One piece of trivia. When the heart was first added to the beta, invincible only capped each instance of damage to 100, you could still otk it. In fact, the first time Jorbs reaches the heart (on stream, you can find the video on youtube), he otk's it while the devs were watching. Next patch, invincible now caps damage per turn.

13:20 "losing a run here can be heartbreaking" Winning a run here is pretty "heartbreaking" too, don't you think :P

Loved this video! I think FTL's final boss, the Rebel Flagship, does a lot of similar things to the heart in this game. It forces you to have multiple kinds of defense, uses every system in the game throughout its 3 phases to test your resilience to everything the game has (boarding your ship with drones, cloaking to interrupt big weapon combos and dodge crucial attacks, mind controlling your crew and making them fight each other, etc). Basically, your ship has to be able to handle every worst-case scenario by the time you get there, or there's a much higher chance you lose. Or at least handle it well enough for you to squeek out a victory. I figured it's probably not worth a video since it's so similar to the heart, but the similarities lead to an overall design philosophy for roguelike bosses that could maybe be explored in a video. Analyzing other roguelikes and how they handle their final bosses could be a very fun topic!

I think the most frustrating thing is when you have a good deck make it to the heart, get bad card draw on the first couple hands and die.

The Heart is why the Tungsten Rod is the single most powerful relic IMO. Nothing sucks more than getting an OP build to your final campfire and realizing you missed a key somewhere along the way.

"Behold the heart of the world! Progenitor of life, Father and Mother, Alpha and Omega! Our creator ... and our destroyer."

Hexaghost was always interesting for me. His first attack is dependent on your current hp, and if you come in fight with full health, you will be lovered to around half. It's an interesting feat, forcing you into a bad situation.

5:15 on high ascensions, spire spear puts the burns at the top of your deck. It becomes so much more bs and dangerous that way, since you are essentially only able to draw 3 useable cards.

Oh wow! With this level of presentation and production I thought this was a well established channel. Awesome work! Only a small nitpick thou, putting some of the soundtrack of the game through out the video play at a low volume would enhance it.

I like the heart because its sort of a litmus test for your deck. It holds you a mirror and shows it where it is strong and where it is weak. I very much like it as an optional test for your build. Like its a dynamic grading system of how well you did.

The absolute best thing about the heart, and one I really miss in other games, is that it is an unreasonably hard but optional final boss. The Heart is not balanced to be a final boss, it is balanced for when the final boss isn't a challenge. For example, in Across the Obelisk you have a lot more control over your decks and builds, and can very often reach a point in the second act where you just know you are going to win the run no problem. You can't just quit because then why are you playing, but there isn't really a point to finishing either when there is no risk of losing. The solution to this would be an optional final boss that is way too hard to have as the final boss, which serves as a secondary objective to keep your entertainment once you've become too strong to be engaged by the balanced final boss. The solution is the heart. Roguelikes all have this problem, and a heartlike boss would fix it in near every single one.

Nice video. One thing that hit me while watching was that slay the spire is one of few games where you really have to learn to sometimes just tank a hit and either buff yourself, or SMorc because the enemies don't wait around, and they might even outscale you. Take the cultist for example, his first attack hits for 6, 1 more than a normal block, so if you wanna full block, you will miss out on damage, and suddenly the next turn he will hit even harder and so on. There are few times that I ever feel that STS is pulling a fast one on me, it's a fair game that keeps beating my ass.

Nice to see the showcase of footage from Slay the Spire content creators. Though I only realized that was happening once I saw Frost Prime on the screen. It would be good to put the name of who the video is from on the screen somewhere, probably in a corner or along one of the edges.

You forgot my least favorite lose condition, "the game shuffles your otherwise very strong deck into an order that guarantees you die to the first salvo of attacks"

I do feel like the heart has one very strange weakness though, in that thorns obliterates it, especially if you are playing the long game, as the heart will do the 15x attack several times, dealing 45 or higher damage to itself multiple times

this is a great analysis of an often overlooked boss, fantastic video!

This is an amazingly well worded explanation of the heart and I'm looking forward to more from the channel. one thing I wish STS did is display the names attacks have in the files when they use each one to make attacks and their patterns more memorable. Have a great Christmas and new year.

