Slay the Spire 2 is a 2026 sequel to Slay the Spire, a deck-building roguelike where you fight through waves of monsters as you ascend the spire seeking for freedom. You start with a simple starter deck, usually focused on basic attacks and blocks. As you progress, you improve your deck with better cards and more synergy to be better equipped to defeat more difficult monsters.
In addition to the trio of Ironclad, Silent and Defect from the original game, this sequel introduces two new characters: Regent and Necrobinder but because I love the Silent, I have not even tried them out yet.
Based on my early experiences of the release weekend, this game feels more difficult than the first one. I was not great at the first one either but regularly getting quite high in the Act 3 around Ascension levels 12-14. In this game, I still haven’t beat the Act 3 boss once. In my opinion, the enemies have more devious debuffs, they scale their aggression faster (even in the early stages) and the characters and their cards haven’t been buffed quite to the same level.
Next up is s a bit of a spoiler section about Silent’s new cards & changes to the old cards. If you want to skip spoilers, come back after you’ve played a few rounds.
There are a couple of new cards for the Silent that I’m such a massive fan of. My favourite way of playing the Silent is the Shiv build rather than discard or poison build (of the main build types) and while they debuffed Blade Dance (Add 3 Shivs to your hand) by adding an Exhaust (Removed until the end of combat) to it, some of the new cards more than make up for it.
The first time I saw Up My Sleeve, I was so excited. It starts off as a +1 energy cost Blade Dance (compared to Blade Dance from the first game) but on the second use, it’s the same and after that it becomes free. Holy moley, I love it. Especially since there’s a quite a few synergies to make it never cost 2 to begin with.
And then, I got my first Knife Trap.
Before I talk about that card, let me tell you something about my emotional journey up and until the release of the game. I absolutely loved Slay the Spire. So much so that I was genuinely worried that the sequel would not live up to my expecations because that so rarely happens. I was worried that they’d take away some of the stuff I really liked and it would feel meh to me. Especially with the Silent Shiv builds because it’s my favourite way to play the game.
And then, I got my first Knife Trap.
That was the moment when I knew I’ll love this game too. It’s a wonderful card. So freaking cool. It brings a new level of synergy to the Shiv build and one that can become extremely powerful in the late game. One major downside of Shiv builds in the original game was that when you faced Time Eater as the Act 3 boss, it would be really hard to beat.
Time Eater has the ability Time Warp that reads:
Whenever you play a certain number of cards, ends your turn and gains X Strength.
Most of the Ascension levels I believe that number to be 10. Maybe it changes at some point, I’m not sure. But a Shiv build is usually built around playing a ton of small damage Shivs and cards that give you Shivs. I’m not sure if I have ever managed to beat it with a Shiv build for that reason.
The first thought I had when I saw Knife Trap was: “Damn, I would have loved to have this against Time Eater.”
And when your favourite build gets a card that is great for the most annoying combination in your earlier playthroughs, you just gotta love it.
The third new card that made me go YAY is Fan of Knives. Making every Shiv hit every opponent? Yes f’n please.
These two cards made me go ecstatic about this game and lose all my worries about whether it’ll match my expectations or not. I played one run with Ironclad, unlocked Silent and have been just learning new Shiv strategies ever since. Eventually, I’ll get bored and try the other characters but so far I’m loving this game.
10/10.
And it’s not even its final form! It’s only in Early Access and has been for a couple of days at the time of writing.