894 hours in Slay the Spire 2: 12 strong opinions from people who've played too much

Slay the Spire 2 is already the most-played deckbuilder in Steam history — 574,638 concurrent players at launch obliterated the genre record — and PC Gamer and GamesRadar+ editors have now collectively sunk 894 hours into its early access release. They've pooled their sharpest takes on what works, what doesn't, and what the game needs to fix.

The panel — PC Gamer's Evan Lahti (426 hours, 441 Silent runs), Harvey Randall (212 hours, A10 clears on every character), and GamesRadar+'s Austin Wood (256 hours, A10 streak on every character back to back) — covers a lot of ground. One of the loudest complaints is Act 1: too punishing, too passive, and quietly balanced around Ironclad while every other character just eats the damage. The argument is that mandatory chip damage forces constant resting, makes aggressive pathing pointless unless you spike hard in the first five floors, and pushes Neow relic picks toward explosive options like Silver Crucible. The fix proposed is simple — trim some of Act 1's difficulty and push it into Act 3, so more runs actually get off the ground with meaningful decisions.

On the brighter side, the panel singles out Shiv spam paired with Sly as the most satisfying basic build in the game. Shiv alone synergises with a long list of relics — Shuriken, Helical Dart, Ornamental Fan, Kusarigama, Letter Opener, Nunchaku, Pen Nib, Cloak Clasp, and Kunai — meaning even a loose pile of two or three of those turns every three-Shiv turn into a cascade of strength, dexterity, and bonus damage. Sly compounds that by letting you cheat energy management entirely, playing a dozen cards in a single turn. The Act 3 boss Aeonglass punishes heavy Shiv commitment, but Sly doubles as a counter to the curses it scatters. The build is described as the Toyota Camry of Slay the Spire 2 — nothing flashy, but it wins at Ascension 10 and feels great doing it.

Slay the Spire 2 is still in early access, so the structural complaints about Act 1 pacing and difficulty distribution are exactly the kind of feedback the developers at Mega Crit can still act on. With the game already rewriting genre records and a panel of editors still logging hours months in, the appetite for refinement — and more opinions — clearly isn't going anywhere.