For the first time in forever, I purchased a game! Today, I talk about that purchase, and how it's successfully managed to pull me away from Animal Crossing (sort of). BACKGROUND:
I saw a trailer of this game on Nintendo's indie-focused Twitter account (@IndieWorldNA), and watched it out of curiosity. What I saw immediately sold me, as the snippets of gameplay reminded me of a game series near and dear to my heart: Mega Man Battle Network. I couldn't buy it at the time, but a couple of months later, I was able to take advantage of a sale. PLOT: The game doesn't really present a story unless you finish a run, but from what I can piece together, there's this place called Eden, and people wanna get to it for some reason? I'm not sure. It's kind of a shame, because the characters have descriptions that hint at a deep backstory, and I wanna learn more about what's going on as I play. Unfortunately, you actually have to succeed to get any sort of full narrative, and this game is... not easy to beat. That said, there are many of these endings, each changing depending on the character you choose and the decisions you make. PRESENTATION: For most of the gameplay, the visuals take on a pixel art style that, while not that detailed, doesn't feel too "retro" to look at. I think it looks pretty good, especially when there's a lot of action happening onscreen. However, I don't think it quite reaches the heights of other indie games that also use pixel art visuals. The visuals in other places (like the full character art on the select screen) are the standouts in my eyes, having this somewhat anime vibe to it. I'm also a fan of the card icons and how simple they look. Speaking of characters, each of their designs are incredibly distinct and exude personality at first sight. Violette looks beautiful and elegant, Shiso looks edgy as fuck, and so on. I know little about these characters, but their designs are so well done that I already really like them off the bat. As for the music, the tracks are phenomenal. The battle themes match the fast-paced nature of the game well (and mesh with the current scenery, too), the less energetic music in between fights is great, and the boss themes are fantastic. My only gripe in this department is the deck UI. I find it weird that it occupies only a small portion of the screen. Other than that, I have no complaints. GAMEPLAY: As I mentioned earlier, what sold me on One Step of Eden is that its gameplay is similar to that of Mega Man Battle Network. The battles in both games take place in real time on this grid, where your character occupies one side and the enemies take the other. You can move one space at a time freely to avoid enemy attacks and to position yourself for your own offense. Boiled down to its basics, the battle system is quite easy to understand, but this game is far from simple. Enemies come in all flavors of infuriating, and they each have their own attack patterns. On their own, they're not that difficult to get around, but on later battles, there are a million of these assholes to contend with, and it becomes a frenetic dance to avoid getting your ass kicked. It takes a hell of a lot of trial and error to learn these patterns, but once I got the patterns down, it became quite satisfying to deftly avoid an onslaught of violence. Your main mode of fighting back comes in the form of spells. You start out with four default spell cards, and you can acquire more by winning fights or buying at shops. In order to play these spell cards, you need to have the Mana required to cast them. This Mana is a resource that regenerates slowly over time, and managing it in the heat of battle is a major key to success. The variety of spells is incredibly overwhelming, ranging from your vanilla damaging spells, to debuffs, to healing, and so much more. You kind of have to learn what they do as you go, but the game does provide a preview of the spell in action to help with that. Like any card game, building a good deck here is important. You'll want your spells to synergize with one another, and that's kinda hard to do given the cards you get are random. This can be mitigated slightly with the Focus mechanic, which increases the likelihood of acquiring spells of a certain family. There are 10 spell families, such as Anima (your vanilla elemental spells), Doublelift (which focuses on deck manipulation), Phalanx (defense-based spells), and more. Again, you kinda have to figure out what's what on your own, which sucks at first for the more complex spell families. You can upgrade spells you already have if you have an Upgrader item, and doing so adds modifiers to the spell (reduced Mana cost, increased damage, etc.). You can also remove cards from your deck if need be with the Remover item. These items are not free, however, adding a bit of resource management to deck building. In addition to spells, you can also acquire Artifacts, which are basically the passive buff items of the game. You get them either at the shop, through random drops, or when you gain enough XP to level up. Like spells, Artifacts have all sorts of effects (some of which can be bad), and the right Artifacts can synergize with certain deck builds. Choosing the right Artifact is equally important as building a decent deck. There are nine playable characters, with