Most of the time, I could tank the heart’s opening attacks if there was at least one elite like spire shield/spear. The heart’s difficulty comes from lack of general game knowledge compared to when you can fight it. A similarly hard boss in Isaac is gated behind having to beat the game MANY times (I compare the heart to Mother from Isaac, and you need 14+ wins to fight it, so you’ve experienced a lot of hard patterns already. Shield and spear are so annoying, not because they’re hard, but because the mechanic is new and unrelenting

Great concept for a series, I look forward to seeing more! You may want to do something about your echo from your mic btw, there are a lot of really simple hacks to mitigate the effect of sounding like you're in a big empty room, I personally put curtains up on each of my walls but I'm sure you could find other options too.

I think it's important to note. When The Heart buffs itself it isn't clearing debuffs, it is specifically clearing negative strength, so while cards like Piercing Wail and Dark Shackles are absolute beasts in the fight, using them on the wrong turn is actually a death sentence since The Heart doesn't cleanse the Shackled debuff and gains 15 strength the following turn.

Cant wait for this channel to take off. Very well made video! Keep it up.

I'm glad this vid popped up in my recommendations, watched your other vids as well, solid work all around! I hope you to see another vid from you in the future, have my notifications on and everything :) Keep being awesome!

You're only a new channel, but I can almost taste the potential. Keep up the great work!

What I love about the heart is that it is consistent in a game where every run can be wildly diferent. It's funny how you can get the comfort of the familiar on the most challenging fight of the game. Great analysis! I would recommend taking a look at the Metroid Prime series. Each installment has a memorable final boss for different reasons, but the titular Metroid Prime is my favorite of them.

This channel is awesome, keep it up

Really high quality vid man!!! Good analysis and amazing vid structure. Keep it up bro!!!!

Amazing video man, keep it coming!

This is a really interesting series and I hope you continue! :)

I think a boss from Hollow Knight would make a good topic, I'm not going to say what bosses in case anyone reading this comment has somehow not played it and doesn't want spoilers. Great video by the way, I found this channel today and I already love it. Keep up the good work.

I know you haven't posted in a while but this is quality, please keep it up :)

Great video! I love Slay The Spire and while I'm not that good at it, I do enjoy seeing it be covered by others. I think an interesting boss you could look at is V2 from ULTRAKILL, either the first fight, the second fight or both, seeing how it flips the combat very much on its head by pitting you against what is effectively yourself.

One of my favorite facets about the Heart fight is that, every once in a while, you string together the *perfect* set of deck and relic syngergies such that even the most difficult fight in the entire game becomes an absolute cakewalk. I had a Prismatic Shard Ironclad run once, where I got Dual Wield, Juggernaut, Talk to the Hand, and Barricade - I was generating so much block each turn and dealing such an obscene amount of damage that I ended the fight before I even finished setting up my block scaling by infinitely copying Talk to the Hand with Dual Wield. It was glorious.

Good job on the video man! It's fascinating how the heart encourages strategies while still testing your resolve. You do a great job going through it. I know you already know about Jorbs, but he has created a bunch of videos going into detail on each and every card and I recommend it as bonus material to watch. I found it fascinating. I'm playing Kena right now and it's an interesting example of bosses both done right and wrong. Some bosses fit the game super well, while others are Elden Ring levels of bad. I'll probably create videos on both games as well, but I think you'd enjoy Kena!

My personal suggestions would be Azathoth from Persona 5 Royal, or Yozora from Kingdom Hearts 3. Azathoth feels like it’s built specifically for Royal’s mechanics and gives a super unique experience with a ton of ways to handle it, along with preventing you from relying on the same strats throughout the fight. Yozora almost plays like a puzzle, with a ton of super creative openings, and has tons of moments where I went “ah-ha!” after finding out what I was supposed to do against a given attack. There’s a ton to talk about with both of these fights but they’re both absolutely fantastic.

superb vid! you're an underrated channel 😭

hope this channel isn’t dead, great vid!! would love to see the heart of the world from darkest dungeon and/or mithrix from ror2

Would love to see something about the final bosses from Risk of Rain/Risk of Rain 2. Great work with this video!

great idea for a channel and super high quality video, easy sub

I might be a year late but this video is astoundingly well made! Fantastic job my friend.

