Yeah. Isaac is a really rng-reliant game but once you start getting the hang of it and to understand how everything works you can do crazy stuff on first floor to secure at least one devil item or two angel items if you're lucky enough, and from there its just snowballing, which is pretty cool because instead of feeling frustrating because its based on luck it feels rewarding because you can finally put the pieces together enough to come up with amazing rewards
Absolutely, had to stop watching after the StS part already. He somehow thinks that knowing what to do is not skill related. If I watch a new player play his first game of StS I can easily see that 50-70% of the choices they do are objectively wrong. The learning curve is astronomically high in StS and my dude says it's luck dependant, while it most likely has one of the lowest RNG factors in a Roguelite ever.
This is probably going to be a very ignorant question since I haven't played much of Slay the Spire or Spelunky or Noita but I always found game knowledge to be a lil' weird compared to executive skill-not to discredit any top players that put their time and effort into mastering what the games are about, it's still impressive, but if a game's main thing revolves around simply not falling for newbie traps or habits to be proficient at it, what's exactly stopping dedicated people from just looking up detailed guides or getting advice in the community and becoming just as proficient as the people that play the game much more in days? It's definitely unfair to deem this kind of thing as luck, but at the same time, if there's just a strategy guide online that just makes a new person's life a thousand times easier once read by the book then it gets into a massive grey area.
@@lurikitsune2384 for me it is mostly the ability to evaluate a new power or item in the context of your current run and then make decisions about what to do with said item. None of these games are a vacuum, so there are few items that are just flat out bad for the player. Knowing the game and how certain things work together are very important, just knowing what items are generally pretty powerful isn’t always enough.
Skill in ROR2 is tied to the luck. By manipulating the odds using probability or the order in which you get items you are significantly more likely to get strong runs. E8 & not using lunars is one of the harder challenges out of all the games I’ve played.
I feel ror2 is much more skill based than luck. Most characters have a way to use most items. As long as you know how to stay alive while dealing damage efficiently you are fine.
the thing is there's so many ways to manipulate the rng that you can't really say it's luck reliant. printers, shredders, recycler, multishops, soups, and bazaar all give you opportunities to mitigate any bad luck you might have. and even with that you could still beat monsoon while getting subpar rng if you're good enough. and by "good enough" i don't mean insane 500 hour players who can beat hades while purging all their boons and intentionally making the worst choices or any of that crazy out there pro player stuff. i wouldn't say it's completely skill but it's really close to it, and i definitely disagree with its rating as more luck than skill.
@Aaron King TLDR; Haha big toxic bouncy ball go brrrrrrr So the flat stone means you shoot out what is effectively a tear that skips across the ground like a rock on water bouncing multiple times which explodes in a little burst of tears or damage in a sense every time it lands due to haemolacria while the mysterious liquids makes a little toxic zone underneath where it lands each skip which enemies will be harmed if they stand on it which is all to say that’s it’s a pretty decent combination that works well due to the presence of the stone to activate the haemolacria and mysterious liquids effects multiple times.
@@michaelolivermorgan3513 however, during the beast fight, (semi spoilers here) this is useless because there is no floor during the entirety of the fight, making your tears useless cause they cant bounce
@@mellowmishXD it was even worse when haemolacria just went flying before the changes too meaning if you went in with it you’d have to stick to the bottom to even hit anything as well
slay the spire is atually quite skill based. First thing to point out is that, no matter the ascension level, you almost always benefit more from a small deck. On ascension 20, or high ascension in gerneral, you will plan which route to go through the map. Choose whether no not to fight elite. Choose weak common card to get through the first map till you find one of the vital card or relic. Some streamer, brkstar at bilibili is able to have a 100 streak on ascension 20 on both defect and the watcher. The skill matters a lot in slay the spire.
yeah when i heard the whole "you need to have a larger deck to avoid ascender's bane" point i paused the video so paralyzed by confusion sts does have luck as an element, obviously, but i think it's genuinely one of the most skill-based turn-based roguelikes out there, especially at higher ascensions
I think his definition of skill is way too much about "technical execution" rather than strategy and planning. In a roguelike! The genre about choices and progression. Slay the Spire might not have mechanical gameplay in the fights, but that's because the whole point of the game is to draft and build a deck. That's the mechanic of the game. Slay the Spire is all about taking the right decision at the right time, and that's a thing you can only do through your skill. It isn't just about knowledge about what card is strong and which card is weaker, it's about choosing the best path to take in the map according to your class, deck and boss. Then adapting to the situation you're in and perhaps change your path. Keeping in mind that the boss of the act might hard counter your class so you have to adapt to it. The fact that some cards like Corruption are run defining doesn't mean you instantly win by picking them, because even with an OP deck you'll eventually have to reckon all the bad decisions you took earlier and die. The argument about not being able to pick the last boss is just bad imo. The Silent is arguably the worst class in very high ascension count because you HAVE to face 2 bosses instead of 1 in Act 3. That means most of the time, you're gonna face the Time Eater which supposedly hard counters every Silent strategy and makes it very hard to beat in high ascensions. The Heart also hard counters the Silent. Well, there are people with HUGE winning streaks with Silent in Ascension 20 beating the Heart as well. If the game wasn't skill-based, then no one would be able to get winstreaks in A20H with the Silent. It IS skill based because no matter the luck, if you don't prepare enough for what the game has to offer you, you'll die, and that's called skill.
The thing i like the most about sts is the fact that common and uncommon cards are on average better than rares. The watcher barely needs rares to win since stance swapping builds are so strong and probably requires the most skill out of all the characters. You get a guaranteed rare at the end of every boss, so generally its better to be very generalised with deck building in act 1 unless you get a strong synergy. The fact that sts is rated with higher luck than isaac is pretty crazy considering 80% of items in isaac will just not really help at all. Most boss items are garbage and so many treasure room items are virtually useless that i’m so much more tempted to flat out reset on isaac than on sts.
Honestly in my opinion Hades is definitely one of the easiest games of the genre I’ve ever played because it only took me twelve runs to get to the final boss whereas in dead cells I find myself regularly struggling to get to the final boss even though I’ve beat it once before. But like you said, Hades really just has something special in the story department and as a fan of Greek mythology myself, it really is something special.
To be fair the comparison should be 0 boss cells vs base hades and adding like 5-10 heat per boss cell really If you do that they are not so different in difficulty
@@lucintis5295 Not at all. Where Hades' heat stops giving benefits and only hinders you after 20 heat, Dead cells continues to empower you with more scrolls, more routes, and the Legendary Forge at every BC
interesting, I'm the opposite - took like 30+ tries to get to the last Hades boss, then got dead cells and literally first-tried every single boss besides the last one
I think luck and variety are two different things that are equally important to acknowledge. Both are made by RNG but a game can feel like a different game each time yet it can still feel like it's all skill if everything is properly balanced, and a game can have very little change between runs besides the overpowered/underpowered loot you get, which makes it feel like a complete luckfest. I also think difficulty and skill are two different things as well, although difficulty usually means the game also has a high skill ceiling, it might not be the case if luck is involved (luck, not variety), and a game can be easy and have high skill ceiling, like 3D Mario games. I think the video is good, but calling variety luck and difficulty skill doesn't do it any favors, although you explain the definitions, people still are confused because they already have their internal idea of what luck and skill is.
One example for the difference between luck and variety I often hear is binding of Isaac. The more Items and DLC were released for the game the more I heard people say that runs started to feel similar because you either die pretty early, or you find some good Item that would lead you to survive until everything just starts exploding, because of all the synergies. In these cases there is a decent amount of luck involved but the variety may be lacking, depending on who you ask.
My problem with it is that he gives the definitions, but then when discussing the actual games he often doesn’t stick to them. Take Slay the Spire (because I’ve played it a lot). He gives it an 8 on supposedly variability, but aside from switching characters, almost every run feels almost exactly the same to me with the exception of how you build your deck, which is much more luck (getting good/synergistic) cards and relics than variability as I understand it. And a lot of the variability is by choice rather than true RNG because the game offers you lots of options, most of which also allow you to skip/ignore them. And if skill=difficulty, then I believe he massively underestimates Slay the Spire, unless he’s exclusively talking about ascension 0 with no heart fight, which isn’t really fair to call the main gamemode or the intended experience.
@@borrisderwutende7850 i hate this argument because it essentially boils down to ‘either i get an op item or i die’ meaning these people are hard relying on op items and just aren’t good enough for the skill aspects to come into play
@@Raine_Walker that is fair to say, I only played rebirth. However the argument that runs started to feel samey because many runs end in everything exploding with only a few truly unique ones still stands in my opinion.
@@supC_ I agree here to a point. I actually think STS is mostly skill based, and luck has very little to do with it. No run is unwinnable, so the choices you're presented with may seem random, but they are structured in a way that it will always be possible to win. Kindof makes the game skill based vs luck based
Complete opposite for me. I *strongly disliked* almost every single mechanic in the game - I could go on for hours about everything I think EtG did wrong. Felt designed to be anti-fun from the top down, just didn’t mesh well with me ig. Ironic, considering I’m a huge roguelike fan. Nuclear Throne, Skul, ItB, and Darkest Dungeon are among my favorites.
@@thewovenmantis6813 I’m just curious, but what are the things you mostly didn’t like. And also what are the thing you do like that makes those other games stand out for you? I’m trying to find my next roque like so yeah. I’ve played EtG, Dead cells, cursed god(not the real name but can’t remember atm), Isaac and Noita. I’ve found myself to be quickly bored with Dead cells(even after multiple boss cells) and cursed god due to the amount of button mashing. So yeah
The main thing about risk of rain 2 is that it is really easy to turn around a bad run by making the right choices, like getting the correct lunar items, scrapping and printing and also using multi shop terminals. And it is really easy to get ahead of yourself and go too long in a stage, the luck can stay the same but risk of rain 2 needs to be bumped up in skill.
Risk of rain definitely takes both skill and luck, not one or the other. (There is a lot more luck though, especially if you aren't using artifact of Command) Also, eclipse mode increases the need for skill a lot, but not as much luck.
I agree. I haven’t been able to win a lot of monsoon runs recently, and though that can be attributed to bad luck, a big factor is skill. It takes a lot of skill to manage time, get a good pool of items, and survive the onslaught of enemies.
YES, SOMEONE WHO I AGREE WITH!! Risk of Rain 2 i think is totally a skill thing, sure you get items from rng, but it provides you with a good deal of choice and ways of getting around the rng. My friend with many less hours than me struggles sometimes with rainstorm, meanwhile i can consistently get good runs on monsoon. It's just about skill. Also the person making this video I think blew the power of lunar items and to a lesser extent legendaries way out of proportion.
Risk of rain (1 AND 2) is almost exactly like Darkest dungeon. On the surface level, everything look to be luck-based and the player having to "just get a lucky run". "please, not this boss", "please this broken item", "oh no the collector, I'm dead 😢" Then, you realise it's not about luck, but how the player can manipulate the rng throught game knowledge. "Oh, this perk reduce chance of bad encounter", "this character favor my gameplay", "Oh, the collector just require to know how to deal with it then it's basically free loot for the rest of your entire experience." Yes, it's sometime feel unfair (and sometime is, because no game is perfect. DD1/2 used to have a fairly amount of bullshit but it get better as soon as the game get polished and is a reason to purposely avoid early access game if you can't deal with a game in its early stage. An excellent exemple is the streamer Wooly. Do you believe he would consistantly clear run in eclipse 8 if the game was this much reliant on luck?
As a lot of people said already i think a lot of the skill from isaac comes from knowing what you want to do with a run and whats the best way to move forward with the items/pickups you have
Slay The Spire is definitely a game that requires a lot of skill. Mechanical skill, of course not, but tons of tactical and strategical skill. You need to know what cards your deck needs to fight certain enemies should they show up (for instance, not picking up many block cards but trying to find higher-damage attacks in the beginning of a run in case you get Gremlin Nob), and to try to find those cards. Then it's a lot of risk-reward calculations, like "do I take 15 damage on this turn and guarantee to finish the fight next turn, or do I take 5 damage this turn with a chance to not kill next turn, and possibly take even more damage on the next turn?" Yes, there is a TON of luck involved, since you may get certain card/relic combinations early in the run that practically win the run on the spot (like hitting an infinite on Watcher with Rushdown and multiple ways to get into calm and wrath, namely cards like Inner Peace, Fear no Evil, and Tantrum), but the skill lies in proper decision-making for what cards and relics to add, how to spend money at shops, which paths to take, which options to choose for events, which potions to use and when, and which cards to play and in what order. Hades, to me, seems less luck-dependent in comparison. Out of what I've seen so far, the upgrades you get during a run are basically just stat upgrades, and most of the success of the run is just dependent on your skill and in-game knowledge. But of course, I don't have that many hours in Hades so I don't fully know. On the flipside, I do have over 100 hours in StS and have seen probably even more hours of StS content from high-level players, especially Jorbs.
Would be cool if you also included Noita here, I'd say that one has a high score in both: with skill you can make anything playable enough to get through the game, but put good RNG on top of that and you can achieve truly insane power levels and go on those 10+ hour, secret hunting runs
I would say it's not just skill, Noita requires much more in understanding and game experience than pure mechanical skill, like knowing spell combinations, what enemies are dangerous, and never ever touch polymorphine
@@lawro2876 Well, yeah. I think this falls under the "skill" category, a.k.a. things that depend entirely on your mastery of the game, mechanical or theoretical. The actual mechanical skill requirement for Noita is quite low as far as roguelikes go
@@lred1383 true, decision making is part of skill, even the entirety of what it takes to be good at non action games like loop hero, even in dead cells you got biome choice and build selection
@@lawro2876 u can use polymorphine to get out of the holy mountain without triggering the collapse, i've got 700 hours so far and I don't see me stopping any time soon. Best roguelike to me personally, such a satisfying yet relentless experience.
I have ~250hrs in Slay the Spire and I can say that the game is getting really hard on higher ascension levels. There is much to understand in this game and making the best decision can be quite hard. Personally I mostly play Defect and I am stuck on A17. Beating A20 is a skill accomplishment because you won't get it if you simply hope for luck and go in without much thought.
I have the most fun playing defect, but it is the hardest character at higher ascension levels. A20H took a lot of tries and took a good amount of luck for me. It's probably a 6 on luck and a 7 on skill.
@@brettmartin3529 thank you for reaffirming that I'm not bad or crazy, but defect is also my fav character and these ascenion tiers are killing me, but catching my other characters up is significantly easier
My method is to watch pro player ranking cards, relics in which they would explain when, why you should buy or get them, what they interact with and make out the best of them for the situations. Knowing the monsters' pattern is essential too.
For beating delirium without any knowledge and by pure randomness, I Can totally Say ISAAC is more a Luck based game than a skill game Once you know how works item and how to optimise every run to have a lot of it, you have more than 75% chance to win
I really disagree a lot of you BOI fans in the comments are way too salty. Yes it takes "skill"(or a quick google) to remember item combos but it's still tied to luck
@@FiniteMan1933its more about knowing and coming up with ways to gain items and controlling the items you get. Easiest example is taking a mystery gift to an angel room or the secret room for better items than if you just used it.
Spire is incredibly skill reliant at a high level. The best players in the world will absolutely achieve 60+% winrate across the board at ascension 20 with act 4 included each run (with watcher being an outlier at like 95+%). It's pretty criminal to chalk successful runs to luck.
I don't know much about Spire, but from what you just said, if the best players in the world can only manage a 60% winrate, it sounds lik it relies quite a bit on luck. The best players in the world for Dead Cells, Hades and many other games can easily get a 95% winrate.
@@The_GronneIt is 60% at A20, a ridiculously hard difficulty. Im pretty sure All those players would have an almost 100% winrate if you are talking about the base game. I don't know what difficulty you are talking about for those other games and how it compares A20 on slay the spire, but A20 is insanely hard, i will tell you that. It took me more than 218 hours playtime to beat A20 once, when luck was in my favour. But even then, my winrate was probably like 3-4%. The winrate of top players being only 60% doesn't define skill, it only defines the luck of the game. And yes, the luck element is high. What defines the skill element is the different between winrates of top players and average players, which is absolutely massive in sts. As of now, only 5% of players have the achievement for beating A20 once on steam. And even in those 5%, majority of the players would have a ridiculously low winrate(
@@The_Gronne At the lowest difficulty It has been reasonably calculated that a win rate of over 99.9% is possible with all four characters. At the highest difficulty of Ascension 20 it goes around 70%/55%/60%/90% win rate on the characters when done optimally. Yes getting no attack cards on the first rooms and dying to forced elite enemy fight or the first act boss does happen, but good players know who to risk manage and find alternate paths if needed to get past these hurdles. So yes, luck is definitely a good bit of the game. I would have said about 4-6. Skill however is the most important factor as getting good cards doesn't just let you win. The game is not forgiving enough for that. Skill would be about 7-9
@@agenzmain6146 So if I do everything right and play as good as a TAS I win only a little over half of the time and you mean to tell me thats not rng? You can tell the difficulty of a game by it's win percentage for top players vs noob players, yes, but you can tell rng by top players vs themselves. If a player who is theoretically perfect only wins half the time that's a testament to bad game design. Just because a game is hard (aforementioned win rates) doesn't mean it isn't overly rng dependent.
The binding of Isaac is probably one of my favourite games just ahead of Gungeon, and I personally think that the main skill elements doesn’t come from dodging but more from tech and game knowledge. Like, sure, a bad player with op items will be able to do better than a good player with Isaac’s heart, but I think what mainly separates good and a bad players is the ability to make the most of bad situations, things like using mystery gift in the secret room, or using the lover’s card in that one black heart secret room.