only one unlocked at the start. Unlocking the rest is a horrific ordeal, as you must defeat the hard version of their boss fight before you can play as them. It's worth it, however, as every character has a unique starting deck (which pretty much means they have their own play style). Each character also has a unique basic weapon, which is something they can use at any time outside of spells (provided you have the Mana). Saffron's, for example, is like the Mega Buster, and is a rapid-fire, low damage shot. It's different for every character, so that's another thing you have to learn. To up the ante, every character has an alternate loadout, with a completely different set of spells and basic weapon. Unlocking these is also a pain in the ass (you have to beat a run with them), but they give you even more ways to play. One of Saffron's alternate loadouts has a basic weapon that slows down time, for instance. I've talked a lot about the battle system, but how does it all fit? Whereas Mega Man Battle Network is a full RPG with all the usual trappings (exploration, dialogue), One Step From Eden says "fuck that" and goes all in on the action. To spice things up, the entire game is a rogue-like, which means randomness galore! Like most rogue-likes, no two runs of this game are exactly the same. Each battle is random, the level progression is different every time, even the boss order isn't fixed. As someone who loves this genre, One Step From Eden does rogue-like quite well. Each run has you go through eight zones, all of which end in a boss fight. In each zone, you have a choice of what path to take on next; do you endure a string of battles to get to a shop, or do you take a relatively safe route to get to a campfire and heal some of your HP? The freedom of choice is appreciated, as you can plan out your route depending on what state you're in (do I have low HP, do I have money to spend, etc.). The bosses start out relatively easy to manage, but in later zones, they have significantly more difficult patterns and will kick your ass. You can play around with the boss order to make things easier, however, as you can select the next zone you go to at the end, and each zone's bosses are fixed. You can knock off a boss you hate right at the beginning and save one you're confident you can beat for later on. Defeating a boss presents you with a choice; do you kill them, or do you spare them? Choosing the former guarantees an Artifact, as well as some money. The latter is more interesting, as the boss heals you and can randomly show up to aid you in future battles. These choices also influence the boss you fight at the very end, as well as the ending you get, so it's not a bad idea to experiment with this aspect. After every run (successful or otherwise), the XP you earned is carried over into an overall player XP bar. Leveling up your overall level unlocks brand new spells and Artifacts that you can (hopefully) find and use in future runs. It's a more streamlined way of handling the classic "permanent unlocks" system of most rogue-like, which often have way too many unlock conditions for various things. Although I've put a good amount of time into the game already, I've yet to scratch the surface of all it has to offer. Stuff like the Dark path of certain zones, an alternate game mode, and most of the endings are still beyond my reach or understanding. You have to be quite skilled at this game to see everything it has to offer, and that may deter many players from giving it a shot. VERDICT: Despite its rather steep learning curve and unforgiving difficulty, I found One Step From Eden to be an absolutely enjoyable and satisfying experience. It takes a unique battle system from an older game that I adore and makes it its own, leaning heavily into the fast-paced action, incorporating elements of deck-building card games, and embracing the mercurial nature of rogue-likes. Picking up this game is going to take considerable patience (and likely time), and if you have neither, you many not enjoy this game as much. That said, I was initially put off by the game not teaching me much at the start, but after letting the game kick my ass and learning from it, I now find One Step From Eden to be one of my favorite rogue-like experiences out there. It felt so satisfying to finally have that "aha!" moment and figure out how to succeed, and I think it's worth putting in the effort just for that feeling. I feel this way for difficult games in general, though I understand that many people aren't like me in that regard. If you want to get a sense of the battle system, I would still recommend that you try out the Mega Man Battle Network games (or even the Star Force series). But if you're like me and there's a Battle Network-shaped void in your soul, this game is one to get. It may not be a full RPG, but my hunger for a game that had the same battle system was more than satiated with One Step From Eden. Here's the game on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/960690/One_Step_From_Eden/ Listen to the awesome soundtrack on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/4oOPQkqP2RiEVu2KkSTJkg?si=UaaXeWoISTOpoM6IlM-WxA - end -
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June 2024
Derryck
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