Slay the Spire

Didn't think i'd like this game, saw it on sale saw tons of reviews with 1000+ hours. Bought it, played 40+ hours in two weeks, bought it on mobile, thinking of getting a SteamDeck to play it with mods for eternity. One of the most addicting rogue-like card dueling games I've ever seen or played. 10000% recommend.

lemme be clear, STS is great and for literally anyone. heres a quick breakdown of characters: Iron clad is gigachad, silent is your edge master weeb, Defect is big brain moves, and watcher is that one friend who never really got parented and so their a cry baby if anyone ever says their wrong. like i said, its for just about anyone.

and if you're not vibing with the 4 main characters to choose from...have no fear. The amount of mods to choose from are genuinely unreal. 100's of new cards, characters, potions, events, ect...the list goes on. You want to play silent and have you character do a back flip every time you play the card [back flip], there's a mod for it. Want to skip the 2nd act and go into a jungle safari? there's a mod for it. You get stuck on loop after loop of tiktoks with the music Deja vu in the background and all of a sudden you want your character to be a car that literally drifts on enemies? there's a mod for that. Want to play another game within this game in a card format? yup, there's a mod for that.

Between the base content (which in its own right is fantastic) and the amount of modded content people have made for STS you have the chance to spend countless hours in a game that is genuinely a blast to play and is under $30.

P.S. Defect is king and if your maining him just know I salute you. Watcher mains are still crying in the corner.

Amazing game. Wish I could erase it from my memory and relive the experience.

Loads of replayability.

Very, very good deck builder.

A lot of choices to be made, and random nature does not go in the way of game play, there is always a winning combination, tough choices, good amount of strategy, and pure fun once you hit that magic combo you always wanted.

Somebody how loves deckbuilding will certainly enjoy this one.

I haven't played many rouge likes so I lack the vocabulary to describe what I like about this game, but I like to a lot! Also all the art is really good, and few things top killing all enemies in one turn by taking out a million knifes (shout out to shiv builds. I hate the Timekeeper with a passion.)

I still haven't reached level 20 on any decks. This game is great and has a LOT of replay value. I just started getting into mods and there are some really put together community made decks and mods out there adding to the replay value

Amazing game. There was a bit of a learning curve for me but once you get the tricks it becomes not just about winning but about building crazy decks.

its a great card game where you can do the stupidest shit in existence and say, how the fuck did that work.

or do A20 heart

This game has a fun and challenging learning curve where you can have fun trying various strategies at lower levels and over time learn how to make use of what you get and make decisions that can lead you to greater heights at higher levels. Since every run is unique the game has a lot of replayability and is an amazing game on its own. On top of that there are many amazing mods that can enhance the game in so many ways, allowing for multiplayer, new characters, enemies, cards and more to further enhance your experience.

Amazing game, Even better board game, superb mods. I love the curse and gunslinger mods personally. After nearly 600 hours of play I will only stop constantly playing this once Slay the Spire 2 come out.

My first 500 hours in Slay the Spire were hours I didn't pay for.

I was a kid in highschool, broke, there was only 3 characters in the game, Vine was alive and Tiktok had yet to really get a foothold in the world. It was a better time.

And I... sailed the seas. Its not something I'm ashamed of, and if you are down on your luck, still a kid, or just don't feel like jockeying the Steam refund policy to see if you like a game, most game devs would prefer thats how you play their game over buying a copy of dubious origin from a reseller.

Why even bring this up, you might ask? Well, it was only last year that I realized how much had gone into the game, and that there was a 4th character that I had no clue even existed. And, against my better judgement with regards to my ever disappearing free time, I picked up STS again to try that 4th character. And then I started playing the other characters too. And then I started ascension runs.

Never in all my days have I encountered such a well crafted deckbuilder. Being singleplayer, STS doesn't care if you find a combo that breaks the game and makes the enemy unable to interact with you. Slay the Spire doesn't try and limit your ceiling, it dares you to go infinite, it wants you to go infinite. My favorite part of the game is how it encourages offense while putting more than enough wrinkles in your path that you can't just go full zerg rush. Fully indexing into any one thing without accounting for the counters puts you on the path to losing.

