One Step From Eden

First and foremost, I've rated this review with a recommendation, but ONLY for people interested in the tagged genres or Mega Man Battle Network fans. If you aren't familiar or like any of the tags/MMBN, this game will probably scare you away as it is not made for those people in mind. I can't describe the game any better than the description it already has on the Steam page, so I'll skip a gameplay summary this time. [h1] The Good [/h1] This game being a roguelike makes it naturally susceptible to inconsistency, so the game partially alleviates this with generating seeds. If you follow your EXACT steps, you will get the same thing every time. This makes god seeds pretty valuable for repeating certain kinds of runs. The game divides all of its spells into "Focuses", which are basically categories. Knife spells go to Slashfik, shiny spells go to Glimmer, etc. The game allows you to choose two Focuses at any point in the run that will increase your chance of getting a card from that type after battles. This again makes the frustration of trying to put the perfect deck together being stalled by RNG a bit lighter. The game allows you to choose from 9 heroes that all have their own unique gameplay styles. Saffron is a standard move and shoot with easy to understand spells, Violette wants you to move in specific patterns for various benefits. The cool thing is that they go even deeper in-depth with this and give other kits to unlock which entirely change the way a hero is played, but they still feel uniquely like that hero. This alone creates extreme variety in what you can do in a run. Invade Selicy will play absolutely NOTHING like Teardown Hazel with the former being boundary-breaking aggressive play and the second being bizarre and cerebral strategies. Or, you can go the indiscriminate chaos route and build into a weapon attack Manafire Gunner or Solo Saffron with spammy spells. It's up to you and that's what's really fun about it. Otherwise, the UI is pretty clean (however it's not very stylised, which may be a problem in the eyes of some) and the music is pretty good. [h1] The Neutral [/h1] The game also has a lot of unlockable cosmetics for characters, ranging from (imo poor) beta designs to "straight up better" alts. However, there aren't many of them so.... I guess. The second thing is the numerous pop culture references thrown all over the place. I mean all over the place, most spells and artifacts have a caption that is making a reference to [i] something [/i]. This can be really amusing at times, but it's also really jarring when this post-apocalyptic bullet hell game starts talking about New Jersey and Bob the Builder. It's a mixed bag and sometimes makes it feel like "reference slop" that doesn't have much to stand on its own otherwise. But usually it's pretty funny. Lastly, I have no idea what is going on in the story since the game doesn't seem to lead you much on that and the game also has routes with different end bosses and endings depending on your actions. Pretty cool, but remember you have to do genocide to loop your run. [h1] The Bad [/h1] As someone who loves bullet hell games and has a 15+ year on and off playthrough of MMBN5 GBA, this game suffers BADLY from visual clutter. You have yourself, the red [ ! ] tiles intersecting with each other, yellow danger tiles, your own spells of various effects like blackouts, fire, hazards, enemies, etc. and unlike MMBN you have no turn phase to slow things down and take a breath. The game is full steam ahead at all times and it's a LOT faster than MMBN. It'll also require you to watch the bottom left of the screen for what spell to pick since there is no turn phase, so you'll be dodging a bullet hell while micromanaging something on your screen. This gets really annoying as shuffles make spells switch spots sometimes and you'll accidentally use something in the wrong order trying to dodge. Sometimes some attacks are hard to see like in the Arctic world, which is just too much white. Unlocking things in the game was kind of dissatisfying. You'll have every spell in the game with not too much time and unless I'm tripping, the game doesn't tell you how to unlock new character kits and costumes. As a matter of fact, a major bad thing about the game is that it doesn't really teach you anything. This makes it HORRIBLE for new players as the game is EXTREMELY brutal to play. Difficulty spikes sharply depending on who you play, the luck stat, Hell Mode, loop scaling, etc. Luck on its own is kind of annoying because it gives the player a chance for higher rarity spells, but GUARANTEES higher difficulty enemies. Speaking of, earlier I mentioned the Focus mechanic. This gets really annoying when you slot double Hexawan Focus and somehow you're not getting any for multiple battles. No, I don't want the damn Anubis spell I'm trying to roll for Turret SD. The multiplayer is... a bit of a footnote. PvP is a first to two and you can't choose other kits. You have set spells it seems. It's bare. Co-Op I had higher hopes for... it's the same format as singleplayer. However, whatever character player 1 chooses is who player 2 is. Player 2 actually has no agency. They can't shop, pick spells, anything. Both players can only use one out of two spells readied, so buildcrafting is harder due to random shuffles. When player 2 dies, they don't even revive in the next world. I get why, but.... okay why? Chances are player 2 is a newbie and the game is brutal enough as is. With both players being individually weaker, I don't see the point in this. It's just not fun for player 2. [h1] In Conclusion [/h1] Overall, this is a tough recommendation. For those interested in the genre (which is why I assume you're here) I say give it a go on sale. With enough experience, you will find your play style and make order out of the chaos (all achievements Invade Selicy main here) but it's a rough ride. However, I feel like in many cases the turn phase is a needed buffer, as checking your deck while avoiding literal screen vomit can be annoyingly challenging in the wrong ways. But, it's admittedly fun to mash a combo like Virusspell + Duel Disk, something that would be impossible with turn phases. Eden tries to compensate for its speed with more visual warnings than MMBN, but sometimes those warnings just add to the mess. Regardless, the game is EXTREMELY addicting as a rougelike despite its shortcomings. It does suffer the same fate as many of them being that it gets very same-y from so many hours, but that's the genre. Good game if it's your thing (masochism)!

Truly a game for the Battle Network freakbeasts to sink their teeth into.

A shameless spiritual successor to the Megaman Battle Network games in the best way possible. The gameplay is challenging but fun, with lots of variety of builds to make. The art and music is top tier, and the characters introduce a lot of variety of playstyles. There's clearly a lot here, even if I havent put in the time to see it all. Also the girls are really cute, great yuri bait.