The Magic card Aerith Rescue Mission encapsulates that choice perfectly: you can either take the elevator, giving you three 1/1 Hero Tokens (representing Cloud, Tifa, and Barrett being ready to fight), or you can take the stairs, which lets you tap and stun up to three creatures (representing their cardio-induced duress)
Basically, if it has any of those set marks, is copyright 1995, and has a white border, then its from Chronicles
There are also a large amount of burn cards to keep enemy creatures at bay
It is some of the best card advantage you can play even if you do have to hard cast it
All told, Irida is going to be an invaluable inclusion in many water-type decks in the new Standard format
You can shut down whole decks with little to no way of your opponents getting around it