Learning the Watcher, the illusive 4th character I didn't know existed as it got added after I put my 500 pirated pre-purchase hours in has been one of the most enjoyable deckbuilding experiences I've had since... well since I played STS the first time.

The main thing I was trying to do on the Watcher that was so fun was going infinite. There was a really interesting play pattern you can take where you reset a lot and chop your deck down to like 3 powers and then your 2 card combo that goes until you win. The fun part is that by taking your deck down to so few cards, any enemy that adds cards to your deck in any way is immediately the most threatening thing you could encounter. You also have to make illogical decisions in order to get to infinite. You skip like 90% of cards you are offered, you make sacrifices for some things that would never make sense in a normal run. And that is just ONE way to play the game on one character, completely ignoring everything that comes with ascension runs.

And all of that is also completely ignoring everything that isn't purely gameplay. The art is amazing, the soundtrack is amazing, the sound DESIGN is amazing, and there has never been a better time to get into Slay the Spire because there is a sequel that looks like its amping up everything about the first game and giving more of what is undeniably one of the grandpappys of indie roguelikes. That would've been a silly statement 10 years ago, but there are so many indie roguelikes now that it can be hard to stand out among them.

Slay the Spire has stood the test of time and remains at the top of the tower. Play this game, and if you can, uh, pay for it while you're at it... I did. Eventually.

https://store.steampowered.com/curator/42143664/

Slay the Spire is a fun mix of roguelike and deckbuilding that makes every run feel exciting. The choose your path map design is a great touch, letting you strategize your route and decide how risky or safe to play. It’s full of variety and smart mechanics that makes it a true gem. Can't wait for the sequel!

From when I first picked it up, I could not put this game down.

Some games are a struggle for me to spend time in and take a bit of effort to push me to play them. This game is the total opposite - I have to pull myself away from it to go to bed on time, and even then I'm still thinking of the run I've paused half way through.

Everything about the game is so well done - the slick animations, soft art style, enemy designs and the gameplay loop is so crunchy that I just want more. Easy to start playing, easy to understand, easy to plan next moves, complex enough to build totally broken strategies with each of the four well crafted characters and play styles. By the end of each run, you feel totally overpowered that some builds had me laughing out loud with how broken they felt, but all satisfying to put together.

I will undoubtedly return for more of this game and will definitely be playing the sequel when it is released. The only reason I'm putting this down is that I want to keep going with my backlog to play other games as well. So I played until I unlocked all cards and relics from each character and didn't proceed with the Ascension difficulty levels last the first few.

The fact that this game was built by two people makes this game an even more impressive achievement. Crazy good game.

Very fun, casual game. Lots of value as it increases difficulty as you progress for new challenges. I play too much.

Pretty standard deck-building roguelike. Runs great on Mac OS and is a lot of fun.

Warning: Time will disappear as you play this game.

I got hooked 10 minutes into the game. Easy to understand but hard to master. I like such a challenging game.

Highly addictive and lots of variation in how you can play the game! Very highly recommend picking it up if it's on sale, but if you have been thinking about it for a while, absolutely worth it at full price as well. Not necessarily the easiest game, and some stuff can be left to RNG, but over time you begin to learn how to limit or negate or plan for those factors. It's so easy to get back into a run and trying to get as far as possible that the deaths don't really matter.

I don't understand why this game has overwhelmingly positive reviews.

From the very beginning I felt that this game is worse than Darkest Dungeon or Tainted Grail because of the lack of the home hub and TOTAL dependence on the outcome of the randomised events that you encounter. In DD or TG you could directly affect every run you will be having by available amount of upgrades that you invested in your hub or investing it in your starting characteristics, hence it straightly did raise the probability of winning (or at least easing the pain during your run for sure). Here you can't directly affect it, the whale in the start of every run offers you very limited choices that I can't say really helpful most of time. You can't change your starting deck (except limited whale offerings), you may hope that some useful cards will be dropped in the nearest starting mob fights (or in the shop), but that's all: no controllable fun for you. No direct tangible intervention into RNG at all. Some of the relics that you may encounter are completely useless, so game doesn't really help you, but effectively messing with little there's left of what the player has any control over

This game is great I love it, its difficult and fun to anyone thinking of buying its worth buying

Slay The Spire is the type of game that will keep you up all night. Unlocking characters and cards is a challenge, but it's the type of challenge that keeps you coming back run after run after run. With 4 different heroes, multiple unlocks for each different hero, plus daily runs, custom runs, and on PC...mods. This game is highly re-playable and enjoyable.

