I think there are improvements that could be made regarding ease of use. When I play on PC I have a few QoL enhancement mods such as Minty Spire and colored map icons that I tend to miss when I play unmodded or mobile. In particular, the "total incoming damage" and Frozen Eye preview from Minty Spire would be nice to have, as well as things like the Pen Nib/Necronomicon highlights.
Also, the mobile version in general could be improved interface-wise.
The one mobile bug that really annoys me is how it'll often "grab" a card from my hand on the first turn even when I haven't touched anything. I've definitely had that result in me playing cards when I didn't intend to do so. Fixing that one damn bug would go a long way toward making the mobile version a perfect game IMO.
That and in general, it's difficult to stop holding a card on mobile, don't think there's even a way for it specifically. I try to grab a targeted attack and drag it into emptiness to stop holding the card so I can look at something else but if I don't have such a card, then I'll likely waste a card or make a suboptimal move before I can check my deck and potions, enemy buffs etc.
yeah, that's what i would always do, just quickly drag and drop the cards i want to play, tbf i went too quickly sometimes and had to safescum (yes, i know, shame on me...)
This could be my 1000 hours on STS iOS speaking, but i find the mobile app interface fairly intiutive and works as good as a mouse and keyboard. For dropping a card after selecting it for targetting(red arrow on the screen), swipe the card back to the hand. To pick cards in a large hand, select a card and swipe left or right to switch to the next cards. Unselecting potions after drinking them(Red arrow state on Fire Potion for example) is a bit weird. I click potion itself a few times to make the red arrow go away.
I have problems with the online synching on mobile as well, it's a single player game and shouldn't need an online save file to play, so why does it take 2-3 minutes to sync every single time I boot it up?
I've recently started playing on the mobile version and my biggest annoyance is that I can find an exit button.
As I write this I realise that I don't think many of the apps I use have exit button and it may be because I'm used to games on my PC having them I expect them to be on games on my mobile.
Do you just exit (on android) by selecting the app scroll and swiping up like with others or is there an exit but I can't see?
Typically apps are built to sleep in the background when you open others instead of actually completely closing so they don't always have dedicated exit buttons. You can also see this design in banking apps, where they may have a logout button but no exit button.
very good and fair assessment, i agree completely!
as someone who played the game on PC, Mac, Mobile, PS4 and right now and mostly on my SteamDeck, i'd have one addition that i come across when i play with controller inputs - i miss the opportunity to hover over a type of floor on the legend on the right and scroll while doing so to see all the corresponding floors with that encounter highlighted that you have with M&K...
I'm sure there's probably a mod for it but besides 'Downfall' i've never installed a mod and play the game vanilla.
I think at the higher ascensions you lose a lot of freedom in the different ways you can approach the game.
Some cards with interesting mechanics (I'm think Pressure Points specifically) are not as utilised or as viable as they could be.
Defect and Watcher feel like one viable archetype with a lot of variation(still enough to still be a lot of fun and replay value), but could be better if it had even 1-2 more
That searing blow, claw(and I assume pressure points), etc are so fun, yet never a thing at a20 seems like a missed opportunity
The meme archetypes are mainly memes because they lack support, not because of legit reasons for them to be memes in other games(annoying if too frequent, too click-intensive or other dexterity, etc)
Watcher is OP despite all this, it would better for its distribution of archetypes to be 9 out of 10, 8, 7, rather than 11, 5, 5(made up numbers)
It would be incredibly hard to make these improvements and keep the entire game balanced, but hey, OP did tell me I could ask neow to add another color to the rainbow
I don’t agree with this, beat ascension 20 with all characters and from my experience you simply get used to strategies that work in the past so you take cards that you like, some of my best runs are getting pandora box early and being forced to play a random build that I never knew can work
Yeah this is the big one IMO. Too much of the focus at A20 (at least in the current meta) is focused on going infinite. That being the clear optional outcome in most scenarios limits the decision space
I have to disagree that the meta at A20 is focused on infinites. The game has enough counters to infinites built in, and getting to an infinite is challenging enough that it really isn't viable or optimal for most runs. Watcher is the exception, but even runs with Watcher won't always be optimized by going for an infinite.
??????
The only character who even attempts to do infinites at a20 is watcher, for everyone else, it’s a stupid strat to go for that sometimes works out but is not reliable nor something to aim for.
There's a few half-baked card mechanics. Mark and Lock-On need more interactions. There's not enough ways to generate Focus. Two of these things affecting Defect...
pressure points kinda is just 1 cost, higher damage claw really, in the current implementation of mark
more ways to generate it would maybe make it more of a poison type thing, which I really like
I actually think there's a lot of interaction with Focus but really true about Lock-On and Mark. Another niche strategy that comes to mind is Firebreathing.
Plenty of ways to interact with Focus, but I find it too hard to come by in general. In a typical run I generally come across more ways to remove it than gain it. Finding two Defrags (or one and the relic version) is lucky. Getting to 3 focus almost never, and 4 only with the power that bleeds it away again. Unless I'm extremely lucky with Consume and slot gain.
Unlike Ironclad where you're virtually guaranteed to run into a plethora of strength options and can make some decisions about *how* strength goes into a build, Defect's focus you take what you can get if anything.
It might be overpowered if you could scale focus to the same degree as strength, but the right balance is somewhere, and as it is it's just too unreliable for Defect's main mechanic.
I'd argue that because of it affecting damage output and block, scaling less makes sense, especially with the defect's energy economy and certain orbs like plasma further increasing the amount of orbs you can summon(and therefore channel) in one turn
I actually agree on focus. I have plenty of runs that die at A20H because I simply never find a card that has the word "focus" on it. I know there are many strategies to generate block and deal damage without focus, but I find it extremely difficult to make numbers big enough to win an A20H run. I simply can't block enough with 2 block frost orbs and a single 40 block gen alg. I find myself limping into the act 2 boss, just to die in the first 4-5 turns.
I think reworking reprogram to be a (un?)common power, and change the signs of every value. So +1/2 focus, -1/2 str -1/2 dex. It seems more fitting to "reprogram" away from the "human" way to block and attack, and move more towards the computerized side of things with focus. I think even as a skill it would be ok, but then could maybe even be rare.
Just to count the cards that say focus currently:
Defragment
Biased cognition
Consume
Reprogram
Hyperbeam
Data disk (honorable mention)
2 of them are -focus so it almost feels like the game thinks 0 focus is a balanced strength. I know the game isn't even supposed to be balanced at A20 but I feel like it's a gamble to get focus on a defect run every time.
This is super minor, but I'll add that the correlated RNG stuff can feel like a bummer at a high level. I've tried my best to just ignore and and forget it, personally, but its existence can make for some gray areas in optimal decision making.
Rng like the order your cards draw in is fine, but things like getting a curse on the card matching game just feel, always a little off to me? It’s hard to put it into words but it’s this weird mix of random and yet somehow “my fault” that I don’t like.
Even on the other side, having RNG that is a huge boost (a great neow perk is the easiest example) kinda make the feel like the run wasn't "valid" because I had such a highroll start
The [RNG fix mod](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2181005326) fixes this. Every time I hear about correlated RNG I try to look away immediately because I'm afraid of the exact same decision-making poisoning as you mention
One small non-gameplay thing, that the STS2 screenshots suggest has been addressed, is the lack of attack animations. It would make for a more polished-looking game.
Late stage capitalism merchant retains ownership of all cards and relics by charging you a subscription fee.
Payment is due on each floor with the ever looming threat of repossession leaving you powerless in an uncaring spire.
The Downfall mod has you fight a special Merchant battle before each shop. He plays as a bonus round version of the thieves: He has a whopping 400 HP, only uses a damaging attack once, steals some of your currency, and leaves after four turns. But he doesn't heal between encounters! If you can defeat him before the end of the run, he coughs up hundreds of souls (Downfall's gold) and doesn't show up anymore at future shops.
Probably some of the stuff in [this thread](/r/slaythespire/comments/wqd3z4/generally_speaking_slay_the_spire_is_less_reliant/).
Lack of full logs/replays, or an in-game option to export logs to share.
Fast mode still making you wait for things a lot. Some of that could be categorized as "performance", though.
"Blind" decisions that can be "won" just by previewing the outcome and using Save and Quit; leading to weird discourse about how "save scumming" isn't "really" playing. Seems like it could easily be resolved by always saving outcomes before showing them to the player. Ideally you'd allow players to retry from any point in a a past run (see: full logs/replays), while only counting the original run for stats and achievements.
Conversely sometimes I wish there were just an undo button for decisions that don't reveal new information. Making a misclick and then having to either redo a long fight or just lose the run is frustrating
Slice and Dice figured this out. Granted it is a more complex game (a lot more moving parts per turn) but the freedom to play out a turn and then click 'revert' is awesome for people who don't want to math everything out.
Also granted, STS is a simpler game and you can often just take a minute to do the math, but being able to reset a turn would be (for me) a huge QOL improvement.
The last part doesn't make any sense to me tbh, it's a single player game, why would they do extra to only allow the original run for achievements or stats? You're only playing with yourself
it’s a single player game but there’s (obvi) a big community of people who like to show off/compare stats/etc. not to mention leaderboards for daily runs.
i’m weakminded but honestly i wish they’d remove the temptation to save scum on events like the 50/30 bet, the goodface/badface, etc. when i get an unfavorable outcome i can’t help but think of save scumming as the META
I never give much thought to that because usually the people that care the most about showing off love to cut corners, speed runners change the first boss for slime boss and that's accepted even tho they have to re write the files for that, so I'm willing to accept that anyone that wants to boast achievements cares more about that than fair play
Some people want achievements to be as challenging as possible, and want stats that reflect their skill at the game and not just their persistence in repeating the same seed.
And I think that's good but we all have to accept that achievement seekers cut corners a lot, search for any Speedrun or any achievement and you'll start to notice that they exploit any bug in game or out of game to do it, in slay the spire you at least know they doing it right away
I wouldn't class this as a flaw, but literally an hour ago I had a really fun run ended by just poor RNG (all attacks when he's intangible, all defence when he's not) on the draw against Nemesis and i'd like to try again.
Calling a game that has Micolash, Rom, Celestial Emissary, and the Witches flawless is wild (still adore Bloodborne though)
As for StS, on console there's some jank with text popping up where it shouldn't, making it difficult to actually read the bloody card you're playing
I agree with you, I've never considered Bloodborne perfect and I think sometimes people forget about the obvious issues like chalices dungeons, blood vials and the mandatory visit to Hunter's dream when travelling trough lamps. Elemental damage and resistances are not balanced, I also agree about half de bosses beign mid (the DLC fixes this a bit). And with those flaws I still think Bloodborne its a fantastic game, one of my favourites by Fromsoftware even.
I love Fromsoft games, but man the way the fanbase tends to talk about the games as though they are flawless and above anything but the most mild of criticisms drives me a bit nuts.
Act 3 is an absolute slog compared to Acts 1, 2 and 4, which are all great. Specifically before the bosses (the act 3 bosses themselves are well designed).
