Review: Slay the Spire (Nintendo Switch)

Several weeks ago, I deided, on a whim, to play Neoverse via Xbox Games Pass. I was quite surprised at how accessible the deck builder game was, and thoroughly enjoyed the combat and rogue like elements. When researching the game after-the-fact to see what the dev team and community consensus about the title was - I came across many references to Slay The Spire, which was the game that Neoverse heavily borrowed from, apparently.

I decided to test this theory, and remembered that once upon a year or so in the past, I purchased this game on my Switch while it was on sale, and consequently, never played it. At all. So I loaded it up.

Slay the Spire gently introduces you to the themes of brutal rogue likes such as Darkest Dungeon (oh, how I lost so many hours on that game!) and combines it with deck building mechanics.

It's an engrossing, challenging game that forces you to get better with each unsuccessful run. Not only do you learn more about the game mechanics as you progress, but you also get buffs, bonuses, and boosters that carry you through the game with a little more cotton wool than the prior failure.

There's three characters to play (just like Neoverse) and each has two distinct styles of gameplay you can pursue, or you can elect to hybridise between the two styles. As a result, just like the game's dungeons - there's heaps of depth and replay value. No fights feel like a grind, and the fact that you get to choose which way to travel through the dungeon, knowing what is coming next (A merchant, a monster, an elite monster, or a mystery, which could be any of these) - gives the game a greater sense of strategy and control.

It's a fine title, with excellent accessibility. The game holds your hand for the first few runs, introducing the new elements gently with an unobtrusive tutorial and plentiful flavour text. The rest, is up to you.

There's synergies that work so incredibly satisfyingly well, but like all trading card games of this style, you need to hope that your deck is drawn in the correct order to enable you to do what you want.

RNJesus plays some component of your measure of success, but you do not get any "free wins" because of the Random Number Generation that flows around this game's loop.

Kit up. Engage in combat. Scrape by with some loot. Try to heal. Buy stuff at the merchant. Hope you get positive totems (totems are items that give your character passive abilities as they traverse through the world - some are negative, and unhelpful) - and get as far as you can before you succumb to the overwhelming waves of monsters out to eat your face, your armour, and everything else you decided to carry with you on your dungeoneering trek.

Controls are well thought out on the switch, and there's no frustrating button arrangements or ergonomic nightmares to be had with this title. It's good, solid, intellectual fun, with a darker slant than Neoverse which doesn't get quite as dark as Darkest Dungeon.

Give it a shot, you'll have a blast for a few hours, I'm sure!