This game is sick. You feel like a god when you get the right synergies. You've heard about this game already: everything they said was right. Its a masterpiece

A masterpiece ,gameplay ,soundtrack ,boss ,etc.
everything in game is perfect.

Very enjoyable game if you like card game mechanics.

I've bought this game 4 separate times (5 if you count the board game). I'm trash, i think my win rate is like 5-7%, but I keep playing and selling my life to it. I'm not kidding, I got a defect tattoo a couple months ago, and I plan on getting all 4 of the OGs. Can't wait to lose my life to the second one.

It has mods so you can put googly eyes on the enemies while they destroy you :3

Rogue-like deck builder style combat. Sounds like it could be complicated, but investing your time into this game is amazing and leads to many a fun combo builds.
My only reason I might suggest not to get this game is because Slay the Spire 2 has been announced, and I'm certain that game will be just as amazing!

Even after only playing for 60 hours this is easily one of my top 3 games of all time. At times it feels like this game has almost infinite depth in terms of strategy and planning with so many different combos and synergies. I can see why it is a genre-defining game in the deck-building genre.

It’s a fun, brain-tickling game. It feels really good when the stars align, and so far I’ve never lost without feeling like there was something I could have done to have a better chance.

"Steam deck compatibility verified" the game is literally soft locked at the main menu because they didnt bother making the on screen keyboard compatible with typing in the name of the save file... 0/10 im not the first one to complain about this, its been a year. fix the game or remove this from the store front titled "great on deck" you fuck ass devs

secretly addicting
this game is a sleeper game in your library. once you get the gist of the game your brain kinda disconnects and just sends card left and right, this game is amazing to pass time. I find it funny that in my case i play this game doing a lot of decisions unconsciously, as the immersion is right in.
regarding the upcoming sequel, it has been announced that it will just be the same except with more. Which i am more than fine is, sequels dont have to be a complete spin on the series and a completely different game than the original. The art rehaul i feel is necessary as the artwork of this game is not eyecatching.

Since Slay the Spire 2 was announced, I finally got this game on sale and played a bunch of it. I can definitely see why it's many people's favorite indie game and how it got them into card video games, or may even be one of their favorite video games, period.

While it seems simple on the surface, with only four characters to play and three acts with randomized events, there's a surprising amount of replayability due to the randomized cards, bosses, and potential builds for each class.

The gameplay feels like a mix of a turn-based JRPG with trading card game effects featuring lots of cool mechanics. While I needed to watch some guides to "properly" figure out how to beat Act 3, or consistently get past Act 2, I can get a groove of how the "meta" is.

That said, while I like this game, the RNG aspect is a blessing and a curse for me. While it ensures no run is the same, I don't like how my desired cards and relics are gated by RNG; it makes me lose motivation to play after beating Act 3 with a character once.

While I had fun learning Ironclad and Silent, they only felt fun just for learning the game. I ended up only beating Act 3 with Defect and Watcher, as they are the only ones not confirmed to be in the first iteration of Slay the Spire 2. This is unfortunate since Defect is easily my favorite of the four; power cycling orbs just always looks and feels sick.

I know many people can easily get hundreds of hours into this game. I felt that when I was still working to beat Act 3 once, but once I "learned" the class, I didn't feel much motivation to keep playing.

Maybe it can be fun to replay down the line. I enjoyed learning the game during the slightly less than ten hours I played. For now, I'll just wait for Slay the Spire 2 and master Ironclad and Silent there, along with whatever the two new classes are—maybe coming back to Spire 1 if Watcher and especially Defect never make it to 2.

I'm a dad. I have various dadly duties that pull me away from gaming a lot. Slay the Spire is short, digestible, and I can leave it whenever I need and come back when I can without worry of missing out on something. Plus. StS2 is coming out soon. Lots of bang for your buck here so if you enjoy deck builders and roguelikes plus have a multitude of dadly (or momly) duties, this is where it's at.

