There is some magic in Slice & Dice, and I don't mean spells. At its best, it captures the sense of combinatorial wonder of a deckbuilder roguelike with a dramatically simpler structure. In my first winning run I went wild using a clever combination of classes and equipment to make a dozen mana a turn, and I was in hog heaven. The problem is, while there are certainly jewels of excitement there to mine, the player has almost no control over when and how they're accessed.

Here is the structure of the game. You begin with a D&D-style party of five characters each of whom has a selection of abilities. You fight waves of enemies, and after each wave you receive either a piece of equipment which provides some unique bonus or a level up for one of your characters. Each character has a range of level 2 and level 3 classes, each with a totally different set of abilities.

What this means is that your choices early in the game have essentially no bearing on the endgame. Early equipment is so weak as to be irrelevant, and the level 2 classes you choose have no bearing on which level 3 classes you have access to or which abilities they have. Any equipment you choose to optimize a midgame party will likely be suboptimal for the endgame.

This severely limits the replayability of the game. When the first 2/3s of the game have no bearing on the rest of it, it just becomes an elongated loading screen you have to get through before the real fun starts. Why not have classes exist in a tree, where level 3s are upgraded versions of level 2s that retain the core concepts? Why even have early-game equipment that's guaranteed to be worse to equip than not later on? This game could be great, but instead it is merely good.