Slay the Spire 2 has clawed its way back up Steam's concurrent player charts, boasting a 24-hour peak of 213,852 and over 116,000 live players as of recent checks. That's no small feat for an early access roguelike deckbuilder, especially one that hit an all-time high of 574,638 at launch in March. Yet beneath the numbers lurks a review score that's less a triumph and more a cautionary tale: recent ratings sit at a dismal 33% positive from 48,799 reviews in the last 30 days, earning a 'Mostly Negative' tag.

The culprit? MegaCrit's April 17 major update (v0.103.2), which ported beta branch changes to the main game—including balance tweaks that nerfed infinite combos and certain boss interactions like the Doormaker fight. Chinese players, whose primary feedback channel is Steam due to platform restrictions on X and Discord, unleashed waves of negative reviews, dropping all-time scores to Mixed overall. Switch to English-only, however, and it's still Very Positive at 93% from 54,061 reviews. The pattern echoes a March beta patch backlash, where devs quickly reversed some nerfs.

X chatter paints a picture of polarized decks: some hail the high player counts as proof the core loop endures, while others decry the review bombs as legitimate gripes over disrupted strats. MegaCrit's newsletter acknowledges the fixes and polish, but the schism suggests early access balancing remains the spire's trickiest ascent. When even a sequel to a deckbuilding legend can't escape the nerf wars, perhaps the real roguelike element is the feedback loop itself.