In the solo deck-builder game Friday (not a video game), you start each game drawing two random pirate ships that will be the boss fights at the end of the game. It would be like Slay the Spire telling you before your first which act III bosses you'd be fighting. Because it's played with a single pre-made deck, this gives players a way to meaningfully focus their build differently each game. Many are simply a couple of numbers, but a few have special effects that really change how you build your deck. The two biggest outliers either make drawing extra cards cost more health (making cards that would otherwise be neutral very negative) or on that is weakened by every card in play (making otherwise neutral cards very useful). Facing both in the same fight sucks.

Hey there! Loved the vid and the insight! Just a thought for future videos, music of some kind would be nice to fill in some dead space in between lines, I think. Great analysis either way!

I started playing this game two months ago. After 300 hours I finally got the platinum trophy ( completed ascention 20 with the defect ), and even though usually I'd be more than looking forward to move on and play another game after all that time, slay the spire still has an incredible draw that shows no sign of wearing off. Now I'm thinking of completing ascention 20 with all characters. They are all so different and unique, and fun to play with for different reasons. What an amazing game.

The heart is so daunting and I love it. Died so many times to it over and over. Finally killed with a deck focusing on card draw and thorns- with enough thorns up the heart eats its own HP with that multi-attack. I could hardly believe when it really went down, I half expected it to pull out a second HP bar just to spite me.

Great video!!!

Idk what happened to this channel but would love to see it come back, great video

The heart is such a massive, game warping difficulty spike compared to a player who can fairly consistently manage to reach it that it honestly just, made me give up and not want to play the game at all. I'll admit to not being great at slay the spire but as a new player once you get a gew runs there and they all just collapse almost immediately without feeling like I stood a chance/ could do anything, I didn't want to play anymore.

Great video keep it up

I'm so surprised that this channel isn't at like 100k. The quality of this channel vastly exceeds its viewcount.

If you still need a video idea, I'd probably suggest The Rebel Flagship from FTL: Faster than Light - it's such an amazing bossfight that composes itself into the game super well, and its design choices are pretty amazing imo

I absolutely loved this video! I have a couple of recommendations for future analyses as well, so if you see this, take that into consideration. Instantly subscribed, hope you keep this going! Borderlands 2's Raid Bosses (especially Voracidious the Invincible) Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess' Bosses (especially Stallord, Zant, and Ganondorf) Dicey Dungeons' Lady Luck Alice: Madness Returns' Final Boss Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice (any boss, really, though Valravn stands out to me)

Destructive force from gravity rush 2. A great final boss in theme, visual and esecution. Its literally the incarnation of the BLACK SEA OF DEATH thath was the focal point of the game and his prequel. Its a tought and long fight after a gauntlet. Its fucking beautiful and give a sense of hopelessness before the final victory. And the crowd literally cheer for you singing your song.

Don't forget... The music is an absolute BANGER!

My most distinct memory of this fight was watching one of my friends reach it, with a defensive Defect deck focused on weathering hits while slowly dealing damage, stacking up Powers with Hello World to win a slow fight. Then the Corrupt Heart buffed strength by 50 (to like +65?) and went for the 24 strike attack. it was really funny

I'm not personally a big fan of the Corrupted Heart fight but mostly cause I like making a (usually gimmicky) build that is fun to use. The Corrupted Heart feels VERY much like you have to build a deck specifically for them, so something that might've been fun to use up to the act 3 boss, suddenly becomes completely useless. Not even the Spire Shield/Spear fight does this, and I dont think I'm just trying to make braindead builds either, as I still need to figure out what cards to play in the right order with the cards I've gotten in order to win each fight. In comparison, Time eater, while a bit annoying, I dont have as much of a problem with. You just have to decide what the last card you want to play on a turn is regardless of your energy resource, and even keeping in mind how many cards you can play next turn helps. Its annoying, but it still feels like you can make a build in a bad match-up work despite the passive. That being said, I dont think what you're saying is wrong; its just we're playing the games differently. You see the strategy of needing to build up to the specific boss fight fun, while I like trying stupid or gimmicky builds to see how well I can get them to work. Might also be worth noting i'm, at most, on ascension 3, and I have beaten the heart before; Its just not a fun time for me. If you want a suggestion for a good boss fight to look at, I'd say look to Granblue Versus. Almost every single Fighting game barring Smash bros doesnt have a good boss fight imo, and yet GBVS has multiple that feel engaging without boiling down to "normal character thats buffed", or "overpowered character that input reads you so you just cheese them" or "Block, then attack cause none of your combos work against them"

Good luck see you again at 100k subscribers

solid vid, good break down.

