One Step From Eden

I like it. Art is good, music is good, gameplay is good, MMBN is good. It's fast-paced, it flows, enemies have their patterns, I get a whiff of MMBN vibes since Capcom won't provide, and there's just enough lore to fill the gaps. There's a wide variety of spells, artifacts and effects. They're easy to memorize, but there's also a built-in preview and effect-explainer tooltip, so I never felt really overwhelmed. I am frustrated at the usual roguelike elements - tons of artifacts that build on spell effects ("on hit", "when you get hit", Flow, Trinity, Poison, Frost, Fire...), but the stars have to align for you to get even a few that synergize well. You can't easily pivot a build (can't remove artifacts, few and sprinkled ways to remove spells) either. Still, you don't necessarily need artifacts to synergize - spell families build around the same effects (Trinity/Flow/Frost/Fire) so it's relatively easy to trigger those, and some characters don't even need spells to power through, or can work with a wide array of them, or are already specialized. I just like having big chains of effects and combos that build on top of eachother, sue me. It's it's own unique thing and I like it.

Fast combat with a variety of challenges, both frenetic and thoughtful. Recognize patterns, avoid attacks, aim your own and watch your spells. There is also deckbuilding and it is very useful, but if you want you can just pick the spells you like and avoid getting hit. It is also somewhat limited until you spend some time unlocking spells. It can be a bit too much for new players, but there is the Angel Mode in the settings, through which you can reduce enemy damage and enemy speed. And spells have previews so you can see what they do before picking them. This game is amazing, and has tons of replayability. I have already spent 90 hours since buying it this Christmas. It also has mods, which are easy to install, and even easy to create.

Like a lot of other reviews have pointed out this much like a certain video game series. However where that was a jrpg that allowed you to go in with a fully crafted load out, OSFE starts you off with a few basic cards attempting to complete what could be considered that series post game. The battles are fast and statuses/ card types are very important. As much as I wished for a mode less hectic or more forgiving I still had a lot of fun. Just found out there's difficulty sliders reading a review, but my pride won't let me use them.

As mentioned, plays much like Megaman network though it's a pure battler so there's no exploration. I hadn't known that going in but it wasn't too disappointing when I realized that. For the game itself, there's a wide variety of cards/spells, artifacts, and characters leading to a lot of different styles of play and approaches for deck building. It was also really tough at first, since the enemies and bosses throw a lot at you and it can be hard to track the new effects while also getting used to your own spells. That made it all the more gratifying when I stuck it through and could regularly get to the end, outside of some bad RNG, with characters that jived with me. Some marks against it would be the RNG deck-building can be very disappointing. As you unlock more things this leads to a larger card pool and more randomized card pulls. So you end up not being able to build decks or get power-ups that combine well as things go one since there's so many to pull form and not all are built equal. There were also a few cards I despised and it was always a loss when they came up. RNG is nice and some characters have leanings to certain ones more than others, but while a random deck and power up builder can be fun, it was a bit too much here leading too some runs that were fun and others that were an annoying drag as I got nothing that matches or cards I would never accept in my deck for cost/benefit not being worthwhile. Perhaps like cards games you can have a library where X ( like50?) number of cards are active in a run and you can pick those. So still have a large variety but also cut out some you hate. The music and sprite art were also a lot of fun. While the writing was sparse, such that I had little idea what was going on exactly, it was still charming in with some things. Such as Selicy's description. Overall, a fun experience and I'm glad I got around to trying it out. I hope to see more games using this approach to active rpg combat in the future.

Like Crypt of the necrodancer, exspect instead of keeping a beat, you are playing slay the spire. This game is very hard. It is loss your first run before getting a quarter of the way through hard. It is go from great run to lossing in a single laps in focus hard. You probably already know if this game is for you, if it is, you'll love it, if not, you'll hate it.