[eterm]

Calling it a deck builder is misleading and I think puts off people who might otherwise enjoy it.

Sure, the abilities are card-shaped and there are drawing mechanics, but it doesn't really play like a deck-builder at all.

I think the main differentiator for me, and where I thin Slay the Spire sets it apart from normal deck builders, is that the enemies you're fighting aren't playing by the same rules. The enemies don't have cards, or decks or similar abilities.

Because of this, the enemies can be really thematic and varied and have interesting mechanics and don't need to be balanced around playing by the same rules as the player.

As a consequence it doesn't feel like a deck builder to me, the abilities just happen to be card-shaped.

Add in the relics which are one of the more important parts of the run, and really the skills involved aren't at all like other deck building games.

But yes, huge recommendation from me too, definitely the best rogue-lite game in years. (~450 hours played for me, and probably twice that watching it on twich).

[hnick]

The enemy intents is an amazing feature and definitely turns it from a card game into a puzzle game. Every turn is a puzzle to solve, it's great.

[gambiting]

I played it for about 5 hours and I just don't have any motivation to keep going. The trickle of new cards is super slow and I don't really feel like much depends on my skill at all. But I also have friends who rave about it, so maybe it's an acquired taste thing.

[chongli]

It's a very challenging game that exercises different muscles than other games, especially if you've never played a deckbuilder before. One of the hardest things to get used to is the fact that skipping a card reward is often the best play. The key insight is that every card taken decreases the probability of drawing all of the other cards in your deck.

Another tricky aspect to the game is that any given card may be great in one deck and terrible in another, to the point where taking it makes your deck worse. Strong players (such as jorbs, whom you can find on twitch) tend to lean very heavily on the card remove feature in order to get rid of bad cards.

There is definitely a luck component to the game but skilled players are pushing that boundary every day. Winning streaks on ascension 20 (the hardest difficulty level) are possible and always growing.

[hnick]

I'm nearing 500 hours on StS and I still have so much to learn. Approaching it as a deckbuilder can definitely be a noob-trap - anyone who has played MTG or similar is very tempted to build into archetypes instead of understanding that you have to deal with the problems at hand with the solutions you are given, because you can't force the game to give you what you want. Taking a "will be good later" pick is nearly always a problem, often because it reduces your chances of reaching "later".

Funnily enough a really thin deck can also be a problem. If you have 15 cards and Nemesis adds 5 burns, you're in trouble without a way to handle that. Instead of thin or fat, the best way to think of it IMO is consistency (draw and exhaust help this).

I really like how each Act tests different strengths and exposes different weaknesses. A20 is tough but rewarding.

[eterm]

I completely agree with this, although as new advice "thin your deck" is good advice because new players don't remove strikes nearly enough, and the "too thin" problems only really hurt when you're doing act 4 and on higher ascensions.

On lower ascensions you get far fewer status cards added, and if you're a new player you probably don't have act 4 unlocked.

[hnick]

Yes definitely. "Remove cards" and "you don't need to take a card every time" are both good early tips.

There's definitely a lot of depth that you have to unlock over time. I sometimes watch Jorbs on YouTube as background noise and he'll often think over a single turn for 15 minutes or more. I don't have that patience.

[ppseafield]

Indeed the first couple hours seem a bit tedious. I will say that the Ascension difficulty mechanic makes the game quite challenging at higher levels but scales quite well. And skill is definitely required to be successful in upper levels.