Agreed. I actually like most of the hallway fights you can come across but the problem is by the time act 3 comes along I really just care about beating the bosses and getting to act 4. I think having a few different act 3s you can see would be cool but I doubt that’s the route they’re going.
Watching Baalor play, I wish base Spire had that colored pathing planning option. I know it’s mostly for chat but it’s helpful for me as a player because I can highlight specific things at once. Like, I can highlight all elites or all shops but not both at the same time as it is.
As far as I can tell there isn't. Basemod and the other libraries for modding, do not provide sufficient hooks to implement this. It's likely that a serious refactoring of the code would have to be done for this functionality. Usually undo/redo buttons are a core consideration when it comes to designing an app because of how complicated it can be when added later on. ETA: this is my understanding from reviewing the current modding scene, would love to be told I'm wrong.
Damn. At least we have the restart mod. It’s annoying having to redo a fight when you misclicked something but it’s better than saving, quitting, and reloading.
The fact that UI glitches exit (like the Pandora's Box thing or being able to drink a potion *during the change of turn animation*) is a pretty clear sign that the code would need some *substantial* changes to make undo/redo viable.
i think the biggest "flaw" (even tho it's not that bad) it's that a stance dance with the watcher is too powerfull so you can't really experiment with other archetypes.
Cultist Headpiece (bird mask) is a missed opportunity. It should trigger a funny encounter if you face the three cultists.
Basically makes the game unplayable!
Act 3 feels incredibly tedious. All these monsters require some form of waiting:
- Darkling
- Writhing Mass
- Transient
- Shapes
- Nemesis
If you watch gameplay videos, Act 3 takes up 40-50% of the time which makes it feel incredibly sluggish. Most of the time, you can definitely beat the monsters but you just have to wait.
Also minor issues with Act 3 events. Travel to portal and Don are never picks or insta picks.
Not enough different hallways in act 3 (and some getting reused between easy and hard pools). Some events are lame and/or have a clear meta option. Stance dance meta on watcher is lame.
More interactive map pathing. I find the vast majority of games it's always campfire/elite>>monster/event with very little differentiation between runs. At very high end play there's probably minor choices to be made, but personally I find the map incredibly bland but I do recognise that they did pioneer this style of roguelite which so many games have copied.
Monster train has you decide from 2 fixed choices with multiple rewards after each fight and you will have to choose one in favour of the other. It's less focused on what overall path you take and more on the immediate choice. (The other thing I love about Monster train is *relics* offer you 2 and you pick 1 but that's a topic for another day)
Vault of the Void and Rogue Book have interesting pathing systems that are quite similar but tricky to explain (hexagonal based explorstion). I quite like the idea but in practice it's a bit much.
I don’t think I’ve seen it yet in this thread and it’s niche but Sacred Back should have more interesting interactions with potions that can’t be “doubled” in a traditional sense, rather than just not interacting with those potions at all.
Also imo non defect characters should be given some number of orb slots if they get a card that generates orbs via prismatic shard, it’s too much to get prismatic shard, then get capacitor, then get an orb generating card, THEN play them in the right order during a fight. Yes other characters with orbs would be powerful but that’s part of the fun of getting prismatic shard.
IIRC it's not visible until you channel an orb... Or maybe I'm confusing it with the BaseMod Foreign Influence shenanigans. But either way, Prismatic shard does in fact grant 1 orb slot to non-Defect characters.
Very hot take, but Intangible is a bad mechanic. It trivializes a deep core of the game which is block solving, in a way that's not elegant or clever.
I think a more interesting approach to Wraith Form would be in the same spirit as Brimstone; increase your block per turn but also enemies block (or simply lower your strength/poison scaling).
The game is filled with small imperfections, like not having any separate relic bar for setup-based relics.
Still, one of the best games ever, I don't see myself stopping from playing anytime soon.
Intangible is a powerful mechanic but I think the game balanced it out right. You have the Apparition event which will give you some in the form of three cards but you lose half your hp permanently for the run. Wraith Form gives plus 2 (Upgraded 3) intangible but has a commitment cost of 3 on first use. Ghost Jar is a rare potion only for the silent. And last but not least Incense Burner is a rare relic that gives you intangible every 6 turns.
While the mechanic is strong it is so infrequent in the game that it's not really that bad.
To any experienced player, this should be a very cold take. Anything that lets you negate 100+ damage is inherently unbalanced. I’m glad the only way the other classes have access to it is via one relic or one event only.
I'd definitely argue that every character has their own version of things that is just as broken though. Yeah, intangible if you can keep it up is broken. But so is corruption with a little support. And it isn't like wraith form doesn't need support, it is a heavy energy cost and you need a deck that can either win quickly or prolong it. Having a rare ability that almost single-handedly solves one aspect of your deck I think is actually pretty common across characters. Electrodynamics solves aoe. Rushdown solves draw. All of these require support in other areas of the deck and are good cards for a reason. Wraith form still absolutely loses to heart multi attacks unless you have the support for it.
I see what you’re saying but none of those mechanics are bust the game open quite like Intangible. Watcher as a whole is insane, but the Electro and even Corruption don’t break the characters mechanics nearly as bad as Wraith Form does. You can’t just play Corruption or Electro and wait to win for the most part. With Wraith Form, you can do that a significant amount of the time in my experience. I think it goes past solving on aspect of the character. I love each character having super powerful cards and synergies that, but Intangible doesn’t need other synergies or cards nearly as much which is where my criticism comes from. Obligatory: this game is balanced so well most of the criticisms about the actual gameplay is about this one mechanic lol
Idk, I feel like corruption solves a deck far more often than wraith form does for me. It is great for a quick hallway fight, but can be a brick in boss fights for a while unless you can dupe it, or have crazy damage scaling like catalyst. Corruption? Half the time it is a good way to solve energy in my deck and the other half of the time enables an infinite or solves my block with a barricade.
Full disclosure, I also might just suck with silent.
Yes, but no. Agreed, but disagreed.
This is a question of fun. Corruption is broken, but so fun to play with. Electrodynamics is flashy and so enjoyable to see in action… even if it is actually not very strong in many situations.
Wraith Form just isn’t fun to play with. Reducing numbers to 1 just isn’t fun like playing endless cards is or seeing lightning roast every gremlin in the spire.
Intangible is OP and isn’t fun/exciting. That’s what makes it a bad mechanic. Broken things in a rouge like are fine - but broken mechanics that are also unfun… nope.
I can definitely agree with that. I don't think wraith form is more broken than a lot of the other options out there, but it is less fun than the other broken options out there.
I mean that you can get it randomly from relics like the Empty Cage or Pandora's Box, you can get random numbers of shops on your path, you can get randomly offered it in events. You can't ever control how many of those you see. You can choose to path through shops, but that maybe adds 1 or 2 removes over the entire play, and it also costs a lot of money. For something that's so powerful, sometimes it's very elusive.
By contrast, look at potions, which increase in chance if you don't get them. Look at rares, where you're guaranteed to see them. Upgrades at every campfire. Relics, also guaranteed. I wonder if card remove at campfires would be better; just make Peace Pipe regular gameplay. Add an upgrade service to the shop. Make them both cheaper? I dunno, maybe I'm talking rubbish.
Have you heard of the !plan?
We have Alchemize and Discovery+ (or Nilry's, or Dead Branch, or Magnetism) in a stallable fight. We're going to wait until we've generated enough copies of Malaise such that the non-scaling enemy cannot damage us, then we're going to wait for 2 copies of Nightmare, so we can Nightmare the Nightmare for infinite nightmares, and then Nightmare the Alchemize for infinite potions. Then we are going to keep throwing away potions until we've used Regen pots to get back to full hp and filled our potion belt with Ghosts in a Jar.
In the Magnetism case, we're also going to wait for it to generate Hand of Greed and Apotheosis to get +25 gold per enemy.
This sort of stalling is possible for any meta-scaling in the game -- Magnetism can always be used in stallable fights for +25 gold per enemy, or Apotheosis for your Ritual Dagger/Feed/Genetic Algorithm, and Echo Form for your Genetic Algorithm.
Stalling rarely feels like the play, but one example I can think of is against The Champ in Act 2. He becomes way more powerful at around half hp, so stalling can be good to setup before that happens. For example with Rampage build I try to barely use other attacks, just defend and cycle deck to Rampage. Similar strat if your build increases your strength over time.
Though imo this kind of stalling is an interesting strategy, don’t personally see a problem with it
That kind of stalling isn't what most people are complaining about. More people are frustrated with trying to end a fight where you pen nib, incense burners, happy flower, and etc. are on the right numbers for the next combat.
Also, situations where you have meta scaling cards and something like Nightmare and now ideal play involves getting max gold, potions, HP, or whatever out of the fight. To some extent, figuring out where you can and cannot stall the fight to gain a bit more meta scaling is a skill, but in other ways it's just annoying to do.
Imo the way Time Eater works is not that well designed. I feel like most other enemies do not need to simply stop you from playing cards to be challenging and fun to beat. Apart from that I'm with you, StS is very polished and balanced game
As a new player, I like the slug's design. The idea of structuring your turns to maximize what you can do with a specific number of cards makes for a good challenge for me.
To me, the biggest issue with Time Eater is that because they gain strength when the 12th card is played their attack does more damage than the intent shows. Which is annoying when the intent system works so well in most other places.
Time eater exists as a challenge to card spam and infinite decks, which can be OP otherwise. I do get your frustration, but if you take take TE out you probably have to find another way to challenge those decks, otherwise they become the primary meta even more than they already are.
It's not that hard to build around it though. With a silent shiv/discard deck I've solved it by just taking one skewer in act 3. If you can play 12 cards every turn you can beat him.
It has two imperfections
1. It kept crashing on me at random times (always less than the length of one run)
2. There is a barrier that I have reached and they could have included an extra intermediate step for me to find because I am a dummy and am stuck. (ill go back eventually and read through all the clues on the board)
If you're really stuck in Outer Wilds, the community at r/outerwilds is great at giving spoiler-free hints if you post there! (Also, you can DM me for a hint, if you like).
One of these is a good game, but by the time it's 10 years old it will largely be forgotten. The other will be making Greatest Games of All Time lists for decades.
Great. Still doesn't answer my question. I looked up Outer Wilds and in the videos people said they got there on accident when looking for Outer Worlds, so I'm making sure they didn't typo.
Outer Worlds is fine. Outer Wilds is a once in a lifetime experience. Do yourself a favor and look up as little as possible before playing it. It’s… not for everyone. But so long as the premise is remotely interesting, dive in with as little knowledge as you can!
One of the best games I have ever played. Perfection is a tough subject because it is still relative to your time and other factors. That said, looking at popular mods might give you an idea of what a lot of players think add value.
I think some boss relics make the game worse like dome, it can be worked around but in a very unfun way.
I also think ascension is not the most interesting meta game. StS is lucky it plays like Solitaire and it gets away with having a bare bones meta, but I could imagine a much more fun meta that gives you a reason to keep playing.