This game is laughably unbalanced. I understand the difficulty and not being able to win runs easily - but the lack of healing and if you do get to heal, you are under powered for almost every fight. Unless you get 1/150683 good runs where you can actually get relics what whatnot.

This game COULD be really fun if they took some scaling from balatro or solitaire or freecell i don't care, I mean this game is unless your going to custom run and add all the cards that allow you to actually deal damage. It doesn't make any sense that a boss can hit you in 3 turns for 18, 18 ,51 - (playing as the first character, ascend 1) - i mean unless your health would scale or you could level after a fight more often, but along with the ridculous amount of debuffs that you get hit with by every enemy while tickling them to death.

But if you play with the silent, oh you can poison and hit with damage per turn, DOESN'T HELP when the boss can hit you for 6x7 on the second round - how the fuck are you supposed to gain 42 shield in a turn by this point... if you get there you either had to put so many offensive cards and take out defense to out DPS (damage per turn though) to kill them before they kill you. This game needs a total rework from the enjoyment perspective. Baltatro, Dead Cells, Blasphemous I/II, Hollow Knight, Elden Ring, etc. are all examples of decent power balancing. This game is acting as difficulty is good because you're not supposed to win every run (no shit, but at least make it possible and not totally due to lacking any sort of good items. I would recommend playing literally any other game. Every random begining boss relic is horrible as it takes away basically you're only guaranteed healing (1st character) and every fight is the same thing, debuf to ensure you either take more damage, can't shield, or can't dispel damage.

If you value your time over anything, this game does not reward you for playing, it rewards only on random pick up and horrible enemy designs. If you want to make everything able to one shot you, you have to have a system where you can either not tank the damage (i.e evade, escape, or scripted at the beginning with a future re-encounter,etc.)

I will say, custom mode is miles better than the original experience, but in my opinion, I would rather not have to play the game or research to understand what the modifiers are doing to actually enjoy the experience - this should be a modifier the way Hades does it, play the game as intended and add these insanely ridiculous modifiers (heats) to make it more challenging and engaging.

Love this game, I can always go back and play it anytime and it is always fresh and fun, absolutely would recommend.

One of my favorite games of all time! Beautifully crafted for chaotic dungeon crawls that randomize every run., highly recommend.

After 900 hours i can say this game is addictive, hard and fun. I understand the repetition and the heavy RNG isn't for everyone, but if you don't mind doing the same thing over and over again you will eventually get there.
Get used to losing, it'll happen a lot and you'll hate each time and you'll love to start again each time.

It is a fun and easily repetitive card/ deck builder. I can definitely say while simple, it is challenging and easily comparable to other challenging roguelikes. While it does not have as much gameplay and unlocks as other games in the category, it has great modding compatibility and opportunities to become one of the individuals who makes a mod for the game. 9/10

Very fun quick card game. Would love if there were some rogue like elements to it.

Amazing game with great replayability and learning curve

Great game. The minimalist achievement was a fun challenge.

Slay the Spire has been an absolute blast. The card mechanics are a perfect blend of strategy and creativity. I love how every run feels fresh because of the endless combinations and synergies you can discover. Each character is so distinct, not just in playstyle but also in their design and personality. Whether it's the Ironclad's relentless power or the Silent's poison finesse, they all feel alive in their own way. And the lore? It’s subtle but intriguing. The mysterious world of the Spire pulls me in, leaving just enough unanswered to keep me hooked. It's the kind of game that keeps you saying, 'Just one more run,' but you know you're lying to yourself. Can’t recommend it enough!

Amazing. Was told to get this game from a friend and within the first couple runs i was hooked. Bought it on my switch and phone as well. I would absolutely recommend StS. So excited for 2 to come out!

Great time waster: quick learning curve, engaging game play, and endless replay-ability

Turn based roguelike with good replayability overall fun game thats worth its price

This game is the gold standard for roguelike-deckbuilders. All the others are judged against this.

Game play is solid.

Replay-ability is huge.

Learning curve is smooth.

Skill cap is high.

Mod support is HUGE. (I have over 200 installed and I don't know why my game still works).

If you like roguelike-deckbuilders and you have not played this, you need to.

If you have not played roguelike-deckbuilders before, but you enjoy short turn based games or you enjoy trading card games, this game is going to be right in your wheelhouse.

