Before you serve your friends a plate of invisible fries, you need to hear about the chaotic launch of Kebab Chefs! Here is my review of this incredibly buggy but surprisingly fun cooking sim.

Somewhere past 250 relics currently exist in this Early Access build, and the vast majority of them are forgettable stat sticks not worth a second thought.

A giant flower growing out of a bone pile offering to trade your health for gold and relics is exactly the kind of decision Act 2 loves to spring with zero warning.

Stumbling into a knockoff shop in Act 3 looks like a joke at first glance, until it turns out to be one of the most profitable optional encounters in the entire game.

Getting picked as Decider in Act 3's courtroom event feels like a throwaway flavor moment right up until refusing the job turns out to be a genuine death sentence.

Walking into an Unknown room expecting a free heal and instead getting locked in a tent with a fortune teller demanding gold for a game of blind minesweeper is peak Slay the Spire 2 event design.

The safety of a post-boss loot chest is gone, replaced by a pantheon of strange deities offering massive power in exchange for your sanity.

A full health bar and a mountain of block mean absolutely nothing the moment this fight's timer hits zero.

Getting killed by a boss that keeps running away and hiding behind rocks might be the single most humiliating way to lose a good run.

Every other boss in Act 2 wants to kill you with damage. This one wants to talk you into doing it yourself.

Want to break Mega Crit's punishing RNG over your knee? Here is exactly how to unlock and use the Slay the Spire 2 developer console to cheat your way to the top.

Walking into Act 3's final boss with a perfectly tuned deck and getting hit with 99 stacks of Weak before you've played a single card is a special kind of humbling.

Clearing Act 3 for the first time doesn't mean the game's over, it means the actual difficulty curve hasn't even started yet.

A three-headed mutant that resurrects itself twice is exactly the kind of finish line the Spire would design.

The item pool got a real overhaul in the sequel, and a lot of the old instincts about what makes a relic strong don't transfer over cleanly.

Progression in this game isn't a single XP bar anymore, it's a sprawling Timeline made of individual milestones called Epochs, and ignoring that system is why your card pool feels thin five hours in.

Underneath the redesigned chassis, this is still the same math-heavy spellcaster who punishes anyone trying to button-mash their way through a fight.

Half of what makes the Regent frustrating to learn has nothing to do with his cards and everything to do with players trying to run two builds at once.

The Ironclad ignores most of what makes this sequel punishing, mainly because his starting relic heals him after every fight whether he deserved it or not.

She's got no healing, 70 HP, and somehow still tops my Slay the Spire 2 tier list.