@@bullettime1116 So true. People just are scared to try it's rework. I obliterate most runs with Isaac's Heart now that I pick it up almost every time I see it. It's just an item that takes learning how to use it correctly with great rewards for doing so.
In Hades there is definitely a reason so go past 20 heat. You unlock the last Skelly statue at 32. One Step From Eden looks extremely similar (gameplay wise) to the first 4 MegaMan Battle Network games so I'll check that out! I like the list. Skill rating feels off at times. And maybe a couple of games could have had the same scores
You got it wrong with risk of rain lol, common items are probably the most useful, lunar items are really gimmicky and dangerous, and red (rarest items) are easy to acquire since you can have 1 100% of the time on stage 4, and a lot of them are pretty bad/not useful for most survivors.
yeah i was pretty shocked by the rating he gave risk of rain. any vet player knows its way more important to PLAY around the weakness of the survivor not just bank on items to fill the gaps. And when you understand the items well enough there are dozens of combinations that any survivor can make use of. If you're sitting around waiting for specific items or printers then youre doing it wrong and yes it would feel very luck based. not to mention some survivors are way more item dependent than others.
@@EthanC1030 god my favorite part of Risk of Rain 2 was using engineers grappling hook with the common that increases the amount of times you can use your secondary. Becoming Iron Spiderman is so fulfilling and so much fun
Nice seeing NT, I totally agree. Everything feels like it's going good and then suddenly you lose 6HP to two bullets and die to an explosion. Plus, Melting is so difficult, basically requiring you to be flawless
That's exactly the reason I love NT. You're always in danger, but if you make small mistakes it's really easy to recover because of the way hp drops work. I can understand why people like EtG but I personally can't stand how small mistakes punish you so much. I like making risky plays but I feels like I'm heavily punished for taking a single hit of damage (lose out on boss HP up, the special shield that's unlocks one of the levels, etc...)
NT feels like an arcade game. Every run is just so frantic and quick, to the point where you either win or you die horribly. Everytime you die, you just wanna get back to it immediately. It’s incredibly addicting imo.
You could compare Melting and The Lost, but why do I feel like you can be best player in the world and still die as Lost to some bullshit, but can't say the same about Melting...
I believe that nuclear throne, which I agree on there being lots of skill and not a lot of luck, should have a bit more luck than it has. The mutations and weapons you get early game really decide your fate for the late game.
This is facts. Sure, you can 'beat the game' with shitty mutations and shitty weapons if you're good. But nobody really wants to do that anyway (cause it ends your run). The devs only added the ending in a later update. You're supposed to loop and go on as long as you can. On loops, builds without melee weapons are objectively worse. So not getting Long Arms is terrible. And on specific characters, not getting Throne Butt is terrible aswell. Other than that there's a few mutations that if you don't get the option to pick them it's annoying but still fine. But with either of these two, you might as well restart if you don't get them.
@@racket804 that is just one of the finales, the aim of the game is imo achieve everything, which is basically obtain every character, get hard mode, get the frog, get all crown wins, all the character skins and 100% the game.
I think slay the spire is a bit of an outlier in this list of games as it is entirely tactical and strategic, and while it doesn't test your physical capabilities, I would say that the game is much more demanding than the others on this list
@@fallongarens6734 I have 200h in sts and just under 150 in dead cells, sts at high ascension (how it is ment to be played imo) is incredibly difficult and over the course of about 1h runs you can at most make one or two mistakes before the run is dead and you really cant afford to make many small inaccuracies, Pseychie saying if you get corruption you win is just plain out wrong over asc 5, dead cells with high boss cells is very demanding do imo mostly to the time system, I have won my first run in dead cells on 0 boss cells because I just didn't see the mechanic and played slow and methodical, overall the enemies represent a threat but mostly you want to get the bosses untouched and try to only get dmg in the biomes and even then you can only afford one or two hits at most. overall sts and dead cells are both hard but (again imo) sts in high ascension is more demanding overall
@@devinloew7681 I think what you mean to say is strategy in sts is much more abstract than a side scrolling action game like DC. Like my first complete run to Dead Cells was quicker than my first victory at the 3rd boss or heart, but I needed to evaluate cards better in order to get there. In DC, I just got my first victory by trial and error.
@@NatanStarke the highest skelly statue is 32 but there is no achievement. Technically you only need 24 heat to get all of the achievements and 3w heat to get all the skelly statues
@@alwayrember193 The boom fly bridge that is trivialized ba T. Lost flight ability? Thaaat bridge? Oh nooo what shall I do, I must doge to the side! aaaaa
A little addition to his Isaac section: People have reached over 1000 winstreak, not just 100. And that as Eden, a character with which you could spawn on 1 (technically 2, depending on incoming damage type) health. You could also spawn with at item that displaces your hitbox, or makes you deal damage to yourself. If you are good enough, any run is winnable. Of course, you could also get a 2 item combo which practically gives you a free win. I might've wanted to put a 10 on both skill and luck. People with thousands of hours still find new synergies they've never seen before, REGULARLY. I love TBOI
I absolutely love how it feels like the RNG factor is so present in Nuclear Throne that the game just boomerangs its way back to not being luck-reliant, thanks to the sheer amount of options you get, unlike something similar to Enter The Gungeon, where guns are more of a commodity.
I'm surprised he gave the game has a luck rating of one, considering he said luck is "a measure of variety" and every single wall and tile is randomly generated in the game
The luck factor definitely comes into play when it comes to what Mutations are given to you, what weapons enemies drop and what come from chests, and what enemies are spawned when you enter a level. The skill factor, on the other hand, comes into play when you're forced to adapt to the situation given to you by these factors of luck. Even with a bad hand you can still make it far if you play your cards right. That's why I love NT; it isn't entirely dependent on how lucky you are.
In the vein of Slay the Spire, Monster Train is possibly my favorite roguelike, along with Hades. You build your deck like StS, but with cards from two different clans of demons (each of which has unique starting spells on top of the Strike/Defend equivalent), and you also start with a few randomly determined spells to round out your starting package. This makes each run start more unique than StS runs. It's also got another layer of mechanics, in that you have to arrange the units you play on the three floors of your train, and enemy units will move up one floor each turn. You really have to strategize each turn to avoid getting overwhelmed.
S2 felt like more luck than s1, you'd die to stuff off screen or have to play super slow just to avoid death. i guess the latter is part of the skill required
@@johnsmith-fk7fw I think it is a function of which you played first. I actually played through S2 first since I was late to the series, got all achievements in S2, then played S1. Doing that I had a really good feel for S2 and found myself with a lot more “cheap” deaths on S1. Plus the difficulty of S2 true ending being soooo much longer and more complex raises the skill ceiling significantly.
@@blightyfrogs it's not guaranteed, you have to overcome the vlad castle which requires some steps to enter and is quite difficult to new players, it's more like a high risk trade I would say.
It's so sad that not many people know about streets of rogue, even those that are into roguelikes. It's such a good game that I wish more people would play
A mistake on The Binding of Isaac: There Rarity/Item quality system you mention does not affect the chances of the item spawning. It only affects certain mechanics and only influences 2 characters in the game (Tainted Cain and Tainted Lost) despite that, I do agree with the point that some runs will be significantly better than others though
@@fiona9891 it USED to affect the chances of the time spawning; when you had a special item the game had a chance to reroll other special items youve found, but this mechanic was changed in repentance for all items to have the same chance
@@fiona9891 no, the item WEIGHT system does. for some of the high-quality items, they do have a lower item weight, but a lower item weight can also be on worse items or downright useless items, like Plan C having a 0.2 item weight.
Regarding Slay the Spire’s third boss, I enjoy the strategic mix-up Time Keeper throws at you. It forces you to adapt your plays to a different rhythm, and get you to think several turns ahead for the win. So what if it shuts down infinite combos? Turns out that most infinite combos in the game don’t need more than 10 or 12 cards to crush each fight, so just because you’re not abusing infinite damage does not mean an auto-loss. Slay the Spire is meant to push you and your deck-building skills to their limit, which means throwing enemies at you that counter whatever strategy you’re currently running, and you finding the win in spite of that through superior planning and card playing. That’s the core fun of Slay the Spire.
Yeah, the third bosses being that way is my favorite element of the game. You can either 33% chance it for your combo deck, or more strategically, add elements that help in all 3 scenarios, which is how you should really be building your deck in the first place.
@@scottwhitman9868 It hates infinites that only do one thing. More broadly, the game hates decks that only solve one type of combat and forces you to try and solve every combat that you can within your deck. Plenty of infinites are viable even at A20. Most Watcher runs go infinite to some degree, Ironclad has many infinite options with exhaust synergies and various damage sources, even Silent and Defect have infinites via discard and Recycle, respectively. It's all about solving the problems you need to solve appropriately.
it's definitely stupid to say that RoR2 has a big item discrepancy. white items give better stats, green items give extra effects to your hits and kills, and red items assist your green and white items and make them much more powerful. having only one of each type is awful, and most ror2 players will tell you they would rather have 3 white items than 3 green items. also, lunar items are in no way overpowered, as they have big downsides and picking up pretty much any of them is a terrible idea unless your build is focused around it.
I definitely agree with a high luck rating for RoR 2, as the sheer randomness of the items can mean that you could end up with borderline gamebreaking combos at the very first stage of a run (capacitor + gesture + double bands for example), however a skill rating of 5 just doesn't cut it imo. Even with the amount of luck involved with the games items, with proper decision making a run with a bad start can become as good or even better than a run with a god start, for example, the numbers of enemies are increasing and you're starting to have trouble dealing with them all, do you scrap a few white and green items and hope for a good printer on the next stage, if yes, let's say on the next stage you get both a white and green item printer, both of them have good single target items, do you print those to deal with individual enemies faster or do you save your scrapped items and hope for a chance to print actual aoe items? Some of the factors that come into play here are: what survivor you are playing, what loadout do you have on the survivor, what equipment item do you have, do you even have an equipment item, what other items you already have, do you care about spending lunar coins to get to the blue portal, what stage you are on and if you plan to loop your run, and so on. And that's just the decision making part, the gameplay itself isn't relying on luck, i can almost guarantee that if someone is only relying on luck to get through the game, they will die if they ever activate 2 mountain shrines on stage 1, while anyone who actually knows how the survivor they're playing works should be able to get through it without too much trouble and get free extra green items. In conclusion, luck rating of 7 or 8 is accurate, but a skill rating of 7 or 8 would be much more appropriate instead of 5. 2:13 definitely true
I've only dealt with the first ror, and it's still been kicking my ass. I only cheesed it by getting like three double jumps and spamming explosives as bandit. So I'd assume ror2 has the same skill ceiling and problem of cheesing
@@kabfridepoblus6951 absolutely not. There are not really any broken classes or cheese methods as the later into the run you go, the more cluster fuck it becomes. (loader is op but we don't mention her). In general. Even if you have the most busted build ever, if you mispositioned at 90+ mins, it's back to the lobby.
@@kabfridepoblus6951 you probably could, but that'd take a while. And he'd probably jump up and charles barkley you into the ground as he has done to me many times.
Every video you make is an absolute treat to watch. I'm currently getting addicted to roguelikes so this video is just perfect. I'm mid improving in dead cells trying to beat 2 BC and I bought hades yesterday. Keep it up!
@@guipinus same I started to get addicted of roguelike games because of enter the gungeon. Had hundred of hours with everything unlocked and sadly now moving on to other games like dead cells
8:30 for risk of rain 2: lunar items can be complete game changers, but they aren't guarantees for success. Infact, I'd wager to say that it's probably a bad idea to count entirely on them. Even on drizzle, I lose regularly to both the final boss and other bosses inbetween. Skill and luck is needed, at least until the command artifact comes into play (it lets you choose your items)
I have put quite a good number of hours into Slay the Spire and the skill rating it got here is not deserved. Granted, yes, it is heavily reliant luck of what you get in terms of items and cards, but you need to know how to approach each situation and that takes a certain level of skill that you acquire after playng the game for so long.
Although I agree, based on the rankings, I think this list is more or less ignoring" knowledge check" kinds of skill. Thats why binding of isaac is so low in the skill department as well
After reading a lot of comments and spend several hundred hours in StS myself I can tell you it’s a knowledge is power kinda game but to 11 and kinda bullshit If you don’t know everything there is to know about your character and what’s available to them you’re going to fail, the problem is that what RNG is in the game often masks what a player does wrong and as such it’s incredibly difficult to learn what you did wrong without watching others. That’s generally regarded as bad game design, even when said game is fun.
Yeah, I agree it doesn’t deserve that skill rating. The important skill of slay the spire is actually managing that high degree of luck. That’s not a mechanical skill, but it is a skill nonetheless.
@@domp2729 unless, you noticed that there were certain combos you could've picked along the way The game's cardpool size is balanced such that it seems in any given run, there are always at least 2 different viable strats
I can recommend Wizard of Legend, especially to people who like a decently strong control over their builds. Charming art style, a small but good soundtrack, and amazing spell combat based on the elements (think of Avatar TLA).
Wizard of legend is really good, but like every other roguelike, there’s quite a few enemies that will have you screaming “BULLS***” at your computer. but man, those bosses feel so good to fight.
There is no reason to ever in your life lose an Isaac run once you master the game. At least in the state it's in now the game gives you too many opportunities to get yourself an advantage even if items are randomized
@@levelmake7758 some people refuse to take randomized stat items like pills or experimental treatment without a good buffer amount of stats like with more than one speed, then I personally never take blind items for the risk that they'll be dunce cap. Sorry but like genuinely skill issue. And this is coming from someone with 2k hours on steam and 1k on switch and I've never had a win streak of like over 10 every L is my fault and that's why Isaac was good
@@levelmake7758like Pablo Said master the game, If you had that strong of a build why did you Gamble picking a random item that you didnt even knew what It was?
@@levelmake7758 after taking a fat speed down (which was a gamble you didn't have to take), you make the bright decision, out of 4 boss rush items, to take one of the biggest speed downs in the game. None of that was rng my guy
I feel like you're really underrating Slay The Spire on skill, luck rating seems spot on though lol. I'm no Jorbs but I have completed the game on A20 with 3 characters (2 of which were modded, the 3 are Ironclad, Bug Knight and Marisa) and I've found there's a lot of room for skill expression in: - routing - card choice - card removal choice - play order - relics - planning Especially planning. Planning wins runs. For example, Marisa has an archetype of cards based on Sparks. Sparks are 0-cost cards that do 4 damage and exhaust, basically they're Shivs. Sparks are strong, but they get countered by Time Eater. Early in my run, even if I have a decent Spark deck going I have to step out of archetype for answers to Time Eater. As you correctly say, I'm not going to beat Time Eater if my gameplan is spamming 0-cost cards, even if that same game plan would run over, for instance, Awakened One. There's a 33% chance I fight Time Eater. I have to have something for Time Eater. In Marisa's case, that might mean I want to fit a Charge-up package in my deck and instead of spending my turns spamming Sparks against him, I spend them turtling up while I build up charge to oneshot him several turns down the line. It's not about picking an archetype and jamming every card you find that fits that archetype into your deck, because that's how you run into a hard counter and just lose. It's about picking the best choices from what you're offered and filling in gaps in your deck so that when you get thrown against Awakened One as your A3 boss, you don't just die because your deck is 100% dependent on Powers you're punished for playing.
Exactly, StS is all about planning and building in contengincies for encounters you know you may face. I've beat Time Eater plenty of times with a "shiv" or "infinite" deck, I've also lost plenty of runs with Ironclad after picking Corruption when it was a terrible choice for what I had rolling but I was too stubborn to see that. I think the tough thing to learn with StS is that you have to throw out the idea of combo archetypes from other card games and instead choose cards as solutions to problems you may face. :D
I’d say the luck rating is a bit high too. You can def luck into wins but lucking into loses is pretty much something that never happens unless you were super fragile, in which case you have made a big mistake earlier. I’d say the game is 10 skill 6 luck
@@iwastherain I laughed when he said RNG killed his run by spawning a certain boss. Right, so you've just encountered one of the relatively small numbers of enemies you have to think about and plan for next time. The game didn't just invent the boss on the spot, he's something you're going to encounter a lot and will lose to again if you don't take him seriously. It all down to the player. If all he's doing is playing each roguelike for about an hour yes he will be at the mercy of whatever the game throws at him. You have to learn how the game works for a bit before you can become skilled at it. The fact that you've hardly played it and don't know what to expect doesn't make it a luck driven game.
@@BlueZirnitra i kinda hate on slay the spire when the game gives me a fun build and then it throws a boss that completaly counters it at the end, its a issue that Monster Train solved by just telling you which final boss you are getting on that run after you pick your starting deck. That for me makes the game more interesting cause you can make a deck that could beat it 100% of the times but risk losing to regular enemies on your way there or a more balanced deck against everything and make your final fight against him harder.
Personally I believe that isaac does have plenty of skill factored into the game play. Obviously good rng makes things way easier, but skill can let a shitty run still win
In binding of issac skill and good decision making is definitely needed. If you are good at the game you can win with even the worst of items and good items are just a nice bonus. I won't deny that getting a ton of broken items will make skill less important but you still definitely need skill to win any given run.
One thing i like about EtG is that it's really easy to pick back up if you haven't played in a while, while something like Hades it feels like if you drop it for a month it takes a bit of time to get back into the groove.
While luck is certainly a large factor in Risk of Rain 2, I oftentimes find that good pacing and knowledge of stage layouts (Newt Altar locations, places the teleporter likes to spawn, abusable geometry, etc.) can circumvent the need for luck tremendously, even with Commando, the so-called weakest survivor (false). And with the scrappers, printers, and multishops, there's almost always a degree of conscious choice in determining what you get out of a level, even if there are still no guarantees.
