One Step From Eden

Extremely fun. More of a modern and extreme version of Megaman BattleNetwork. Extremely hard at times and I have yet to beat the game but every minute is worth it.

About a year ago, I was invited to play a card game called "Magic the Gathering". I informed the people who brought me over that I'd never played a tabletop card game before. They reassured me they'd show me the ropes and it'd be fairly easy to grasp for newcomers. After they handed me something called a "Commander Deck", they then proceeded to inform me of a new mechanic of the game on every turn I took and hastily requested I just play a card. I protested, saying I needed to read what the cards said first so I knew how they worked. They told me it was fine, just play a card. "No, not that one, you don't have enough mana. Not that one either, that's a token." and other such comments were thrown my way as I scrambled to do something while still trying to remember the earlier mechanic I was told about 3 turns ago, nevermind what was being thrown at me on the current turn. I got about an hour in before deciding this was a miserable experience and promptly abandoned the game session. You might be wondering what this has to do with One Step From Eden. Regrettably, I'm here to tell you I had a near identical experience as I did with my first time playing Magic the Gathering. Similarly, I only sunk about an hour into One Step From Eden, but I think that's plenty for me to write about my experience with it as I am reluctant to play more. I appreciate the desire to continue on the style of combat the Mega Man Battle Network series offers, believe me, I do. I myself am a massive fan. This is not nearly as straightforward and intuitive, however, and exclusively gets more complicated at a breakneck pace. I did two runs due to this game's randomized nature of providing the player tools to work with and different enemies and bosses to fight. The first of which gave me a spell that offered me a shield with its strength based on the number of spells in my deck. I tested it out in the practice area and it failed to work, saying "Must be in battle". Not really helpful for giving me an idea of how effective it was. Then I got a spell that gave me something called "Flow" and despite the extra menu that popped up to describe it, I have to say, it did nothing to teach me what it is or how it worked. Typing in "One Step From Eden what" into my phone's search bar immediately caused it to add "is Flow?" on the rest of the search, which tells me I'm not alone in my confusion. This is about the point where I started to get worried about how things would go for my experience with this game. The next spell I got had a tool tip stating I'd need to be a level 14 magician to use it. I was only level 2 at the time and didn't even realize classes were present at all in OSFE. Despite the tool tip, I could still use the spell just fine, which did not help my already growing confusion with the game's mechanics. I did a few more fights, progressed to the second area, died, then started a new run, fared about the same, and got a level up that's apparently separate to the levels I gain on my runs. This gave me a spell called "explosion" which stated I should've done a better job distributing my stats. Theoretically, this would help me use it more effectively or would've given me a different, better reward? It did nothing to tell me which stats I should focus on, which would already prove difficult due to the random nature of the game. Just under an hour in and I was already exhausted, just as I was with Magic the Gathering. I love Mega Man Battle Network. So much so I even got all of the achievements in both Legacy Collections back at launch. I looked forward to giving One Step From Eden a shot after seeing the similarities in the gameplay, but this isn't remotely what I came to love about the series. Heck, even with BN's most obscure mechanics, questionable translations from time to time, or unfortunate issues with localization (One of many birds, anyone?), I still never felt as at a loss on what was happening as quickly as I did with One Step From Eden. OSFE relentlessly throws everything and the kitchen sink at you constantly and expects you to grasp what's happening immediately. I was told it was made for people who have experience with the Battle Network series, but even I'm unable to keep up with everything this kept throwing at me. I cannot in good faith recommend this to anyone and that sucks to say because I can tell the devs are experienced BN players, yet I think they spent too much time practicing and mastering their own, brand new mechanics, before releasing the game as it's just too much too fast. There needed to be a slower approach to the pacing of this game's introduction to mechanics and some proper down time, not just a practice room, between fights. Don't even consider trying One Step From Eden if you haven't played Battle Network before, you'll be even worse off than I was.

Criminally underrated. A fast pace card building game that has very satisfying and rewarding combat. There is a great variety of cards, which enables different set of playstyles. some cards also have very neat references to other games or media, which is always fun to read. My only critique is that the enemy variety is a bit limited, and some bosses have "peculiar" dodging patterns that might seem undodgeable. Also, to provide some further context, the game lacks any form of permanent upgrades (except for unlocks of new cards / characters), thus the only way to progress further is to git gud. Overall, this, to me, is a very solid game. Do not let the hard early game discourage you. Give it a couple of hours, get familiar with the mechanics, in order for this game to trully shine. 9/10 highly recommanded.

I refunded the game to buy it at full price.

具有随机元素和牌组构建的肉鸽类即时战斗游戏，玩法新奇，战斗有趣 就是太难了 T-T

Fun deck building Roguelite that is a mix of Megaman Battle Network and Slay the Spire. It is quite difficult though

Fun game but I really, really wish the dev had not played Undertale midway through development