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Thoughts on Slay the Spire 2

So this is basically the only real videogame I've been playing for the past couple months. It's easy to boot it up for a quick sesh on the daily, which is why I've somehow amassed about 200 hours on it. The original Slay the Spire is the closest thing to the perfect roguelike, in my personal opinion, so they'd have to really fuck it up for the sequel to be a failure. Thankfully, the sequel is good. It has problems, but in many ways it is an objective improvement over the original.

Slay the Spire 2 is a roguelike deckbuilder. Those words may mean nothing to you if you have a social life, but essentially it means a game where you engage in battle using a deck of cards that you progressively build over the course of a run. Each run lasts 3 acts, escalating in difficulty and lasting from 40 minutes to an hour on average. The game has 5 different characters, each one with a different pool of cards they can obtain, and a unique mechanic to support them through these troublesome circumstances. Take the Ironclad, for example, who heals a portion of health after each battle, and whose card pool consists of very aggressive, damage-focused cards that can be used to run down enemies within a short number of turns (because this is a card-based game, you and the enemy take turns. it should be noted that the enemy does not use cards, but instead generic attack patterns of applying status effects, such as making you block less attack damage for a turn). It's a hard game to explain. Just play the first one, it'll probably be on sale for like 2 bucks during a steam sale in the near future.

As I have said, the game is good. The most significant addition is the two new characters. You have The Necrobinder, a skeleton lady (i love when women are a little chubby like that) who used a gigantic boney hand to whack off any potential threat. The main benefit of this is that Osty (the bone hand) has his own pool of health, and he effectively functions as a meat shield. Her cards are usually based around Osty attacking the enemy and gaining some benefit from it (like a card that becomes free to use if Osty had attacked the enemy prior), although her most powerful cards involve the generation of soul cards that make you draw extra cards for no energy cost (although you have to consume energy to create them) and you can use power cards to enhance these soul cards, such as being able to damage an enemy upon using a soul card. The other new character, The Regent, is a geometric alien man sitting high upon a throne (someone modded him into a smug loli, which makes him about three times as appealing, because I personally do not enjoy his gameplay), and his unique mechanic involves a different energy system seperate from the existing one, so you have to balance generating this new energy type and then spending it on powerful cards. He also has a big sword he can charge up that does massive damage. I honestly don't love either of these inclusions, mainly because their mechanics are much less intuitive, and the more common cards you can get for them are not typically great on their own, and sort of pigeonhole you into a specific build. The original 3 STS brought back in this game do not have these problems and are mostly unchanged, with some minor additions and exclusions to their card pool.

It's a hard game. I've beat the game multiple times with each character on the hardest difficulty, and it's a pain in the ass. Call it a skill issue, but a lot of the time you die purely to bullshit unluckiness. It feels like the regular enemy fights are far too overtuned, and the actual boss battles that end each act are simple unless you've opted for a specific playstyle, and you get raped. It feels like throwing yourself against a wall, over and over. It's still being actively balanced, because it's in an early access stage, but apparently they want to make it harder? It seems a bit misguided. I'm not one of those Chinese players who exploit every little mechanic and resort to cheap tricks such as infinites or whatnot, I'm just a guy who actively sacrifices optimal gameplay for something that looks cool. Fundamentally, the most satisfying thing about this game is getting a big number and then unleashing said big number on the enemy. The developers seem to not understand this with their balance decisions, and include extremely unfun mechanics for the sake of difficulty. Recently, they added a boss that adds bullshit on your deck if you play a lot of cards in a turn. This is bad game design, because you're probably doing a good job in the game if you're able to play a lot of cards in a turn. You also have a 2/3 chance of getting this boss on the highest difficulty, so you basically have to play in this anti-fun way the whole time if you actually want to win. Boo.

I think the art direction of the game could be improved. It's a little dull and ugly at points, specifically the backgrounds. The animation doesn't pass the smell test either, it looks slightly unnatural, and you can clearly see the points in which the model is being tweened. I admire some of the enemy and boss design, as well as the ancients (except that committee approved obese goblina woman), but even the design of the main playable characters I feel is off a little. It could do with more vibrant colours, because this spire that you're slaying is very varied in terms of environments and weather. I also feel as if the soundtrack is a downgrade, with no memorable tracks coming to mind -- whereas in the first game, I actively kept the music on when I knew a good track was coming up, such as the boss fight against The Champ.

The game as a whole so far still feels very similar to the original. This is good, I suppose, but for a game that has been in development for so long, it could stand to have brought more new content into the series. Still, it's a 2026 game that cost 20 bucks, it's absolutely worth it, and the fact that it is a 2026 game I have enjoyed playing says a lot. Your opinion on the first game will basically match your opinion of this, there's not too much to talk about, and I don't want to dig too deep seeing as it's still early access. I'll likely come back to this when it exits early access (a novel concept for an early access title, I know) and update my thoughts on the game, because maybe they do improve the artstyle, soundtrack, and gameplay of the two new characters? It'll likely be 3 or 4 new characters by that time, too, so I'll either have more or less to moan about.