(Image credit: Mega Crit)

I've beaten Ascension 10 on every character other than the Necrobinder and Defect (and their day is coming), and I'm having a much better time than I did trying to climb the difficulty ranks in Slay the Spire 1.

Slay the Spire 2 has—among some of my coworkers—been a bit of a contentious little game. Back when it first came out, my fellow writer Robin Valentine wrote that Slay the Spire 2 felt more like a remake than a sequel after beating it with an eight year old deck, calling it "a really impressive late expansion pack." Still good, but treading over old ground.

And while I do agree with Robin that a lot of the same decks can win those earlier ascensions, the more I play, the more I'm deeply taken by Slay the Spire 2 in a way that I was never absorbed by the original—which I went back and played a bit of before this and just didn't have the same zest for.

Slay the Spire 2 is samey, sure, but it's deceptively so.…