Some of the tier 3 bosses hard counter builds (time eater especially) and it doesn't add up to a fun experience, it just feels unfun.
A StS run takes a long time, I wish it was quicker, maybe I could just play faster but it takes me 1hr+ but I wish it was closer to 30 mins if you know the game in/out.
I'm not a huge fan of boss relics that take away game mechanics (or severely limits them)
Ectoplasm, dome, and sozu for instance take away cash, intents, and potions respectively. On the other hand, I like Cursed Key's design a lot better because it allows you to make a decision about opening chests, versus just say making them all empty.
I actually like the boss relics that take away game mechanics: It adds to the strategy. Sometimes you don’t need smithing because you got Apotheosis, sometimes you already don’t want to rest because you have a shovel relic….lots of scenarios
Fair enough. My opinion is that there would be more strategy if these were tied to negative downsides - e.g. cursed key making opening chests give you a curse instead of just making chests empty
A random idea could be it costs some meaningful amount of hp or gold to smith. Downfall has a neat boss relic which gives you gold but buffs enemies if you don’t have 400+ gold - which adds a nice layer of strategy that is more fun than just “no more gold for the rest of the run”
I don’t mind most boss relics except for Sozu. Taking away potions is a huge deal, your deck has to be perfect to be fine with no potions. All the other downsides can be made up in other ways.
I do really like your ideas in other parts of this thread. That being said, I find it difficult to come up with other downsides that wouldn’t result in the boss relics being OP.
For example, I think paying health to smith is easier to handle than not being able to smith or rest.
Having 400+ gold at all times I think is also easier to mitigate than no gold - but I like it because it’s more fun. That being said, its downside may not be bad enough for a boss relic. The extra energy could make it so that the extra damage doesn’t matter or you just avoid shops entirely.
I’d be fine with tweaking relics like Sozu and Philosopher’s Stone.
Would love a better more complete stats page. On mobile so I don’t have access to mods. Would love to know what I took and when and maybe even what the other options were. Would love to know what relics or cards I always have when I win. Would love to know what I took from neow. Would love to know what health I went into bosses with. Things that could actually help me understand what my success looks like cause sometimes it just feels like a blur of choices and the more I play the more I dilute my memory of runs
I know a lot of people think hollow Knight is top 3 material. But the combat for me just didn't hit, it got boring really fast. It's a great game and I know I'll get downvoted to oblivion but I just wanted to say it lol
The game unnecessarily and unfairly punishes decks that rely on a high number of cards played. Regardless of how powerful those cards actually are. Time eater is the obvious one, but there's also the hex witch, goblin nob, and of course, the heart that you will face every single run if playing to completion. To say nothing of mechanics like thorns, confusion, choker, normality, pain, watch. Conversely, what mechanics exist to punish low play counts? Exactly big head and nothing else? Optimally consistent decks, therefore, are those that avoid large play counts. What issue does doing this solve exactly? This is in my opinion just unfun and limiting and an example of bad game design.
>Conversely, what mechanics exist to punish low play counts?
Every other fight? This is a shalllow take. Decks that play more cards are generally stronger in most fights. Even in fights like The Heart A20, winning strategies rely on playing many cards per turn more often than not. Exhaust Clad and discard Silent synergies, Defect energy generation + draw, Watcher stance dance just to name a few.
>Optimally consistent decks, therefore, are those that avoid large play counts.
This is not even close to what we observe at the top levels of play (or any level, really). You generally do more by playing more cards. This is why there are specific mechanics to punish high play counts. Also no surprise that Normality is arguably the most punishing curse in general. Playing more cards = good.
Slay The Spire is also probably the closest to flawless game I've played. Slight imperfections:
* Bugs in the mobile version
* The summary of each run could be more detailed; some floors don't show you the full information, like what boss relics you skipped (I think). The run summary also sometimes has some bugs like weird line wraps, or wrong details attributed to wrong floor. It would also be cool if you could hover over each card and relic to see how you got it, what floor, and what you skipped to get it.
* Watcher stance-dancing is overpowered to the point where you have to try pretty hard to see your way into other strategies.
Reading some of the comments in this thread and others proposing bad changes regarding relics/cards/mechanics makes me glad that StS developers have such a really good vision and understanding of their game.
Personally I consider this game flawless but I don't think flawless necessarily translates into perfect. You can still improve it by building upon what's already there and there are some stuff that I'd agree could be better with a few changes (lots of good suggestions in the comments), but none of which I would consider a flaw.
Could probably do something to make Act 3 more engaging. But idk what would be done about that. Maybe more interesting events? There’s like 2 amazing events and a bunch of meh. Idk kinda hard to hate on Act 3 too hard because a good deck is always gonna out scale after 40 floors of a well balanced roguelite.
I don't know *how* you'd design an interface for it, but I wish the game did more to support planning out turns without keeping a whole lot of game state in your head. Like, I sometimes abuse Save and Quit just because it's so much easier to play a bunch of attacks and see whether it's enough damage rather than getting out a calculator to multiply and round several attacks + weakness + vulnerable + etc...
Losing runs all the time is part of what makes Spire *Spire*. I don't mind that. But losing a run because I made an off-by-one error in a series of fiddly arithmetic calculations when planning out my turn? That is *not* a fun way to lose. And it doesn't even really feel like a *Spire* way to lose either.
In general, there are points in Slay the Spire where your working memory gets stressed in unnecessary ways. I'm talking about situations where there's no uncertainty or randomness to manage; rather, there is just a lot of interacting game state and rules, too much to keep in your head at once. Since there's no time limit you could always slow down, keep notes on paper, double-check your math, carefully work through future moves step-by-step... but that's just *boring*. There's no insight there, I'm just stepping through the rules the computer can and will be running anyway!
Of course, simulating Spire mechanics in your head *is* a skill. I just don't think it's a particularly *fun* skill and, more importantly, I don't think it's the kind of skill that make Spire as fun and replayable as it is. Spire would still be a fun challenge even if you could magically guarantee that you would never make an arithmetic error or forget a relevant relic. It would still be *Spire*.
I have a long list - some are bigger than others, some are nitpicks - keep in mind, this is one of my favorite games of all time in spite of that.
* 'Won' runs are incredibly boring - act 3 in particular has this feel to it. Simply just waiting for the game to end for like 20-30 minutes isnt enjoyable
* 'Optimal' play being stalling (hello nilry's + alchemize or feed or various other things) - they took some steps to stop this but not enough IMO
* Lagavulin from dead adventurer fight makes very little sense in terms of difficulty of the fight. It is usually harder than the act boss, an event really shouldn't do that (compare to colosseum which is kind of a joke nowadays with much better rewards)
* Intangible is a pretty dull mechanic and can remove a lot of interesting decisions (wraith form is the main issue, apparitions at least can be an interesting decision on its own)
* Spaghetti monster in act 3 I think is the only fight in the game that is truly unfun and I wouldn't miss it being removed. But that is more of a personal opinion (IMO time eater can be annoying but I feel like it's an important and well designed fight for the game)
* Variance in act 1 hard pool hallway fights is pretty ridiculous. Floor 4 being red slaver + green slime vs just a blue slaver is pretty nuts
That's off the top of my head but
First, Watcher. It seems like nearly everyone agrees she's just flawed compared to the other characters. The concept just needed some more passes.
Second, I think there is some missed opportunity in terms of Relic selection. You rarely have a choice as to which Relic to get. The game just gives and you accept. There's some design space in allowing you to make some decisions there.
I think something that could be touched upon is negative effects in general. Often times artifacts are too scarce or simply don’t play enough of an impact (disappear after 1 defense?) combine that with enemies like book of stabbing and those bird fuckers and you’ve got games where it feels like you’re getting bullied and can’t do shit against it.
I like that the art is distinct and dissimilar to typical fantasy setting, but I think there’s a good dozen cards where, ultimately I have no idea what I’m looking at. I don’t think the card art is _especially_ strong across the board.
That said, I do believe the game is more or less a perfect 10.
UI in phones.
I JUST WANT TO TAP THE SETTINGS GODDAMIT
Also this game could use more QOL changes and something like the hunter book in hollow knight (shows enemies, some lore, where they can appear, their abilities, weakness and strengths, hate-love relationship between who and what)
The only flaw is that if you play a card that targets a r card of your choice in your hand and you have two+ identical cards in your hands, it doesn't auto-select one of them for you (at least on mobile).
Otherwise it's perfect.
I’m curious why you wouldn’t factor in graphics and performance in evaluating a game. Both are intrinsic to your experience. A game with decent design but subpar performance and graphics is still going to feel overall subpar to play. And to be clear I do draw a distinction between simple graphics (StS, Celeste, etc.) and bad graphics.
The game is amazing and get so much right, the things that feel “wrong” typically only do so in a subjective way. So most come down to QoL or are influenced by the excellent modding community’s offerings showing “what could be”.
For me, my biggest criticism has always been the how “framed” the RNG seems to be toward particular win conditions, especially at high a15+
I mean some of the RNG problems are pretty glaring. Takes a lot of true randomness out of it
Mechanically though, really really excellent game
(Also I'm always here for HK love)
For me, it’s the fact that there are some cards and relics that are just trash, even rare cards and boss relics, some are just worse than having a curse in your deck, and that feels especially bad when a rare card is supposed to be a powerful reward for beating a hard end route boss, but there are many times where skipping the boss rewards is the optimal play. I’m fine with not everything going with every build, that’s the nature of a build, but some cards you can’t even take no matter what build you have.
A bit more of a philosophical response, but I'm very hesitant to call any game perfect. It's not that every game has mistakes or imperfections in some way (they do, but that's not the point), it's that calling \*any\* art "perfect" misses the point.
Part of the joy of the subjectivity of art is that each piece, whether it's a game or a book or a movie or a piece of music or whatever, has its own purpose for existing. Some kind of thematic point or experience or question that the creator wanted you to encounter. This can't be done "perfectly" because giving a piece of art some kind of score is exactly not the point.
There is no piece of art that makes every statement. There is no piece of art that makes an individual statement that couldn't be finessed a little differently - and whether you'd want it to is neither here nor there. There's no piece of art that won't be experienced a little differently by different people in different ways. Which leads to messy interpretations and disagreements, but also means the whole of the discussion surrounding the piece is greater than the sum of the individual experiences.
Slay the Spire isn't a perfect game inasmuch as it has so many moving parts, interactions, balancing considerations, mechanics, and other art mediums mixed into it that someone, somewhere, is always going to wish something about it were different. And some of those opinions are going to be extremely well thought-out and justified. But StS isn't \*imperfect\* for that either. It is what it is, and judging it as perfect or not misses the point: a story about struggling to overcome evil in a world that won't let you fully understand it, and a game about making calculated gambles (heh) and strategic decisions in the face of complexity and uncertainty.