I will 1v1 you in Melty Blood in a phone booth on Wall Street and probably lose but I'll send a message (Since this the internet, I feel obligated to clarify that I'm joking)
For some reason he seemed to not count game knowledge into skill. I agree that it's not really a "skill" per se to know that this item does this and that enemy does that, but _understanding_ these things is where it becomes a skill. Knowing how to make game mechanics work in your favor is a huge part of a game like Slay the Spire or Isaac (and I suppose RoR2 as well but I havent played that one very much).
I think once you play enough rogue likes, it’s common to get extremely far or even “beat” them on your first run, but it’s just because you have a leg up knowing how the mechanics typically work. I also think it just varies from person to person because I know for me I found dead cells extremely easy but it took me a sad amount of runs to ever beat Hades for the first time.
3:36 that's wrong. The item quality does NOT make it rarer. A sacred heart has the same chance to appear as breath of life, what determines an item rarity is the weight wich has nothing to do with it being good or bad. The mechanic that made "good" items rarer if you had already seen a "good" item was removed in repentance
the quality, is in fact non relevant to how rare they are however, each item has a weight in each pool, such as Magic Mush or Spindown dice in the treasure room which have a weight of 0.1. making them way less likely to find in this room than every other items
@@djevebran2432Weight is, however, seldom used just to make good items rarer. Its used to avoid oversaturation. R Key for example, one of the most objectively powerful items in the game, has a weight of 1. The standard, and highest it goes.
Item quality doesn’t actually affect the item rarity at all they only affect tainted Cain tainted lost and sacred orb weight affects the item rarity and it’s actually really fair an item like black powder and brimstone are the exact same weight most bad items and good items are the same weight with them only being lower when they’re out of they’re pools (like getting holy mantle in an item room instead of angel)
They are talking about the binding of isaac just wanted to mention that for other readers. What keeps you from getting OP items in isaac is the vast amount of medium power items. In repentance especially i feel like there are fewer runs that end with you becoming ultra op but also fewer runs that end in very poor stat-gain. A lot of skill in isaac also comes from knowing how to get the most out of every floor (more / better items) It's not just dodging. Even for lost or tainted lost knowing when to reroll and how to get more holy cards is important.
@@anders_x3 lost, especially after the eternal d6 unlock, is a really great character tho, and the general complaint about the tainted lost is about the gargantuan amount of unavoidable damage (if you don't get any speed ups you're 100% get hit on the latest floors, for example)
Well you are technically right. There are a handful of items that have a lower weight like mega blast. Also before the repentance DLC there was a special item system in place that reduces the chance to find multible amazing items (Fun fact Soy Milk used to be a special item). I would also like to point out that Repentance nerfed almost all of the "solo carry items" and made most "bad" item viable.
@@Bambochutafreak I don’t understand why soy milk is considered bad by so many people. It is a net damage up and has some of the best synergies in the game unlike something like isaac’s heart.
you did sts dirty man, easily the hardest game strategically on the list. and, while certain cards are stronger than others, no card is a guaranteed win. The skill expression comes in CONSISTENCY, you are given the tools in almost every seed to formulate a win, and you need to statistically optimize a route to it (sometimes the luck doesn't play in your favor, but math is still skill)
That's the thing, his definitions of luck and skill are super muddy to me. Luck seems to sometimes be pure variation of a run, or whether or not you can get an item to carry you, etc. Skill seems to be purely twitch function? But not even fully, because he should've given StS a 1 then since it takes no more twitch skill than using a web browser. And w/ StS in specific, like you said, no card can carry you to a win. Deck building is the skill, it may not be a twitch skill, but it's a skill nonetheless. Only a good player can beat the higher difficulties of the game, and only a great player can do it consistently. There is a lot of variation in any given run, but just like with MtG, good players can mitigate that variation and turn what would be a run killer for a normal player into another W in their file. I don't think it's a huge deal though, some people are getting real angry lol. Dude said he was in grade school in 2012, he's barely old enough to drink in the US, if even that. This video is him learning. At the end of the day, these are all just games and it was all purely his opinion, however misguided. People shouldn't get too upset about it, beyond explaining why they disagree.
Perhaps a bit of bias but Dead Cells and Risk of Rain 2 absolutely prioritizes skill and good decision making over pure luck. Skill isn't just pure execution but they both have high level movement and combat options that are essential for run consistency. RoR2 and Dead Cells have found a good middle ground loop of emergent gameplay and spontaneous choices imo. SuperHOT MCD did a good job at this as well. All in all I agree with the list but I'd swap RoR2 with a 6 in skill over Hades easily. Having to choose your end game is meaningful as they are both hard in their own way. As much as I like Void Bastards, it's heavily luck driven for "smart" decisions to matter but Hades is on the opposite end where the feels like it's designed to be a digestible roguelite that newcomers can actually finish It's a good entry level roguelite with less to chew as time goes on.
That's a big reason I dropped Void Bastards. I had great runs where I felt like I did everything right but the RNG just keep giving my junk and then runs where I was playing mediocre but I kept falling into health + ammo
That's the same with Slay the Spire. The difficulty comes with building your deck - you have to juggle staying alive, closing out games, and what powers you get whenever you add/remove cards.
Half the fun of slay the spire is building decks than can fight all the different act 3 bosses. A20 makes you fight 2 of them anyways, if you're losing runs because you got a bad act 3 boss, it's because your deck wasn't built properly, not bad luck. Ive killed time eater with an infinite, just gotta make sure that infinite generates about 40 block while it's doing it's thing. The variance comes in what card rewards you're offered and what relics you get.
Hello, i have a lot of time on risk of rain 2, and personally i'd like to say that throughout most of my runs, some of the legendary items don't actually do all too much. only a select few like meat hooks, or ceremonial daggers or a few others really skyrocket your run. and for lunar items, most of them are actually more detrimental than beneficial aside from shaped glass and gesture of the drowned. Later game, and early game you'll find that common items and rare items are so much more important than getting legendary or lunar items to make a build. Those two rarities are the most important items throughout your run. if you were to only pick up red items, you would have few healing items, little to no defense, and ok damage. but add in a couple white items and you have a great build. To attest to the skill of the survivors, or characters, being smart with how much time you spend on stages and deciding what abilities to use on what and when is extremley important early game. if you aren't progressing at a fast speed early on in a run you are gonna get decimated by any later stages. unless you spend even more time playing catch up with items. although on monsoon, it's very difficult to get god runs, or basically just become immortal. on monsoon all of the enimies are much much more challenging. the final boss difficulty scales VERY drastically between difficulties. I resign.
Idk I’ve played a lot of RoR 2 and while really bad luck can kill a run and really good luck can make it a lot easier, it feels pretty consistent in difficulty most of the runs, leaving most of the emphasis on skill (this is just imo, I also don’t think it’s the highest skill game but knowing how to manage your build can save a lot of bad runs)
In my experience, as you get better at RoR 2 you start to realize its far less luck based than you originally thought. Getting bad items can definitely hurt and sometimes kill your run but you have way more control over the items you get than it seems when you're new.
For Nuclear Throne, I personally find a large amount of run variability through the many viable options, as mentioned in the video, giving a solid amount of differentiation between two runs. Such as building into weapon types through mutation. Though luck, in the traditional sense, can be felt in spawn locations which can turn a level that is generally easy into a stress fest. Due to the lower amount of mutations/options relative to other games, like Isaac, I do get the low relative rating of variability. In terms of skill/difficulty, yea... I'd rate something similar.
Mean while in Noita, A random enemy pick up a wand that have a nuke in it and fired it at a rat nearby, all of this happend off screen, you just standing still doing your business and get ass blasted by that nuke. you have no idea what is happening, you just died. Lmao
Noita's skill is salvaging luck and dodging all the weird shit the game throws at you. That and game knowledge like what combines with what and which places have secrets.
From my own experience I feel as though Isaac has more skill than what you gave it. Playing perfectly for some people isnt out of the question and that can lead to devil deals/angel deals and the perfection trinket. Plus gives you opportunity to use blood banks and judgements. For risk of rain 2 I'd say legendary items arent needed to win a run. Stacking common items which is relatively easy if you use printers to sacrifice your other items of the same quality you can get stacks of really good common items and that can help carry a run more so than the rare items.
Spelunky is an essential to add to this list. Both Spelunky HD (what most people just know as Spelunky) and Spelunky 2 are great, I would recommend going straight to 2. I think it’s a purely better game and has so much more to discover. They require insane skill to beat, but they have many different endings with different difficulty levels so it’s still approachable. My favorite rogue-like by far.
Cringe take, Spelunky 2 endings are extremely underwhelming Hmmm do I want to nuke a giant fish lady only for her to not die and mock me? Or do I want to be a literal freaking star MEANWHILE IN SPELUNKY HD I get to kill the literal ruler of an ancient civilizations or the lord of hell, and then meet up with the GOAT Yang as the credits say I'm a hero You get my point.
@@adriansrsa90 this is so crazy, you can’t be serious? No one plays Spelunky (1 or 2) for the narrative, right? It’s such a heavy gameplay game, with a very trivial story. I really don’t care in the slightest what the bosses look like, just how great it feels to play and how fun and challenging the game is. Spelunky was a great starting point, but 2 is a masterpiece. So much depth and complex difficulty. Spelunky 2 is just so, so much better.
3:12 tbh Soy Milk should have been replaced with Almond Milk. Soy Milk’s main problem in the past was that shots had so much knockback that the dps was inconsistent, but in Repentance the knockback was reduced which makes Soy Milk more consistent and viable on any given run. Almond Milk is just Soy Milk but inherently inconsistent due to all of the worm trinket effects it cycles through.
@@nullius9807 kinda depends the situation (and your other items) what is the better option (the random worm effect make brimstone really hard to use just to give an example)
@@calebhherra2553 i always feel like almond milk is more powerful just because of the less damage down, also the run is way more fun with almond than soy
And there's *Noita,* in which the Skill rating is 10, and the Luck rating is 10 too. This game is the true definition of CBT, actually intended to people with arsonist/masochistic tendencies. Never manage to finish a run, and my death streak is 278 🤡🤡🤡
3:10 this is what divides BoI noobs from experienced players- these three are definitely not "run ruining items" (except in some combinations with others, but that can then apply even to ipecac etc.) Yes, it is harder for novice to adjust to these, but that's where you build skill and learn to gain benefits out of them, and they are not ruining runs. Its like my friend who just started recently playing BoI said the "Chocolate Milk" is the worst item. Also 280 hours for game like Isaac is decent, but I'd say you finally start to master game after 600th or 700th hour.
Right? As soon as I saw soy milk, I couldn’t trust a lot of what he said. There’s no way, it has helped so many of my runs in repentance. I love that it’s a tear multiplier now instead of a tears all the way up.
I think the slay the spire rating is rather bad. Stuff like bosses and different cards is stuff you need to build around, not stuff that you lose due to rng if you play wrong , and the thing about “you can’t beat the final boss with the starting stuff” just ignores the entire purpose of the game. I think the rating was ruined by lack of experience in the game
You can't beat the final boss without deckbuilding in a deckbuilder is like complaining that you cant beat civ without building anything. Dude probably never beat an Ascension run lol
I just recently got into Enter The Gungeon and it made me Enter The Pharmacy for a bottle of Xanax after completely raging out and destroying everything in my neighbor’s front yard because I can’t get more than 3 or 4 levels into the damn game without being absolutely demolished by those little bastards.
@@blulunarity yes it is a great game, highly addictive! Funny seeing this comment I made when I bought it 8 months ago cuz I’ve put in a few hundred hours on it lol. There’s a LOT of content and replayability and the wiki really helps! Lots of secrets, characters to unlock, hidden levels, tons of stuff! Enjoy!
Two of my favorite roguelikes are Curse of the Dead Gods, and Wizard of Legend. Wizard of legend is super fast paced, mini bullet hell and has an absolutely massive variety of abilities, that even change depending what slot you equip them in! It also has a very high skill ceiling, for example, there is no parrying in the game, however you can pick up a certain item which then allows you to parry. That is a whole mechanic hidden behind a specific item. Another fun addition is that you can play it with couch co-op and a friend! Couch co-op is a feature that will instantly make me a love a game because it is something from my childhood that I feel too few games have nowadays. Curse of the Dead Gods has a completely different vibe. I love the art style, and there is the constant sense of foreboding. In other games, the more you play, the more powerful you get, and while this is semi true for CotDG there is a curse system which applies debuffs to you the further into the run you are (there are ways to mitigate this). There is a rising sense of fear and pressure the further into the run you get. In terms of actual gameplay I would say it is easier than WoL, but still just as much fun! I would highly recommend both of these games.
@@bingbong1966 No you can’t lmao, take fighting games for example. You don’t need luck to have fun since nothing barely anything is luck based on those
That isaac being mostly luck is very wrong, people are able to do top notch bosses like mega satan, hush or the beast, with either no items with a certain character or minimal items, the game lends you countless ways to break trough it to get even better stuff and you mostly need knowledge to do so which i learned by mods and some yt videos over 2 weeks, easily to get streaks in it too if you aim your run in perspective to what you accomplished, skill issue Edit:Obviously luck plays a big role on how powerful you are, but that still doesnt mean you wont be able to win your run because of it anyways, its even easier now after repentance with the alt rooms, like letting you pick the item in the treasure room or choose one randomly, also the mirror floor with an extra boss item
@@lukebytes5366 thats plain wrong, especially since Repentance. There are so many ways to optimize the runs if you have sufficient game knowledge that its borderline impossible to have a "trash" run.
@@derrickshowproductions3010 It has reliance on luck yes, more than EtG for example, but my point is that you CAN mitigate that with skill and optimizations, unlike StS where you are kind of at the mercy of the game.
As a huge slay the spire fan who has done countless A20 heart kills, your rating really breaks my heart. Slay the spire’s skill comes from its intensively complex decision-making, not pure mechanics. Players like Jorbs have gone from a 30-40% A20 winrate at 3000 hours to a 70% winrate at 6000. Most players have a less than 10% winrate at A10. Furthermore, at higher ascensions you see two of the three act three bosses every run, and on top of that the act 3 bosses are probably among the least threatening fights in the game. Furthermore, much of its RNG changes based on observable factors.
@@vinncentuntiedt5851 the concept of "perfect play" in a game as ridiculously complex as slay the spire is nonexistent. Nobody can even claim to be close to perfect play. However, there are people who have near-100% winrates on watcher. There's maybe a couple seeds in existence where there is absolutely no way to win (lagavulin silent). While I do admit STS has a greater margin of variance from run to run, that doesn't in any way make it more "luck-based" than other games, nor diminish the skill required to pilot your character through the spire.
@@vinncentuntiedt5851 just one unbeatable seed has been found in the history of slay the spire as far as I last researched, all other don't know how many millions and millions of seeds are solvable.
@@h445 For reference my winrate is only 25% or so after hundreds of hours, which only highlights the skill disparity between me and top level players (who some have reached 95%+ winrates on certain characters in 50+ game sample sizes). Never claimed I am skilled; just that there is a massive skill aspect to Slay the Spire.
Isaac is literally 100% sightreading skill. The game is very hard to learn, so when it comes to a new player's perspective when not playing as Azazel the game is indeed mostly luck based.
it's just because the new players are playing repentance which is harder than the other versions of the game someone playing rebirth will find it easier to win a run but in repentance you have new enemies and bosses with a hard to learn pattern
Some of these games are 40% luck, 50% skill, and 10% grinding. Getting max flasks in dead cells or unlocking all the NPCs in Gungeon or filling out the mirror in Hades make each of their games much easier.
i think there are many ways to play sts, he seems to like more the "i try to build something cool" approach, and that's good, but i prefer the approach of "i try to win as many games as possible adapting to the map", when this is your mentality, the game requires huge skills
As a gungeon and nuclear throne fanatic, luck 4 and skill 9 on gungeon and the luck 1 and skill 10 on throne really tickled my “i’m good at this game” bone
I have to disagree with Slay the Spire's ratings, how is it possibly the most luck dependent game in the list. Even your example of facing Time Eater is not the game screwing you with rng, there are 3 bosses at the end of each act, choosing to knowingly ignore one of them is your fault not the game's. It's entirely possible to beat Time Eater with high card play per turn decks
I believe Pschie's rating is mostly flawed because difficulty isn't as straightforward as luck. For example, StS and Dead Cells are very difficult, but in extremely different ways. While Dead Cells is mostly mechanichal, StS is all about building and manipulating your deck. I'd say it's one of the more skill required in terms of strategy, but there is no mechanical gameplay and Pschie obviously factors that the most. For example, I think Isaac easier than Gungeon in mechanical terms, but it does require a much more in depth understanding of the game to be good at it.
Yeah, I've beaten time eater with the zero deck. it is high on the luck factor, some runs at high ascension even extreme high level players can't win, however that said it is high skill as evident by those players never lose lower level ascension
@@saddas1307 very few runs at max ascension are 'unwinnable', streamer LifeCoach did a20 winstreaks of 15+ on ironclad and watcher (maybe watcher was a few wins less). but even in his losses, he realized mistakes he made. the skill in STS is actually the highest out of any of these games because of the amount of thinking in each card played. sometimes he would take 30-45 minutes just on the first few fights. its like high level chess really, low level you can say the games easy just move pieces and theres no mechanical skill, but obviously we know thats not true
In defense of risk of rain 2: there is more to the system then what you said. Mainly, that while legendary items can take you further into your run, it doesn't guarantee it. Infact, it can sometimes kill it if you get the wrong one. Along with lunar items (though those have a more obvious effect on your game). There are several legendary items can can screw you over if you get them, and thus makes them unnecessary to thrive. This is all assuming you don't run the artifact of command, which can allow you to choose what items you want from that category of rarity. This can and does change how you prioritize items, and can outright make insane builds that literally wipe the map clean. Honestly, it's fun when you get to that point
I would honestly flip the luck and skill ratings for Isaac with the Repentence update. There are a lot more skill-based plays you can do to fish for better items. Items were rebalanced so that even Isaac's Heart can be useful, but outright gamebreaks are a lot rarer. And enemy shot speed is generally higher so that you can't facetank everything with soul heart generation.
