I deliberately hadn’t been looking too closely at Slay the Spire 2 ahead of yesterday’s Early Access launch. Despite being spectacularly atrocious at it, I really love the first game, as much for the fun it’s brought me as for the joy I’ve seen it bring others. It’s a game that feels like it should be niche, and yet is so broadly adored, I suspect because it’s just so inherently a good game. It turns out that Slay the Spire 2 is quite similar, and I’m just delighted it is. Because this is an even better game.
Slay the Spire has, to my mind, become the archetypal example of a roguelite deckbuilder. As a name for a genre, that may be close to impenetrable, but it describes a game that’s instinctively understandable: you have a selection of cards, and when you play them, the card does the thing it says it does. And since 2017, when the original game was released, it’s a genre that has become phenomenally busy. As well as ten thousand copycats, there have been many other fantastic games clearly very inspired by Mega Crit’s design but then taken it off in their own directions. I think it’s fair to say that without Slay the Spire, you don’t get Balatro, Monster Train, Griftlands or the other seven examples you just thought of. (And yes, of course, you don’t get Slay the Spire without Dream Quest, Hand of Fate and Hearthstone, but it was StS that broke the floodgates.)
So you could forgive Mega Crit for having spent the last seven years trying to advance the genre another generation forward, responding to all who have followed in its footsteps by leaping further into the distance. Slay the Spire 2 could have been a first-person looter shooter with deckbuilding elements, and it’d probably have been worth playing. But instead, the development team has done something that feels more extraordinary to me: they’ve tuned out all the possibilities they could have seized upon for making something wildly different, focused immediately in front of themselves, and instead worked on doing an even better job of making Slay the Spire than they did last time.
At first glance, you could easily confuse the two games. They look incredibly similar, and even feature the same starting characters. On your first run, once again you’ll be Ironclad with his sword-n-shield-based deck, crawling up that branching vertical map between battles, treasures, shopkeepers, campfires and random encounters, until you reach the area’s boss for a mighty climactic battle. Win and you start the next map, just like before. Lose and you’ll still unlock the same second character, Silent, with its entirely different deck of stealthy, stabby and poisonous attacks. There are still relics to gather that change each run’s feel, and of course new cards to pick or refuse after every battle, as well as those all-important moments when you can pay to remove a card and better refine your deck. Potions still fill three slots at the top of the screen, and it’s all still depicted in the same 2D paper doll design.
That’s not entirely fair, as StS2 is significantly prettier, with better art and animations, and while the UI is familiar, you’ll immediately discover that it all feels smoother, refined through years of use, making interaction even more instinctive than before. But all of that could be part of an updated edition of the first, and from everything I’ve said, some might think it sounds like just that. But it’s not, because it’s just better.
This isn’t a review, this isn’t my telling you everything you need to know about Slay the Spire 2, because I’ve not yet played for long or far enough to be able to do so. I’ve reached the boss at the end of Act 3 with Silent, and I’m damned proud of that. Given it inflicted me with Frail, Weak and Vulnerable for 100 turns at the start, and also Chains of Binding which massively restricted which cards I could play, I really wasn’t ready. But I still unlocked four new Epochs as a result, giving me a range of new cards and relics I could use on future runs, and progress was made. No, this is just me rushing in to tell you as soon as I was able: Oh my goodness, this is like Slay the Spire, but better! That’s a thing you want!
This is of course still in Early Access (and very early in that), and there’s a good chance Mega Crit has a lot more to reveal. It makes a lot of sense to put out something that feels so immediately familiar, but noticeably more interesting and detailed, before applying any twists they might have in store. But I’d be happy even if that weren’t the case. An improved version of an already brilliant thing is something to welcome, introducing as it does not just new classes, but vast numbers of new cards and potions and relics that allow entirely new tactics against new enemies and bosses with surprising new attacks. Imagine Slay the Spire is a pond, and now that pond has been put in the middle of a lake.
Anyway, leave me alone, stop making me explain this, I want to carry on playing. I’m going to beat an Act 3 boss if it kills me, which it will, over and over and over.
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