When comparing Slay the Spire vs Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, the Slant community recommends Slay the Spire for most people. In the question“What are the best roguelikes/roguelites on PC?” Slay the Spire is ranked 4th while Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is ranked 8th. The most important reason people chose Slay the Spire is:
Card games usually are free to play, endlessly milking their players for money with new card releases and expansions. Slay the Spire is an exception, having only a single purchase that helps sustain its developers. This helps you to enjoy the game without worrying that your wallet is not thick enough to keep up with all the new releases. It also helps keep out trolls and heralds of the microtransaction apocalypse, which can feel really nice.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro A pay to play card game
Card games usually are free to play, endlessly milking their players for money with new card releases and expansions. Slay the Spire is an exception, having only a single purchase that helps sustain its developers. This helps you to enjoy the game without worrying that your wallet is not thick enough to keep up with all the new releases. It also helps keep out trolls and heralds of the microtransaction apocalypse, which can feel really nice.
Pro A great mix of genres
A roguelike that has deck building might sound weird at first, but it's a surprisingly fun concept. You can select one of classes(decks), choose a path on the spire, fight monsters using your deck, get new cards to improve your deck, and even fight bosses. There's enough strategy, depth, and randomness in all of this, which can make it really satisfying when you make a great deck, win a difficult battle, or get extremely lucky.
Pro Intriguing world
Slay the Spire features a desolate land with just a massive tower called "The Spire" looming over it. No one knows why it's there, why it's inhabited by otherwordly creatures, and why heroes from far away are drawn to it. This makes progressing through the game a lot more interesting because you're gradually uncovering this mystery through the eyes of your character.
Pro Simple character creation with different classes
There are a few different classes available at character creation, each one has it's own abilities that are different from the others. Creating one is quite simple, which makes for a fast way to get into the game and start playing.
Pro Gold Standard for roguelikes
The controls and replayability have been refined over the years. Whether the player chooses to play with Tiles (graphics) or console (ASCII) the game works well even when choosing online or offline play. Either way there is just enough interface to play the game.
Cons
Con Limited to just singeplayer
There's no multiplayer or co-op in Slay the Spire. While competitive multiplayer in a roguelite can sound absurd, co-op would've been a lot of fun, especially with a friend.
Con Some cards can feel impractical because of randomness
There a really good cards(usually involving exhaust and poison mechanics) that don't really work by themselves, requiring you to have another card for a synergy effect. If you only have one of the cards, it can feel like dead weight that hinders your current playthrough, making it even more frustrating when you can't find a matching card because of randomness.
Con Not F2P
Premium card games have yet to prove it is a successful model.
Con Have to fiddle with controls
Being that the game uses an emulated keyboard on screen it works best on tablet, though is not really the preferred method (but is the only one) since it takes up screen space.