Fantastic video, this is such a neat topic to touch on! Wish I could say more but I haven't tried every game on this list, I agree with your ratings on EtG, RoR, NT, and Dead Cells. I don't see the Hades one though, I would honestly put both of its ratings on the lower side, at least without the pact of punishment. Hades is somewhat difficult from the get-go but it's relatively easy to learn and gets very repetitive rather quickly. If I had to recommend a roguelike though, I would highly urge you to check out Monolith (+ it's Relics of the Past DLC). It is probably my favorite roguelike of all time, it's basically shmup Enter the Gungeon. I would probably rank it similarly to Nuclear Throne; It's a relatively simple game at the surface with some pretty unique mechanics that test the player's decision-making skills. It also has some really well-designed enemy rooms and amazing boss fights. And while there is a factor of luck to it, the player can definitely get through the entire game using only the starting weapon (in fact, sometimes it's just outright better than some of the pick-ups you come across). High-level loops on the other hand... that's a different story lmao
If you want a first-person roguelike to round out the dimensions of gameplay, might I recommend Gunfire Reborn? It just left early access in November of this year and was my personal game of the year. The game has the same general idea that went into scoring Enter the Gungeon, that all weapons and items are useful but you can make do with whatever you get in order to achieve victory, and much like EtG, there are a variety of wacky weapons at your disposal. From a skeletal dragon rocket launcher that fires mini black holes that suck in foes before exploding and a many-eyed shotgun that gets reloaded by feeding it fish.
As someone with >1500 hours in Slay the Spire I'm so mad that I don't even want to write a 7 paragraph essay on how extremely skill based it is. I will say, however, that if your deck relies only on an infinite to win and you know that you might fight Time Eater, you should've built a better deck. The game even shows you the last boss so you have the whole act to prepare for it. And obviously, corruption doesn't win you the game and will probably hurt you if you pick it up too early.
Dude I'm with you, when I saw how low he ranked StS I couldn't take his opinions seriously anymore. Slay the spire is the most skill-heavy roguelike on the list and it's not even close.
You guys don’t understand his rating systems. Knowledge on how to play the game doesn’t seem to be his criteria for skill, his criteria for skill is literally the mechanical act of playing the game. For example, street fighter might have a skill level of 10 and luck of 0 because you literally can only play the game mechanically. Low skill level doesn’t mean “the game is easy” or that you can only win if you get lucky, what it means is that if you get lucky, anyone can win, but players who have a good understanding of the game will obviously do better. I have never played sts, but based on HIS criteria for rating, idk if I would have even given it a 3. If you are going to say how he defines skill is wrong, then you are arguing semantics and it literally has nothing to do with the game. If you use his criteria, can you honestly say the mechanical act of playing the game is high skill?
@@andrewevenson2657 Extremely long rant warning, tldr at the end. Putting aside the fact that redefining words just so they work against you is a pretty bad idea (could've called them "mechanical skill" and "variation"), he states at the beginning that a 1 in skill means that anyone can play it and a 10 that it's dark souls, implying that skill means difficulty. Not only that, but he's constantly fighting his own definitions, like in BoI, where he says "one cannot deny that luck also plays a factor ... some runs will be significantly easier than others" which means that luck affects wether you win or not and not just variation. Then he gives Nuclear Throne a 1 in luck and a skill rating of 10, saying "It's one of the most skill based games ... you can still improve after hundreds of hours". But wait many of *my* playthroughs are pretty different. Didn't luck mean variation? Why does it get a 1 then? Does the fact that you can improve after hundreds of hours affect how skill based it is? But then why isn't Spire in there? Oh wait! He only means mechanical skill so obviously choosing the right weapons, mutations, chests, paths, etc. doesn't play a part when he talks about improving in Nuclear Throne. And then again, if skill means mechanical skill then why give a turn based game a 3? It should be a 1 unless clicking is sort of hard for him. When he talks about StS he sounds like someone who isn't used to it enough. He hasn't reached intentionality. No, you don't take more cards once you get Ascender's Bane, and there isn't "a degree of complexity" when it comes to deck building, there's like 3000 degrees. No, no cards win you the run, especially not corruption (you can't put in in play in Act 1 and Gremlin Nob just kills you if you do). And saying that the one aspect that can lose you the run no matter what is the boss you fight (even when the game tells you the boss at the beginning of the act) is just silly. There's decisions ready to be made, but he isn't even aware that they exist yet. Imagine a TH-camr stating that Street Fighter has an aspect that can cause you to lose no matter what, and that it the shoryuken. "They can just pick up a character with a dp, spam it on wake up and there's nothing you can do". In the end it's just a scrub quote. TL;DR: He's constantly inconsistent with his own definitions, and it's frustrating to see him talk about Spire because he's still at Dunning-Kruger's peak of Mount Stupid.
Nuclear Throne is the best imo. Glad to see you're a fish main as well, I have over 2,000 hours of fish throning now and I'm not even close to done yet lol.
"Slay the spire does not take that much skill, just luck" Yeah, say that to a grand finale deck, don't get me wrong, the game does take luck, but not that much if you can manage what you are given, great video anyway
i have 120h and i've never felt like i lost because i had no luck tho... it's helpful, i'll put it that way. knowing what type of deck use depending on your artefacts/cards given is much more relevant tho. i've made it to 17 difficulty with the "mage" and i think i could make it to 20 but i'm quite bored for now. and i only don't have the "end game with only 1 artefact" if it comes to achievments :
@@thatguy5233 I never felt like I lost because I have bad reward or event luck but I did lose once when I drew a full hand of defence card when the enemy is not attacking and a full hand of attack when the same enemy is attacking and is intangible
@@arandomnoob3551 oh, that is true. I've had that too, but you have to be *really* unlucky from my experience. And you can be THAT unlucky and lose because of that in pretty much every game. I mean, if you are crazy good maybe not... but I think everyone gets what I mean.
I was thinking. What if you did a hand of the king run in dead cells where you only use weapons from hotk fight ( symmetrical lance, telluric shock, light speed for his ramming attack and the grenade launcher for his grenade attack)
Shisheyu is a streamer who has a streak in the binding of isaac. He did 100 runs of The lost without dying. He's currently trying to obtain the dead god succes without dying nor reset any run.
Whoever said that lunar items are going to extend your run is an idiot lol. The whole thing about lunar items is they have a positive and negative affect, and the negative affect is usually more bad than the positive affect is good. That being said, some lunar items can be worth taking in specific circumstances, and there are like 3 lunar items that are always good to take. ROR2 is by far my favorite game, close to 350 hours in it. Your rating is probably pretty accurate. A lot of the “higher skill” players in risk of rain are good because they have an intimate understanding of the mechanics in the game. I mean they are also good at fps games, but honestly you don’t have to be good at fps games if you understand the mechanics. Knowing when to farm loot or go to the next floor. When to scrap items and what items to print. Knowing things like one hit protection, and how to double it with barrier. Knowing how to form proc chains, or knowing the number of items you can take before it’s maxed out. Basically, my point is, the skill in this game ultimately comes from knowledge. You can have an elite fps player do trash compared to someone who just knows how the game works.
Giving Slay the Spire a skill rating of 3 proves you never really got into the game. At A15 heart, 100% of runs should be winnable, if you’d deck loses to timekeeper you played poorly and build a deck that you knew would lose 33% (or 66% on A20) of the time. If your strategy loses that often you are at fault not the game.
It's outrageous, I don't know why aren't more people talking about it. StS is one of the most skill-based roguelikes to date, anyone who doesn't have a deep understanding of the deckbuilding will get absolutely curbstomped every run, and every seed provides quite a few viable synergies. It seems like this guy got mad he couldn't cheese the game with a busted deck and decided to make a video saying that the Time Eater is a poorly designed boss.
@@praker3829 I couldn't agree more, I play a lot of games in the genre and I have a higher win rate on Slay the Spire than most of the other games listed. A fair amount of hades runs at high heat die to not having the right boons for your aspect, Gungeon occasionally will fuck you over with terrible guns. Even at A20 there's usually a path to win, it's just how long your willing to spend to find it. Also Time Eater is not that bad if you play even half decently, the Awakened One is more stressful personally.
@@nurgle-j5n exactly in addition dont mean to shit on rainstorm players but rainstorm is easy + the only thing he repeats is "red item better than white"
I'm an Isaac player but in my opinion it's more skill than luck, you can get a crap run but on that same run you could literally make it to The Beast and still win, with nothing but 3 dmg
@@dominoree I agree, I was gonna add if you have played the game long enough and know what you're doing you can turn that crap run into an even better run
I feel like I disagree with the luck ratings of both Slay the Spire and Risk of Rain. Both of them do have tiered items, but their drop rates are balanced so you basically never get one right off the bat (except for the Neow trade, but that's balanced in a different way). In fact, since there's three different tiers of chests, each with their own cost and own chances of giving a rare item, Risk of Rain gives you a lot of control over what you want to purchase. However, Slay the Spire's three-card drafts are probably the most control any game gives you over your run, and allow you to get the deck archetype you want more often than not.
I only got to the StS bit and when it boiled down to "I've dabbled a little, not really touched ascensions but basically this is mostly a luck based game because I failed to prepare for one of the handful of bosses in the game that hard counters my inflexible deck" I noped out.
"It tells you you should probably go outside" you got me there 😂 sub! Incredible video, now that I started creating contents here on TH-cam in this niche I can tell the amount of work that you for sure have done for this video. Congratz! Ended now the video, I was surprised for the skill level of hades and isaac.. I found Hades way easier, I completed the whole story and beat heat 10, while I wasn't able to beat Satan on Isaac.
I love how he says he doesn't have much experience with RoR2, then immediately proves it by saying that lunar items guarantee progression. True, SOME of them do, but I've also had runs instantly ended because I pick up the wrong lunar item, and others just have too passive an effect to really make a significant difference, like the one that shrinks the teleporter area. Source: I have 76 hours in the game as of writing this. He is absolutely right about item rarity being kinda off. I find that almost all the most useless items have green rarity, while almost every white item is still useful by the end game.
ATG missile, Will o the wisps, both bands and Ukulele are like the bread and butter of the game and are all green rarity. Green rarity has helluva important items.
Yeah I dropped the game after console taking ages to fix ( and for those who don’t know, the console patch did almost nothing) and now I’m just waiting for the dlc Edit: to clarify, I have 400 hours, I didn’t just drop it upon dying
Get Gunfire Reborn on this list! I'd love to see where you'd rank it between skill and luck. Recent balance changes have left it way harder than just 3 months ago so I feel it's moved more towards skill. However the right Goshawk and you're laughing
Item rarity in the binding of isaac doesn't influence the chances of those items spawning. Making it arbitrary to mention. It only effects 2 characters, the lost with birthright and tainted lost.
@@rafa_5020 That's wrong, some items like Plan C and Mega Blast do have a less likely chance to appear, but that is different from the item quality system
I feel like a part of the learning curve in the binding of isaac is finding out methods to gain items
Or how to abuse them. Aaah, the golden days of steam sell + restock.
Yeah. Isaac is a really rng-reliant game but once you start getting the hang of it and to understand how everything works you can do crazy stuff on first floor to secure at least one devil item or two angel items if you're lucky enough, and from there its just snowballing, which is pretty cool because instead of feeling frustrating because its based on luck it feels rewarding because you can finally put the pieces together enough to come up with amazing rewards
ur not a certified isaac player until you’ve learned about the unlimited item method with the blank card
@@Lu-bc3pl didn't that get nerfed?
@@petkofuchalski9809 i wouldn’t know since i haven’t played in a while but last i checked it still works
the "skill" rating has too high a focus on executive skills and not enough on planning/strategic skills imo. There's more to skill than execution.
I think this sums up most of my feelings on the skill ratings in the video.
Absolutely, had to stop watching after the StS part already. He somehow thinks that knowing what to do is not skill related. If I watch a new player play his first game of StS I can easily see that 50-70% of the choices they do are objectively wrong. The learning curve is astronomically high in StS and my dude says it's luck dependant, while it most likely has one of the lowest RNG factors in a Roguelite ever.
@@deliro8758 I dont think slay the spire is a rouge lite
This is probably going to be a very ignorant question since I haven't played much of Slay the Spire or Spelunky or Noita but I always found game knowledge to be a lil' weird compared to executive skill-not to discredit any top players that put their time and effort into mastering what the games are about, it's still impressive, but if a game's main thing revolves around simply not falling for newbie traps or habits to be proficient at it, what's exactly stopping dedicated people from just looking up detailed guides or getting advice in the community and becoming just as proficient as the people that play the game much more in days?
It's definitely unfair to deem this kind of thing as luck, but at the same time, if there's just a strategy guide online that just makes a new person's life a thousand times easier once read by the book then it gets into a massive grey area.
@@lurikitsune2384 for me it is mostly the ability to evaluate a new power or item in the context of your current run and then make decisions about what to do with said item. None of these games are a vacuum, so there are few items that are just flat out bad for the player. Knowing the game and how certain things work together are very important, just knowing what items are generally pretty powerful isn’t always enough.
Skill in ROR2 is tied to the luck. By manipulating the odds using probability or the order in which you get items you are significantly more likely to get strong runs. E8 & not using lunars is one of the harder challenges out of all the games I’ve played.
I feel ror2 is much more skill based than luck. Most characters have a way to use most items. As long as you know how to stay alive while dealing damage efficiently you are fine.
the thing is there's so many ways to manipulate the rng that you can't really say it's luck reliant. printers, shredders, recycler, multishops, soups, and bazaar all give you opportunities to mitigate any bad luck you might have. and even with that you could still beat monsoon while getting subpar rng if you're good enough. and by "good enough" i don't mean insane 500 hour players who can beat hades while purging all their boons and intentionally making the worst choices or any of that crazy out there pro player stuff. i wouldn't say it's completely skill but it's really close to it, and i definitely disagree with its rating as more luck than skill.
yesssssss
Yeah, and while I agree with the vid saying lunar and red items are strong, white items can still be really strong once stacked up.
*artifact of command
I think alot of the difficulty in The Binding of Isaac comes from understanding what item to pick up and how they combine with each other
"wow, flat stone! This will have a good synergy with my haemolacria and mysterious liquid! Time to go fight the beast!"
@@ripzmad9846 I've never played The Binding of Issac and have no clue what those words mean.
@Aaron King TLDR; Haha big toxic bouncy ball go brrrrrrr
So the flat stone means you shoot out what is effectively a tear that skips across the ground like a rock on water bouncing multiple times which explodes in a little burst of tears or damage in a sense every time it lands due to haemolacria while the mysterious liquids makes a little toxic zone underneath where it lands each skip which enemies will be harmed if they stand on it which is all to say that’s it’s a pretty decent combination that works well due to the presence of the stone to activate the haemolacria and mysterious liquids effects multiple times.
@@michaelolivermorgan3513 however, during the beast fight, (semi spoilers here) this is useless because there is no floor during the entirety of the fight, making your tears useless cause they cant bounce
@@mellowmishXD it was even worse when haemolacria just went flying before the changes too meaning if you went in with it you’d have to stick to the bottom to even hit anything as well
100% of viewers are subbed lmao first time I've seen that keep it up brother hope schools going well
Me no way that's true, I never sub to anyone who is top tier ..... Oh I am actually a sub! So he is correct.
I've seen it a few times
Me: i'm goin to be the greatest villan of all time
_*doesn't subscribe_
@@randomlol-ya3063 *gasp* you monster
wtf are you talking about
slay the spire is atually quite skill based. First thing to point out is that, no matter the ascension level, you almost always benefit more from a small deck. On ascension 20, or high ascension in gerneral, you will plan which route to go through the map. Choose whether no not to fight elite. Choose weak common card to get through the first map till you find one of the vital card or relic. Some streamer, brkstar at bilibili is able to have a 100 streak on ascension 20 on both defect and the watcher. The skill matters a lot in slay the spire.
Agreed if slay the spire is considered an 8 of luck then I guess wildfrost would be considered a 15 of luck -5 skills lol
yeah when i heard the whole "you need to have a larger deck to avoid ascender's bane" point i paused the video so paralyzed by confusion
sts does have luck as an element, obviously, but i think it's genuinely one of the most skill-based turn-based roguelikes out there, especially at higher ascensions
I think his definition of skill is way too much about "technical execution" rather than strategy and planning. In a roguelike! The genre about choices and progression.
Slay the Spire might not have mechanical gameplay in the fights, but that's because the whole point of the game is to draft and build a deck. That's the mechanic of the game. Slay the Spire is all about taking the right decision at the right time, and that's a thing you can only do through your skill.
It isn't just about knowledge about what card is strong and which card is weaker, it's about choosing the best path to take in the map according to your class, deck and boss. Then adapting to the situation you're in and perhaps change your path. Keeping in mind that the boss of the act might hard counter your class so you have to adapt to it. The fact that some cards like Corruption are run defining doesn't mean you instantly win by picking them, because even with an OP deck you'll eventually have to reckon all the bad decisions you took earlier and die.
