This Slay the Spire 2 run was my first properly recorded attempt with the Silent after I already fumbled an earlier attempt by not recording it, so I ended up quitting that run early.

I end up leaning hard into poison almost immediately, partly because the opening card options pushed me there and partly because, well, poison is fun. A lot of the early run is me trying to figure out the new stuff on the fly, planning around shops so I can remove strikes, and repeatedly saying I need to stop taking every poison card right before taking another poison card anyway.

I do that a lot Slay The Spire. And probably most video games too. And board games. Saying I should do one thing then doing another. Oh wakasm…

The deck gets strong pretty fast, but it also felt messy for a while because I had too many cards, not enough removal, and I kept running into situations where I was clearly still learning what some of the new relics, enemies, and boss mechanics actually did.

The run was good (we won), but it was also full of little mistakes, accidental clicks, and me realizing one turn too late how something worked. I definitely made life harder on myself a few times, especially with the Golden Compass choice and some card pickups I did not mean to lock in, but the poison shell was strong enough to carry a lot of that anyway. By the end I still get the win, unlock more Silent stuff, and come away feeling pretty good about the character even though this was very much a “learn by almost throwing” kind of run.

Not a bad start with the Silent at all but I will need to tighten things up if I want to beat higher ascendancies.

I only did one run so far (Ironclad) but my first impression was that it almost feels more like a remake of Slay the Spire than a full sequel… the map works the same, the energy system is the same, combat feels basically identical. Not a bad thing at all since the original is one of the best games ever made.

Even in just one run though there were clearly new enemies, events, and cards popping up. The art style also looks great in motion. Characters are bigger and the animations make fights feel a bit more lively.

Difficulty also felt a little different. While I don’t have thousands of hours like others, I have hit Ascendancy 15 on some characters in the first Slay The Spire but that didn’t stop me from losing on my first run in Act 3.

Some events also seem a bit more involved. I found a quest egg that turned into a cool 0 coloress attack.

I haven’t tried coop yet so I can’t comment on that.

Overall it feels extremely familiar but in a good way. If you like Slay the Spire, this basically just feels like more Slay the Spire… which honestly is exactly what I wanted.

Here is my winning run for the Grim Vampire in Dungeon Pages Underboss.

This was the finale of my Legacy of Yu campaign, and I came into it one win away from finishing the whole thing. I had six wins and one loss, a very strong ongoing power from that one loss, and a couple of harder canal cards now mixed in from the previous game. I also knew going in that there was still a bunch of unrevealed campaign content I might never see if I won here, which gave the whole session a slightly weird feeling right from the start. Like, I wanted to win, but I was also kind of curious what the game had left hidden.

The actual run ends up feeling a little easier than I expected for a finale. There are still some nasty barbarian moments, but nothing quite spikes the tension the way I thought it might. I get the win, finish the campaign, and then spend a good chunk of time at the end reflecting on what I liked, what I missed, and whether I mostly got carried by that one really strong power. My honest take by the end is that I had a good time with it, I’d probably call it a solid B-tier game for me, and I’m totally fine with it being the kind of campaign you play through once and then put away for a while.

Now I have to write up a review and decide if I want to keep this game or not.

This was game seven of the campaign, and I came into it pretty sure I was close to the finish line, even if I had to spend the first minute reminding myself what number game I was actually on (they sort of blend together over time). I recorded this one while half dressed for Halloween because my kid was going as Mario and I was testing out my Bowser gear, which honestly gives the whole video a slightly goofy energy from the start. The actual game state was a lot less goofy though. The four-worker barbarians were out, the campaign pressure was still climbing, and I was trying to keep the win streak alive without doing something dumb.

This one got tighter than I expected. At one point I thought I had an easy win lined up, then realized I was about to lose because I wasn’t paying close enough attention to how many barbarians were about to show up. I do recover, I do get the win, and it ends up being one of those sessions where the ending is way closer than it looked a few turns earlier. After that, the campaign throws one more twist at me by making the canals themselves harder, which actually feels like the kind of change that could matter more than some of the barbarian upgrades did.

This was game six of my Legacy of Yu solo campaign, and at this point I was starting to feel like the whole thing might actually be under control. I had already won four and lost one, the food shortage challenge was finally behind me, and the big question now was whether the newer barbarians were actually going to be scary enough to slow me down. I also spent a little time at the start talking about the One Player Guild solo voting top 200 list they do every year and some general channel stuff before getting into the run.

The session itself ends up going really well. Once I got my engine moving, it felt like I had way more room than I expected, to the point where I was basically wiping the board clean by the end. There are a couple spots where I second guess whether I handled the discard pile correctly, but the run still felt strong the whole way through. I get another win, which puts me one step closer to finishing the campaign, and then the game answers by adding a new set of mercenary barbarians with four-worker requirements.

So yeah, the campaign is still trying to increase it’s own difficulty but you can also remove usually half of the new challenges so there is sort of a roller coaster style of challenge.