Fine game but I didn't find the gameplay so enjoyable that I wanted to keep beating it... I beat it one time each with all the characters and that was enough spire slaying for me.

Good fun while it lasted but I felt no incentive to tackle the higher difficulty tiers.

Some games with the rogue-like system or rogue-lite concept allow you to complete each run relying only on your skills, such as Dead Cells, BPM, Hades, Gunfire Reborn, etc; you can complete these games even without using any random items. However, when it comes to a card game, as in Slay the Spire, players need to rely heavily on luck rather than their skills, resulting in occasionally confronting inevitable loss (even with your brain functioning 100%). So, your skills do not matter much in this game. If you are fine with this concept, Slay the Spire is a card game that can steal many hours of yours, I can guarantee you that. Well, it is not as challenging as Darkest Dungeon, especially because you can start a new run with fresh air in this game while in Darkest Dungeon, you start a new run with depleted resources. If you are into a card game with some challenges, Slay the Spire is one of the best.

---{ Graphics }---
☐ You forget what reality is
☐ Beautiful
☑ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS

---{ Gameplay }---
☑ Very good
☐ Good
☐ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't

---{ Audio }---
☐ Eargasm
☑ Very good
☐ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf

---{ Audience }---
☑ Kids
☑ Teens
☑ Adults
☑ Grandma

---{ PC Requirements }---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☑ Potato
☐ Decent
☐ Fast
☐ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer

---{ Game Size }---
☐ Floppy Disk
☑ Old Fashioned
☐ Workable
☐ Big
☐ Will eat 10% of your 1TB hard drive
☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it
☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data

---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Just press 'W'
☐ Easy
☑ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Significant brain usage
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls

---{ Grind }---
☑ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☐ Isn't necessary to progress
☐ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ You'll need a second life for grinding

---{ Story }---
☐ No Story
☑ Some lore
☐ Average
☐ Good
☐ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life

---{ Game Time }---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☐ Short
☐ Average
☐ Long
☑ To infinity and beyond

---{ Price }---
☐ It's free!
☑ Worth the price
☐ If it's on sale
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money

---{ Bugs }---
☑ Never heard of
☐ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs

---{ ? / 10 }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☐ 6
☐ 7
☐ 8
☑ 9
☐ 10

---{ Author }---
☑ https://vojtastruhar.github.io/steam-review-template

Slay the Spire is as fun as it is frustrating while being equally unfair and stingy with it's RNG mechanics.


I know I have less time in this game than most. That being said, I just finished my first run tonight and just...Didn't really care that I finished it. All I was met with was a screen basically telling me I had to suffer through 2 more times with 2 different characters to get to what I'm assuming is either the "true" final boss or another act entirely, which I'm not entirely a fan of.

There's not a story to follow that I can see. The combat becomes very monotonous and at no time did I ever think "WOW, THAT WAS COOL". Once you have the cards you need (whenever they DO decide to show up), you're set so long as the RNG puts them in your hand when you need them, which it rarely does until you're about to die. And then you die and all of the cards you've collected just get thrown back into the void for you to have to collect all over again.

I can understand the appeal of the game. The art is amazing. The characters you play as all have their own unique mechanics (even if the first two are very boring in my opinion). The enemy types are varied enough to prevent the game from feeling completely boring, though I got sick of seeing the same repeat "elite" enemies and actively avoided the elite rooms during Act 1 after a time. It's really fun, but it just isn't for me.

But the game lacks, in my opinion, any incentive to continue playing after you finish the first run. Yes, I know, for some reason there's a competitive scene with the leaderboard and everyone trying to 1-up each other, but really, that's not the appeal of a roguelike in my opinion. The appeal, for me, comes from constantly getting new things. Not finding new things every 5 failed runs. And out of the 3 measly cards you unlock, they may be complete garbage and you'll never actually want to use them. The crazy thing? If you care about 100%ing the game, you'll have to commit time to playing with each of the 4 characters for multiple hours to "level up" and unlock the 3 cards for each level up to get EVERYTHING.

