cavalcade

I have put about 5 or 6 hours into it now, and I like some characters more than others, but it's just so slow and I feel more often than not, you can just be destroyed by a bad draw. Also, Monster Train 2's thing where it shows you damage calculations before triggering the end of your turn, really is the way to go. When you have hundreds of variables, I can't really be arsed working out if I'm 1 point of damage short from killing something.

It's also quite samey. It's a flat plane, it's your deck and some things to kill. Every round. MT has the spatial aspect, which means it's almost like two games in one. Slay 2 could have made the ordering of the enemies important, but it isn't really. It also shamelessly pilfers mechanics from Magic the Gathering, which I guess is inevitable after 30+ years of that game exploring every card game design space, but MT/MT2 don't just have to rip off card game mechanics as it has the spatial aspect to it (so, for example, you can have a deck based on moving the enemies around - card position in modern MTG isn't a thing).

It is also strangely unfinished, with placeholder art and no achievements. Which is all very early access, I know, but seems almost like it's in there just for the sake of being in there. Like, most of it is hyper polished and then it has MS Paint art on a few bits. Mmm. And aspects to the UI are just painful - the unlock screen should never have got past a first design meeting. It's woeful to navigate on a pad and is just a wall of useless shit I don't care about. MT is clear about what progression unlocks what, and it's all shown on a normal screen for normal people.

At its core it's the sort of game that's always never going to be shit, just by virtue of the action of playing cards and doing stuff is always going to be fun. I just think it's pretty disappointing after the first game and feels more like a DLC or reskin. The fact the first character you can play is the most boring one from Slay 1 also hammers this home. I'd put it in the same bracket as Balatro. Fine. Reasonably enjoyable. But Monster Train remains the absolute king of this genre by a mile.

Play - Slay the Spire 2
I never really got on with the first Slay. I think it's glacially slow to get going each round, and a lot of the builds and cards are just really dull. Like Balatro, I don't mind it, but it was always absolutely overshadowed by Monster Train, which does everything it does, a lot better. But I was really struggling to get back into the Monster Train 2 DLC (I think I just ran out of steam and had reached Monster saturation point - I have hundreds of hours on it now) so I thought I'd give Slay 2 a go.

And, well. It's fine? It's very like the first one - a little more dense and with some welcome added complexity, but it's still a little stilted, stiff and nowhere near as satisfying as MT2 to play. I do like it more than Slay 1, and it suits handheld play so I think I'll give it a fair shot. But really, I still don't think it's in the same quality class as Monster Train 2 (or 1 for that matter).

Car repairs and dental work….

felt, did you crash your car again.

I haven't actually gone back to Monster Train 2 yet. I have been playing Dungeons of Hintenberg, which is on Gamepass, but I got a key for it on Steam for 79p.

I had played it a bit before, but it sorta got swallowed up by other releases. It's really, really good. Looks wonderful on handheld with a line drawn art style unlike anything I've seen before and is really charming. On the Performance graphics setting it runs incredibly smoothly on the Ally (so I'd imagine would also be fine on the Deck, and would probably really pop on the OLED one).

I didn't know I wanted to play a Swiss holiday resort themed social simulator crossed with an Zeldaish action RPG, but turns out I did. The dialogue is good, the structure is vaguely Persona-like and the enemies have a sort of gloopy charm to them. Combat is a bit simplistic until you get level specific powers that are quite entertaining.

I dunno. A bit like Eternal Strands, I feel it got swallowed up at a time there were AAA bangers being released almost daily.

Ys Seven, maybe?

It is indeed a Ys game, Ys: Memories of Celceta. Nice deductions.