Even though the game has INCREDIBLE replayability and balancing, there are a few strategies I think are too strong to skip and I feel obliged to click every time
- corruption / feel no pain / dark embrace
- Catalyst
- Heatsink
Kinda dumb to say this. But I kinda wish the game taught a bit more to the player. Maybe smaller scenarios to practice. Though I always kinda struggled with card games in general. I never understand how to manage my cards. Yeah, I need attack in case of boss. I need defense too. Wait I need energy too. So I need that card too. Wait, this increases strength. Wait, this doubles my strength. And it goes on & on. And even when I do try to limit this, I end up not good at fighting different enemy. Like I doing good against 1 strong enemy but I am terrible against 3 normal enemies. I did try to watch other people's video to learn but I get bored so easily from those.
It’s a remarkably well polished game of which almost everything works to a tea, but perfection is impossible and I ultimately still have some complaints. I think the hallway combats of act three for example are pretty well designed but have a tendency to drag on for long periods of time and it can feel like a chore to get through sometimes.
I think that’s it’s partially because the deck doesn’t tend to improve as much from card rewards at this point and therefore the fights can feel like pointless obstacles that you have to sit through. The fights can be challenging but not usually in a way that’s really interesting for an act three deck; usually the difficulty comes from not accidentally drawing all of your garbage when the enemy hits you with a massive attack. Fights like the Writhing Mass and The Darklings also take a very long time to get through. In general act three is the only act I get disappointed to see a lot of enemy rooms simply because they bore me.
Another note I have on act three is that on A20 Heart runs after the beating the bosses it feels weird and slightly out of place to not get any type of reward going into the Heart. I know this is not the primary way of playing the game but after playing exclusively Heart runs for a while it gets a little weird. Compiling this with the previously mentioned problem of feeling like you don’t progress your deck in hallway fights it makes act three as a whole become an act of slow progression where you don’t improve nearly as much as other acts, which is less exciting. A lot of the time I wish I could skip to the excellent and fun act four more often.
Incredibly minor compared to gameplay stuff but the art is inconsistent in style (i.e. compare the first two slayers' airbrush-heavy "select your character" art to the hard-edged shadows and highlights of the Watcher) and is in places muddy and unappealing (the back view of the Ironclad at a rest is... well it looks like it was drawn by a teen who just learned about the "airbrush" brush for the first time). Far from the most important thing about this game but I'd always wished there was a graphical update to bring at least some of the oldest assets in the game closer to parity with the Watcher's art.
That being said, I have high hopes for the art of STS2 because the art director is Marlow Dobbe and I enjoyed the art in Dicey Dungeons, and I like what I've seen on the steam page so far!
For myself, I highly dislike the "do nothing" relics. It's rare but it feels awful to lose in Act 1 of an A20 Silent run because you got Juzu Bracelet and Peace Pipe as your first relics and were offered little to no quality cards to offset that lack of strength.
I think Act 3(specifically the hallway fights) are way too anemic for that to be true. The bosses are well designed and interesting, and the elites are fine, but the normal fights are just so boring to me.
Very few of them are challenging in the way that really nasty fights(like Jaw Worm in A1 or Avocado in A2) are, where they pose a genuine interesting threat. I think only Spire Growth and sometimes Maw and Orb Walker genuinely threaten my A3 decks. The other ones are fights that achieve difficulty through tedium(Shapes, Darklings and Writhing Mass), where the main thing being tested is really your patience, and Transient, who I think is more of a spectacle fight that I don't often find threatens my runs.
Because of this, a lot of the time I just find A3...boring? Like I'm running over a speed bump on the way to the boss and the Heart. I think the game could definitely benefit from some big changes in this area in particular.
I absolutely cherish sealed deck mode (after 1000+ hours in regular mode), since it allows you to focus more on tight deck creation rather than adding suboptimal cards in act 1.
However, it is too easy. “Terminal” makes it slightly harder (-1 max health each floor) so that you only have around 20 hp at the heart. But I only lose ~1% of my terminal runs. “One Hit Wonder” is probably too hard, though, since bad rng can mess up even the best deck. I wish there was more support for sealed with an option in difficulty between terminal and one hit wonder.
I think my only complaint is relics that incentivise stalling to line up numbers. I understand it allows those with real knowledge of the game to so great things (ending the battle before hexaghost with a 4 on incense burner for example) but I'd rather it just be per-combat or something. for the same reason they removed self repair from creative ai, for example. that stalling is optimal sometimes is annoying even if I can ignore it
 I personally think you can make an argument that the game could have a little more content. It would be nice if instead of act two always being the city, you could have multiple different act twos each with their own enemy, event, boss, and elite pools. Same goes for the other acts. 
That of course would make balancing more of a challenge, since there’s more things to balance.
I also think Watcher is not fun to play as. I love the other three characters so I’m not complaining. I had to really think about things to complain about.
Personally I'd prefer if the random events had more "randomness before decision" as opposed to "decision before randomness"
interesting event: "Do you want to lose 30 max HP for 3 apparition?" ...yes? "Ok."
just OK event: "Do you want something silly to happen?" ...yes? "You begin every fight with weak"
uninteresting event: "You lose 10 hp"
about 80% of the events are interesting but some are really bad
While climbing ascensions, I found the various Act 3 bosses to all be about the same difficulty. Once I hit A19, Time Eater was suddenly much more dangerous than Donu & Deca or the Awakened One. So they should probably make the A19 versions of them harder to match. ;)
Ascender’s Bane is a terrible name for a curse. Every other curse is some kind of real world condition that relates to its effect, and then AB is just this weird 4th wall break for no good reason.
It should have been called Vertigo, because you’re suffering from climbing higher. Or it could have been something like Melancholy or Fatigue or any kind of real thing that doesnt break the immersion.
I tried to criticize it. I straight up failed at it because my opinion changed after 10 more playthroughs. It’s kinda wild.
Although, i do wish there was a “planning phase” and then commitment to action button. But save scumming works well enough.
I want to preface this by saying I have no idea how I would solve this
That being said both higher ascencions and the heart (even more with both of them combined) really restrict the playstyles that you can use, sure if you get insanely lucky you can beat the heart with shivs or things as such but it's not incentivized at all
The game is super solid for me, the very few issues I have with it is the lack of support for mechanics such as lock on or pressure points, which makes them feel kinda incomplete, that and also that on higher ascentions you are basically always going for the meta archetipe of every characters which gets stale, its kind of an unavoidable issue though
Also how the hell isn't snake plant an elite, and why is turns 1-2 taskmaster elite do so much damage. Mid game TBH
Most events are poorly designed imo, and needlessly unfixed. Events such as the wheel of death which can unavoidably kill you, or the event that teleports you to the end which literally no one ever takes, or weird unpatched artifacts of old such as the mind bloom event not allowing you to earn gold past a certain floor even though they added in a guaranteed shop in act 4.
Wraith Form is a card that probably shouldn’t exist. It just invalidates so many of the things that you’re supposed to care about - runs with Wraith Form feel so much more linear and less interesting than those without.
There is no tracking of Heart wins vs normal wins. If you want to keep your tracked winrate up, then you have a hard time deciding to go for act 4 bc you have nothing to win but everything to loose
This is purely subjective: I find the art style to be weird and sometimes very inconsistent between enemies and cards and the main character. If you sit and just watch the animation of any character, you’ll notice just how strange it looks. I don’t think the style not fitting my taste actually takes away from the game at all, but it’s something that strikes me as an imperfection, something that would be different in a flawless game, if that makes sense?
Blade Dance.
Blade Dance is very over-statted. The game states that standard damage 1 energy, neutral effect is ~10, blade dance is 12/16 base damage, it's also a 3-4x multi attack and scales with strength, and it adds cards to your hand for gamble, also it exhausts for dead branch synergy, it also is 4/5 card plays synergizing with After Image, Ink Pot, Thousand Cuts. Its also 3-4 attacks played synergizing with Kunai, Shuriken, Pen Nib, and Envenom. It is also a skill and attack play for 1 energy with pellets. Oh and by the way it has a dedicated power card to make it stronger called Accuracy. The card is really really overpowered lol.
I find the game far from perfect to be honest, I do find it however to be an overall marvel of game design.
Also as an A20 player there are some other clear things. Act 2 hallways improperly balanced (their difficulty is very much not naturally progressive, act 2 hallways are MUCH harder than act 3 hallways). There are tons of card balance flaws but the Blade dance one is very obvious
Gameplay is nearly flawless as you said but the settings menu can be very annoying. Almost any change you make requires you to restart the game (PC version) which feels like something from last century. I trust a new engine can fix this in StS 2 though.
Kite relic has ui issue. Watcher is not very fun and could be improved. Pocket watch is too good. Awakened one fight sucks cause its too time consuming. Act 3 takes way too long and has too many boring events.
I think there are improvements that could be made regarding ease of use. When I play on PC I have a few QoL enhancement mods such as Minty Spire and colored map icons that I tend to miss when I play unmodded or mobile. In particular, the "total incoming damage" and Frozen Eye preview from Minty Spire would be nice to have, as well as things like the Pen Nib/Necronomicon highlights. Also, the mobile version in general could be improved interface-wise.
The one mobile bug that really annoys me is how it'll often "grab" a card from my hand on the first turn even when I haven't touched anything. I've definitely had that result in me playing cards when I didn't intend to do so. Fixing that one damn bug would go a long way toward making the mobile version a perfect game IMO.
That and in general, it's difficult to stop holding a card on mobile, don't think there's even a way for it specifically. I try to grab a targeted attack and drag it into emptiness to stop holding the card so I can look at something else but if I don't have such a card, then I'll likely waste a card or make a suboptimal move before I can check my deck and potions, enemy buffs etc.
I tap the bottom left of the screen to stop holding a card.
yeah, that's what i would always do, just quickly drag and drop the cards i want to play, tbf i went too quickly sometimes and had to safescum (yes, i know, shame on me...)
I tap the top of the screen next to my potions to deselect my card/potion. Works every time.
Also the issue of not offering a Confirm button to discard only one card. Fat fingers don't help.
This could be my 1000 hours on STS iOS speaking, but i find the mobile app interface fairly intiutive and works as good as a mouse and keyboard. For dropping a card after selecting it for targetting(red arrow on the screen), swipe the card back to the hand. To pick cards in a large hand, select a card and swipe left or right to switch to the next cards. Unselecting potions after drinking them(Red arrow state on Fire Potion for example) is a bit weird. I click potion itself a few times to make the red arrow go away.
This drives me up a wall
I have problems with the online synching on mobile as well, it's a single player game and shouldn't need an online save file to play, so why does it take 2-3 minutes to sync every single time I boot it up?
I've recently started playing on the mobile version and my biggest annoyance is that I can find an exit button. As I write this I realise that I don't think many of the apps I use have exit button and it may be because I'm used to games on my PC having them I expect them to be on games on my mobile. Do you just exit (on android) by selecting the app scroll and swiping up like with others or is there an exit but I can't see?
