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Game Debate #65: Slay the Spire


Reed Rothchild

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27 members have voted

  1. 1. Rate based on your own personal thoughts on playing it, NOT HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE

    • 10/10 - One of your very favorite games of all time.
    • 9/10 - Killer fucking game. Everyone should play it.
    • 8/10 - Great game. Easy to recommend.
    • 7/10 - Very good, but not quite great.
    • 6/10 - Pretty good. You might enjoy occasionally playing it.
    • 5/10 - It's okay, but maybe not something you'll go out of your way to play.
      0
    • 4/10 - Meh. There's plenty of better alternatives to this.
      0
    • 3/10 - Not very good.
      0
    • 2/10 - Pretty crappy.
      0
    • 1/10 - Horrible in every way.
      0
    • 0/10 - The Desert Bus of painful experiences. You'd rather shove an icepick in your genitals than play this.
      0
    • Never played it, but you're interested.
    • No interest in playing it.


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My game of the year for 2019.

It's just super fun to learn about the ins and outs of the cards and relics and how they synergize against the enemies and bosses. Every character is very different from each other with their unique card pools and there are so many ways to build your deck and slap ass. Risks and rewards feel real and the game balance is great - of course there are overpowered setups and things but if you don't spoil yourself on the optimal strategies (like I didn't) then it should feel rather fair on the average run.

The audiovisual side is done well and the full run length feels perfect. The game even has modding but I haven't tried any mods yet. After you beat the game you can challenge it again with Ascension levels (up to 20 per character) that pump up the difficulty and the game even tracks your every run in concise results pages.

I think I made most of my decks way too big but I had fun with that way of playing. Took me 191 hours to get 100% achievements on Steam. Ascension 20 victory with Defect was a pain and took dozens of hours of my time (victory run results image in spoiler):

Spoiler

1589892056_DefectAscension20victory.jpg.f81f73d9c93134ba72bcb480f4c66d9a.jpg

Edited by sp1nz
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I am not the biggest fan of card games nor roguelikes but it's fun. I like certain games of this type but I have to be in the mood for them. Admittedly I haven't put 100s of hours into this game which is generally how roguelikes work, the more you put into them the more you get out of it. But I'll give it a 7/10 because I think it's a good game,not necessarily my cup of tea.

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  • 1 year later...
  • 6 months later...

Saw this one in the "not enough votes" section of the master thread, so I thought I'd come here and toss in my opinion.  8 out of 10, and I could be convinced to go higher.  The game is not something that I would recommend to everyone, but for those of us who like this card-battle, low-commitment type of game, it is very good.  It also gave me quite a sense of accomplishment when I finally did escape with one of the characters.  Even after that, it still left me wanting even more.

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Having now played this game I can go back and change my vote. Going with an 8 out of 10 as well. Great game, but also comes with most of the caveats of your typical modern "roguelike", and while it hinges a bit too much on RNG for my liking, I also realise it really wouldn't have worked very well without it.

Full write-up of my thoughts here: 

 

Edited by Sumez
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  • 7 months later...

Gave it a 6 out of 10. Was debating between a 5 or 6, and ultimately went up. Honestly, don't plan to every come back to it. Just way way way way way too much RNG. If you want a roguelike done right, play Hades which is easily in the 9+ range. 

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7 hours ago, avatar! said:

Just way way way way way too much RNG. If you want a roguelike done right, play Hades

!?

Ok now I'm really curious what Hades does "right" that Slay the Spire apparently does wrong. Or how those two games even relate. I enjoy both, but for very different reasons.

It's a deck builder card game, and I'm really curious how you'd like the game to be designed to rely *less* on RNG.
Also, as a related side note, do you dislike Tetris as well?

Edited by Sumez
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11 hours ago, Sumez said:

!?

Ok now I'm really curious what Hades does "right" that Slay the Spire apparently does wrong. Or how those two games even relate. I enjoy both, but for very different reasons.

It's a deck builder card game, and I'm really curious how you'd like the game to be designed to rely *less* on RNG.
Also, as a related side note, do you dislike Tetris as well?

While there's always luck involved in everything, Hades is a game of skill. People have even talked about completing the game on a fresh run, which is crazy and cool! Most of us, will die a lot in Hades, but each time you die you can upgrade your character. In Spire you do upgrade your deck, but even if you have an amazing deck, you can easily lose because of the RNG. In Hades, even if you didn't get your favorite power-ups, it's a game of skill, you can do significant damage and dodge attacks so long as you are skillful regardless of what you collected in your current run. Not to mention the fact that Hades continuously "helps/rewards" you when you make it a bit further, and it has an excellent storyline, and the characters are all interesting, and NONE of that makes it into Spire.

