Recent reviews by Kriggit

Oh god I have poured so much time into this game without realizing it...
This is pretty much a strict upgrade to the first game; if you haven't played the first and are interested in Slay the Spire but with tower defense elements, you can just pick this one up.

I think the only place this falls short of the original for me are its flavor and setting. Despite having more character interaction and story cutscenes, it feels like there's way less to learn about the new factions and characters. The levels of heaven feel more samey than the visually distinct layers of hell from the first game.
This literally does not impact gameplay at all, but I am unfortunately the type that reads every card's flavor text; I felt rewarded for it by MT1, not so much in MT2.

Anyway, I just needed to get that off my chest, this game is really good, please make sure you set aside an hour or so if you're going to start a run because time WILL vanish on you.

Cute! Not huge or too complex (100%ed after about 20 hours), but this game very much captures the nostalgic appeal of gradually amassing a collection of trading cards. The game's biggest strength is that you're rarely locked into a strategy. You can (usually) see the elements of the next opponent, and can change your entire deck between every battle, which very much encourages making a dragon hoard of cards.
Other pluses are the adorable critters (with artist credit!) and clear element identities. If the cards had flavor text, it would hit all of my weaknesses.

The biggest miss is probably the sheer randomness of battle turns. You can see what moves your opponent will make, but sometimes an enemy will burst you down with 3 attacks on turn 1 before you can set up, and other times they'll use a card that does literally nothing. Losing to a fluke is made all the more painful by the fact that you lose a critter if you lose a battle, and then have no choice but to try the same battle again.
Other minor gripes are with a lack of polish in some areas. I had a few overlapping menu glitches, and hiding the ability to click a button to move through the binder (instead of swiping) in the settings menu is awkward when there are so many pages to flip through.

Overall, I enjoyed my time with it! If you don't already like roguelike deckbuilders and don't have any connection to the feel of old playground TCG gameplay, this probably won't make you fall in love, but it hits the mark pretty well for me.

Shoutout to the genre of sad anime girl having a bad time over and over and over again.

I could see this game not working for everyone, but it definitely works for me.
As a roguelite deckbuilder, it's incredibly competent. Difficult, strategic, flexible, and flavorful with plenty of emergent synergies and moments that require thinking on your feet. As a story, it's way more gripping than I expected, with dramatic twists and deep characters that literally brought me to tears a few times.
Those elements can sometimes step on each other's toes, though. Nothing kills a flow state like needing to not play the card game for an hour while the story happens; nothing kills a story's momentum like getting unlucky during a climactic boss and needing to go through another run, fast-forwarding through scenes that had you engrossed the first time.

If you don't mind the artstyle or sitting through some cutscenes, there's genuinely a lot to love here. Call me an investigator because I'd die for Lucy.

"The fox friend, cheering! Over."
"Legs? Over."
"No legs. Over."

Maybe bring a neck pillow for the mood whiplash for the first hour of cutscenes. After that it's a pretty cute, if short, time! The game never gets too hard, but there were a couple of puzzles that made me shake my head softly upon getting the solution.

In some ways it was clear that this was a labor of love, and in some ways it's clear that this was the team's first game. Looking forward to seeing them create more, for sure.

The moral of the story is to disregard authority and jump headlong into things you know nothing about. Kingship and lesbianism await you.

In almost every way, this is a lot of nothing. But it's free nothing that gets you 2 achievements in 3 to 30 minutes, and that's just good value. Also there are boobs I guess.