The argument about not being able to pick the last boss is just bad imo. The Silent is arguably the worst class in very high ascension count because you HAVE to face 2 bosses instead of 1 in Act 3. That means most of the time, you're gonna face the Time Eater which supposedly hard counters every Silent strategy and makes it very hard to beat in high ascensions. The Heart also hard counters the Silent.
Well, there are people with HUGE winning streaks with Silent in Ascension 20 beating the Heart as well.
If the game wasn't skill-based, then no one would be able to get winstreaks in A20H with the Silent. It IS skill based because no matter the luck, if you don't prepare enough for what the game has to offer you, you'll die, and that's called skill.
Agreed, really made me wonder why he’s ranking games while seemingly having very little experience.
The thing i like the most about sts is the fact that common and uncommon cards are on average better than rares. The watcher barely needs rares to win since stance swapping builds are so strong and probably requires the most skill out of all the characters. You get a guaranteed rare at the end of every boss, so generally its better to be very generalised with deck building in act 1 unless you get a strong synergy. The fact that sts is rated with higher luck than isaac is pretty crazy considering 80% of items in isaac will just not really help at all. Most boss items are garbage and so many treasure room items are virtually useless that i’m so much more tempted to flat out reset on isaac than on sts.
Honestly in my opinion Hades is definitely one of the easiest games of the genre I’ve ever played because it only took me twelve runs to get to the final boss whereas in dead cells I find myself regularly struggling to get to the final boss even though I’ve beat it once before. But like you said, Hades really just has something special in the story department and as a fan of Greek mythology myself, it really is something special.
I like that it lets you customize the difficulty, so the game can get a lot harder
To be fair the comparison should be 0 boss cells vs base hades and adding like 5-10 heat per boss cell really
If you do that they are not so different in difficulty
@@lucintis5295 Not at all. Where Hades' heat stops giving benefits and only hinders you after 20 heat, Dead cells continues to empower you with more scrolls, more routes, and the Legendary Forge at every BC
interesting, I'm the opposite - took like 30+ tries to get to the last Hades boss, then got dead cells and literally first-tried every single boss besides the last one
@@diethylmalonate same, but that’s because in dead cells your meant to beat the final boss fairly quickly. 0bc is the tutorial
I think luck and variety are two different things that are equally important to acknowledge. Both are made by RNG but a game can feel like a different game each time yet it can still feel like it's all skill if everything is properly balanced, and a game can have very little change between runs besides the overpowered/underpowered loot you get, which makes it feel like a complete luckfest. I also think difficulty and skill are two different things as well, although difficulty usually means the game also has a high skill ceiling, it might not be the case if luck is involved (luck, not variety), and a game can be easy and have high skill ceiling, like 3D Mario games. I think the video is good, but calling variety luck and difficulty skill doesn't do it any favors, although you explain the definitions, people still are confused because they already have their internal idea of what luck and skill is.
One example for the difference between luck and variety I often hear is binding of Isaac.
The more Items and DLC were released for the game the more I heard people say that runs started to feel similar because you either die pretty early, or you find some good Item that would lead you to survive until everything just starts exploding, because of all the synergies. In these cases there is a decent amount of luck involved but the variety may be lacking, depending on who you ask.
My problem with it is that he gives the definitions, but then when discussing the actual games he often doesn’t stick to them. Take Slay the Spire (because I’ve played it a lot). He gives it an 8 on supposedly variability, but aside from switching characters, almost every run feels almost exactly the same to me with the exception of how you build your deck, which is much more luck (getting good/synergistic) cards and relics than variability as I understand it. And a lot of the variability is by choice rather than true RNG because the game offers you lots of options, most of which also allow you to skip/ignore them. And if skill=difficulty, then I believe he massively underestimates Slay the Spire, unless he’s exclusively talking about ascension 0 with no heart fight, which isn’t really fair to call the main gamemode or the intended experience.
@@borrisderwutende7850 i hate this argument because it essentially boils down to ‘either i get an op item or i die’ meaning these people are hard relying on op items and just aren’t good enough for the skill aspects to come into play
@@Raine_Walker that is fair to say, I only played rebirth. However the argument that runs started to feel samey because many runs end in everything exploding with only a few truly unique ones still stands in my opinion.
@@supC_ I agree here to a point. I actually think STS is mostly skill based, and luck has very little to do with it. No run is unwinnable, so the choices you're presented with may seem random, but they are structured in a way that it will always be possible to win. Kindof makes the game skill based vs luck based
Beating Enter the Gungeon for the first time was a crazy feeling. Got me into roguelikes and now I'm trying to play a bunch of others.
it's the same with me and Isaac. Now I'm playing through Slay the spire and I have Enter the dungeon and Dead cells installed waiting to be played
What otger are good
Same, the first time beating the dragon was after the 6th time getting to the place.
Complete opposite for me. I *strongly disliked* almost every single mechanic in the game - I could go on for hours about everything I think EtG did wrong. Felt designed to be anti-fun from the top down, just didn’t mesh well with me ig.
Ironic, considering I’m a huge roguelike fan. Nuclear Throne, Skul, ItB, and Darkest Dungeon are among my favorites.
@@thewovenmantis6813 I’m just curious, but what are the things you mostly didn’t like. And also what are the thing you do like that makes those other games stand out for you?
I’m trying to find my next roque like so yeah.
I’ve played EtG, Dead cells, cursed god(not the real name but can’t remember atm), Isaac and Noita.
I’ve found myself to be quickly bored with Dead cells(even after multiple boss cells) and cursed god due to the amount of button mashing. So yeah
The main thing about risk of rain 2 is that it is really easy to turn around a bad run by making the right choices, like getting the correct lunar items, scrapping and printing and also using multi shop terminals. And it is really easy to get ahead of yourself and go too long in a stage, the luck can stay the same but risk of rain 2 needs to be bumped up in skill.
Risk of rain definitely takes both skill and luck, not one or the other.
(There is a lot more luck though, especially if you aren't using artifact of Command) Also, eclipse mode increases the need for skill a lot, but not as much luck.
I agree. I haven’t been able to win a lot of monsoon runs recently, and though that can be attributed to bad luck, a big factor is skill. It takes a lot of skill to manage time, get a good pool of items, and survive the onslaught of enemies.
eclipse 8 is pretty hard at start but the longer you loop the easier it gets
YES, SOMEONE WHO I AGREE WITH!! Risk of Rain 2 i think is totally a skill thing, sure you get items from rng, but it provides you with a good deal of choice and ways of getting around the rng. My friend with many less hours than me struggles sometimes with rainstorm, meanwhile i can consistently get good runs on monsoon. It's just about skill. Also the person making this video I think blew the power of lunar items and to a lesser extent legendaries way out of proportion.
Risk of rain (1 AND 2) is almost exactly like Darkest dungeon. On the surface level, everything look to be luck-based and the player having to "just get a lucky run".
"please, not this boss", "please this broken item", "oh no the collector, I'm dead 😢"
Then, you realise it's not about luck, but how the player can manipulate the rng throught game knowledge.
"Oh, this perk reduce chance of bad encounter", "this character favor my gameplay", "Oh, the collector just require to know how to deal with it then it's basically free loot for the rest of your entire experience."
Yes, it's sometime feel unfair (and sometime is, because no game is perfect. DD1/2 used to have a fairly amount of bullshit but it get better as soon as the game get polished and is a reason to purposely avoid early access game if you can't deal with a game in its early stage.
An excellent exemple is the streamer Wooly. Do you believe he would consistantly clear run in eclipse 8 if the game was this much reliant on luck?
As a lot of people said already i think a lot of the skill from isaac comes from knowing what you want to do with a run and whats the best way to move forward with the items/pickups you have
Slay The Spire is definitely a game that requires a lot of skill. Mechanical skill, of course not, but tons of tactical and strategical skill. You need to know what cards your deck needs to fight certain enemies should they show up (for instance, not picking up many block cards but trying to find higher-damage attacks in the beginning of a run in case you get Gremlin Nob), and to try to find those cards. Then it's a lot of risk-reward calculations, like "do I take 15 damage on this turn and guarantee to finish the fight next turn, or do I take 5 damage this turn with a chance to not kill next turn, and possibly take even more damage on the next turn?"
Yes, there is a TON of luck involved, since you may get certain card/relic combinations early in the run that practically win the run on the spot (like hitting an infinite on Watcher with Rushdown and multiple ways to get into calm and wrath, namely cards like Inner Peace, Fear no Evil, and Tantrum), but the skill lies in proper decision-making for what cards and relics to add, how to spend money at shops, which paths to take, which options to choose for events, which potions to use and when, and which cards to play and in what order.
Hades, to me, seems less luck-dependent in comparison. Out of what I've seen so far, the upgrades you get during a run are basically just stat upgrades, and most of the success of the run is just dependent on your skill and in-game knowledge. But of course, I don't have that many hours in Hades so I don't fully know. On the flipside, I do have over 100 hours in StS and have seen probably even more hours of StS content from high-level players, especially Jorbs.
Would be cool if you also included Noita here, I'd say that one has a high score in both: with skill you can make anything playable enough to get through the game, but put good RNG on top of that and you can achieve truly insane power levels and go on those 10+ hour, secret hunting runs
I would say it's not just skill, Noita requires much more in understanding and game experience than pure mechanical skill, like knowing spell combinations, what enemies are dangerous, and never ever touch polymorphine
@@lawro2876 Well, yeah. I think this falls under the "skill" category, a.k.a. things that depend entirely on your mastery of the game, mechanical or theoretical. The actual mechanical skill requirement for Noita is quite low as far as roguelikes go
@@lawro2876 having played noita I get what you mean but that could also be said about roguelites in general especially enter the gungeon.
@@lred1383 true, decision making is part of skill, even the entirety of what it takes to be good at non action games like loop hero, even in dead cells you got biome choice and build selection
@@lawro2876 u can use polymorphine to get out of the holy mountain without triggering the collapse, i've got 700 hours so far and I don't see me stopping any time soon. Best roguelike to me personally, such a satisfying yet relentless experience.
I have ~250hrs in Slay the Spire and I can say that the game is getting really hard on higher ascension levels. There is much to understand in this game and making the best decision can be quite hard.
Personally I mostly play Defect and I am stuck on A17. Beating A20 is a skill accomplishment because you won't get it if you simply hope for luck and go in without much thought.
I have the most fun playing defect, but it is the hardest character at higher ascension levels. A20H took a lot of tries and took a good amount of luck for me. It's probably a 6 on luck and a 7 on skill.
@@brettmartin3529 thank you for reaffirming that I'm not bad or crazy, but defect is also my fav character and these ascenion tiers are killing me, but catching my other characters up is significantly easier
@@Fox_Olive i have the most hours on ironclad nad the worst w/l ratio xD got him at 19 silent at 18 defect at 13, watcher at 10
My method is to watch pro player ranking cards, relics in which they would explain when, why you should buy or get them, what they interact with and make out the best of them for the situations. Knowing the monsters' pattern is essential too.
Isaac is lots of skills. You can for sure get carried by items, but to consistently win even with sub par items needs skill.
No shit, just like every rogue like. You clearly didn’t understand the point of this video
For beating delirium without any knowledge and by pure randomness, I Can totally Say ISAAC is more a Luck based game than a skill game
Once you know how works item and how to optimise every run to have a lot of it, you have more than 75% chance to win
I really disagree a lot of you BOI fans in the comments are way too salty. Yes it takes "skill"(or a quick google) to remember item combos but it's still tied to luck
If there is skill there I do not have it ToT
@@FiniteMan1933its more about knowing and coming up with ways to gain items and controlling the items you get. Easiest example is taking a mystery gift to an angel room or the secret room for better items than if you just used it.
Spire is incredibly skill reliant at a high level. The best players in the world will absolutely achieve 60+% winrate across the board at ascension 20 with act 4 included each run (with watcher being an outlier at like 95+%). It's pretty criminal to chalk successful runs to luck.
I don't know much about Spire, but from what you just said, if the best players in the world can only manage a 60% winrate, it sounds lik it relies quite a bit on luck. The best players in the world for Dead Cells, Hades and many other games can easily get a 95% winrate.
I don’t think he made it past ascension 2 for this video tbh
@@The_GronneIt is 60% at A20, a ridiculously hard difficulty. Im pretty sure All those players would have an almost 100% winrate if you are talking about the base game. I don't know what difficulty you are talking about for those other games and how it compares A20 on slay the spire, but A20 is insanely hard, i will tell you that. It took me more than 218 hours playtime to beat A20 once, when luck was in my favour. But even then, my winrate was probably like 3-4%.
The winrate of top players being only 60% doesn't define skill, it only defines the luck of the game. And yes, the luck element is high.
What defines the skill element is the different between winrates of top players and average players, which is absolutely massive in sts. As of now, only 5% of players have the achievement for beating A20 once on steam. And even in those 5%, majority of the players would have a ridiculously low winrate(
@@The_Gronne At the lowest difficulty It has been reasonably calculated that a win rate of over 99.9% is possible with all four characters.
At the highest difficulty of Ascension 20 it goes around 70%/55%/60%/90% win rate on the characters when done optimally. Yes getting no attack cards on the first rooms and dying to forced elite enemy fight or the first act boss does happen, but good players know who to risk manage and find alternate paths if needed to get past these hurdles.
So yes, luck is definitely a good bit of the game. I would have said about 4-6. Skill however is the most important factor as getting good cards doesn't just let you win. The game is not forgiving enough for that. Skill would be about 7-9
@@agenzmain6146 So if I do everything right and play as good as a TAS I win only a little over half of the time and you mean to tell me thats not rng?
You can tell the difficulty of a game by it's win percentage for top players vs noob players, yes, but you can tell rng by top players vs themselves. If a player who is theoretically perfect only wins half the time that's a testament to bad game design. Just because a game is hard (aforementioned win rates) doesn't mean it isn't overly rng dependent.
The binding of Isaac is probably one of my favourite games just ahead of Gungeon, and I personally think that the main skill elements doesn’t come from dodging but more from tech and game knowledge. Like, sure, a bad player with op items will be able to do better than a good player with Isaac’s heart, but I think what mainly separates good and a bad players is the ability to make the most of bad situations, things like using mystery gift in the secret room, or using the lover’s card in that one black heart secret room.
Isaac's heart is kinda pog now tho
@@bullettime1116 No.
@@bullettime1116 So true. People just are scared to try it's rework. I obliterate most runs with Isaac's Heart now that I pick it up almost every time I see it. It's just an item that takes learning how to use it correctly with great rewards for doing so.
Isaacs heart is pretty good now
In Hades there is definitely a reason so go past 20 heat. You unlock the last Skelly statue at 32. One Step From Eden looks extremely similar (gameplay wise) to the first 4 MegaMan Battle Network games so I'll check that out! I like the list. Skill rating feels off at times. And maybe a couple of games could have had the same scores
You got it wrong with risk of rain lol, common items are probably the most useful, lunar items are really gimmicky and dangerous, and red (rarest items) are easy to acquire since you can have 1 100% of the time on stage 4, and a lot of them are pretty bad/not useful for most survivors.
yeah i was pretty shocked by the rating he gave risk of rain. any vet player knows its way more important to PLAY around the weakness of the survivor not just bank on items to fill the gaps. And when you understand the items well enough there are dozens of combinations that any survivor can make use of. If you're sitting around waiting for specific items or printers then youre doing it wrong and yes it would feel very luck based. not to mention some survivors are way more item dependent than others.
@@EthanC1030 god my favorite part of Risk of Rain 2 was using engineers grappling hook with the common that increases the amount of times you can use your secondary. Becoming Iron Spiderman is so fulfilling and so much fun
@@Sonic759100 engineer is the least mobile character. loader has the grappling hook secondary.
@@noakinn fuck i always get em mixed up
the up side of lunars are too strong to call their downside risky after you get decent at the game
Nice seeing NT, I totally agree. Everything feels like it's going good and then suddenly you lose 6HP to two bullets and die to an explosion. Plus, Melting is so difficult, basically requiring you to be flawless
That's exactly the reason I love NT. You're always in danger, but if you make small mistakes it's really easy to recover because of the way hp drops work.
I can understand why people like EtG but I personally can't stand how small mistakes punish you so much. I like making risky plays but I feels like I'm heavily punished for taking a single hit of damage (lose out on boss HP up, the special shield that's unlocks one of the levels, etc...)
@@patrickramos1748 I love flawless so I've never minded that in etg, so I love playing melting but progression is super slow
yea it is fucking nuts. everythign dose so much.
NT feels like an arcade game. Every run is just so frantic and quick, to the point where you either win or you die horribly. Everytime you die, you just wanna get back to it immediately. It’s incredibly addicting imo.
You could compare Melting and The Lost, but why do I feel like you can be best player in the world and still die as Lost to some bullshit, but can't say the same about Melting...
I believe that nuclear throne, which I agree on there being lots of skill and not a lot of luck, should have a bit more luck than it has. The mutations and weapons you get early game really decide your fate for the late game.
late game - sure, to beat the game - not even close.
This is facts. Sure, you can 'beat the game' with shitty mutations and shitty weapons if you're good. But nobody really wants to do that anyway (cause it ends your run). The devs only added the ending in a later update. You're supposed to loop and go on as long as you can.
On loops, builds without melee weapons are objectively worse. So not getting Long Arms is terrible. And on specific characters, not getting Throne Butt is terrible aswell. Other than that there's a few mutations that if you don't get the option to pick them it's annoying but still fine. But with either of these two, you might as well restart if you don't get them.
@@utm0st i thought the aim of the game was to beat the IDPD captain?
If you're looking for specific weapons or mutations, 99% there are more than enough opportunities to get what you want.