Now, moving onto the RNG of this game...It's whack. It's probably the worst RNG I've ever seen in any game that I have ever played. There are times where you'll be breezing through. Not a thought in your head. Other times, the game will put you up against something you literally cannot beat because it refuses to give you the cards/relics/items you need to win. I hate saying it's "unfair" because life isn't fair, but this is a video game. Video games should be for fun, not for testing people's patience. If I wanted my patience tested, I'd go play Overwatch. And I hate that the RNG is what this entire game boils down to. It's 100% luck of the draw (no pun intended). If you don't get good cards, good luck with winning. If you don't get good relics, just throw your next fight to get the XP and restart your run. This isn't one of those games where you can just magically win through trying harder. If the game doesn't give you what you need, you will fail. If you think otherwise, you're just delusional.

And don't get me wrong, almost 150k positive reviews shows that many people love this game. This isn't me telling you to NOT buy it. This is simply what I experienced in my very limited playtime with the game. Your mileage, views, thoughts, and feelings may vary.

Edit:

So, I've continued playing a bit, and I wanted to add something:

I figured out why I dislike this game so much. Making me get rid of my cards when I have 3 expendable energy per round (unless you use potions or cards that give you energy, which are few and far between) is why I absolutely hate this game. It completely removes any element of strategy that this game could possibly claim to have, because there is no strategy to be had when you wipe the slate clean every 10 seconds.

You can rarely use all of the cards in your hand, and you may want to save something for the next round, but because the game forces you to give up your cards each and every round (unless you're using the final unlockable character and then expending energy to retain cards for your next round or you get the relic that lets you keep your hand), it's completely and utterly pointless. There's times where you're forced to take damage because you literally won't be given shields to mitigate any damage. There's times where you'll get only shields when the enemy WON'T attack on that round. Just let me keep my cards. Every other card battler does.

Then there's the caveat of keeping your cards with the relic...You also keep all of the cursed cards/unplayable cards as well, which, unless you use a card that lets you exhaust them or you use the potion that lets you get rid of cards in your hand, you can get completely stuck with a bunch of nonsense in your hand.

The more I play this, the more I realize the devs never really had a thought in their head and just continually threw things into the mix that made the experience worse for players who are just trying to have fun with the game. There are so many QoL things that should be in the game, but just aren't. It's really quite sad.

Maybe my RNG is especially bad, but I'm erring more on the side that the game just wants me to fail without giving me any rewards to force me to play and fail even more to give me mediocre rewards after banging my head against a wall for hours, without giving me any sense of accomplishment.

At least in other card battlers with a roguelike element (Inscryption, for instance) you get at least some sense that you've done something, even if you fail. That's the reason why even when I failed at Inscryption 20 times before I finally beat it, I felt okay. Because after each run, you get the opportunity to craft a card that will help you in the next run. With Slay the Spire, I get nothing but a headache because it takes 10 runs to "level up" and get access to a whopping 3 new cards that may not ever show up because each person has 95 cards that are special to them ontop of whatever other random nonsense that the game decides to put in your deck. The average run is anywhere between 15 to 45 minutes for me so far. So it's taking 2+ hours for me to even see any kind of progress, which is just abysmal for any kind of roguelike game.

And those 2+ hours of progress are generally within the first two Acts. I spend so much time thinking and planning, and the more I do it, the more annoyed I get, because you can plan for everything and the RNG will still screw you over.

As of writing this review, I spent 2 hours getting to the second boss trying to get as much health and taking as little damage as possible, and the RNG still screwed me over because he decided to pop his insta-kill move and the game didn't give me a shield or any cards that allow me to draw extra cards. But the hand before that, I had 3 shields, why could I get one shield to mitigate even a little bit of that 52 damage that comes off of that BS move?

The crazy part? The first run that I ever completed took 55 minutes. Didn't plan for anything, just kept throwing my deck at the wall until I made it through. Now, no matter what I do, I can't get past the second boss, and that's after an additional 3-4 hours of playing. The only difference? I changed the character I was playing, but there's NO way in hell that has made that much of a difference given it's one of the first characters the game expects you to play with.

How can you make the RNG in your game THIS bad? I've played gacha games that aren't THIS bad with RNG.

One of the most well balanced games ever made. Every single aspect of the game works so well with each other that, by the 30th time a seemingly inconsequential relic or card morphed into a completely different playstyle, I started to think that the devs planned every possible interaction in the game. It's no wonder this made the genre explode, it is the gold standard.