Slay The Spire
Release Date: Nov 14, 2017
Slay The Spire, where do I even begin? So, as it's probably been obvious time and time again, deck building style games aren't exactly always in my eyesight, so I tend to just brush them off as I feel like a lot of deck building games are simply not that good. That's not to say games like Hand of Fate 2 and Hearthstone aren't good, I'm just making sure people understand that this isn't a genre I dive into very often. Slay The Spire has found a certain combination of genres that seems to work in its favor. Yes, Slay The Spire is yet another deck building style game, but instead of just buying booster packs and trying to make the best deck from the get go, you are actually meant to go through the levels given to you in order to unlock new cards, unlock new potential synergies for your character, and build decks progressively instead of making it right from the get go. I think that has a lot to do with my enjoyment of the game because I'm a big fan of progressively completing more and more and getting more powerful as time goes on. A lot of games that have been released recently also do this well. Dead Cells deserves a mention based on that alone. And please do keep in mind, I've never actually played any of the deck building games that I mentioned, I just know myself well enough to not find much enjoyment out of them. Slay The Spire however takes the deck building style and mixing it with a lot of different genres, some of which shine really well. You've definitely got the side scrolling and combat system from the likes of Darkest Dungeon, and of course the deck building and progressive improvement much like Binding of Isaac and Dead Cells, except it's just with cards and not items.
The cards come in different categories too. I mentioned synergies for a reason, because even though this is a pretty straight forward deck building game, it's still got that rogue like feel going on where you really don't know how your run is going to go until you see the type of cards you unlock throughout your travels. And of course, even your own exploration isn't always certain. You can follow a path on the map that leads you to the boss on every floor, and sometimes the rooms on that floor will have combat, a shop, and sometimes it can be random. And although some may think that games sounds like it's repetitive, it kind of is. But it's done in such a way that each run you do feels different and you feel more inclined to really strategically think about which cards you want in your deck, and whether you want less cards or more. From my own personal experience, I've noticed that not only one build works really well. Recently I had a build that focused a lot of block generation based on certain cards giving my character block depending on which cards I play that round. And yes, the combat is turn based, but in this case, it works really well. And again, it shouldn't be a surprise that I enjoy this seeing as Divinity Original Sin 2 made me a believer of turn based combat again after seeing games do it so poorly. That and this game do it so well that it's a lot of fun and you feel the impact of every move you make, causing you to really think about how you're going to go about the fight you find yourself in.
As far as difficulty goes, a lot of people are probably expecting a game like this to be super easy and simplified. However, the cards that you find and unlock tend to make the game not only more difficult, but way more varied in the way that you decide to take on the rest of the map. It's interesting in the sense that even if you're working on a certain build for your deck, you'll find a card after one room of combat that could completely shift how you take on the rest of the game.
I have yet to actually beat a successful run of Slay The Spire, but I can say that I've gotten extremely close. But of course, as you progress further, the game gets harder and harder, and the enemies get smarter with their decks.
All in all, I bought this game based on a recommendation from a Youtuber and I don't regret it. It's still in Early Access, but in this specific case, Early Access is not a bad thing. The developers have made it so the game they have presented is the game they want to finalize and make better, with updates every two weeks. As it stands now, the game works really well, it's a lot of fun, and I can find myself playing this even when I'm not in the mood for video games. In fact, even after a long work day, I can find myself going to my computer and thinking "yeah, just one round of Slay The Spire." It's certainly piqued my interest not only for gaming purposes, but for deck building style gameplay as well. I'm excited to see where this game goes from here, but it can honestly only improve from here, and that's saying something.
With 6 hours already put into this game, and with me working all the time and really only putting time into this game, I'd say it gets my full recommendation.