@@racket804 that is just one of the finales, the aim of the game is imo achieve everything, which is basically obtain every character, get hard mode, get the frog, get all crown wins, all the character skins and 100% the game.
I think slay the spire is a bit of an outlier in this list of games as it is entirely tactical and strategic, and while it doesn't test your physical capabilities, I would say that the game is much more demanding than the others on this list
Excuse me but have you PLAYED Dead Cells.
@@fallongarens6734 I'd be interested to see the asc20 heart kill win rate vs 5bsc
@@fallongarens6734 I have 200h in sts and just under 150 in dead cells,
sts at high ascension (how it is ment to be played imo) is incredibly difficult and over the course of about 1h runs you can at most make one or two mistakes before the run is dead and you really cant afford to make many small inaccuracies,
Pseychie saying if you get corruption you win is just plain out wrong over asc 5,
dead cells with high boss cells is very demanding do imo mostly to the time system, I have won my first run in dead cells on 0 boss cells because I just didn't see the mechanic and played slow and methodical, overall the enemies represent a threat but mostly you want to get the bosses untouched and try to only get dmg in the biomes and even then you can only afford one or two hits at most.
overall sts and dead cells are both hard but (again imo) sts in high ascension is more demanding overall
Has a huge barrier of entry too. Someone could play over 100 hours before beating the heart or making it past ascension 10
@@devinloew7681 I think what you mean to say is strategy in sts is much more abstract than a side scrolling action game like DC. Like my first complete run to Dead Cells was quicker than my first victory at the 3rd boss or heart, but I needed to evaluate cards better in order to get there. In DC, I just got my first victory by trial and error.
11:20 “there’s no reason to go past 20 heat”
**Laughs in skelly statues**
He’s right
@@Rations282 nop theres even achievements for skellie statues so its really relevant
@@NatanStarke is there? i got the plat i forgot what was the max heat needed but it wasnt the highest
@@Rations282 it inst the highest its 32 and really fine tuned for a final achievement
@@NatanStarke the highest skelly statue is 32 but there is no achievement.
Technically you only need 24 heat to get all of the achievements and 3w heat to get all the skelly statues
I'd say the reason I love the binding of Isaac is it's pure skill and game knowledge. I've never felt like I lost a run of Isaac to rng
Have you played t. Lost?
@@daustthefaust8120 Why highlight T. Lost, when T. Eden is the real RNG fiesta of Repentance.
The boom fly bridge in question:
@@alwayrember193 The boom fly bridge that is trivialized ba T. Lost flight ability? Thaaat bridge? Oh nooo what shall I do, I must doge to the side! aaaaa
A little addition to his Isaac section: People have reached over 1000 winstreak, not just 100. And that as Eden, a character with which you could spawn on 1 (technically 2, depending on incoming damage type) health. You could also spawn with at item that displaces your hitbox, or makes you deal damage to yourself. If you are good enough, any run is winnable. Of course, you could also get a 2 item combo which practically gives you a free win. I might've wanted to put a 10 on both skill and luck. People with thousands of hours still find new synergies they've never seen before, REGULARLY. I love TBOI
I absolutely love how it feels like the RNG factor is so present in Nuclear Throne that the game just boomerangs its way back to not being luck-reliant, thanks to the sheer amount of options you get, unlike something similar to Enter The Gungeon, where guns are more of a commodity.
yea NT is a very strange game, there is a lot of luck, but a lot of skill is involved too.
I'm surprised he gave the game has a luck rating of one, considering he said luck is "a measure of variety" and every single wall and tile is randomly generated in the game
The luck factor definitely comes into play when it comes to what Mutations are given to you, what weapons enemies drop and what come from chests, and what enemies are spawned when you enter a level. The skill factor, on the other hand, comes into play when you're forced to adapt to the situation given to you by these factors of luck. Even with a bad hand you can still make it far if you play your cards right. That's why I love NT; it isn't entirely dependent on how lucky you are.
@@Mate_Antal_Zoltan would make sense if they feel 'samey' despite the variety
In the vein of Slay the Spire, Monster Train is possibly my favorite roguelike, along with Hades. You build your deck like StS, but with cards from two different clans of demons (each of which has unique starting spells on top of the Strike/Defend equivalent), and you also start with a few randomly determined spells to round out your starting package. This makes each run start more unique than StS runs.
It's also got another layer of mechanics, in that you have to arrange the units you play on the three floors of your train, and enemy units will move up one floor each turn. You really have to strategize each turn to avoid getting overwhelmed.
3:30 Item quality has no relevance to item rarity on its own. It is a different mechanic
Sad to see that Spelunky/Spelunky 2 is not here, it's definitely one of those games were you have to rely more on skill rather than luck.
S2 felt like more luck than s1, you'd die to stuff off screen or have to play super slow just to avoid death. i guess the latter is part of the skill required
Why are you sad about it, its not a top 10 games, its just the ones he played
At the same time, S2 guarantees many mobility items (like Vlad's Cape or spike shoes).
@@johnsmith-fk7fw I think it is a function of which you played first. I actually played through S2 first since I was late to the series, got all achievements in S2, then played S1. Doing that I had a really good feel for S2 and found myself with a lot more “cheap” deaths on S1. Plus the difficulty of S2 true ending being soooo much longer and more complex raises the skill ceiling significantly.
@@blightyfrogs it's not guaranteed, you have to overcome the vlad castle which requires some steps to enter and is quite difficult to new players, it's more like a high risk trade I would say.
It's so sad that not many people know about streets of rogue, even those that are into roguelikes. It's such a good game that I wish more people would play
it doesnt feel like a roguelike but its still really fun
streets of rogue is fuckin awesome
I have a friend that plays it, seems pretty interesting
I will check it out
Streets of rogue was the only roguelike I enjoyed
A mistake on The Binding of Isaac: There Rarity/Item quality system you mention does not affect the chances of the item spawning. It only affects certain mechanics and only influences 2 characters in the game (Tainted Cain and Tainted Lost) despite that, I do agree with the point that some runs will be significantly better than others though
the item quality system does affect item spawning actually, it was the mechanic that replaced special items
@@fiona9891 it USED to affect the chances of the time spawning; when you had a special item the game had a chance to reroll other special items youve found, but this mechanic was changed in repentance for all items to have the same chance
@@baqly technically not all items have the same spawn chance, but yeah, an item's quality and its weight in a pool are 2 independent variables
@@fiona9891 no, the item WEIGHT system does. for some of the high-quality items, they do have a lower item weight, but a lower item weight can also be on worse items or downright useless items, like Plan C having a 0.2 item weight.
@@TarlukLegion plan c can kill delirium and get you the completion mark, and any, ANY item that can make the delirium fight easy is appreciated.
Regarding Slay the Spire’s third boss, I enjoy the strategic mix-up Time Keeper throws at you. It forces you to adapt your plays to a different rhythm, and get you to think several turns ahead for the win. So what if it shuts down infinite combos? Turns out that most infinite combos in the game don’t need more than 10 or 12 cards to crush each fight, so just because you’re not abusing infinite damage does not mean an auto-loss. Slay the Spire is meant to push you and your deck-building skills to their limit, which means throwing enemies at you that counter whatever strategy you’re currently running, and you finding the win in spite of that through superior planning and card playing. That’s the core fun of Slay the Spire.
Totally agree, winning against really tough odds is kind of the whole pull of the game for me LOL
Yeah, the third bosses being that way is my favorite element of the game. You can either 33% chance it for your combo deck, or more strategically, add elements that help in all 3 scenarios, which is how you should really be building your deck in the first place.
Yeah the game absolutely hates infinites so if you're relying on an infinite this late something has gone wrong
@@scottwhitman9868 It hates infinites that only do one thing. More broadly, the game hates decks that only solve one type of combat and forces you to try and solve every combat that you can within your deck.
Plenty of infinites are viable even at A20. Most Watcher runs go infinite to some degree, Ironclad has many infinite options with exhaust synergies and various damage sources, even Silent and Defect have infinites via discard and Recycle, respectively. It's all about solving the problems you need to solve appropriately.
@@whydidimakethis111 yeah i think i said it poorly. I think its more that in sts an infinite isnt always going to be infinitely good.
it's definitely stupid to say that RoR2 has a big item discrepancy. white items give better stats, green items give extra effects to your hits and kills, and red items assist your green and white items and make them much more powerful. having only one of each type is awful, and most ror2 players will tell you they would rather have 3 white items than 3 green items. also, lunar items are in no way overpowered, as they have big downsides and picking up pretty much any of them is a terrible idea unless your build is focused around it.
Nono, give me the 3 green items, also Gesture of the Drowned is the only one 100% broken
I definitely agree with a high luck rating for RoR 2, as the sheer randomness of the items can mean that you could end up with borderline gamebreaking combos at the very first stage of a run (capacitor + gesture + double bands for example), however a skill rating of 5 just doesn't cut it imo. Even with the amount of luck involved with the games items, with proper decision making a run with a bad start can become as good or even better than a run with a god start, for example, the numbers of enemies are increasing and you're starting to have trouble dealing with them all, do you scrap a few white and green items and hope for a good printer on the next stage, if yes, let's say on the next stage you get both a white and green item printer, both of them have good single target items, do you print those to deal with individual enemies faster or do you save your scrapped items and hope for a chance to print actual aoe items? Some of the factors that come into play here are: what survivor you are playing, what loadout do you have on the survivor, what equipment item do you have, do you even have an equipment item, what other items you already have, do you care about spending lunar coins to get to the blue portal, what stage you are on and if you plan to loop your run, and so on. And that's just the decision making part, the gameplay itself isn't relying on luck, i can almost guarantee that if someone is only relying on luck to get through the game, they will die if they ever activate 2 mountain shrines on stage 1, while anyone who actually knows how the survivor they're playing works should be able to get through it without too much trouble and get free extra green items. In conclusion, luck rating of 7 or 8 is accurate, but a skill rating of 7 or 8 would be much more appropriate instead of 5.
2:13 definitely true
I've only dealt with the first ror, and it's still been kicking my ass. I only cheesed it by getting like three double jumps and spamming explosives as bandit. So I'd assume ror2 has the same skill ceiling and problem of cheesing
@@kabfridepoblus6951 absolutely not. There are not really any broken classes or cheese methods as the later into the run you go, the more cluster fuck it becomes. (loader is op but we don't mention her).
In general. Even if you have the most busted build ever, if you mispositioned at 90+ mins, it's back to the lobby.
@@Lucy_LightbringerVT I'm not saying it doesn't take skill, but if you can jump over the final boss and spam explosives it does have some cheese
@@kabfridepoblus6951 you probably could, but that'd take a while. And he'd probably jump up and charles barkley you into the ground as he has done to me many times.
@@SmilingBones oh I'm talking about the first one, idk about the second one though
Every video you make is an absolute treat to watch. I'm currently getting addicted to roguelikes so this video is just perfect. I'm mid improving in dead cells trying to beat 2 BC and I bought hades yesterday. Keep it up!
I highly reccomend enter the gungeon, it’s the best roguelike I’ve played before dead celss
@@guipinus same I started to get addicted of roguelike games because of enter the gungeon. Had hundred of hours with everything unlocked and sadly now moving on to other games like dead cells
8:30 for risk of rain 2: lunar items can be complete game changers, but they aren't guarantees for success. Infact, I'd wager to say that it's probably a bad idea to count entirely on them. Even on drizzle, I lose regularly to both the final boss and other bosses inbetween. Skill and luck is needed, at least until the command artifact comes into play (it lets you choose your items)
You're wrong Lunars are incredibly and could easily solo your entire run
I have put quite a good number of hours into Slay the Spire and the skill rating it got here is not deserved. Granted, yes, it is heavily reliant luck of what you get in terms of items and cards, but you need to know how to approach each situation and that takes a certain level of skill that you acquire after playng the game for so long.
Although I agree, based on the rankings, I think this list is more or less ignoring" knowledge check" kinds of skill. Thats why binding of isaac is so low in the skill department as well
I agree, though seems like he rated it low due to lack of mechanical/real-time skill
After reading a lot of comments and spend several hundred hours in StS myself I can tell you it’s a knowledge is power kinda game but to 11 and kinda bullshit
If you don’t know everything there is to know about your character and what’s available to them you’re going to fail, the problem is that what RNG is in the game often masks what a player does wrong and as such it’s incredibly difficult to learn what you did wrong without watching others. That’s generally regarded as bad game design, even when said game is fun.
Yeah, I agree it doesn’t deserve that skill rating. The important skill of slay the spire is actually managing that high degree of luck. That’s not a mechanical skill, but it is a skill nonetheless.
@@domp2729 unless, you noticed that there were certain combos you could've picked along the way
The game's cardpool size is balanced such that it seems in any given run, there are always at least 2 different viable strats
I can recommend Wizard of Legend, especially to people who like a decently strong control over their builds. Charming art style, a small but good soundtrack, and amazing spell combat based on the elements (think of Avatar TLA).
Wizard of legend is really good, but like every other roguelike, there’s quite a few enemies that will have you screaming “BULLS***” at your computer.
but man, those bosses feel so good to fight.
@@chickennugget6684 the only enemy that i find to be that way is the electric mage but only when i have a low hp build
I can agree on this one
One of my FAVS, sunk almost 100 hrs into it
There is no reason to ever in your life lose an Isaac run once you master the game. At least in the state it's in now the game gives you too many opportunities to get yourself an advantage even if items are randomized
@@levelmake7758 some people refuse to take randomized stat items like pills or experimental treatment without a good buffer amount of stats like with more than one speed, then I personally never take blind items for the risk that they'll be dunce cap. Sorry but like genuinely skill issue. And this is coming from someone with 2k hours on steam and 1k on switch and I've never had a win streak of like over 10 every L is my fault and that's why Isaac was good
@@levelmake7758like Pablo Said master the game, If you had that strong of a build why did you Gamble picking a random item that you didnt even knew what It was?
@@levelmake7758 after taking a fat speed down (which was a gamble you didn't have to take), you make the bright decision, out of 4 boss rush items, to take one of the biggest speed downs in the game. None of that was rng my guy
@@levelmake7758Why the hell would you take bucket of lard with bad speed
@@ZentoBrinebgnecro 2 is the boss rush floor. You can probably figure out the rest
I feel like you're really underrating Slay The Spire on skill, luck rating seems spot on though lol. I'm no Jorbs but I have completed the game on A20 with 3 characters (2 of which were modded, the 3 are Ironclad, Bug Knight and Marisa) and I've found there's a lot of room for skill expression in:
- routing
- card choice
- card removal choice
- play order
- relics
- planning
Especially planning. Planning wins runs. For example, Marisa has an archetype of cards based on Sparks. Sparks are 0-cost cards that do 4 damage and exhaust, basically they're Shivs. Sparks are strong, but they get countered by Time Eater. Early in my run, even if I have a decent Spark deck going I have to step out of archetype for answers to Time Eater. As you correctly say, I'm not going to beat Time Eater if my gameplan is spamming 0-cost cards, even if that same game plan would run over, for instance, Awakened One. There's a 33% chance I fight Time Eater. I have to have something for Time Eater. In Marisa's case, that might mean I want to fit a Charge-up package in my deck and instead of spending my turns spamming Sparks against him, I spend them turtling up while I build up charge to oneshot him several turns down the line.
It's not about picking an archetype and jamming every card you find that fits that archetype into your deck, because that's how you run into a hard counter and just lose. It's about picking the best choices from what you're offered and filling in gaps in your deck so that when you get thrown against Awakened One as your A3 boss, you don't just die because your deck is 100% dependent on Powers you're punished for playing.
Exactly, StS is all about planning and building in contengincies for encounters you know you may face. I've beat Time Eater plenty of times with a "shiv" or "infinite" deck, I've also lost plenty of runs with Ironclad after picking Corruption when it was a terrible choice for what I had rolling but I was too stubborn to see that. I think the tough thing to learn with StS is that you have to throw out the idea of combo archetypes from other card games and instead choose cards as solutions to problems you may face. :D
I’d say the luck rating is a bit high too. You can def luck into wins but lucking into loses is pretty much something that never happens unless you were super fragile, in which case you have made a big mistake earlier.
I’d say the game is 10 skill 6 luck
@@iwastherain I laughed when he said RNG killed his run by spawning a certain boss. Right, so you've just encountered one of the relatively small numbers of enemies you have to think about and plan for next time. The game didn't just invent the boss on the spot, he's something you're going to encounter a lot and will lose to again if you don't take him seriously. It all down to the player.
If all he's doing is playing each roguelike for about an hour yes he will be at the mercy of whatever the game throws at him. You have to learn how the game works for a bit before you can become skilled at it. The fact that you've hardly played it and don't know what to expect doesn't make it a luck driven game.
the guys just said that RoR2 is more skill based and less luck based than StS, lol
@@BlueZirnitra i kinda hate on slay the spire when the game gives me a fun build and then it throws a boss that completaly counters it at the end, its a issue that Monster Train solved by just telling you which final boss you are getting on that run after you pick your starting deck.
That for me makes the game more interesting cause you can make a deck that could beat it 100% of the times but risk losing to regular enemies on your way there or a more balanced deck against everything and make your final fight against him harder.
Personally I believe that isaac does have plenty of skill factored into the game play. Obviously good rng makes things way easier, but skill can let a shitty run still win
In binding of issac skill and good decision making is definitely needed. If you are good at the game you can win with even the worst of items and good items are just a nice bonus. I won't deny that getting a ton of broken items will make skill less important but you still definitely need skill to win any given run.
If you have a great build you don't need skill at all
@@kirgizikable yeah but if you have skill you don't need great build
@@immortaltiger2617 Show me the player who can beat bosses such as Delirium at
@@flip.flap. "beating the game" doesnt necessarily mean killing deli.
