 One Step From Eden is one of the most addictive games I've picked up in a while. It's the most interesting hybrid between a deck builder and an arcade action game I've ever experienced. This isn't a review so much as a first look, as it were. While I've unlocked a good number of the characters and have levelled up the default, one, a fair amount, I don't feel anywhere near proficient enough to judge the depth of the mechanics of One Step From Eden yet. I see plenty to talk about, however, and I do like to define what needs further investigating. The first and most important point I'd like to make is this. If you're not into deckbuilders, do not be disheartened. This is far different from anything else that I'd define as part of that genre. In fact, I would define One Step From Eden as a bullet hell action strategy first, second and third. Deckbuilding defines your arsenal of weaponry for the long way to Eden. Spoilers, it's a lot more than just One Step. Combat is defined by positioning on a battle grid, two 4x4 quadrants for you and your foes each, which should already tell you a little something about what gameplay is going to be. Fast, eventually frantic, reaching more and more extreme amounts of spells, knives, bullets, and far worse, thrown at you. Normal mobs usually have a single attacker too. The so-called mini-balls and counters are more intense than normal fights with a great amount of enemies or a higher tier mob who's present with more challenging abilities. As you move from one bound to another, there are 8 in all you'll find yourself in the unenviable position of being in a non-stop, adrenaline inducing fight for your life and don't even get me started on the bosses. There are 8 of those in all, all of whom you eventually unlock and can play as. Each of them can start off as mildly annoying and turn into massive threats that you can barely contend with. It will be difficult and it will demand every drop of skill you have. You'll love every minute of it. The only permanent progress you make is to unlock new spells, characters and items. After every run ends, the level you achieved with the character you played with will be used to raise that progression level and grant you certain unlocks, 50 in all, or rather 50 levels in all and each level has several unlocks. I recall complaining about nowhere profit's lack of synergy several weeks back. In one step from Eden, synergy is the name of the game. RNG plays a part of course, as with all such roelikes, but spells are defined in 10 different schools, all of which have catchy names, such as anima, knifetech, kinesis, convergence and more. Within these schools, you've got a variety of effects. Trinity, for example, which is part of the convergent school, gives you a status effect that, once you collect three trinities, there's massive damage with the humongous knife appearing in the skies and stabbing down at a foe. Eye spells stack to do damage, fire turns a tile or a row of them into sheer agony for anyone standing over the open fire. Lasers and infernal fire rain from above. Poison takes away delivering massive amounts of damage, you can even pick your own tiles and use them as projectiles. The list goes on and on and on. And the more you unlock, the more the list expands. The amount of spells is staggering, would be intimidating if the rate of unlocks wasn't paced well. Rather than overwhelm, however, the rate at which you receive new abilities and items coincides perfectly with your deepening understanding of the game and the way the different characters opening builds can develop into interesting and horrifying combos. This is one of the most challenging games I've played in a while. I know it recently received an easy mode update, but I have yet to play around with the difficulty settings. For now, I'm having far too much fun testing my metal against bosses who become more and more monstrous. Quicker and quicker, do more and more damage as I reach further into the game, but rather than discourage me, every loss drives me to try harder and harder, something that all the best roguelikes and roguelites have in common. I've played the measly several hours so far, but I suspect this will be one of the games that I will revisit in the same way as Hades, Dead Cells, Darkest Dungeon and Slay the Spire. The sheer amount of characters as well forces me to go back and explore them further and further, pushing as far as my skills will take me. I'm excited to speak more about one step from Eden in the future, but I have to warn you, it might be a while, I need to know this game a lot more intimately than I do right now. At the time of writing and recording this, I have played it for about 7 hours. I suspect that I will play at least 10 times as much over the coming months. Until then, I'm Philip Magnus, if you enjoyed this video, like it, share it, subscribe. Leave me a comment down below, have I managed to awaken your curiosity about one step from Eden? Are you going to play it? Until next time, bye!