“Slay the Spire II” in early access is far from being the biggest or flashiest title of 2026, but it was one of my most eagerly anticipated games of the year. I wouldn’t necessarily call the original “Slay the Spire” one of favorite games, but it is almost certainly the game that I have put the most hours into with around 524 hours of playtime on my Switch, plus a couple dozen more on PS4. (Some might scoff at that figure as “rookie numbers” as I know plenty of people rack up thousands of hours on individual games, but that’s never been my style.) Part of why I put so much more time into “Slay the Spire” than most other games has to do with how replayable it is and how it easy it is to pick up and do a run anywhere at anytime, whether as second screen material, while I’m riding public transit, or in bed as I drift off to sleep. But another aspect of that time-suck is how fine-tuned and addictive the gameplay is. These days, it seems like there are countless rogue-lites coming out all the time, including more rogue-lite deck-builders than you can shake a stick at. Plenty of these have some fun things going for them, but nothing has ever dethroned “Slay the Spire” as the definitive rogue-lite deck-builder… until, perhaps, “Slay the Spire II.”
If anybody could outdo the specific goodness of “Slay the Spire,” it would probably be the team at Mega Crit returning to the formula. And while the game is a huge success by most metrics, part of me does think that they stuck a bit too close to that formula of the original.
These are my thoughts from the very beginning of the early access process, which the devs have said will likely last between one and two years. A lot is bound to change, but it does feel like a mostly complete game already. You will get your money’s worth in terms of content and there’s a pretty good level of polish on display even if there are still some placeholders to be found here and there. I picked up the game on release day and have put about 12 hours into it so far across both my Mac and Steam Deck, and in that time, I’ve played all of the characters and won a few runs. Even if this was the 1.0 release, with this kind of game, it will take much, much longer to experience all that “Slay the Spire II” has to offer, hence why these are impressions rather than a full review and why I’m not scoring the game at this point.
In short, I think “Slay the Spire II” is really great in isolation but a little too samey to fully impress as a sequel. A lot of content from the original game returns alongside the new content, and there wasn’t much done to distinguish that returning material for a second go around despite some updates and refreshes. There are new characters (which are excellent), but 3/5 of the cast are repeats from the first game. There are some fun new cards and trinkets to change up those repeat characters, but the majority of their cards from the first game are back, as are most of the trinkets from the first game, and those repeat characters largely rely on the same strategies and synergies as before. All of this can lead to runs with those characters where you could practically forget which “Slay the Spire” you’re playing if not for the differing enemies — the enemies are mostly all new with only a couple of the usual suspects returning, and there’s a great amount of variety to them, including the bosses and elites.
In this sense, “Slay the Spire II” is the type of sequel that essentially serves as a replacement for the original. It’s additive nearly to a fault and hangs onto too much of the previous game while adding in its fun new ideas, characters, cards, trinkets, and mechanics. If you haven’t played either “Slay the Spire” game, then the second one is the definitive game to play as it renders the original largely obsolete by comparison. Nearly all of “Slay the Spire” one is in “Slay the Spire II,” minus one of the four playable characters (who I wouldn’t be surprised to see added later on). For newcomers, this isn’t any sort of a problem, but as someone with hundreds of hours in the first game, I was hoping for it to feel more different.
“Slay the Spire II” takes a “bigger and better” approach, and while it does succeed in that regard, I don’t think it quite does enough to earn its status as a sequel — especially one released nearly a decade after the early access release of its predecessor. From my first run until a dozen hours in, I’ve been having a lot of fun and feeling that same addictive pull, but I can’t shake the feeling that “Slay the Spire II” feels closer to a DLC or, honestly, even a big update than it does to a full fledged sequel. Sure, the art and animations are stronger across the board, but I still wouldn’t consider the game’s visuals all that impressive — the original provided a pretty low bar to clear on the presentation front but sung on its other strengths. Even the addition of multiplayer, as exciting and complex as it may be, isn’t a big enough game changer to make “Slay the Spire II” feel like a totally different entity from the original to me, though I’m sure it will be for some.
It’s possible that the game will come to distinguish itself more from its predecessor throughout its early access period, and I hope that’s the case. I do, however, worry that the bones of the two games are so fundamentally similar that only an incremental improvement is possible rather than a total remedy of this issue of feeling too samey, but it’s definitely possible. All that being said, ” Slay the Spire II” is a great game in its own right, and I don’t want to undersell just how good it is if you can forgive its minor lack of ambition and innovation. The two new characters have mechanics that are unique to them and are fun and exciting to use, along with compelling sets of cards that provide a significant number of options. These are the two that I’ve found myself going back to most often, largely because they feel the most different, for obvious reasons. When the first game launched into early access, it only had two playable characters. Over time, the roster doubled to four characters. If the sequel follows suit and adds more characters that are as fun and distinct as the two new additions over time, then I could see “Slay the Spire II” fully earning its status as a sequel (one which happens to also include the bulk of its predecessor within). Regardless of my hangups with it, I will certainly be sinking plenty more hours into this game.
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