Tetris is not a roguelike.

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Editorials Team · Posted

So, Hades debate on deck?

Hades might be the easiest of all the acclaimed roguelikes, but I love it too.  There's room for lots of love to be spread around, it's not an either-or situation 🥰

My personal scores would be something like the following:

  1. Darkest Dungeon - 10/10
  2. Slay the Spire - 10/10
  3. Hades - 9.5/10
  4. Returnal - 8.5/10
  5. Dead Cells - 8.5/10
  6. Enter the Gungeon - 8/10
  7. Into the Breach - 8/10
  8. Everspace - 8/10
  9. Binding of Isaac - 7.5/10
  10. Dicey Dungeons - 7/10
  11. Flinthook - 7/10
  12. Rogue Legacy - 6.5/10
  13. Crawl - 6/10
  14. Moonlighter - 5/10

Inscryption, Loop Hero - tbd

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20 minutes ago, Reed Rothchild said:

So, Hades debate on deck?

Hades might be the easiest of all the acclaimed roguelikes, but I love it too.  There's room for lots of love to be spread around, it's not an either-or situation 🥰

My personal scores would be something like the following:

  1. Darkest Dungeon - 10/10
  2. Slay the Spire - 10/10
  3. Hades - 9.5/10
  4. Returnal - 8.5/10
  5. Dead Cells - 8.5/10
  6. Enter the Gungeon - 8/10
  7. Into the Breach - 8/10
  8. Everspace - 8/10
  9. Binding of Isaac - 7.5/10
  10. Dicey Dungeons - 7/10
  11. Flinthook - 7/10
  12. Rogue Legacy - 6.5/10
  13. Crawl - 6/10

Inscryption, Loop Hero - tbd

Darkest Dungeon is a 10/10 for me too. Spire, not even close. I would definitely rate Rogue Legacy much higher than a 6.5 -- curious why you rated it so low? Enter the Gungeon was very well done, just not for me. I've been meaning to play Binding of Isaac -- I see you gave it a decent if not great score. I know that game has huge acclaim overall.

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Editorials Team · Posted
1 minute ago, avatar! said:

Darkest Dungeon is a 10/10 for me too. Spire, not even close. I would definitely rate Rogue Legacy much higher than a 6.5 -- curious why you rated it so low? Enter the Gungeon was very well done, just not for me. I've been meaning to play Binding of Isaac -- I see you gave it a decent if not great score. I know that game has huge acclaim overall.

Reed scale.  7.5/10 = good to great

It's why my scale is superior.  Normally a 9 is considered great, a 8 is good, a 7 is okay, and 6 and below are all garbage.  What a shitty useless scoring system 😎

As far as Rogue Legacy... good game.  Worth a playthrough.  But very bare bones compared to most of these titles.  And pretty RNG-driven, ironically.

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39 minutes ago, Reed Rothchild said:

So, Hades debate on deck?

Hades might be the easiest of all the acclaimed roguelikes, but I love it too.  There's room for lots of love to be spread around, it's not an either-or situation 🥰

My personal scores would be something like the following:

  1. Darkest Dungeon - 10/10
  2. Slay the Spire - 10/10
  3. Hades - 9.5/10
  4. Returnal - 8.5/10
  5. Dead Cells - 8.5/10
  6. Enter the Gungeon - 8/10
  7. Into the Breach - 8/10
  8. Everspace - 8/10
  9. Binding of Isaac - 7.5/10
  10. Dicey Dungeons - 7/10
  11. Flinthook - 7/10
  12. Rogue Legacy - 6.5/10
  13. Crawl - 6/10
  14. Moonlighter - 5/10

Inscryption, Loop Hero - tbd

I know you are very careful with your backlog list, but you might enjoy playing Monster Train.  Very similar to Slay the Spire and Dicey D.  I think I kinda liked Monster Train even better than StS.

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Editorials Team · Posted
6 minutes ago, wongojack said:

I know you are very careful with your backlog list, but you might enjoy playing Monster Train.  Very similar to Slay the Spire and Dicey D.  I think I kinda liked Monster Train even better than StS.

I now vaguely recall it having some buzz at release, but completely forgot about it.  Added to my Amazon list to track a price drop.  Thanks!

edit:  oh wait, it's LRG.  Price drop not coming 😆

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