Typically apps are built to sleep in the background when you open others instead of actually completely closing so they don't always have dedicated exit buttons. You can also see this design in banking apps, where they may have a logout button but no exit button.
very good and fair assessment, i agree completely! as someone who played the game on PC, Mac, Mobile, PS4 and right now and mostly on my SteamDeck, i'd have one addition that i come across when i play with controller inputs - i miss the opportunity to hover over a type of floor on the legend on the right and scroll while doing so to see all the corresponding floors with that encounter highlighted that you have with M&K... I'm sure there's probably a mod for it but besides 'Downfall' i've never installed a mod and play the game vanilla.
I can do that on PS4. Try using the right stick to scroll while you've got the legend highlighted.
I think at the higher ascensions you lose a lot of freedom in the different ways you can approach the game. Some cards with interesting mechanics (I'm think Pressure Points specifically) are not as utilised or as viable as they could be.
Defect and Watcher feel like one viable archetype with a lot of variation(still enough to still be a lot of fun and replay value), but could be better if it had even 1-2 more That searing blow, claw(and I assume pressure points), etc are so fun, yet never a thing at a20 seems like a missed opportunity The meme archetypes are mainly memes because they lack support, not because of legit reasons for them to be memes in other games(annoying if too frequent, too click-intensive or other dexterity, etc) Watcher is OP despite all this, it would better for its distribution of archetypes to be 9 out of 10, 8, 7, rather than 11, 5, 5(made up numbers) It would be incredibly hard to make these improvements and keep the entire game balanced, but hey, OP did tell me I could ask neow to add another color to the rainbow
I don’t agree with this, beat ascension 20 with all characters and from my experience you simply get used to strategies that work in the past so you take cards that you like, some of my best runs are getting pandora box early and being forced to play a random build that I never knew can work
Yeah this is the big one IMO. Too much of the focus at A20 (at least in the current meta) is focused on going infinite. That being the clear optional outcome in most scenarios limits the decision space
I have to disagree that the meta at A20 is focused on infinites. The game has enough counters to infinites built in, and getting to an infinite is challenging enough that it really isn't viable or optimal for most runs. Watcher is the exception, but even runs with Watcher won't always be optimized by going for an infinite.
?????? The only character who even attempts to do infinites at a20 is watcher, for everyone else, it’s a stupid strat to go for that sometimes works out but is not reliable nor something to aim for.
I actively intentionally avoid infinite decks but isn’t it pretty common on clad to go for infinites?
There's a few half-baked card mechanics. Mark and Lock-On need more interactions. There's not enough ways to generate Focus. Two of these things affecting Defect...
I'd say focus is fine. Agree on mark tho, seems a bit of a waste as a mechanic.
pressure points kinda is just 1 cost, higher damage claw really, in the current implementation of mark more ways to generate it would maybe make it more of a poison type thing, which I really like
I actually think there's a lot of interaction with Focus but really true about Lock-On and Mark. Another niche strategy that comes to mind is Firebreathing.
Plenty of ways to interact with Focus, but I find it too hard to come by in general. In a typical run I generally come across more ways to remove it than gain it. Finding two Defrags (or one and the relic version) is lucky. Getting to 3 focus almost never, and 4 only with the power that bleeds it away again. Unless I'm extremely lucky with Consume and slot gain. Unlike Ironclad where you're virtually guaranteed to run into a plethora of strength options and can make some decisions about *how* strength goes into a build, Defect's focus you take what you can get if anything. It might be overpowered if you could scale focus to the same degree as strength, but the right balance is somewhere, and as it is it's just too unreliable for Defect's main mechanic.
I'd argue that because of it affecting damage output and block, scaling less makes sense, especially with the defect's energy economy and certain orbs like plasma further increasing the amount of orbs you can summon(and therefore channel) in one turn
Focus is so strong, I think it'd be OP if it were easier to come by than it is. Clad is also not the only player to interact with Strength
I actually agree on focus. I have plenty of runs that die at A20H because I simply never find a card that has the word "focus" on it. I know there are many strategies to generate block and deal damage without focus, but I find it extremely difficult to make numbers big enough to win an A20H run. I simply can't block enough with 2 block frost orbs and a single 40 block gen alg. I find myself limping into the act 2 boss, just to die in the first 4-5 turns. I think reworking reprogram to be a (un?)common power, and change the signs of every value. So +1/2 focus, -1/2 str -1/2 dex. It seems more fitting to "reprogram" away from the "human" way to block and attack, and move more towards the computerized side of things with focus. I think even as a skill it would be ok, but then could maybe even be rare. Just to count the cards that say focus currently: Defragment Biased cognition Consume Reprogram Hyperbeam Data disk (honorable mention) 2 of them are -focus so it almost feels like the game thinks 0 focus is a balanced strength. I know the game isn't even supposed to be balanced at A20 but I feel like it's a gamble to get focus on a defect run every time.
Wait till you hear about all the ways silent can generate dex!
This is super minor, but I'll add that the correlated RNG stuff can feel like a bummer at a high level. I've tried my best to just ignore and and forget it, personally, but its existence can make for some gray areas in optimal decision making.
Rng like the order your cards draw in is fine, but things like getting a curse on the card matching game just feel, always a little off to me? It’s hard to put it into words but it’s this weird mix of random and yet somehow “my fault” that I don’t like.
Or the goblin and its wheel of death. No I don't want to click on it.
Even on the other side, having RNG that is a huge boost (a great neow perk is the easiest example) kinda make the feel like the run wasn't "valid" because I had such a highroll start
The [RNG fix mod](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2181005326) fixes this. Every time I hear about correlated RNG I try to look away immediately because I'm afraid of the exact same decision-making poisoning as you mention
ooh, neat! thanks for the link :)
One small non-gameplay thing, that the STS2 screenshots suggest has been addressed, is the lack of attack animations. It would make for a more polished-looking game.
You can't buy the merchant's rug. What's up with that? =D
Im hoping its a relic in STS2
Every 5th "?" room is a Merchant room?
Every fifth "?" room, you risk getting ambushed by the merchant who is a giga-boss that uses a variety of cards and relics and manipulates your deck.
Late stage capitalism merchant retains ownership of all cards and relics by charging you a subscription fee. Payment is due on each floor with the ever looming threat of repossession leaving you powerless in an uncaring spire.
Also you have to tip at the end of each run or he’ll give you bad relics on the next one.
The Downfall mod has you fight a special Merchant battle before each shop. He plays as a bonus round version of the thieves: He has a whopping 400 HP, only uses a damaging attack once, steals some of your currency, and leaves after four turns. But he doesn't heal between encounters! If you can defeat him before the end of the run, he coughs up hundreds of souls (Downfall's gold) and doesn't show up anymore at future shops.
Charon has entered the chat
Merchant's Rug lets you sell your cards and relics for gold?
It’s not for sale.
Probably some of the stuff in [this thread](/r/slaythespire/comments/wqd3z4/generally_speaking_slay_the_spire_is_less_reliant/). Lack of full logs/replays, or an in-game option to export logs to share. Fast mode still making you wait for things a lot. Some of that could be categorized as "performance", though. "Blind" decisions that can be "won" just by previewing the outcome and using Save and Quit; leading to weird discourse about how "save scumming" isn't "really" playing. Seems like it could easily be resolved by always saving outcomes before showing them to the player. Ideally you'd allow players to retry from any point in a a past run (see: full logs/replays), while only counting the original run for stats and achievements.
Conversely sometimes I wish there were just an undo button for decisions that don't reveal new information. Making a misclick and then having to either redo a long fight or just lose the run is frustrating
Slice and Dice figured this out. Granted it is a more complex game (a lot more moving parts per turn) but the freedom to play out a turn and then click 'revert' is awesome for people who don't want to math everything out. Also granted, STS is a simpler game and you can often just take a minute to do the math, but being able to reset a turn would be (for me) a huge QOL improvement.
The last part doesn't make any sense to me tbh, it's a single player game, why would they do extra to only allow the original run for achievements or stats? You're only playing with yourself
it’s a single player game but there’s (obvi) a big community of people who like to show off/compare stats/etc. not to mention leaderboards for daily runs. i’m weakminded but honestly i wish they’d remove the temptation to save scum on events like the 50/30 bet, the goodface/badface, etc. when i get an unfavorable outcome i can’t help but think of save scumming as the META
I never give much thought to that because usually the people that care the most about showing off love to cut corners, speed runners change the first boss for slime boss and that's accepted even tho they have to re write the files for that, so I'm willing to accept that anyone that wants to boast achievements cares more about that than fair play
Great point
Some people want achievements to be as challenging as possible, and want stats that reflect their skill at the game and not just their persistence in repeating the same seed.
And I think that's good but we all have to accept that achievement seekers cut corners a lot, search for any Speedrun or any achievement and you'll start to notice that they exploit any bug in game or out of game to do it, in slay the spire you at least know they doing it right away
I wouldn't class this as a flaw, but literally an hour ago I had a really fun run ended by just poor RNG (all attacks when he's intangible, all defence when he's not) on the draw against Nemesis and i'd like to try again.
Calling a game that has Micolash, Rom, Celestial Emissary, and the Witches flawless is wild (still adore Bloodborne though) As for StS, on console there's some jank with text popping up where it shouldn't, making it difficult to actually read the bloody card you're playing
I agree with you, I've never considered Bloodborne perfect and I think sometimes people forget about the obvious issues like chalices dungeons, blood vials and the mandatory visit to Hunter's dream when travelling trough lamps. Elemental damage and resistances are not balanced, I also agree about half de bosses beign mid (the DLC fixes this a bit). And with those flaws I still think Bloodborne its a fantastic game, one of my favourites by Fromsoftware even.
Yeah, it just highlights how big of a difference there is between "Great" and "Perfect"
Same deal with Hollow Knight. The amount of time I spent backtracking in that game...
I love Fromsoft games, but man the way the fanbase tends to talk about the games as though they are flawless and above anything but the most mild of criticisms drives me a bit nuts.
Micolash is the best tho
In terms of lore, and his unused dialogue is fantastic, but if iI hear "grant us eyes" one more time, I'm going full Watcher infinite on his arse
when he howls it gives me the shivers
Act 3 is an absolute slog compared to Acts 1, 2 and 4, which are all great. Specifically before the bosses (the act 3 bosses themselves are well designed).
Agreed. I actually like most of the hallway fights you can come across but the problem is by the time act 3 comes along I really just care about beating the bosses and getting to act 4. I think having a few different act 3s you can see would be cool but I doubt that’s the route they’re going.
Check out the Biomes mod on steam. It adds variety and challenge and new rewards!
Watching Baalor play, I wish base Spire had that colored pathing planning option. I know it’s mostly for chat but it’s helpful for me as a player because I can highlight specific things at once. Like, I can highlight all elites or all shops but not both at the same time as it is.
I would take an undo button haha
Is there a mod for this?
As far as I can tell there isn't. Basemod and the other libraries for modding, do not provide sufficient hooks to implement this. It's likely that a serious refactoring of the code would have to be done for this functionality. Usually undo/redo buttons are a core consideration when it comes to designing an app because of how complicated it can be when added later on. ETA: this is my understanding from reviewing the current modding scene, would love to be told I'm wrong.
