When it comes to games that last, complex and well-designed mechanics can keep players coming back for more years after release. These are the sort of games that are usually challenging but fair, deep and mysterious, but also simple enough to play for short bursts and typically there are lots of things to unlock or elements that change up each session. I consider games like this to be mechanically pleasing. Games that fall into that category for me include Tetris, Doom Eternal, Binding of Issaac, Bloodborne, and Monster Hunter World just to name a few. These are games driven by their unique mechanics and the gameplay loops that define them. One Step From Eden sits mostly in the mechanically pleasing category for me. While I find it pretty bare visually and often overly tough, I have a hard time putting it down once I start a session. That said, there are a few glaring issues that keep it from being truly excellent.
One Step From Eden owes much of its design from the Mega Man Battle Network series, an RPG spin-off with a unique battle system. That battle system involved the player hopping from square to square in a grid with one side being for the player and the other being for the enemies. Players get a basic attack but the most effective moves come from the chips that are arranged like a deck of cards. Deeper than that, MegaMan.exe was able to dodge various attacks through quick movement and pattern recognition. Things could get pretty tough too, especially bosses.
Building from that foundation, One Step From Eden focuses on those battles and wraps them in a roguelike structure. Players take control of a character and fight through a broken world to reach Eden but the adventure is fraught with peril as every single encounter poses a substantial challenge. These encounters slowly build to absolute insanity that feels similar to playing a bullet hell game. Through over 30 hours of playtime, I only made it to the sixth area, just above halfway to reaching the final trial of the run. Due to not watching many others play, I actually don’t know what lies at the end of that road.
Thankfully, progress feels steady in One Step From Eden. During a run, characters level up and gain new spells and artifacts. Once a run is over, those character levels are pumped into an overall level which slowly unlocks new spells, artifacts, characters, and costumes. After about ten or so runs, I got my first new character and with nine total to unlock and lots of variants to acquire, I was hooked.
The basics of the game’s combat involve keeping an eye on enemy projectiles and attacks while tossing out various spells and using basic attacks to keep up the pressure. Characters have hit points well around a thousand pretty early on and even the strongest attacks only do about 300 damage so fights can feel like they last forever, even when they are actually pretty quick. This is due to the constant, acute attention that One Step From Eden demands. Every single move is precious and though the player also has plenty of health for making mistakes, not paying attention can shred heroes into ribbons in seconds.
Things get hectic quick in One Step From Eden.
After just about every fight, players usually get to choose between a few spells to take with them or they can opt-out of taking them entirely to keep decks leaner. Spells are sorted by type and they do fall into a lot of interesting builds. One of my favorite builds involves getting cards focused on generating kunai, which builds a pile of ammo that can be machine-gunned into foes. This works great for the first character Saffron whose first basic attack is a rapid-fire blast that can be held down and maintained while moving. However, when I eventually got Hazel, an engineer with a wrench that adds shields to structures, I focused entirely on using turrets and shield generators to turtle in a corner. There are lots of possibilities and experimenting is highly encouraged since death is so frequent but the game can be quickly restarted.
Those who play for longer periods of time will start to notice a few subtle mechanics, such as being able to hop through attacks with proper timing. This was also a feature of the Mega Man Battle Network series but here in One Step From Eden, it is almost a mandatory move to get through the later stages. Aside from that, one also learns that keeping a deck lean and focused can optimize damage output, so knowing when to skip taking an item becomes a part of the strategy. Of course, being that I am still learning the ins and outs of One Step From Eden, there’s much I don’t know about the higher-level strategies.
Unfortunately, the game is mostly about learning through experience which can lead to a ton of confusion. Some of the game’s essential knowledge can be hard to locate in the UI and menus and there are some things that I swear are just not detailed out enough. One character, Shiso, wields a powerful handgun that apparently deals damage based on how much money one has. There’s not an indicator in the animation or anything that helps drive this concept, so I could not figure out why my shots were doing absolutely no damage. I ended up learning that one through Reddit, although I did eventually find where this was written out in the character select menu. Note that on the Switch version of the game, one can use the touch screen or the Y button to get those extra details.
Out of all the characters I unlocked, aside from Saffron, I played Hazel the most.
That’s kind of what makes One Step From Eden so enticing though. This game is a meat grinder that rips players apart with no mercy. However, the more one becomes familiar with the detailed and specific combat the more one is apt to succeed.
Oddly enough, I do wish that some of the mechanics found in Mega Man Battle Network were injected into One Step From Eden. For starters, the act of building a deck happens at random and I would love to have a set of cards that I put together before each run. Rather than getting spells frequently, players could get the passive abilities of the artifacts throughout the run.
I’m also not convinced that some characters are even viable. Shiso, the pistol-toting warrior I mentioned before, is locked into his animation when using his basic attack. This makes him extremely vulnerable to the screen-filling nonsense so I never got far when choosing him. Really, I only played a couple of characters and Saffron felt the best catered for the mechanics at hand.
There’s also not much going on visually. Almost every moment of the game is spent in the battle screen, even rests and deck-modification. It’s just not interesting to look at after a while and the environments are just static backgrounds. I’m also not a big fan of the creature design which lacks cohesion. Functionally, the monsters have a lot of little nuances that push the player into a specific strategy and the boss characters (also the characters one unlocks, at least as far as I’ve seen so far) scale in such a way that they are always tough. I did find some bosses to be much tougher than others and some of their patterns just seem overwhelming.
Long sessions of One Step From Eden definitely left me with cramped hands.
Note that players can skip rewards, which in turn makes their deck slimmer for a more precise strategy.
Controls are snappy and precise but I’m convinced that using the Joy-Con is an express ticket to carpal tunnel syndrome. The heroes also don’t move when holding a direction, one has to tap the stick to move, which can feel pretty awkward sometimes. Honestly, using a keyboard or an arcade stick with a short shaft might be the way to go for hardcore players. Actually, the Mixbox arcade platform would be absolutely incredible for One Step From Eden. That said, I quickly picked up how to play and it wasn’t long before I picked up many of the more subtle mechanics and strategies. While I’m familiar with the Mega Man Battle Network series, I only played a couple of them and that was more than 15 years ago so the control scheme must be pretty good.
Overall, I really enjoyed picking my cards and taking on these super tough foes. Yet, I always felt that the skill needed to even finish a run was far beyond what I am capable of doing, even physically. I feel like there could be a mode that slows down the game’s overall speed or something that could allow for something a bit more lenient. I also just hope to see more things added to the game overall because the core concept is strong but there are areas that could easily be improved. Performance was mostly fine throughout on the Nintendo Switch but I did run into stutters frequently enough that I expect a patch to be in the works.
I’m still not quite sure how they work but pets are available and I got a cute turtle once.
One Step From Eden definitely captures the complexity and crunchy bones of what made Mega Man Battle Network so different and, with enough effort, it could be a roguelike worthy of standing next to its contemporaries. Unfortunately, there is enough holding it back and the challenge is so hard to overcome that I don’t think it’s a game that most players will get to see through to the end. Really it’s up to the developers to keep a close eye on what their players are saying and, hopefully, they won’t be afraid to adjust should they need to.
More information about One Step From Eden can be found on the official website. A digital copy for the Nintendo Switch and Steam was provided for the purpose of review. The Switch version was mainly the version played. Screenshots are from the Switch version using the capture functionalities of the Switch.
