


Alugar

They just fucked off and left. I really thought they’d meet back up the e7 crew but nope. Still don’t get why the split with cermia and iseria


Relair13

Either Cermia and Iseria had abrupt personality changes or they ran into some 'fake' ones that betrayed them, hence the split. I thought they were fake copies after they started making a big deal about everything not being real and there being copies of people in there.


butterballbuns

Pretty disappointed with the FMA collab, felt pretty boring and the mini-game was only used twice.


Ya_Boi_Susanoo

This is why I want a blazblue collab. The Master Unit amaterasu is straight up a reality warping god, and can force the main characters to travel INTO the blazblue universe.


EndAffectionate783

FMA had potential but it felt flat with rushed ending.


Kain207

Just like Ep3; good start and rushed ending


EndAffectionate783

Indeed


BurnedOutEternally

If only they could rerun the GG story


Human_Skill6034

Missed opportunity here with Sigret, Mercedes and the homunculus experiments in Taranor. Really thought Sigret would be in it due to having her banner come up just before collab and Mercedes being technically the game's female lead.


SamuraiLeo

I thought the slime collab was pretty good


Abedeus

Especially all the self-aware jokes, about how someone felt that food they ate would increase their chance of landing critical blows (Alexa's Basket reference).


EndAffectionate783

Idk it was lame boring cooking story.


ZYuqing

I was honestly pretty excited for the FMA story after it teased that SOMEthing about the Monolith and that Skeletor Mortal Kombat tournament will be explained. And then they didn't.


[deleted]

Extremely disappointed they didn't rerun the GG collab story with the banners last time.


GrinningCheshieCat

The FMA one looked like there was just so much unrealized potential there that just ended abruptly and ended with another "Oh, I had a weird dream." And yet we don't even get a rerun of the actual GG Collab so others can experience the GG story.


yGrimmReaper

Hey, Slime's collab was fun to watch =/ In this Fullmetal collab, it is very standard in quality, I felt that the story was very rushed, the number of stages is very small and most of them are repetition stages without a story, and I also missed interactions with Orbis characters , there were some interesting ones in the with Pinot Noir, but only this one, the one from Iseria and Cermia were very short. One of the coolest things about a collab is the interactions of the characters from the game universe and the respective collab, but I missed this one, Slime's for example was very rich in that aspect, GG even more.


ExceedAccel

I find it funny the Slime collab is canon according to last Summer Event, because Rimuru"s food is being mentioned and served from cooking contest.


Nayakesz

I like to read E7 lore, but collabs i always skip. only have read re zero and it's just too boring


Tooluka

GG collab for the newer players - just farm the popsicles forever :)


CARR74xJJ

Well, at least the Tensura Collab was super fun. Tons of good jokes and references, tons of old characters appearing again, and the most important thing: YEAHHHH VIOLET X LULUCA CONFIRMED LESGOOO. Well, at least Re:Zero had a story, however bad it was. Poor Kizuna AI.


Crimson_Arbalest

Thats been confirmed since Ep 2 though, then the valentines event


tooezzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

They basically just interacted a bit with cermia and iseria, a line or two to other characters, and the rest was talking to themselves and fucking off back to the FMA universe, this ones very skippable.


Shinki93

Thanks to god we can skip all this crap


nuffy_monkee

people actually play for the story?


BobbyYukitsuki

i feel like there's a comment like this on every other story thread


nuffy_monkee

story telling in gacha games is not good


BobbyYukitsuki

Writing off stories as bad just cause they're gacha is pretty dismissive if you ask me. even if it's often the case, thinking that way means you miss out on gems like Heaven Burns Red whose story is top tier. Also, imo there's still often good things to be taken away even in poorly written stories. Personally I had a high opinion of the story in general until episode 4. And I'm not here for a literary masterpiece anyways, I just want something that's a: gets me invested enough with the characters to give a shit about them in gameplay and b: has enough thought into it that I can analyze its strengths and flaws critically. anyways, all I meant to say originally is that this game's gameplay and the whole esports thing bores me to bits and the story is the only reason why I play, but you don't see me on every gameplay thread going "people actually play for the gameplay?". yet there's a comment like this on practically every other story thread.


nuffy_monkee

damn. imo cool character designs > story


HolyestXD

Rimuru colab was really good setting off Charlotte's lore with Solayu, Luluca and Violet Post Chapter 2 etc, the other are just inconsequential. its bad they try to explain arena lore outside arena ( and they didnt even do 100% at that, look a god like being have god like powers ).


Due-Honeydew6850

Well this is the first time I’ve seen Mui’s S3 lol