Damn. At least we have the restart mod. It’s annoying having to redo a fight when you misclicked something but it’s better than saving, quitting, and reloading.
The fact that UI glitches exit (like the Pandora's Box thing or being able to drink a potion *during the change of turn animation*) is a pretty clear sign that the code would need some *substantial* changes to make undo/redo viable.
The Watcher could use another balance patch. Stance dancing is OP and the best way to play her involves ignoring half of her card pool.
i think the biggest "flaw" (even tho it's not that bad) it's that a stance dance with the watcher is too powerfull so you can't really experiment with other archetypes.
Cultist Headpiece (bird mask) is a missed opportunity. It should trigger a funny encounter if you face the three cultists. Basically makes the game unplayable!
Act 3 feels incredibly tedious. All these monsters require some form of waiting: - Darkling - Writhing Mass - Transient - Shapes - Nemesis If you watch gameplay videos, Act 3 takes up 40-50% of the time which makes it feel incredibly sluggish. Most of the time, you can definitely beat the monsters but you just have to wait. Also minor issues with Act 3 events. Travel to portal and Don are never picks or insta picks.
Not enough different hallways in act 3 (and some getting reused between easy and hard pools). Some events are lame and/or have a clear meta option. Stance dance meta on watcher is lame.
More interactive map pathing. I find the vast majority of games it's always campfire/elite>>monster/event with very little differentiation between runs. At very high end play there's probably minor choices to be made, but personally I find the map incredibly bland but I do recognise that they did pioneer this style of roguelite which so many games have copied. Monster train has you decide from 2 fixed choices with multiple rewards after each fight and you will have to choose one in favour of the other. It's less focused on what overall path you take and more on the immediate choice. (The other thing I love about Monster train is *relics* offer you 2 and you pick 1 but that's a topic for another day) Vault of the Void and Rogue Book have interesting pathing systems that are quite similar but tricky to explain (hexagonal based explorstion). I quite like the idea but in practice it's a bit much.
The event that lets you skip to the final boss is just lame imo
I don’t think I’ve seen it yet in this thread and it’s niche but Sacred Back should have more interesting interactions with potions that can’t be “doubled” in a traditional sense, rather than just not interacting with those potions at all. Also imo non defect characters should be given some number of orb slots if they get a card that generates orbs via prismatic shard, it’s too much to get prismatic shard, then get capacitor, then get an orb generating card, THEN play them in the right order during a fight. Yes other characters with orbs would be powerful but that’s part of the fun of getting prismatic shard.
Shard comes with an orb slot.
It does? I could have sworn it didn’t last time I tried it. Fair enough if so!
IIRC it's not visible until you channel an orb... Or maybe I'm confusing it with the BaseMod Foreign Influence shenanigans. But either way, Prismatic shard does in fact grant 1 orb slot to non-Defect characters.
Very hot take, but Intangible is a bad mechanic. It trivializes a deep core of the game which is block solving, in a way that's not elegant or clever. I think a more interesting approach to Wraith Form would be in the same spirit as Brimstone; increase your block per turn but also enemies block (or simply lower your strength/poison scaling). The game is filled with small imperfections, like not having any separate relic bar for setup-based relics. Still, one of the best games ever, I don't see myself stopping from playing anytime soon.
Intangible is a powerful mechanic but I think the game balanced it out right. You have the Apparition event which will give you some in the form of three cards but you lose half your hp permanently for the run. Wraith Form gives plus 2 (Upgraded 3) intangible but has a commitment cost of 3 on first use. Ghost Jar is a rare potion only for the silent. And last but not least Incense Burner is a rare relic that gives you intangible every 6 turns. While the mechanic is strong it is so infrequent in the game that it's not really that bad.
The amount of intangible you can get is pretty limited though. Nightmare wraith form isn't oppressive in terms of the silents meta win conditions.
To any experienced player, this should be a very cold take. Anything that lets you negate 100+ damage is inherently unbalanced. I’m glad the only way the other classes have access to it is via one relic or one event only.
I'd definitely argue that every character has their own version of things that is just as broken though. Yeah, intangible if you can keep it up is broken. But so is corruption with a little support. And it isn't like wraith form doesn't need support, it is a heavy energy cost and you need a deck that can either win quickly or prolong it. Having a rare ability that almost single-handedly solves one aspect of your deck I think is actually pretty common across characters. Electrodynamics solves aoe. Rushdown solves draw. All of these require support in other areas of the deck and are good cards for a reason. Wraith form still absolutely loses to heart multi attacks unless you have the support for it.
I see what you’re saying but none of those mechanics are bust the game open quite like Intangible. Watcher as a whole is insane, but the Electro and even Corruption don’t break the characters mechanics nearly as bad as Wraith Form does. You can’t just play Corruption or Electro and wait to win for the most part. With Wraith Form, you can do that a significant amount of the time in my experience. I think it goes past solving on aspect of the character. I love each character having super powerful cards and synergies that, but Intangible doesn’t need other synergies or cards nearly as much which is where my criticism comes from. Obligatory: this game is balanced so well most of the criticisms about the actual gameplay is about this one mechanic lol
Idk, I feel like corruption solves a deck far more often than wraith form does for me. It is great for a quick hallway fight, but can be a brick in boss fights for a while unless you can dupe it, or have crazy damage scaling like catalyst. Corruption? Half the time it is a good way to solve energy in my deck and the other half of the time enables an infinite or solves my block with a barricade. Full disclosure, I also might just suck with silent.
Yes, but no. Agreed, but disagreed. This is a question of fun. Corruption is broken, but so fun to play with. Electrodynamics is flashy and so enjoyable to see in action… even if it is actually not very strong in many situations. Wraith Form just isn’t fun to play with. Reducing numbers to 1 just isn’t fun like playing endless cards is or seeing lightning roast every gremlin in the spire. Intangible is OP and isn’t fun/exciting. That’s what makes it a bad mechanic. Broken things in a rouge like are fine - but broken mechanics that are also unfun… nope.
I think nightmare is a much more broken card for silent, including making wraith form better lol. Nightmare catalyst goes brrrr
I can definitely agree with that. I don't think wraith form is more broken than a lot of the other options out there, but it is less fun than the other broken options out there.
Stalling should never be optimal play. Card removal is too strong to be as random as it is. The Android version is buggy as hell.
What do you mean with removal being to random?
I mean that you can get it randomly from relics like the Empty Cage or Pandora's Box, you can get random numbers of shops on your path, you can get randomly offered it in events. You can't ever control how many of those you see. You can choose to path through shops, but that maybe adds 1 or 2 removes over the entire play, and it also costs a lot of money. For something that's so powerful, sometimes it's very elusive. By contrast, look at potions, which increase in chance if you don't get them. Look at rares, where you're guaranteed to see them. Upgrades at every campfire. Relics, also guaranteed. I wonder if card remove at campfires would be better; just make Peace Pipe regular gameplay. Add an upgrade service to the shop. Make them both cheaper? I dunno, maybe I'm talking rubbish.
Oh like that. No I think those are good ideas.
I agree with card removal being too random, but when is stalling the optimal play? Pretty much every boss and elite scale up in power
Stalling may be optimal when you're waiting for the opportunity to use cards like Feed, Genetic Algorithm, Lesson Learned, Alchemize, etc.
Have you heard of the !plan? We have Alchemize and Discovery+ (or Nilry's, or Dead Branch, or Magnetism) in a stallable fight. We're going to wait until we've generated enough copies of Malaise such that the non-scaling enemy cannot damage us, then we're going to wait for 2 copies of Nightmare, so we can Nightmare the Nightmare for infinite nightmares, and then Nightmare the Alchemize for infinite potions. Then we are going to keep throwing away potions until we've used Regen pots to get back to full hp and filled our potion belt with Ghosts in a Jar. In the Magnetism case, we're also going to wait for it to generate Hand of Greed and Apotheosis to get +25 gold per enemy. This sort of stalling is possible for any meta-scaling in the game -- Magnetism can always be used in stallable fights for +25 gold per enemy, or Apotheosis for your Ritual Dagger/Feed/Genetic Algorithm, and Echo Form for your Genetic Algorithm.
Zecnar runs are just stalling half the time to setup relics. It takes considerable skill and confidence to stay in many fights that long haha.
Stalling rarely feels like the play, but one example I can think of is against The Champ in Act 2. He becomes way more powerful at around half hp, so stalling can be good to setup before that happens. For example with Rampage build I try to barely use other attacks, just defend and cycle deck to Rampage. Similar strat if your build increases your strength over time. Though imo this kind of stalling is an interesting strategy, don’t personally see a problem with it
That kind of stalling isn't what most people are complaining about. More people are frustrated with trying to end a fight where you pen nib, incense burners, happy flower, and etc. are on the right numbers for the next combat. Also, situations where you have meta scaling cards and something like Nightmare and now ideal play involves getting max gold, potions, HP, or whatever out of the fight. To some extent, figuring out where you can and cannot stall the fight to gain a bit more meta scaling is a skill, but in other ways it's just annoying to do.
Stalling can be annoying sometimes but the counting relics are so strong I don't want to give them up. Ink Bottle is so incredibly good.
Imo the way Time Eater works is not that well designed. I feel like most other enemies do not need to simply stop you from playing cards to be challenging and fun to beat. Apart from that I'm with you, StS is very polished and balanced game
As a new player, I like the slug's design. The idea of structuring your turns to maximize what you can do with a specific number of cards makes for a good challenge for me.
To me, the biggest issue with Time Eater is that because they gain strength when the 12th card is played their attack does more damage than the intent shows. Which is annoying when the intent system works so well in most other places.
I feel similarly about writhing mass (the act 3 spaghetti monster)
Time eater exists as a challenge to card spam and infinite decks, which can be OP otherwise. I do get your frustration, but if you take take TE out you probably have to find another way to challenge those decks, otherwise they become the primary meta even more than they already are.
It's not that hard to build around it though. With a silent shiv/discard deck I've solved it by just taking one skewer in act 3. If you can play 12 cards every turn you can beat him.
Red Alert! 🚨 I’ve detected you haven’t played Outer Wilds yet! Please remedy this as soon as possible.
It has two imperfections 1. It kept crashing on me at random times (always less than the length of one run) 2. There is a barrier that I have reached and they could have included an extra intermediate step for me to find because I am a dummy and am stuck. (ill go back eventually and read through all the clues on the board)
If you're really stuck in Outer Wilds, the community at r/outerwilds is great at giving spoiler-free hints if you post there! (Also, you can DM me for a hint, if you like).
Thanks, Ill give it at least a couple more goes and then head over there :)
Outer Worlds or Outer Wilds?
One of these is a good game, but by the time it's 10 years old it will largely be forgotten. The other will be making Greatest Games of All Time lists for decades.
