Monster Train Review
I kind of hate comparing games to junk food. Junk food is something that isn’t supposed to be good for you, but it’s tasty and enjoyable. Most junk food is also quick to prepare, if it even needs to be prepared at all. Most of the time you’ll just be opening a sterilized, yet greasy, bag or clicking a hard plastic lid off a cheap cardboard container, but on the other hand, everything comes in a variety of colors and tastes. Some snacks are salty, some are sweet. You aren’t expecting a long and drawn out 3-course meal with a snack, just something quick and satisfying. The negatives aside, I can’t really think of a better comparison of what playing “Monster Train” has felt like for the past several weeks.
“Monster Train” isn’t a new game, it released on PC almost a year ago, but recently found its way onto the Switch. The amount of time I invested into the game in the few weeks that it’s been out has probably rivaled some of the longer game’s I’ve played in the past year, the biggest difference being that Monster Train has an incredibly low floor to get in on, but gives a continual feed of challenges to keep you wanting more.
“Monster Train” is another deck building rogue-like, in the same vein as “Slay the Spire,” and last month’s review of “Banners of Ruin.” The catch for monster train is that it feels closer to something like a tower defense, where you have to methodically place buildings and traps against waves of enemies to stop them, than a typical combo-heavy deck game.
You are a minion of hell, and hell’s fire is constantly going out. In order to relight the pyre and keep things going, you need to take your train into the deepest levels of the underworld and manually give the pyre a bit a of kick. The problem: heaven isn’t so keen on you rekindling the underworld, and will send wave after wave of invaders break your smaller pyre and stop you from rekindling the big one. The only thing that stands between each wave and your precious tiny blaze, is the limited number of units you can summon and a handful spells you can cast against them.
The titular train of “Monster Train” is a 4-story tall behemoth of a passenger car, with a small pyre residing by itself on the very top floor. You, as the head conductor, can summon units to any of the 3 lower floors of the train to block the incoming angelic units that are hell-bent on stopping you from unbending hell’s extreme winter.
Combat moves in turns, with the angelic units attacking first, and then your summoned defenses countering. However, each wave will only spend one turn on each floor, so you have to coordinate your units to prevent enemy waves from reaching the pyre at the top. The pyre is able to defend itself, and will melt anything that enters its chamber in a few attacks, but it can only take so many hit itself before going out.
The “decks” in monster train are divided up between different races, each having two “champion” cards that tend to dictate the direction your deck wants to take. Champions share cards in their races, but what cards you pick and how you use them can be dictated in wildly different ways. For example, Hell-Horned is the first race the player has access to. Their starting champion is the “Horn-Breaker Prince,” a Unit that mostly builds as a frontline attacker. He wants to be in the action since almost all of his builds benefit from him dealing killing blows and absorbing damage from invaders. You’ll tend to prioritize armor and damage buffing support cards for him just to maximize his output. You’ll also want to position him in such a way that he gets a lot of kills on either the 2nd or 3rd floor after your initial party has weakened any invaders.
The Hell-Horned’s second champion is “The Shard-Tail Queen,” who has effects that mostly deal with swarming units on the field, particularly “imps.” She can gain benefits and buffs, similar to the Prince, but a deck for her will be much more unit-heavy to make sure she’s constantly reaping rewards of playing imps. One of the more fun builds I’ve found with her is using imps as a projectile of sorts, and doing massive amounts of damage to entire waves of enemies per-imp. This build ends up being vastly different from a Horn-Breaker build, as you want to throw the queen on the bottom row to maximize her damage output, and then have someone else above her to clean-up the leftovers.
I could gush about each individual race and champion, but then this review would end up closer to a 3000-word guide. Just know, I found myself constantly enamored by the volume of options I had. There’s 6 different races, 2 champions per-race, and then 3 “variants” of each champion that can be mixed and matched along the way. You also get to choose any other race outside your starter as a secondary-race, adding at least 10 different variants of support cards to your deck on top of those form your main one. Very rarely did I ever find myself bored with my options, and most of my climb through “Monster Train” was done so by hitting the random button and just rolling with what I had.
The “climb,” so-to-speak, is how “Monster Train” handles its difficulty. Each run can be paired with a covenant. Covenants add new challenges or restrictions onto the player, or empower enemy units on each battle. There are 25 covenants in total, with most of the difficulty not kicking in until around 20 or so. That’s not to say any level before that is easy, just that the leeway given until then is a bit more forgiving. I mentioned before how I made most of my journey just hitting random, but I had to stop and focus down as I reached the last 5 covenants. They demand a bit better understanding of how to mix races and cards together to create combos, loops, or just generally overpowered setups that obliterate your opposition.
One of the weaker aspects I found in “Banners of Ruin,” was how the hardest parts of the game forced me to exploit it, draining most of the fun out of it for me. “Monster Train” does a bit of the same. You can’t just luck your way through the last few covenants, you have to actively know what’s broken, how to get it, and what your broken alternatives are…and that’s the key difference, “alternatives.”
“Monster Train” never had me feeling restricted to just one race or combo that could clear through the game at higher difficulties. Pretty much every combination and champion has some way to the break the game, but they do so in their own flavor. You’re not waiting on one specific card to show up each time, and just slapping reset if you don’t see it. There’s almost always a workable path to the end, and most of them stand out from each other. I already described the Shard-Tail Queen, one of my favorites, and her imp-rocket style of field clearing, but you can kick it up a notch by giving your imps an ability to recycle themselves when they die. Some imps have very strong effects when they’re summoned, leading to crazy loops and stat boosts for the Queen by the time you reach the end of a battle.
On the other end of the deck-building spectrum is the Stygian, a race that typically wants to build around spells instead of units. The unlockable Stygian champion gains a “shard” every time a spell is cast on their floor, and those shards can lead into high damage numbers or incredibly powerful defenses. It’s another favorite deck of mine, as it builds around maxing out how many spells you can cast, and how many cards you can draw in the turn to quickly build up your shards. Many of the Stygian units also come with effects that power them up per-spell cast, creating a lot of fun synergy between them.
The game also looks and sounds good. The characters are all bright, colorful, and standout from each other. You’d never confuse a unit from one race as being from another, and that visual diversity is really impressive. Unlocking new cards and units is a treat, because all the art is so expressive and fun to look at. Some of the card artwork will even animate during the victory screens when you’re choosing a new addition for your deck.
The sound effects in the game are super satisfying to hear as well. Whether it’s the dull *thud* of a demon’s hammer hitting an enemy, the explosive effect of a spell landing on a unit, the crinkling and crusty sound of rocks falling when using a gem-themed card, or the sound of a champion munching down a morsel unit, the quality of it will be memorable and satisfying. Sound effects are something I don’t think get enough credit in games, and “Monster Train” has some of the best sounding sounds I’ve heard this year.
“Monster Train” has been the perfect junk food game for me, recently. It’s a lot of fun, each run comes in a different and unique flavor, and it’s a bright and colorful mess of quick play sessions. A single run can take about 30 minutes to an hour. I’m sure there are other games I could be moving on to after finishing all 25 of “Monster Train’s” covenants, but I keep finding myself going back for more and more. There are things like daily challenges as well, but I found that the base game is providing enough incentive already for me to go back and replay it. The simple thrill of having another accessible and quick rogue-like is just too hard for me to pass up, and if you haven’t already tried “Monster Train,” I’d recommend it on whatever platform you like you most.
5/5
“Monster Train”
Publisher: Good Shepherd Entertainment
Developer: Shiny Shoe LLC
Release Date: 2020/05/20 PC/ 2021/09/19 (Switch)
Available on: Switch and PC
Played on: Switch