This is such a sick concept. I hope he dives into the armored core series. NineBall, White Glint. Tons of great mythos and boss design in armored core and fellow Ravens would appreciate it.

As for a fight you could do for a future video, I was always very impressed with the final swordfight against Ganon in Twilight Princess; it's a unique take on a bossfight that requires you to do a single combo long enough to expose him for the final blow. Of course, I could see how that might be annoying for some players...

Hey, awesome video, I'm a big StS fan and the Heart is one of my favorite bosses of all time. My recommendation is Charon from Hades. Charon is available at all stages of the game via chance visiting his shop, and he is a beast and a half. He hits like a truck, is immune to effects like weak and deflect, and has lots of long range attacks as well as melee. All things considered though, he is very balanced and feels good to fight against as though he has lots of attacks and hits like a truck, the attacks have big blind spots, and the ranged ones are easy to dash through. He is a lovely fight and a lovely boatman, Charon is the best 👌

Also Heart's theme is super epic

The final boss of Across The Obelisk feels heavily inspired by the Heart, and could be a cool analysis

The algorithm gods have blessed this video, go! Go!

I thoroughly enjoyed this, and can't wait to see more! I personally would love to see something from hollow knight, please and thank you!

I love the way The Spire is designed compared to other bosses. You may have had a good deck to get to it, but it being good enough isn't a heart killer. It might kill if you are lucky and keep getting good draws but you need those draws to be consistent and you can't just monkey brain or turn it off. One mistake can just end your entire run.

I enjoyed the video. Have you played Monster Train? I think Seraph is a fantastic final boss for a run. He is consistent yet variable.

I got out of bed to play slay the spire while listening to this

"it's a perfectly balanced fight that's designed to be beatable, without letting any build walk all over it" brimstone/limit break with apparitions:

10:00 I would heavily disagree with your comment on time eater, the time eater punishes infinites and decks that play a lot of cards, absoloutely, but the only playstyle Time Eater completely invalidates is not playing enough cards on your turn. 12 cards each turn (especially if they're effective enough to mitigate the hearts crazy damage) is almost always enough to outdo timeeater, the decks timeeater really punishes are the ones that play 9 or 10 cards a turn, and are therefore then left with only 2-3 cards to play next turn, which is almost never enough to save yourself unless they're really high value cards. Essentially what I'm saying is my main tip for time eater and possibly making him more fun is to do the math, and if you can't play all 12 cards, play six instead to maximise your chances of playing enough cards next turn!

the heart is the bossfight of all time in the best way possible, surprised you didn't mention how it cleanses debuffs and gives artifact during buff

Hey you should analyze The End from MGS3. Specifically the one with the original camera. The subsistence camera made the overall game better but also completely nerfed him. The End with the Snake Eater camera is one of the most tense, difficult, and interesting boss fights I’ve ever played.

Great video! Would've liked some background music or ambiance or something.

I think it's really funny that the one clip you have of Frost Prime is the day he wore a dress, likely from losing Slay the Streamer

Personal reccomendation Something from furi. There is alot of argument over what the best one is but my money is on the song as her design and theme really tells the story very well

There's nothing quite like killing the heart with an all offense build after using relics and 2 feeds to get 300 hitpoints XD

Sekiro's final 2 bosses (sword saint ishin & the hidden boss demon of hatered) should be really cool to analyze, they are essentially the final version of two types of challenges the game has to offer (the refined swordfights of sekiro vs the more movement oriented feel that you would find in dark souls)

Huh, not sure why, but I was half-expecting this to be a bait-and-switch about Time Eater.

Long story short: - In a game all about buffs and debuffs the most uses said skills. - challenging but ot impossible. - has anti cheese protection while allowing for some hard to assemble strategies to work against it. - devs made sure the battle ends by adding a fair time limit that will kill the player no matter what.

As a suggestion for another video: "Thunderjaw in Horizon Zero Dawn". I know its not technically a boss, but its such a great encounter. And as a nice bonus: The fight against the Thunderjaw was the first thing that got "done", before even the rest of the game got developed.