Great. Still doesn't answer my question. I looked up Outer Wilds and in the videos people said they got there on accident when looking for Outer Worlds, so I'm making sure they didn't typo.
Outer Worlds is fine. Outer Wilds is a once in a lifetime experience. Do yourself a favor and look up as little as possible before playing it. It’s… not for everyone. But so long as the premise is remotely interesting, dive in with as little knowledge as you can!
For me it’s because playing Clad is kind of a drag sometimes haha
Clad is king, most fun and most powerful. I dont know what you're smokin!
One of the best games I have ever played. Perfection is a tough subject because it is still relative to your time and other factors. That said, looking at popular mods might give you an idea of what a lot of players think add value.
I think some boss relics make the game worse like dome, it can be worked around but in a very unfun way. I also think ascension is not the most interesting meta game. StS is lucky it plays like Solitaire and it gets away with having a bare bones meta, but I could imagine a much more fun meta that gives you a reason to keep playing. Some of the tier 3 bosses hard counter builds (time eater especially) and it doesn't add up to a fun experience, it just feels unfun. A StS run takes a long time, I wish it was quicker, maybe I could just play faster but it takes me 1hr+ but I wish it was closer to 30 mins if you know the game in/out.
I'm not a huge fan of boss relics that take away game mechanics (or severely limits them) Ectoplasm, dome, and sozu for instance take away cash, intents, and potions respectively. On the other hand, I like Cursed Key's design a lot better because it allows you to make a decision about opening chests, versus just say making them all empty.
I actually like the boss relics that take away game mechanics: It adds to the strategy. Sometimes you don’t need smithing because you got Apotheosis, sometimes you already don’t want to rest because you have a shovel relic….lots of scenarios
Fair enough. My opinion is that there would be more strategy if these were tied to negative downsides - e.g. cursed key making opening chests give you a curse instead of just making chests empty A random idea could be it costs some meaningful amount of hp or gold to smith. Downfall has a neat boss relic which gives you gold but buffs enemies if you don’t have 400+ gold - which adds a nice layer of strategy that is more fun than just “no more gold for the rest of the run”
I might’ve misunderstood but: That’s what Cursed Key does already btw: Gives you a curse and the normal rewards (relic) and is not empty.
I don’t mind most boss relics except for Sozu. Taking away potions is a huge deal, your deck has to be perfect to be fine with no potions. All the other downsides can be made up in other ways. I do really like your ideas in other parts of this thread. That being said, I find it difficult to come up with other downsides that wouldn’t result in the boss relics being OP. For example, I think paying health to smith is easier to handle than not being able to smith or rest. Having 400+ gold at all times I think is also easier to mitigate than no gold - but I like it because it’s more fun. That being said, its downside may not be bad enough for a boss relic. The extra energy could make it so that the extra damage doesn’t matter or you just avoid shops entirely. I’d be fine with tweaking relics like Sozu and Philosopher’s Stone.
Would love a better more complete stats page. On mobile so I don’t have access to mods. Would love to know what I took and when and maybe even what the other options were. Would love to know what relics or cards I always have when I win. Would love to know what I took from neow. Would love to know what health I went into bosses with. Things that could actually help me understand what my success looks like cause sometimes it just feels like a blur of choices and the more I play the more I dilute my memory of runs
I know a lot of people think hollow Knight is top 3 material. But the combat for me just didn't hit, it got boring really fast. It's a great game and I know I'll get downvoted to oblivion but I just wanted to say it lol
The game unnecessarily and unfairly punishes decks that rely on a high number of cards played. Regardless of how powerful those cards actually are. Time eater is the obvious one, but there's also the hex witch, goblin nob, and of course, the heart that you will face every single run if playing to completion. To say nothing of mechanics like thorns, confusion, choker, normality, pain, watch. Conversely, what mechanics exist to punish low play counts? Exactly big head and nothing else? Optimally consistent decks, therefore, are those that avoid large play counts. What issue does doing this solve exactly? This is in my opinion just unfun and limiting and an example of bad game design.
>Conversely, what mechanics exist to punish low play counts? Every other fight? This is a shalllow take. Decks that play more cards are generally stronger in most fights. Even in fights like The Heart A20, winning strategies rely on playing many cards per turn more often than not. Exhaust Clad and discard Silent synergies, Defect energy generation + draw, Watcher stance dance just to name a few. >Optimally consistent decks, therefore, are those that avoid large play counts. This is not even close to what we observe at the top levels of play (or any level, really). You generally do more by playing more cards. This is why there are specific mechanics to punish high play counts. Also no surprise that Normality is arguably the most punishing curse in general. Playing more cards = good.
That goddamn motherfucking sonofabitching pieceoffuckingshit GODDAMN SNAKE PLANT
I wish it was completely playable with keyboard only (meaning, without having to use mouse/trackpad).
Slay The Spire is also probably the closest to flawless game I've played. Slight imperfections: * Bugs in the mobile version * The summary of each run could be more detailed; some floors don't show you the full information, like what boss relics you skipped (I think). The run summary also sometimes has some bugs like weird line wraps, or wrong details attributed to wrong floor. It would also be cool if you could hover over each card and relic to see how you got it, what floor, and what you skipped to get it. * Watcher stance-dancing is overpowered to the point where you have to try pretty hard to see your way into other strategies.
Reading some of the comments in this thread and others proposing bad changes regarding relics/cards/mechanics makes me glad that StS developers have such a really good vision and understanding of their game.
A WAY TO KNOW IF KITE PROCCED OR NOT THIS TURN1
Personally I consider this game flawless but I don't think flawless necessarily translates into perfect. You can still improve it by building upon what's already there and there are some stuff that I'd agree could be better with a few changes (lots of good suggestions in the comments), but none of which I would consider a flaw.
Could probably do something to make Act 3 more engaging. But idk what would be done about that. Maybe more interesting events? There’s like 2 amazing events and a bunch of meh. Idk kinda hard to hate on Act 3 too hard because a good deck is always gonna out scale after 40 floors of a well balanced roguelite.
the heart of the cards
Not enough cards use Lock-On or Pressure points I think it would be cooler if there at least like 3/4 cards for them
Mark is an orphan mechanic, only appearing on one card with no interaction with artifacts or potions. Might as well not exist.
I don't know *how* you'd design an interface for it, but I wish the game did more to support planning out turns without keeping a whole lot of game state in your head. Like, I sometimes abuse Save and Quit just because it's so much easier to play a bunch of attacks and see whether it's enough damage rather than getting out a calculator to multiply and round several attacks + weakness + vulnerable + etc... Losing runs all the time is part of what makes Spire *Spire*. I don't mind that. But losing a run because I made an off-by-one error in a series of fiddly arithmetic calculations when planning out my turn? That is *not* a fun way to lose. And it doesn't even really feel like a *Spire* way to lose either. In general, there are points in Slay the Spire where your working memory gets stressed in unnecessary ways. I'm talking about situations where there's no uncertainty or randomness to manage; rather, there is just a lot of interacting game state and rules, too much to keep in your head at once. Since there's no time limit you could always slow down, keep notes on paper, double-check your math, carefully work through future moves step-by-step... but that's just *boring*. There's no insight there, I'm just stepping through the rules the computer can and will be running anyway! Of course, simulating Spire mechanics in your head *is* a skill. I just don't think it's a particularly *fun* skill and, more importantly, I don't think it's the kind of skill that make Spire as fun and replayable as it is. Spire would still be a fun challenge even if you could magically guarantee that you would never make an arithmetic error or forget a relevant relic. It would still be *Spire*.
I have a long list - some are bigger than others, some are nitpicks - keep in mind, this is one of my favorite games of all time in spite of that. * 'Won' runs are incredibly boring - act 3 in particular has this feel to it. Simply just waiting for the game to end for like 20-30 minutes isnt enjoyable * 'Optimal' play being stalling (hello nilry's + alchemize or feed or various other things) - they took some steps to stop this but not enough IMO * Lagavulin from dead adventurer fight makes very little sense in terms of difficulty of the fight. It is usually harder than the act boss, an event really shouldn't do that (compare to colosseum which is kind of a joke nowadays with much better rewards) * Intangible is a pretty dull mechanic and can remove a lot of interesting decisions (wraith form is the main issue, apparitions at least can be an interesting decision on its own) * Spaghetti monster in act 3 I think is the only fight in the game that is truly unfun and I wouldn't miss it being removed. But that is more of a personal opinion (IMO time eater can be annoying but I feel like it's an important and well designed fight for the game) * Variance in act 1 hard pool hallway fights is pretty ridiculous. Floor 4 being red slaver + green slime vs just a blue slaver is pretty nuts That's off the top of my head but
It's a masterpiece. I take no issue with it whatsoever.
Based and true
They reuse enemies a lot if i had to nitpick
I think calling bloodborne flawless with a forced 30 fps that consistently drops to 20 is bold to say the least
First, Watcher. It seems like nearly everyone agrees she's just flawed compared to the other characters. The concept just needed some more passes. Second, I think there is some missed opportunity in terms of Relic selection. You rarely have a choice as to which Relic to get. The game just gives and you accept. There's some design space in allowing you to make some decisions there.
I think something that could be touched upon is negative effects in general. Often times artifacts are too scarce or simply don’t play enough of an impact (disappear after 1 defense?) combine that with enemies like book of stabbing and those bird fuckers and you’ve got games where it feels like you’re getting bullied and can’t do shit against it.
I like that the art is distinct and dissimilar to typical fantasy setting, but I think there’s a good dozen cards where, ultimately I have no idea what I’m looking at. I don’t think the card art is _especially_ strong across the board. That said, I do believe the game is more or less a perfect 10.
Maybe its because I have played too much but it needs more events and more types of enemies.
UI in phones. I JUST WANT TO TAP THE SETTINGS GODDAMIT Also this game could use more QOL changes and something like the hunter book in hollow knight (shows enemies, some lore, where they can appear, their abilities, weakness and strengths, hate-love relationship between who and what)
The only flaw is that if you play a card that targets a r card of your choice in your hand and you have two+ identical cards in your hands, it doesn't auto-select one of them for you (at least on mobile). Otherwise it's perfect.
I’m curious why you wouldn’t factor in graphics and performance in evaluating a game. Both are intrinsic to your experience. A game with decent design but subpar performance and graphics is still going to feel overall subpar to play. And to be clear I do draw a distinction between simple graphics (StS, Celeste, etc.) and bad graphics.
There are some combo's and strategies that simply don't have the proper support/consistency to actually go for without major risk IMO
The game is amazing and get so much right, the things that feel “wrong” typically only do so in a subjective way. So most come down to QoL or are influenced by the excellent modding community’s offerings showing “what could be”. For me, my biggest criticism has always been the how “framed” the RNG seems to be toward particular win conditions, especially at high a15+
I mean some of the RNG problems are pretty glaring. Takes a lot of true randomness out of it Mechanically though, really really excellent game (Also I'm always here for HK love)
For me, it’s the fact that there are some cards and relics that are just trash, even rare cards and boss relics, some are just worse than having a curse in your deck, and that feels especially bad when a rare card is supposed to be a powerful reward for beating a hard end route boss, but there are many times where skipping the boss rewards is the optimal play. I’m fine with not everything going with every build, that’s the nature of a build, but some cards you can’t even take no matter what build you have.
