Recent reviews by Suus

This is easily one of those games you'll pick up every 6-8 months, become a hermit, and live several lifetimes in the span of two weeks. Then, you'll lose 1 fight cuz the AI decided it remembered how to couch a lance, and suddenly the spell is broken.
Truly earns the title of "sequel", plus there are an unreal amount of mods which can add on additional playtime. Especially with mods, pretty much any playstyle is acceptable, including non-combat. Progression feels significant, and 95% of the time the battle system feels incredible and communicates how well you are doing clearly.
That last 5% is my primary gripe with the game, as comparative to more modern real-time, action-oriented combat systems, this one feels pretty clunky. Controls-wise, the system really didn't change much between the two games, so there really isn't much learning curve, but you still have all the restricted movement and attack selection that can make some situations more frustrating than others. I understand that realism gets sacrificed for functionality or fun, but when I can see my opponents' feet, and I poke a spear at their feet, suddenly their lil horizontal sword they're holding at waist-level can block that with no damage bleedthrough or stamina damage or anything. That's no longer fun. Some mods have fixed this/improved combat feel, but be prepared for that 5% suck in the base game.
Runs great on Steam Deck as well, but there should probably be a dedicated tutorial to the command menu during battle for controllers. You can learn it by yourself but some things are buried behind an additional button press (mount/unmount, face this way, delegate command, etc).
Anyways, there's the review. Glory to Sturgia.

There's something special about a game that will encourage you to abuse collision detection to exponentially increase the amount of damage you can do per hit. The deck building mechanics work really well and allow for plenty of creativity, such as a build that wants you to fill the field with enhanced bombs to do your DPS, or a masochism build that increases your attack the more damage you do to yourself and auto-crits below 50% HP, or a multiball build that constantly refreshes all of the activated pegs so that you just sit at your computer for 5 minutes while das blinkenlights and the sounds go plink plonk.