A game I would recommend you cover is Titan souls, I haven’t played a lot of it but the game is entirely focused on bosses so you could probably find a good one to cover.

Great video, might I recommend some background music behind your voice? Empty air doesn't feel right.

I just wanna emphasize this point: pretty much ANY deck type can beat the heart. Some have a better time than others (defect frost+lightning deck is definitely easier to win with than, say, ironclad perfected strike), but I've seen other people beat the heart with just about every kind of deck. I myself have beaten heart maybe 8-10 times, and I do not lie when I say every single time has used a very different deck. There really is no "optimal" deck for the heart, because what the heart asks for us two very simple things: block good, and attack good. If these are both things your deck can do well, then barring bad luck, you WILL beat the heart.

This video is fantastic and I really like the points you're making, however you may benefit from slowing down your footage to highlight the abilities you are discussing, or show screenshots of the tooltips. I've played this game enough to know it all without thinking, but it could be confusing to a larger audience.

I would vote Fatalis from monster hunter world. As a massive souls fan I've seen many different incredibly crafted and incredibly difficult bosses but somehow I believe Fatalis is the hardest but most fair fight I've played. Great vid and I always love running into the heart mostly because of how fantastic the music is as well as the fight

I'd love to see a cover of Hollow Knight's final boss/bosses. Hollow Knight's THK and Radiance combo fight is incredibly memorable and functions in a similar way to Slay the Spire's shield and spear leading into the heart fight

I never did beat this boss when I was playing the game. I made it there a few times with builds where I was confident I would win, but then got beat by something I didn't account for. I felt like the boss fight was challenging, but fair and I think that's the sign of a good final boss fight.

12:18 - The heart is one of the most powerful enemies in the game in terms of damage it can deal, because these 72x15 damage are already more than the player can block even having 999 block.

I love a series analyzing boss quality across different games!! I would mostly recommend Souls bosses, but they sort of get talked about to death. Here are some others from games I like: The Overseer from ARK Survival Evolved is an awesome end to the games Island map. It is very difficult (basically needing a dinosaur army to defeat) with an amazing setting, soundtrack, and build-up. Raging Brachydios from Monster Hunter World Iceborne is an awesome fight with an explosive brute of a wyvern that all culminates in an amazing clash in the deepest parts of its locale. The Rat from Enter the Gungeon is a brutal hidden boss that has some of the game’s most challenging bullet hell moments. But learning his patterns and conquering him is very satisfying due to his sly stealing of free items during your run! The Plasm Wraith from Pikmin 3 is a great final battle against such an eerie amorphous foe that’ll test your skills with all of the game’s pikmin types. All the while, the battle gets more hectic the further you get in! Definitely interested in seeing more for this series!!

Checking out the Flagship from FTL would be neat.

Imagine playing Slay the Spire while listening to this, couldn't be me.

My first (and only) heart kill was with a classic infinity block build with body slam for damage

tbh my favorite deck ive ever built was Juggernaut and a shit ton of defense cards. with exhume to keep getting some of my exhausts cards back

Nice presentation. Maybe you can pull one from the Pokemon series

9:50 yes it absolutely does. limiting your damage to 300 is the very definition of not going infinite

I'd love to listen to your take on Mars 1 from Pokemon Platinum, the hardest early game battle in Pokemon in my opinion.

hmmm frostprime in my slay the spire video YesYes

Please do a video on The Rebel Flagship - FTL: Faster than Light

I came back to slay the spire after a year or two and finished three runs (daily, ascention 0 and 2) but I never saw any keys. Do I have to unlock them somehow or was I just unlucky? I am 100% certain that there was no red key in any of the campsites.

May I suggest Red from Pokemon Gold & Silver/ Heartgold & Soulsilver for this series?

I would sugest for the series Alatreon from MHW Iceborne, it's a hard boss in standart terms, but what really makes it dificult is is elememtal damage gimmick: if you don't do enought elemental damage in a certain period, he will do an attack called The Excaton Judgment that WILL kill you; this means that you can't judge dodge and chug potion you have to do damage and you have to do it FAST.

I definitely feel like biggest make or break when fighting the heart is how the turn 2 goes.