Slay the Spire 2 Review (Early Access, April 2026): The Spire Is Back, and It’s Already Better

I’ll be upfront: I went into Slay the Spire 2 expecting more of the same. Screenshots looked familiar. The UI looked familiar. The Ironclad standing there with his sword looked very, very familiar. And honestly? That’s still mostly true. Mega Crit didn’t try to do something radically different.

They just did it a lot better.

After about 25 hours across all five characters, through the post-launch balance patch and the partial rollback that followed, here’s where STS2 stands in April 2026 and what you should actually know before buying it.

What’s Actually New In STS2

Let’s get this out of the way first, because every review at launch danced around it: STS2 is not a massive departure. The core loop is identical. You pick a character, climb a branching map, build a deck from card rewards, and die. A lot. Then you learn something, run it back, and die slightly less.

What’s changed is everything around that loop.

The three original characters, Ironclad, Silent, and Defect, are back with reworked card pools. The two new characters are where STS2 does something worth paying attention to.

The Necrobinder is the standout. She’s a glowing skeleton necromancer with a companion called Osty, a floating giant hand that takes hits for you and can be buffed into a primary damage source. Her signature mechanic is Doom, a stacking debuff that kills enemies when it rises above their current HP. The result is a satisfying slow-burn playstyle where you’re building two parallel threat tracks at once: your own cards and Osty. She’s the most immediately rewarding of the new characters to pick up.

The Regent is trickier. He’s an arrogant alien royal carried around on a throne by two suffering servants (the visual design alone is great). He operates around Stars, a second resource that carries between turns, and the Forge mechanic, which builds up a floating sword to deliver massive delayed damage. He rewards patience in a way that can feel frustrating until it clicks. The learning curve is real, and some players love him from run one. Others, myself included, are still figuring him out after 25 hours.

Beyond the new characters, the Epochs system is worth calling out. Each Epoch is a lore drop tied to a new piece of the Spire’s history, unlocked through run completion. You get new cards, new relics, and actual context for the world. It’s a small thing that adds surprising cumulative meaning to what used to feel like isolated runs.

The Spire itself has been rebuilt floor by floor. New biomes, environments that feel like actual places rather than reskinned corridors, new bosses, new enemies. The presentation jump from STS1 is noticeable. Smoother animations, better art, more personality in every encounter.

And then there’s co-op.

Co-Op: Actually Good, With Caveats

Four-player online co-op is here, and it received serious design attention. Mega Crit didn’t bolt it on.

You and up to three friends share a map, coordinate routes, watch each other’s fights in real time, and pass potions between players. There are co-op-specific cards that only appear in multiplayer. Some builds create cross-character synergies too, where one player inflicts a debuff that a teammate’s card is specifically built to exploit. Solo play can’t replicate that.

A few things to know before you invite your friends:

• No public matchmaking. Private lobbies only. You need to already know who you’re playing with.
• If someone leaves mid-run, their character just stops. You either save and quit until they return, or abandon the run. Mega Crit has acknowledged this limitation.
• Enemy HP scales with player count. Everyone hits together, but so does the enemy. Targeting coordination is actually necessary.

Play with friends who know the game and it’s one of the best ways to experience it. The strategy conversation that happens between rooms is half the fun.

The Balance Situation

Steam’s recent reviews for STS2 currently sit at 77% positive, down from 95% overall. That gap exists because of a single balance patch.

Beta patch v0.100.0 (opt-in only, not the main branch) took a hard pass at infinite loop strategies. The most contentious change was to the Silent’s Prepared card, previously a zero-cost card that let you discard one card and draw a replacement. The patch changed its cost and modified the draw-discard cycle, making certain infinite combos significantly harder to execute.

A few things worth knowing about this:

The patch was on a beta branch that players had to opt into. The main branch was untouched. Some of the negative reviews were filed by players who hadn’t even played the patch. They were reacting to the announcement.

The frustration makes sense. People who buy into early access specifically to find and exploit powerful build lines don’t love seeing those lines pruned days later. Mega Crit’s counter-argument is that they’re trying to keep the game readable and avoid degenerate patterns that make every high-level run look the same. Neither side is wrong here.

What I can tell you is that 25 hours in, across two patches, the game has felt rewarding and playable throughout. Balance in early access changes. That’s the deal going in.

What STS1 Players Should Know

If you put hundreds of hours into the original, here’s what to actually expect:

The first few runs will feel like muscle memory. Same energy economy, same block/attack/power card types, same campfire decisions. You’ll probably notice the familiar rhythm before you notice what’s different.

The differences creep up on you. The new bosses don’t play the same way. The new Ancients system, which replaces the old boss relic structure at the start of each act, reshapes your run in more complex ways. The card pool for returning characters has been reworked enough that old instincts will occasionally betray you. Ironclad players especially: some mechanics you relied on have been redistributed to other characters. There’s relearning to do.

The Watcher is not in the current game, and Mega Crit hasn’t officially said whether she’ll show up at any point during Early Access. That hasn’t stopped the community from speculating. Threads on r/slaythespire and the Steam forums are full of theories about her return, with some fans convinced she’ll come back in reworked form, and others pointing to a mysterious new character teased at the end of the Early Access trailer as a possible clue. Nothing confirmed, but if you’re a Watcher main, there’s at least enough chatter to keep the hope alive.

Some reviewers have come away feeling that STS2 doesn’t push the genre forward enough, given how much deckbuilders have evolved since the original launched in 2017. Balatro, Monster Train 2, and others have moved in new directions. STS2 largely ignores those directions and goes deeper on what it already does. That’s a reasonable criticism. It’s also a reasonable design choice. Where you land depends on what you wanted from this sequel.

What Mega Crit Still Has to Ship

STS2 is Early Access and Mega Crit has been transparent about what’s missing. Confirmed from the Steam store page and their Neowsletters:

• No true ending yet
• Steam Achievements are disabled
• Act variations for Acts 2 and 3 are in progress. Only Act 1 has variation currently
• Some placeholder art still visible in the Timeline
• Mod support is coming but not yet live
• Full release is estimated 1 to 2 years from March 2026

Mega Crit confirmed on the Steam store page that the price will increase after Early Access. At $24.99 now, you’re buying in at the lowest it will be (Aside from the discounts).

The Verdict

Slay the Spire 2 does what it set out to do. It takes the best roguelike deckbuilder ever made and adds more of everything that made it good: sharper presentation, two fresh characters, co-op that actually works, and a progression system that makes repeated runs feel like they’re building toward something.

The balance controversy was loud, but keep it in context. It was a beta patch on an opt-in branch. The fact that 13,000 people cared enough to leave a negative review over card changes in a single-player game shows how deeply invested this player base already is. That’s actually a decent sign for a game still in Early Access.

If you loved STS1, this will take a lot of your hours. If you’re new to the series, you don’t need the original first. This is a complete enough experience on its own, with more on the way.

The Spire is open.