The game never bothers to explain how players earn money, what to spend the money on, the demonic pacts the player can make, why the various playable characters seem to know each other, what’s going on in the world, what Eden is, or why anyone wants to go there. The game has a tutorial built into the first few levels the player goes through, but that only explains the basics of acquiring new spells and artifacts, managing the player’s deck of spells, and how to navigate the FTL: Faster Than Light-style progression map. The first thing I noticed about One Step From Eden is that it explains very little. Whether the player wins or loses the run, they’ll unlock new spells, artifacts, and playable characters for future runs, earning more rewards the higher level their character was. Boss fights pit the player against the other playable characters not chosen at the beginning of the run, each with their own deck of spells. Standard levels are mostly fights, sometimes with modifiers such as hostages needing rescuing or some third-party threat, but can also be roadside camps where players can restore health or shops where players can purchase items. Using these tools, players will battle across eight worlds, each made up of seven levels: six standard levels that follow one of seven themes and one boss fight level. As they make their way through enemies and obstacles, players gain new spell cards to add to their decks as well as magical artifacts that provide special passive benefits. One Step From Eden is a roguelite game in which players step into the shoes of one of nine playable characters, each of which have their own special style of techno-magic in the form of a deck of cards, and fight their way through waves of monsters, robots, and enemy wizards on their quest for Eden. But in the intervening years, I’ve grown fond of deck building games so when I learned about the release of One Step From Eden last week, I thought it would be time to revisit the real-time deck building action that killed my interest in an entire series. Because of this new card-based system, my interest in Chain of Memories, and in the Kingdom Hearts series as a whole, died after only a few hours. Instead of attacking and using spells normally, now all of my actions were dictated by a deck of cards, something I found infuriatingly debilitating and unwieldy. Unfortunately, when I did start playing Chain of Memories, I found out it was a bizarre departure from the previous game with a completely overhauled combat system. So when the first of many sequels, Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories was released two years later, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it. My undeveloped brain was distracted from the nonsensical plot by all of the bright colors and recognizable characters. As a teenager, I fell into the trap of Kingdom Hearts.
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