One thing i like about EtG is that it's really easy to pick back up if you haven't played in a while, while something like Hades it feels like if you drop it for a month it takes a bit of time to get back into the groove.
True tho!
When I got back to Hades after about two months I beat Hades second-try... I didn't even play games similar to it
I've had a lot of fun with Streets of Rogue, which isn't particularly skill intensive, but has a high chaos factor in variability.
It is. And in multiplayer it gonna be cooler, for sure
Skill is definitely there but getting 3 giant pills is also a factor (even if i hoard them most of the time)
I absolutely ADORE Streets of Rogue. One of the best games ever made.
One of the few games where it’s genuinely difficult to choose between a boon and a clear but potentially hilarious detriment.
While luck is certainly a large factor in Risk of Rain 2, I oftentimes find that good pacing and knowledge of stage layouts (Newt Altar locations, places the teleporter likes to spawn, abusable geometry, etc.) can circumvent the need for luck tremendously, even with Commando, the so-called weakest survivor (false). And with the scrappers, printers, and multishops, there's almost always a degree of conscious choice in determining what you get out of a level, even if there are still no guarantees.
i agree but commando is definitely the weakest survivor, not bad, but definitely weakest
I will 1v1 you in Melty Blood in a phone booth on Wall Street and probably lose but I'll send a message
(Since this the internet, I feel obligated to clarify that I'm joking)
For some reason he seemed to not count game knowledge into skill. I agree that it's not really a "skill" per se to know that this item does this and that enemy does that, but _understanding_ these things is where it becomes a skill. Knowing how to make game mechanics work in your favor is a huge part of a game like Slay the Spire or Isaac (and I suppose RoR2 as well but I havent played that one very much).
@@kbs333 nah huntress is the worst
@@Jqcksremmurd Huntress worse than commando? She can shoot while running ffs. That automatically makes her top 3 material.
I think once you play enough rogue likes, it’s common to get extremely far or even “beat” them on your first run, but it’s just because you have a leg up knowing how the mechanics typically work. I also think it just varies from person to person because I know for me I found dead cells extremely easy but it took me a sad amount of runs to ever beat Hades for the first time.
Hades also has quite a bit more meta progression than Dead Cells.
@@laurelkeeper This is true! I just meant I know a lot of people beat Hades on their their 10th - 20th run and it took me a little longer!
3:36 that's wrong. The item quality does NOT make it rarer. A sacred heart has the same chance to appear as breath of life, what determines an item rarity is the weight wich has nothing to do with it being good or bad. The mechanic that made "good" items rarer if you had already seen a "good" item was removed in repentance
huh, I didn't realise they changed it for repentance
the quality, is in fact non relevant to how rare they are
however, each item has a weight in each pool, such as Magic Mush or Spindown dice in the treasure room which have a weight of 0.1. making them way less likely to find in this room than every other items
@@djevebran2432Weight is, however, seldom used just to make good items rarer. Its used to avoid oversaturation.
R Key for example, one of the most objectively powerful items in the game, has a weight of 1. The standard, and highest it goes.
Item quality doesn’t actually affect the item rarity at all they only affect tainted Cain tainted lost and sacred orb weight affects the item rarity and it’s actually really fair an item like black powder and brimstone are the exact same weight most bad items and good items are the same weight with them only being lower when they’re out of they’re pools (like getting holy mantle in an item room instead of angel)
They are talking about the binding of isaac just wanted to mention that for other readers. What keeps you from getting OP items in isaac is the vast amount of medium power items. In repentance especially i feel like there are fewer runs that end with you becoming ultra op but also fewer runs that end in very poor stat-gain. A lot of skill in isaac also comes from knowing how to get the most out of every floor (more / better items) It's not just dodging. Even for lost or tainted lost knowing when to reroll and how to get more holy cards is important.
@@anders_x3 lost, especially after the eternal d6 unlock, is a really great character tho, and the general complaint about the tainted lost is about the gargantuan amount of unavoidable damage (if you don't get any speed ups you're 100% get hit on the latest floors, for example)
Well you are technically right. There are a handful of items that have a lower weight like mega blast. Also before the repentance DLC there was a special item system in place that reduces the chance to find multible amazing items (Fun fact Soy Milk used to be a special item). I would also like to point out that Repentance nerfed almost all of the "solo carry items" and made most "bad" item viable.
@@Bambochutafreak I don’t understand why soy milk is considered bad by so many people. It is a net damage up and has some of the best synergies in the game unlike something like isaac’s heart.
you did sts dirty man, easily the hardest game strategically on the list. and, while certain cards are stronger than others, no card is a guaranteed win. The skill expression comes in CONSISTENCY, you are given the tools in almost every seed to formulate a win, and you need to statistically optimize a route to it (sometimes the luck doesn't play in your favor, but math is still skill)
That's the thing, his definitions of luck and skill are super muddy to me. Luck seems to sometimes be pure variation of a run, or whether or not you can get an item to carry you, etc. Skill seems to be purely twitch function? But not even fully, because he should've given StS a 1 then since it takes no more twitch skill than using a web browser.
And w/ StS in specific, like you said, no card can carry you to a win. Deck building is the skill, it may not be a twitch skill, but it's a skill nonetheless. Only a good player can beat the higher difficulties of the game, and only a great player can do it consistently. There is a lot of variation in any given run, but just like with MtG, good players can mitigate that variation and turn what would be a run killer for a normal player into another W in their file.
I don't think it's a huge deal though, some people are getting real angry lol. Dude said he was in grade school in 2012, he's barely old enough to drink in the US, if even that. This video is him learning. At the end of the day, these are all just games and it was all purely his opinion, however misguided. People shouldn't get too upset about it, beyond explaining why they disagree.
Perhaps a bit of bias but Dead Cells and Risk of Rain 2 absolutely prioritizes skill and good decision making over pure luck. Skill isn't just pure execution but they both have high level movement and combat options that are essential for run consistency. RoR2 and Dead Cells have found a good middle ground loop of emergent gameplay and spontaneous choices imo. SuperHOT MCD did a good job at this as well. All in all I agree with the list but I'd swap RoR2 with a 6 in skill over Hades easily. Having to choose your end game is meaningful as they are both hard in their own way.
As much as I like Void Bastards, it's heavily luck driven for "smart" decisions to matter but Hades is on the opposite end where the feels like it's designed to be a digestible roguelite that newcomers can actually finish It's a good entry level roguelite with less to chew as time goes on.
That's a big reason I dropped Void Bastards. I had great runs where I felt like I did everything right but the RNG just keep giving my junk and then runs where I was playing mediocre but I kept falling into health + ammo
That's the same with Slay the Spire. The difficulty comes with building your deck - you have to juggle staying alive, closing out games, and what powers you get whenever you add/remove cards.
Half the fun of slay the spire is building decks than can fight all the different act 3 bosses. A20 makes you fight 2 of them anyways, if you're losing runs because you got a bad act 3 boss, it's because your deck wasn't built properly, not bad luck. Ive killed time eater with an infinite, just gotta make sure that infinite generates about 40 block while it's doing it's thing. The variance comes in what card rewards you're offered and what relics you get.
Truth, and your username makes me joyous to see a fellow Sanderson fan out here!
Hello, i have a lot of time on risk of rain 2, and personally i'd like to say that throughout most of my runs, some of the legendary items don't actually do all too much. only a select few like meat hooks, or ceremonial daggers or a few others really skyrocket your run. and for lunar items, most of them are actually more detrimental than beneficial aside from shaped glass and gesture of the drowned. Later game, and early game you'll find that common items and rare items are so much more important than getting legendary or lunar items to make a build. Those two rarities are the most important items throughout your run. if you were to only pick up red items, you would have few healing items, little to no defense, and ok damage. but add in a couple white items and you have a great build. To attest to the skill of the survivors, or characters, being smart with how much time you spend on stages and deciding what abilities to use on what and when is extremley important early game. if you aren't progressing at a fast speed early on in a run you are gonna get decimated by any later stages. unless you spend even more time playing catch up with items. although on monsoon, it's very difficult to get god runs, or basically just become immortal. on monsoon all of the enimies are much much more challenging. the final boss difficulty scales VERY drastically between difficulties. I resign.
Red items like WOV, happiest mask, bottled chaos, and aegis are incredibly weak red tiems
@@linus8438 Aegis can be kinda nuts given the right core build, but unless you are very licky it sucks.
Idk I’ve played a lot of RoR 2 and while really bad luck can kill a run and really good luck can make it a lot easier, it feels pretty consistent in difficulty most of the runs, leaving most of the emphasis on skill (this is just imo, I also don’t think it’s the highest skill game but knowing how to manage your build can save a lot of bad runs)
I think that a lot of it also comes down to whether or not you use command artifact, although it just completely kills luck altogether at that point
@@fragant47 command can't be used in eclipse mode.
@@Lucy_LightbringerVT true, but they didn't say anything about eclipse, so I just assumed regular runs
In my experience, as you get better at RoR 2 you start to realize its far less luck based than you originally thought. Getting bad items can definitely hurt and sometimes kill your run but you have way more control over the items you get than it seems when you're new.
@@206lbs.hercules5 yea for me bad items have never out right killed me just requires me to play better
For Nuclear Throne, I personally find a large amount of run variability through the many viable options, as mentioned in the video, giving a solid amount of differentiation between two runs. Such as building into weapon types through mutation. Though luck, in the traditional sense, can be felt in spawn locations which can turn a level that is generally easy into a stress fest. Due to the lower amount of mutations/options relative to other games, like Isaac, I do get the low relative rating of variability. In terms of skill/difficulty, yea... I'd rate something similar.
>opens video
>"if nuclear throne is not here I'm not watching
>opens description
>NUCLEAR THRONE
THANK YOU ❤️
Mean while in Noita, A random enemy pick up a wand that have a nuke in it and fired it at a rat nearby, all of this happend off screen, you just standing still doing your business and get ass blasted by that nuke. you have no idea what is happening, you just died. Lmao
Noita's skill is salvaging luck and dodging all the weird shit the game throws at you. That and game knowledge like what combines with what and which places have secrets.
From my own experience I feel as though Isaac has more skill than what you gave it. Playing perfectly for some people isnt out of the question and that can lead to devil deals/angel deals and the perfection trinket. Plus gives you opportunity to use blood banks and judgements. For risk of rain 2 I'd say legendary items arent needed to win a run. Stacking common items which is relatively easy if you use printers to sacrifice your other items of the same quality you can get stacks of really good common items and that can help carry a run more so than the rare items.
Spelunky is an essential to add to this list. Both Spelunky HD (what most people just know as Spelunky) and Spelunky 2 are great, I would recommend going straight to 2. I think it’s a purely better game and has so much more to discover. They require insane skill to beat, but they have many different endings with different difficulty levels so it’s still approachable. My favorite rogue-like by far.
100% agree, sad that this dude didn't put it in the video lmao.
Cringe take, Spelunky 2 endings are extremely underwhelming
Hmmm do I want to nuke a giant fish lady only for her to not die and mock me?
Or do I want to be a literal freaking star
MEANWHILE IN SPELUNKY HD
I get to kill the literal ruler of an ancient civilizations or the lord of hell, and then meet up with the GOAT Yang as the credits say I'm a hero
You get my point.
@@adriansrsa90 this is so crazy, you can’t be serious? No one plays Spelunky (1 or 2) for the narrative, right? It’s such a heavy gameplay game, with a very trivial story. I really don’t care in the slightest what the bosses look like, just how great it feels to play and how fun and challenging the game is. Spelunky was a great starting point, but 2 is a masterpiece. So much depth and complex difficulty. Spelunky 2 is just so, so much better.
Damn, spelunky hd and 2 my favourite roguelike too
3:12 tbh Soy Milk should have been replaced with Almond Milk. Soy Milk’s main problem in the past was that shots had so much knockback that the dps was inconsistent, but in Repentance the knockback was reduced which makes Soy Milk more consistent and viable on any given run. Almond Milk is just Soy Milk but inherently inconsistent due to all of the worm trinket effects it cycles through.
Almond milk is better than soy milk
@@nullius9807 kinda depends the situation (and your other items) what is the better option (the random worm effect make brimstone really hard to use just to give an example)
Almond milk is soymilk but it gets insane crowd control with synergies
@@calebhherra2553 i always feel like almond milk is more powerful just because of the less damage down, also the run is way more fun with almond than soy
Worm trinket effects aren't really that impactful, almond is better because of the less damage down
Nuclear throne holds a special place in my heart for being the first roguelike I ever got into. FTL as well.
And there's *Noita,* in which the Skill rating is 10, and the Luck rating is 10 too.
This game is the true definition of CBT, actually intended to people with arsonist/masochistic tendencies.
Never manage to finish a run, and my death streak is 278 🤡🤡🤡
3:10 this is what divides BoI noobs from experienced players- these three are definitely not "run ruining items" (except in some combinations with others, but that can then apply even to ipecac etc.) Yes, it is harder for novice to adjust to these, but that's where you build skill and learn to gain benefits out of them, and they are not ruining runs. Its like my friend who just started recently playing BoI said the "Chocolate Milk" is the worst item. Also 280 hours for game like Isaac is decent, but I'd say you finally start to master game after 600th or 700th hour.
If one motherfucker posts skill issue after I say curse of the tower is a garbage item I am gonna nut.
@@Terker2 curse of the tower can be fun and kinda useful if you get that host item, pyromaniac or anything like that tho
Right? As soon as I saw soy milk, I couldn’t trust a lot of what he said. There’s no way, it has helped so many of my runs in repentance. I love that it’s a tear multiplier now instead of a tears all the way up.
@SpelunkyGuy101 It kinda does make it better tho
@SpelunkyGuy101 "Use it right" It literally just gives a tears multiplier
I think the slay the spire rating is rather bad. Stuff like bosses and different cards is stuff you need to build around, not stuff that you lose due to rng if you play wrong , and the thing about “you can’t beat the final boss with the starting stuff” just ignores the entire purpose of the game.
I think the rating was ruined by lack of experience in the game
You can't beat the final boss without deckbuilding in a deckbuilder is like complaining that you cant beat civ without building anything. Dude probably never beat an Ascension run lol
The skill rating seems quite biased towards mechanical/real-time skills, and StS was probably rated so low due to its lack in that department
@@revimfadli4666 why would you decide to include an entry that just doesn't fundamentally match with the criteria of the list though
I just recently got into Enter The Gungeon and it made me Enter The Pharmacy for a bottle of Xanax after completely raging out and destroying everything in my neighbor’s front yard because I can’t get more than 3 or 4 levels into the damn game without being absolutely demolished by those little bastards.
Got the game on sale, great game.
@@blulunarity yes it is a great game, highly addictive! Funny seeing this comment I made when I bought it 8 months ago cuz I’ve put in a few hundred hours on it lol. There’s a LOT of content and replayability and the wiki really helps! Lots of secrets, characters to unlock, hidden levels, tons of stuff! Enjoy!
isaac is a game of minmaxing the early floors to then steamroll the later ones and i personally really enjoy that
The "100% of my viewers are subscribed" thing had me rolling way harder than it should have, especially the monotone "thank you" right there lmao
Two of my favorite roguelikes are Curse of the Dead Gods, and Wizard of Legend.
Wizard of legend is super fast paced, mini bullet hell and has an absolutely massive variety of abilities, that even change depending what slot you equip them in! It also has a very high skill ceiling, for example, there is no parrying in the game, however you can pick up a certain item which then allows you to parry. That is a whole mechanic hidden behind a specific item. Another fun addition is that you can play it with couch co-op and a friend! Couch co-op is a feature that will instantly make me a love a game because it is something from my childhood that I feel too few games have nowadays.
Curse of the Dead Gods has a completely different vibe. I love the art style, and there is the constant sense of foreboding. In other games, the more you play, the more powerful you get, and while this is semi true for CotDG there is a curse system which applies debuffs to you the further into the run you are (there are ways to mitigate this). There is a rising sense of fear and pressure the further into the run you get. In terms of actual gameplay I would say it is easier than WoL, but still just as much fun!
I would highly recommend both of these games.
Isaac is fairly skill-based, the big issue is that you need luck in order to have fun
You can say this for any game
@@bingbong1966 No you can’t lmao, take fighting games for example. You don’t need luck to have fun since nothing barely anything is luck based on those
That isaac being mostly luck is very wrong, people are able to do top notch bosses like mega satan, hush or the beast, with either no items with a certain character or minimal items, the game lends you countless ways to break trough it to get even better stuff and you mostly need knowledge to do so which i learned by mods and some yt videos over 2 weeks, easily to get streaks in it too if you aim your run in perspective to what you accomplished, skill issue
Edit:Obviously luck plays a big role on how powerful you are, but that still doesnt mean you wont be able to win your run because of it anyways, its even easier now after repentance with the alt rooms, like letting you pick the item in the treasure room or choose one randomly, also the mirror floor with an extra boss item
It's still very much playing dice on whether you get an item that enhances your performance or not.
@@lukebytes5366 thats plain wrong, especially since Repentance. There are so many ways to optimize the runs if you have sufficient game knowledge that its borderline impossible to have a "trash" run.
In comparison to the other games on the list it seems like binding of issac is reliant on luck
@@derrickshowproductions3010 It has reliance on luck yes, more than EtG for example, but my point is that you CAN mitigate that with skill and optimizations, unlike StS where you are kind of at the mercy of the game.
lol agreed, i've seen mfs kill final bosses with guppy hairball
I wish you mentioned that items can stack in risk of rain too and the artifacts that completely change how the game is played.
