One Step From Eden

Got around to finally playing a game I had actually anticipated - One Step From Eden. I seemed to have either forgotten, or perhaps I never took a careful look in the first place, but I was somewhat surprised to learn that this was, in fact, not a turn-based game. Well, action games are fine. Surely, this won't ruin my enjoyment?

One Step From Eden is an action roguelike deckbuilder that takes place on a 8x4 grid, of which the left half is yours, and the right half belongs to your enemy. You can move freely on your side, and cast your attack (generally for free), or either of two spells. Casting a spell costs some mana, which quickly refills, and discards the spell to draw a new one from your remaining deck. Once the deck is empty, it is reshuffled. Most spells hit one or multiple tiles in front of you, and can have a variety of effects besides damage.
The enemy side has one or multiple enemies who will similarly cast their spells at you, and if you kill them all, you get to move to the next level. There's a bit of a choice in levels, but every few levels there is a boss fight, and between most levels you get to adjust your deck, usually by getting a new spell, or some passive ability (artifact).

There is a whole load of variety and replayability. Far more than I could describe here, and far more than I got to experience. Nearly a dozen different characters, and probably a few hundred spells, plus artifacts, spell modifiers, and a bunch of synergies between them all. The pixel art is pretty nice, the characters look cool, and there's more references as flavor text to every possible medium than I would know, which were enjoyable to recognize. I think there is a lot of love put into this game, and it's executed to a very high degree of polish. The combination of genres is unique (though I did see literally everyone mention it's just like Megaman Battle Network, which I know nothing about), and I don't have any objective complaints about it in general.

Despite my positive attitude towards it and my initial excitement during the first hour of playing it, it soon sank in that this was not a game I could play. I loved thinking about all the interactions between the cards, optimal ways to play, and building a deck, but the game runs at an incredibly high speed. Every second, or even more often, I am expected to re-learn what spells I currently have available, what they do (because in proper deckbuilding roguelike fashion, effects often change over the course of the battle), where I am supposed to move to dodge the enemy, where I am supposed to move to hit the enemy, and maybe more. This makes for an incredibly high skill ceiling and no doubt rewards players who have sunk a lot of hours in the game, but I can not process this information. Playing at a slower pace will just make me get hit more and deal less damage, so the only real solution is to just spam my abilities without thinking what they do or if they hit. Sure, the game is somewhat balanced around this, where AoE spells are quite weak, and pin-point spells can be incredibly strong, but I feel this just robbed all of the thought from the game. I can't execute my synergies or do cool things, because I must act faster, not smarter.

I am very sad about this resolution. This looks like a very nice game, and I think a lot of people, who are not me, can actually well enjoy One Step From Eden. It's not even all that difficult, as I got probably around halfway through on my second run. So if you either don't care as much as I do about executing your deck to its fullest, or are someone who can think and recall information faster and is willing to invest more time into memorizing what every spell and enemy does, this will probably be a really good game. I think once you go play it, you will understand very swiftly if the combination of action and strategy works for you. So, while I can't personally recommend it, I still have faith that it's a good game, and that a lot of people could get plenty of enjoyment out of it.