Monster Train

Review

I'm No Angel

May 22nd, 2020 by Quinn Levandoski

reviewed on PC

Now We�re Cooking

While the world has slowed down and many of us have found ourselves spending more time at home, it�s been a great time to pick up new hobbies. For me, it�s been cooking. I got myself a great chef�s knife, a book about the science of cooking, other odds and ends, and I�ve already been able to reap the benefits of a few nice recipes. I can�t get enough of it; even when I�m not cooking, I�m thinking about recipes and how the things I�m eating may have been made. Maybe it�s because of this newfound culinary calling that a recipe popped into mind the minute I started playing Monster Train. It�s a simple one.

Monster Train Cocktail
Yields one serving of deck building goodness.

Ingredients:
12 ounces Slay the Spire juice
1 ounce Hearthstone zest
1/2 tbsp biblical lore

Directions:
Begin with 1 cup Slay the Spire juice. Mix in the zest from Hearthstone, and top with biblical lore before serving for color.

It�s a simple recipe, but the result is a fun, fast, easy-to-learn-but-difficult-to-master deck building game that�s sure to be a hit for anyone that enjoys the genre.

Slay the Spire is too darn good of a game not to inspire a slew of imitators, and, to be frank, I�m surprised that it�s taken this long to get a good one. To call Monster Train an imitator of the aforementioned is a bit of a disservice given all of the things it does differently, but the parallels are clear. Fortunately, the result isn�t derivative and it doesn�t feel like a knockoff. Monster Train is an absolute blast and I can�t stop playing it.

Highway to Hell

An inversion of most game set-ups, Monster Train puts you in control of the legions of hell, desperate to protect a train delivering the last pyre capable of stopping hell from completely freezing over. To do this, you�ll have to travel, region by region, through the underworld, gathering and strengthening your army and defending your three-story locomotive from a slew of heaven�s forces determined to snuff out the underworld once and for all. It�s not much, narratively, but I wouldn�t expect it to be in a game like this. What�s there works and gives reason for some unique, creative creatures along the way.

Much like Slay the Spire, Monster Train is a turn-based rogue-like deck builder, which sounds like a whole lot of buzz-word malarkey, but it�s a genre marriage made in... ahem... heaven. The game is broken into distinct sections (regions of hell), each one consisting of one battle. In each battle, you�ll be tasked with summoning units and slinging spells to stop a wave of heavenly fighters from moving, one floor at a time, up to the third floor of your train to extinguish the pyre. What you can summon is up to the draws from your deck, and while your deck starts out with one leader, some weak damage spells, and some squishy generic defenders, you�ll quickly be given the opportunity to beef up what you�re playing with. After every fight you�ll get to choose some new cards, and before every fight you�ll have the opportunity to do things like gain artifacts (permanent buffs or abilities), gain cards, purge cards, and more.

Strategy and Decisions

The actual gameplay mechanics are fantastically simple to understand, but they work together to create an incredible amount of depth. Adding, removing, and upgrading cards is simple, but which cards you do this to in order to support your overarching strategy is key. That big, tough unit you have the opportunity to recruit may do more damage than anything else you have, but, if you�re building a frostbite spell or defensive spike deck, is he really going to help you? Probably not! What strategies you use are largely going to be determined by which of the five clans you choose as your primary clan, but things are made even more interesting by the requirement to choose a secondary clan as well. I spend a good amount of time experimenting with different combinations, each one lending itself to a very different style of play.

They say adventures are about the journey, not the destination, and which route your journey takes through hell is important, too. After each battle you�ll be given the choice of two routes for your train to take, and this decision determines which opportunities you have to strengthen your deck and train. You can see exactly which options are on each route (save for the caves, which offer random-but-always-positive encounters), so I often times had to put some thought into whether, say, my pyre really needed some healing or if I wanted a chance to recruit a tough new unit. The journey is also a joy because everything looks fantastic. While the cards and fonts look straight out of Hearthstone, each friendly and enemy unit is creative, unique, and engaging to look at. You�ll be able to control everything from classic horned demons to mer-people, and the forces of heaven which are made up of far more than angels. It�s clear that a lot of care and attention went into character design, and it really did a lot to pull me into the game.

Between being able to mix and match primary and secondary factions, unlocking new faction-specific cards, and the random nature of the game, replayability is fantastic. While the first few runs with each faction may be the most exciting before you figure out the �optimal� card sets for each, further playthroughs reward critical thinking and strategy. Between the three factions to unlock in addition to the two starting ones and the generous number of faction cards available to unlock- not to mention the ability to make and share custom challenges online- this is a game that�s easy to come back to time and time again. And you will want to come back. While it�s easy to cast aside a game that takes inspiration from another as too derivative, it�s hard to complain when the results are this fun. Monster Train proves that, sometimes, it�s good to be bad.

9.5

fun score

Pros

Great art style, solid core gameplay mechanics, tons of replay value, easy to learn but tough to master

Cons

None of note.