As a huge slay the spire fan who has done countless A20 heart kills, your rating really breaks my heart. Slay the spire’s skill comes from its intensively complex decision-making, not pure mechanics. Players like Jorbs have gone from a 30-40% A20 winrate at 3000 hours to a 70% winrate at 6000. Most players have a less than 10% winrate at A10. Furthermore, at higher ascensions you see two of the three act three bosses every run, and on top of that the act 3 bosses are probably among the least threatening fights in the game. Furthermore, much of its RNG changes based on observable factors.
the point is that you can often lose, even with perfect play.
Thats not really a thing in most roguelikes.
@@vinncentuntiedt5851 the concept of "perfect play" in a game as ridiculously complex as slay the spire is nonexistent. Nobody can even claim to be close to perfect play. However, there are people who have near-100% winrates on watcher. There's maybe a couple seeds in existence where there is absolutely no way to win (lagavulin silent). While I do admit STS has a greater margin of variance from run to run, that doesn't in any way make it more "luck-based" than other games, nor diminish the skill required to pilot your character through the spire.
@@vinncentuntiedt5851 just one unbeatable seed has been found in the history of slay the spire as far as I last researched, all other don't know how many millions and millions of seeds are solvable.
sorry bro - you're not skilled. sorry his video made you feel bad feelings about yourself.
@@h445 For reference my winrate is only 25% or so after hundreds of hours, which only highlights the skill disparity between me and top level players (who some have reached 95%+ winrates on certain characters in 50+ game sample sizes). Never claimed I am skilled; just that there is a massive skill aspect to Slay the Spire.
Isaac is literally 100% sightreading skill. The game is very hard to learn, so when it comes to a new player's perspective when not playing as Azazel the game is indeed mostly luck based.
it's just because the new players are playing repentance which is harder than the other versions of the game
someone playing rebirth will find it easier to win a run but in repentance you have new enemies and bosses with a hard to learn pattern
@@minecrafttaher I can say that repentance is definitely harder, but Afterbirth+ was certainly not easy
Some of these games are 40% luck, 50% skill, and 10% grinding. Getting max flasks in dead cells or unlocking all the NPCs in Gungeon or filling out the mirror in Hades make each of their games much easier.
The point of slay the spire is that you’re supposed to tailor your run to the boss you will get on each floor.
i think there are many ways to play sts, he seems to like more the "i try to build something cool" approach, and that's good, but i prefer the approach of "i try to win as many games as possible adapting to the map", when this is your mentality, the game requires huge skills
As a gungeon and nuclear throne fanatic, luck 4 and skill 9 on gungeon and the luck 1 and skill 10 on throne really tickled my “i’m good at this game” bone
The video was straight-up wrong by the THUMBNAIL. That's impressive.
Thanks for mentioning One Step From Eden, it definitely underrated and is worthy for praise
I have to disagree with Slay the Spire's ratings, how is it possibly the most luck dependent game in the list. Even your example of facing Time Eater is not the game screwing you with rng, there are 3 bosses at the end of each act, choosing to knowingly ignore one of them is your fault not the game's. It's entirely possible to beat Time Eater with high card play per turn decks
Yea u must know the game enough to prepare 4 everything not only 1 thing
The skill rating seems biased towards mechanical/realtime, which StS lacks
I believe Pschie's rating is mostly flawed because difficulty isn't as straightforward as luck. For example, StS and Dead Cells are very difficult, but in extremely different ways. While Dead Cells is mostly mechanichal, StS is all about building and manipulating your deck. I'd say it's one of the more skill required in terms of strategy, but there is no mechanical gameplay and Pschie obviously factors that the most. For example, I think Isaac easier than Gungeon in mechanical terms, but it does require a much more in depth understanding of the game to be good at it.
Yeah, I've beaten time eater with the zero deck. it is high on the luck factor, some runs at high ascension even extreme high level players can't win, however that said it is high skill as evident by those players never lose lower level ascension
@@saddas1307 very few runs at max ascension are 'unwinnable', streamer LifeCoach did a20 winstreaks of 15+ on ironclad and watcher (maybe watcher was a few wins less). but even in his losses, he realized mistakes he made. the skill in STS is actually the highest out of any of these games because of the amount of thinking in each card played. sometimes he would take 30-45 minutes just on the first few fights. its like high level chess really, low level you can say the games easy just move pieces and theres no mechanical skill, but obviously we know thats not true
In defense of risk of rain 2: there is more to the system then what you said. Mainly, that while legendary items can take you further into your run, it doesn't guarantee it. Infact, it can sometimes kill it if you get the wrong one. Along with lunar items (though those have a more obvious effect on your game). There are several legendary items can can screw you over if you get them, and thus makes them unnecessary to thrive.
This is all assuming you don't run the artifact of command, which can allow you to choose what items you want from that category of rarity. This can and does change how you prioritize items, and can outright make insane builds that literally wipe the map clean. Honestly, it's fun when you get to that point
I would honestly flip the luck and skill ratings for Isaac with the Repentence update. There are a lot more skill-based plays you can do to fish for better items. Items were rebalanced so that even Isaac's Heart can be useful, but outright gamebreaks are a lot rarer. And enemy shot speed is generally higher so that you can't facetank everything with soul heart generation.
Fantastic video, this is such a neat topic to touch on! Wish I could say more but I haven't tried every game on this list, I agree with your ratings on EtG, RoR, NT, and Dead Cells. I don't see the Hades one though, I would honestly put both of its ratings on the lower side, at least without the pact of punishment. Hades is somewhat difficult from the get-go but it's relatively easy to learn and gets very repetitive rather quickly.
If I had to recommend a roguelike though, I would highly urge you to check out Monolith (+ it's Relics of the Past DLC). It is probably my favorite roguelike of all time, it's basically shmup Enter the Gungeon. I would probably rank it similarly to Nuclear Throne; It's a relatively simple game at the surface with some pretty unique mechanics that test the player's decision-making skills. It also has some really well-designed enemy rooms and amazing boss fights.
And while there is a factor of luck to it, the player can definitely get through the entire game using only the starting weapon (in fact, sometimes it's just outright better than some of the pick-ups you come across). High-level loops on the other hand... that's a different story lmao
Your analysis on TBOI is actually unhinged. Skill ceiling in Isaac can be insanely high, especially with certain characters and rigging.
Yeah this guy is an idiot, especially how he rates StS
If you want a first-person roguelike to round out the dimensions of gameplay, might I recommend Gunfire Reborn? It just left early access in November of this year and was my personal game of the year. The game has the same general idea that went into scoring Enter the Gungeon, that all weapons and items are useful but you can make do with whatever you get in order to achieve victory, and much like EtG, there are a variety of wacky weapons at your disposal. From a skeletal dragon rocket launcher that fires mini black holes that suck in foes before exploding and a many-eyed shotgun that gets reloaded by feeding it fish.
As someone with >1500 hours in Slay the Spire I'm so mad that I don't even want to write a 7 paragraph essay on how extremely skill based it is. I will say, however, that if your deck relies only on an infinite to win and you know that you might fight Time Eater, you should've built a better deck. The game even shows you the last boss so you have the whole act to prepare for it. And obviously, corruption doesn't win you the game and will probably hurt you if you pick it up too early.
Dude I'm with you, when I saw how low he ranked StS I couldn't take his opinions seriously anymore. Slay the spire is the most skill-heavy roguelike on the list and it's not even close.
Finally someone said it
You don't lose to time eater because you have an infinite, you lost because your infinite had low impact cards.
You guys don’t understand his rating systems. Knowledge on how to play the game doesn’t seem to be his criteria for skill, his criteria for skill is literally the mechanical act of playing the game. For example, street fighter might have a skill level of 10 and luck of 0 because you literally can only play the game mechanically. Low skill level doesn’t mean “the game is easy” or that you can only win if you get lucky, what it means is that if you get lucky, anyone can win, but players who have a good understanding of the game will obviously do better.
I have never played sts, but based on HIS criteria for rating, idk if I would have even given it a 3. If you are going to say how he defines skill is wrong, then you are arguing semantics and it literally has nothing to do with the game. If you use his criteria, can you honestly say the mechanical act of playing the game is high skill?
@@andrewevenson2657 Extremely long rant warning, tldr at the end.
Putting aside the fact that redefining words just so they work against you is a pretty bad idea (could've called them "mechanical skill" and "variation"), he states at the beginning that a 1 in skill means that anyone can play it and a 10 that it's dark souls, implying that skill means difficulty.
Not only that, but he's constantly fighting his own definitions, like in BoI, where he says "one cannot deny that luck also plays a factor ... some runs will be significantly easier than others" which means that luck affects wether you win or not and not just variation. Then he gives Nuclear Throne a 1 in luck and a skill rating of 10, saying "It's one of the most skill based games ... you can still improve after hundreds of hours". But wait many of *my* playthroughs are pretty different. Didn't luck mean variation? Why does it get a 1 then? Does the fact that you can improve after hundreds of hours affect how skill based it is? But then why isn't Spire in there? Oh wait! He only means mechanical skill so obviously choosing the right weapons, mutations, chests, paths, etc. doesn't play a part when he talks about improving in Nuclear Throne.
And then again, if skill means mechanical skill then why give a turn based game a 3? It should be a 1 unless clicking is sort of hard for him.
When he talks about StS he sounds like someone who isn't used to it enough. He hasn't reached intentionality. No, you don't take more cards once you get Ascender's Bane, and there isn't "a degree of complexity" when it comes to deck building, there's like 3000 degrees. No, no cards win you the run, especially not corruption (you can't put in in play in Act 1 and Gremlin Nob just kills you if you do). And saying that the one aspect that can lose you the run no matter what is the boss you fight (even when the game tells you the boss at the beginning of the act) is just silly. There's decisions ready to be made, but he isn't even aware that they exist yet.
Imagine a TH-camr stating that Street Fighter has an aspect that can cause you to lose no matter what, and that it the shoryuken. "They can just pick up a character with a dp, spam it on wake up and there's nothing you can do". In the end it's just a scrub quote.
TL;DR: He's constantly inconsistent with his own definitions, and it's frustrating to see him talk about Spire because he's still at Dunning-Kruger's peak of Mount Stupid.
Nuclear Throne is the best imo. Glad to see you're a fish main as well, I have over 2,000 hours of fish throning now and I'm not even close to done yet lol.
"Slay the spire does not take that much skill, just luck"
Yeah, say that to a grand finale deck, don't get me wrong, the game does take luck, but not that much if you can manage what you are given, great video anyway
i have 120h and i've never felt like i lost because i had no luck tho... it's helpful, i'll put it that way. knowing what type of deck use depending on your artefacts/cards given is much more relevant tho. i've made it to 17 difficulty with the "mage" and i think i could make it to 20 but i'm quite bored for now. and i only don't have the "end game with only 1 artefact" if it comes to achievments :
@@thatguy5233 as someone who doesn't enjoy slay the spire as much as others, I don't think RNG is 100% at fault when you lose but bad luck does hurt.
@@thatguy5233 I never felt like I lost because I have bad reward or event luck but I did lose once when I drew a full hand of defence card when the enemy is not attacking and a full hand of attack when the same enemy is attacking and is intangible
@@arandomnoob3551 oh, that is true. I've had that too, but you have to be *really* unlucky from my experience. And you can be THAT unlucky and lose because of that in pretty much every game. I mean, if you are crazy good maybe not... but I think everyone gets what I mean.
I was thinking. What if you did a hand of the king run in dead cells where you only use weapons from hotk fight ( symmetrical lance, telluric shock, light speed for his ramming attack and the grenade launcher for his grenade attack)
Shisheyu is a streamer who has a streak in the binding of isaac. He did 100 runs of The lost without dying. He's currently trying to obtain the dead god succes without dying nor reset any run.
Whoever said that lunar items are going to extend your run is an idiot lol. The whole thing about lunar items is they have a positive and negative affect, and the negative affect is usually more bad than the positive affect is good. That being said, some lunar items can be worth taking in specific circumstances, and there are like 3 lunar items that are always good to take.
ROR2 is by far my favorite game, close to 350 hours in it. Your rating is probably pretty accurate. A lot of the “higher skill” players in risk of rain are good because they have an intimate understanding of the mechanics in the game. I mean they are also good at fps games, but honestly you don’t have to be good at fps games if you understand the mechanics. Knowing when to farm loot or go to the next floor. When to scrap items and what items to print. Knowing things like one hit protection, and how to double it with barrier. Knowing how to form proc chains, or knowing the number of items you can take before it’s maxed out. Basically, my point is, the skill in this game ultimately comes from knowledge. You can have an elite fps player do trash compared to someone who just knows how the game works.
Giving Slay the Spire a skill rating of 3 proves you never really got into the game. At A15 heart, 100% of runs should be winnable, if you’d deck loses to timekeeper you played poorly and build a deck that you knew would lose 33% (or 66% on A20) of the time. If your strategy loses that often you are at fault not the game.
It's outrageous, I don't know why aren't more people talking about it. StS is one of the most skill-based roguelikes to date, anyone who doesn't have a deep understanding of the deckbuilding will get absolutely curbstomped every run, and every seed provides quite a few viable synergies. It seems like this guy got mad he couldn't cheese the game with a busted deck and decided to make a video saying that the Time Eater is a poorly designed boss.
@@praker3829 I couldn't agree more, I play a lot of games in the genre and I have a higher win rate on Slay the Spire than most of the other games listed. A fair amount of hades runs at high heat die to not having the right boons for your aspect, Gungeon occasionally will fuck you over with terrible guns. Even at A20 there's usually a path to win, it's just how long your willing to spend to find it. Also Time Eater is not that bad if you play even half decently, the Awakened One is more stressful personally.
Y’all are a lil too upset about this id think.
@@fallongarens6734 no
@@rosemaris5754 yeah.
the treatment he did with risk of rain is dirty in every way
Yeah he clearly has no clue what he is talking about. His "discord experts" are probably drizzle+command players with 50hrs playtime.
@@nurgle-j5n exactly in addition dont mean to shit on rainstorm players but rainstorm is easy + the only thing he repeats is "red item better than white"
For Isaac streaks, Shisheyu (a french streamer) did 100 win streaks with the Lost. I think he is one of the best streaker in this game
I'm an Isaac player but in my opinion it's more skill than luck, you can get a crap run but on that same run you could literally make it to The Beast and still win, with nothing but 3 dmg
i think that with skill and good understanding of the game you can turn around any run
@@dominoree I agree, I was gonna add if you have played the game long enough and know what you're doing you can turn that crap run into an even better run
Having watched friends play isaac and getting obliterated with items like sacred heart or polyphemus, i def. Agree
@@silenttripmine4230 no way, seriously? lol I can understand losing with poly but sacred heart?
@@ineur8780 they suck at avoiding tears ¯\_( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)_/¯
About Nuclear Throne, there IS the best build named meta. No one can agrue about it.
I feel like I disagree with the luck ratings of both Slay the Spire and Risk of Rain. Both of them do have tiered items, but their drop rates are balanced so you basically never get one right off the bat (except for the Neow trade, but that's balanced in a different way). In fact, since there's three different tiers of chests, each with their own cost and own chances of giving a rare item, Risk of Rain gives you a lot of control over what you want to purchase. However, Slay the Spire's three-card drafts are probably the most control any game gives you over your run, and allow you to get the deck archetype you want more often than not.
I hyper disagree with just about everything said in this video - still really appreciated the insight and thought it was well made. Keep it up!
I only got to the StS bit and when it boiled down to "I've dabbled a little, not really touched ascensions but basically this is mostly a luck based game because I failed to prepare for one of the handful of bosses in the game that hard counters my inflexible deck" I noped out.
Yeah, hard to say if something is reliant on skill or not when you don't know enough about the game to give yourself favorable conditions
"It tells you you should probably go outside" you got me there 😂 sub!
Incredible video, now that I started creating contents here on TH-cam in this niche I can tell the amount of work that you for sure have done for this video. Congratz!
Ended now the video, I was surprised for the skill level of hades and isaac.. I found Hades way easier, I completed the whole story and beat heat 10, while I wasn't able to beat Satan on Isaac.
I love how he says he doesn't have much experience with RoR2, then immediately proves it by saying that lunar items guarantee progression. True, SOME of them do, but I've also had runs instantly ended because I pick up the wrong lunar item, and others just have too passive an effect to really make a significant difference, like the one that shrinks the teleporter area. Source: I have 76 hours in the game as of writing this.
He is absolutely right about item rarity being kinda off. I find that almost all the most useless items have green rarity, while almost every white item is still useful by the end game.
ATG missile, Will o the wisps, both bands and Ukulele are like the bread and butter of the game and are all green rarity. Green rarity has helluva important items.
Yeah I dropped the game after console taking ages to fix ( and for those who don’t know, the console patch did almost nothing) and now I’m just waiting for the dlc
Edit: to clarify, I have 400 hours, I didn’t just drop it upon dying
Get Gunfire Reborn on this list! I'd love to see where you'd rank it between skill and luck. Recent balance changes have left it way harder than just 3 months ago so I feel it's moved more towards skill. However the right Goshawk and you're laughing
i second this
Dude congrats on everyone watching ur videos being subscribed thats actually crazy
Item rarity in the binding of isaac doesn't influence the chances of those items spawning.
Making it arbitrary to mention.
It only effects 2 characters, the lost with birthright and tainted lost.
There are god items that definitely reduce the chance of getting other God items once taken
@@BOBINDUN That's not true
Exept it does? Rarity 4 item specifically have a lower chance of appearing
@@rafa_5020 That's wrong, some items like Plan C and Mega Blast do have a less likely chance to appear, but that is different from the item quality system