I’ve heard things about The Eminence in Shadow being some guilty pleasure romp and it certainly gives me that impression with our hero being some incredibly bombastic dweeb determined to downplay his protagonist power because a wizard is never late, he only arrives when he’s meant to, or whatever. The Eminence in Shadow: Master of Garden is the mobile gacha game adaptation of this fantasy, so it falls to me to see how this apparent absurdity be translated here.

RAISE HAND TO FACE

The opening would have me believe that the main story and the chronicles on the side pretty much follow the anime, complete with some stills and occasional use of 3D models. In combat itself, it goes from left to right, with your units on the left and enemies on the right. I think the models are quite nice for what its worth with some transparency and clipping issues here and there. The animations for character walk-ins, special attacks and victory can be a little long, especially when you’re going to be seeing them a lot.

That said, they’ve clearly put in some effort into the characters with their little mannerisms, idle motions, and defeat animations. At one point, I saw Cid flying off into the distance because I suppose he’s the only one who will bear the brunt of the slapstick comedy. Game is fully voiced, with the option to not download any to save on space.

I don’t have too much to say about how the game looks itself; it’s pretty presentable for what it sets out to do, with full size models for those who don’t like chibis.

I CHOOSE YOU, TRUCK-KUN!

The core gameplay is basically an auto-battler, with up to 5 units to a team. The tutorial tells you you need one tank and one healer for your party as enemies will attack the front-most unit first. As usual, they have their own ultimates and automatic active skills, with auto battle on top of that, up to 2x speed. When you 3-star clear a quest, you will be able to skip them provided you have enough stamina. You can get free stamina from logging in at set times as well as temporary consumables which increases in upper limit as you level up.

The added mechanic is a Strike Combo. Fill up the bar and three of your characters will unleash their combos. Your tank can reduce party wide damage, your support party wide heal, and one DPS to increase the overall combo damage. It’s a little more unique in that the effects of your selected combo will increase the later they are in the chain, so you might want to sacrifice some damage if you need some defensive measures badly. There’s also the elemental chart, but in the early game, you can probably just steamroll with brute force.

Characters have multiple ways of getting powered up besides their base level: Awakening (up to 5 duplicates), raising Rank, and Rarity. The character’s level is tied to your account level, with SSR characters having up to 2 additional levels above the cap, and SR 1 level above cap.

Awakening unlocks new skills and magic gear slots, besides incremental stats. Only SSR in the gacha will grant you the related character’s “Magic Cores” to Awaken them; dupes of other characters just give currency to buy shards with no other avenue to get cores for most other characters at launch.

Raising Rank can also unlock new skills. This is basically getting the required equipment pieces similar to publishing stable-mate Princess Connect. A similar system is used for acquiring Shards to raise rarity as well; 120 for an SSR and 30 for an A. If you want to unlock a character you don’t have yet, you can buy 135 shards (SSR; SR takes 45 and A 15) to get them from the character list. There’s PVP (Bushin Festival) and Guild Battles (Armageddon) which likewise are mechanically similar to Princess Connect and will serve as a source of premium currency and method to buy shards.

There’s a bonding system where you can chat the person in your homescreen with several options to choose from. Nothing too big there. It does offer a bit of additional characterization and something less static to look at, with more locales unlocked as you raise affection.

VERSUS GACHA

At 3% for an SSR, it’s the average rate. There is a “spark” system at 200 pulls for a ticket to guarantee an SS character, whose wording is a bit dubious should it not actually be a selector ticket. The gacha presentation looks like a shoddy tournament bracket. You can get either unit shown in a particular line.

At 2800 currency for a 10-pull when you get at most about 20??? on a 3-star quest, I’m not particularly impressed.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

Without any attachment to the series, The Eminence in Shadow: Master of Garden is a passable gacha game with cute moments and side-game gameplay. If you’re up for isekai, harem-not-harem, vaguely trashy, campy fun without subjecting yourself to the source material, sure, go for it.

Download

The Eminence in Shadow: Master of Garden

Publisher: Crunchyroll Games

Developer: Aiming

Release Date: 2022-11-29

Android, iOS, Microsoft Windows

Continue the story with new chapters, beat exciting new challenges and get the latest characters after every new episode with anime-updates!

Featuring cutting-edge 3D graphics and anime cutscenes, Master of Garden's story spotlights characters with memorable scenes from the anime and untold events from the light novels!

Whether you're a fan of the light novels, or have yet to see The Eminence in Shadow, Master of Garden's story is sure to satisfy any anime fan!