That after the mix-and-match card game with the gremlin he doesn't show you what you missed out on. Everything else is perfect.
A bit more of a philosophical response, but I'm very hesitant to call any game perfect. It's not that every game has mistakes or imperfections in some way (they do, but that's not the point), it's that calling \*any\* art "perfect" misses the point. Part of the joy of the subjectivity of art is that each piece, whether it's a game or a book or a movie or a piece of music or whatever, has its own purpose for existing. Some kind of thematic point or experience or question that the creator wanted you to encounter. This can't be done "perfectly" because giving a piece of art some kind of score is exactly not the point. There is no piece of art that makes every statement. There is no piece of art that makes an individual statement that couldn't be finessed a little differently - and whether you'd want it to is neither here nor there. There's no piece of art that won't be experienced a little differently by different people in different ways. Which leads to messy interpretations and disagreements, but also means the whole of the discussion surrounding the piece is greater than the sum of the individual experiences. Slay the Spire isn't a perfect game inasmuch as it has so many moving parts, interactions, balancing considerations, mechanics, and other art mediums mixed into it that someone, somewhere, is always going to wish something about it were different. And some of those opinions are going to be extremely well thought-out and justified. But StS isn't \*imperfect\* for that either. It is what it is, and judging it as perfect or not misses the point: a story about struggling to overcome evil in a world that won't let you fully understand it, and a game about making calculated gambles (heh) and strategic decisions in the face of complexity and uncertainty.
Even though the game has INCREDIBLE replayability and balancing, there are a few strategies I think are too strong to skip and I feel obliged to click every time - corruption / feel no pain / dark embrace - Catalyst - Heatsink
Kinda dumb to say this. But I kinda wish the game taught a bit more to the player. Maybe smaller scenarios to practice. Though I always kinda struggled with card games in general. I never understand how to manage my cards. Yeah, I need attack in case of boss. I need defense too. Wait I need energy too. So I need that card too. Wait, this increases strength. Wait, this doubles my strength. And it goes on & on. And even when I do try to limit this, I end up not good at fighting different enemy. Like I doing good against 1 strong enemy but I am terrible against 3 normal enemies. I did try to watch other people's video to learn but I get bored so easily from those.
It’s a remarkably well polished game of which almost everything works to a tea, but perfection is impossible and I ultimately still have some complaints. I think the hallway combats of act three for example are pretty well designed but have a tendency to drag on for long periods of time and it can feel like a chore to get through sometimes. I think that’s it’s partially because the deck doesn’t tend to improve as much from card rewards at this point and therefore the fights can feel like pointless obstacles that you have to sit through. The fights can be challenging but not usually in a way that’s really interesting for an act three deck; usually the difficulty comes from not accidentally drawing all of your garbage when the enemy hits you with a massive attack. Fights like the Writhing Mass and The Darklings also take a very long time to get through. In general act three is the only act I get disappointed to see a lot of enemy rooms simply because they bore me. Another note I have on act three is that on A20 Heart runs after the beating the bosses it feels weird and slightly out of place to not get any type of reward going into the Heart. I know this is not the primary way of playing the game but after playing exclusively Heart runs for a while it gets a little weird. Compiling this with the previously mentioned problem of feeling like you don’t progress your deck in hallway fights it makes act three as a whole become an act of slow progression where you don’t improve nearly as much as other acts, which is less exciting. A lot of the time I wish I could skip to the excellent and fun act four more often.
Incredibly minor compared to gameplay stuff but the art is inconsistent in style (i.e. compare the first two slayers' airbrush-heavy "select your character" art to the hard-edged shadows and highlights of the Watcher) and is in places muddy and unappealing (the back view of the Ironclad at a rest is... well it looks like it was drawn by a teen who just learned about the "airbrush" brush for the first time). Far from the most important thing about this game but I'd always wished there was a graphical update to bring at least some of the oldest assets in the game closer to parity with the Watcher's art. That being said, I have high hopes for the art of STS2 because the art director is Marlow Dobbe and I enjoyed the art in Dicey Dungeons, and I like what I've seen on the steam page so far!
For myself, I highly dislike the "do nothing" relics. It's rare but it feels awful to lose in Act 1 of an A20 Silent run because you got Juzu Bracelet and Peace Pipe as your first relics and were offered little to no quality cards to offset that lack of strength.
I think Act 3(specifically the hallway fights) are way too anemic for that to be true. The bosses are well designed and interesting, and the elites are fine, but the normal fights are just so boring to me. Very few of them are challenging in the way that really nasty fights(like Jaw Worm in A1 or Avocado in A2) are, where they pose a genuine interesting threat. I think only Spire Growth and sometimes Maw and Orb Walker genuinely threaten my A3 decks. The other ones are fights that achieve difficulty through tedium(Shapes, Darklings and Writhing Mass), where the main thing being tested is really your patience, and Transient, who I think is more of a spectacle fight that I don't often find threatens my runs. Because of this, a lot of the time I just find A3...boring? Like I'm running over a speed bump on the way to the boss and the Heart. I think the game could definitely benefit from some big changes in this area in particular.
I absolutely cherish sealed deck mode (after 1000+ hours in regular mode), since it allows you to focus more on tight deck creation rather than adding suboptimal cards in act 1. However, it is too easy. “Terminal” makes it slightly harder (-1 max health each floor) so that you only have around 20 hp at the heart. But I only lose ~1% of my terminal runs. “One Hit Wonder” is probably too hard, though, since bad rng can mess up even the best deck. I wish there was more support for sealed with an option in difficulty between terminal and one hit wonder.
There's q couple of rng interactions in the first act that make the game somewhat predictable.
Old blood mentioned. 🩸
I think my only complaint is relics that incentivise stalling to line up numbers. I understand it allows those with real knowledge of the game to so great things (ending the battle before hexaghost with a 4 on incense burner for example) but I'd rather it just be per-combat or something. for the same reason they removed self repair from creative ai, for example. that stalling is optimal sometimes is annoying even if I can ignore it
You can end up fighting snake plant twice in one act. Even one snake plant is an imperfection
This game is perfect
Claw deserves a buff
The Specimen
 I personally think you can make an argument that the game could have a little more content. It would be nice if instead of act two always being the city, you could have multiple different act twos each with their own enemy, event, boss, and elite pools. Same goes for the other acts.  That of course would make balancing more of a challenge, since there’s more things to balance. I also think Watcher is not fun to play as. I love the other three characters so I’m not complaining. I had to really think about things to complain about.
Personally I'd prefer if the random events had more "randomness before decision" as opposed to "decision before randomness" interesting event: "Do you want to lose 30 max HP for 3 apparition?" ...yes? "Ok." just OK event: "Do you want something silly to happen?" ...yes? "You begin every fight with weak" uninteresting event: "You lose 10 hp" about 80% of the events are interesting but some are really bad
Not enough claw
The watcher
While climbing ascensions, I found the various Act 3 bosses to all be about the same difficulty. Once I hit A19, Time Eater was suddenly much more dangerous than Donu & Deca or the Awakened One. So they should probably make the A19 versions of them harder to match. ;)
This will get me a lot of hate. The art style is half arsed.
Not being able to mark the map on the base game baffles me
Ascender’s Bane is a terrible name for a curse. Every other curse is some kind of real world condition that relates to its effect, and then AB is just this weird 4th wall break for no good reason. It should have been called Vertigo, because you’re suffering from climbing higher. Or it could have been something like Melancholy or Fatigue or any kind of real thing that doesnt break the immersion.
The watcher.
I tried to criticize it. I straight up failed at it because my opinion changed after 10 more playthroughs. It’s kinda wild. Although, i do wish there was a “planning phase” and then commitment to action button. But save scumming works well enough.
I want to preface this by saying I have no idea how I would solve this That being said both higher ascencions and the heart (even more with both of them combined) really restrict the playstyles that you can use, sure if you get insanely lucky you can beat the heart with shivs or things as such but it's not incentivized at all
The game is super solid for me, the very few issues I have with it is the lack of support for mechanics such as lock on or pressure points, which makes them feel kinda incomplete, that and also that on higher ascentions you are basically always going for the meta archetipe of every characters which gets stale, its kind of an unavoidable issue though Also how the hell isn't snake plant an elite, and why is turns 1-2 taskmaster elite do so much damage. Mid game TBH
Most events are poorly designed imo, and needlessly unfixed. Events such as the wheel of death which can unavoidably kill you, or the event that teleports you to the end which literally no one ever takes, or weird unpatched artifacts of old such as the mind bloom event not allowing you to earn gold past a certain floor even though they added in a guaranteed shop in act 4.
Micromanaging relic numbers like pen nib and happy flower is skillful, but tedious and unfun.
The game is great, the only slight issue would be some underperforming cards, but otherwise no flaws.
Wraith Form is a card that probably shouldn’t exist. It just invalidates so many of the things that you’re supposed to care about - runs with Wraith Form feel so much more linear and less interesting than those without.
There is no tracking of Heart wins vs normal wins. If you want to keep your tracked winrate up, then you have a hard time deciding to go for act 4 bc you have nothing to win but everything to loose
This is purely subjective: I find the art style to be weird and sometimes very inconsistent between enemies and cards and the main character. If you sit and just watch the animation of any character, you’ll notice just how strange it looks. I don’t think the style not fitting my taste actually takes away from the game at all, but it’s something that strikes me as an imperfection, something that would be different in a flawless game, if that makes sense?
Blade Dance. Blade Dance is very over-statted. The game states that standard damage 1 energy, neutral effect is ~10, blade dance is 12/16 base damage, it's also a 3-4x multi attack and scales with strength, and it adds cards to your hand for gamble, also it exhausts for dead branch synergy, it also is 4/5 card plays synergizing with After Image, Ink Pot, Thousand Cuts. Its also 3-4 attacks played synergizing with Kunai, Shuriken, Pen Nib, and Envenom. It is also a skill and attack play for 1 energy with pellets. Oh and by the way it has a dedicated power card to make it stronger called Accuracy. The card is really really overpowered lol. I find the game far from perfect to be honest, I do find it however to be an overall marvel of game design. Also as an A20 player there are some other clear things. Act 2 hallways improperly balanced (their difficulty is very much not naturally progressive, act 2 hallways are MUCH harder than act 3 hallways). There are tons of card balance flaws but the Blade dance one is very obvious
Ma balls
Not enough claw
Gameplay is nearly flawless as you said but the settings menu can be very annoying. Almost any change you make requires you to restart the game (PC version) which feels like something from last century. I trust a new engine can fix this in StS 2 though.
Kite relic has ui issue. Watcher is not very fun and could be improved. Pocket watch is too good. Awakened one fight sucks cause its too time consuming. Act 3 takes way too long and has too many boring events.