Monster Train Review (PC Game, 2020)

One of my favorite genres of games is deck building games. I’m not picky, either. Is it a Trading Card Game? Sure, I’ll pick up some starter kits and give it a try. It’s very rare I find a system I don’t like. Is it a deck building game, where the cards are assigned or acquired at random? Awesome. I love just making up and adjusting strategies on the fly. Single player, two player, multiplayer: no preference there, either.

Monster Train is a roguelike deck building combat game. You play as the Champions of Hell. All of your power is attached to the last surviving remnants of the Pyre that powers Hell. You have been tasked with leading the train that takes you straight to the core of the inferno. The only thing that is stopping you is the Gilded Wing. They attack you at every juncture, invading your train with a wave of high powered magical soldiers who fight their way up the four levels of your train to the last fragment of the Pyre. If the Pyre is destroyed, you lose. If you defeat the army, you are rewarded with new cards, new artifacts that grant different powers and abilities to your train, and the opportunity to choose your path through a variety of merchants and treasures leading to the final stop.

It seems like a lot of mechanics, but it is quite intuitive for a deck building game. You start with two clans of cards (Hellhorned, the warriors of Hell, and Awoken, the living plants that constantly grow in battle) and work to unlock three more (Stygian Guard, the aquatic warriors who boost each other’s powers, Umbra, the oldest beings who consume each other for power, and Melting Remnant, the people still living under the delusions of wealth in Hell). You choose a primary clan, which gives you a super powerful champion to start with, and a secondary clan that fills out the rest of your deck. The cards are drawn five at a time with a cost to play (between zero and 10). Some are fighters who can take up limited slots in the train cars. Others are spells that apply powers directly to you or the enemy. Different character abilities impact how fast you move through the deck, how cards are recycled through the discard pile, and how much fire you have to spend on actions each turn.

Your first playthrough will guide you through the basics in one of the cleanest tutorials I’ve ever found in a card game. You’re guided with information through the first few levels and then left to fend for yourself on what turns into your first real run at the game. There are eight junctures to battle at before you reach the inferno.

If you take your time, a round can last 45-50 minutes. Monster Train lets your control the pace of the game. There is no time limit on your actions in the main game, but you can also adjust how quickly the characters go through combat. I’m the kind of card game player who likes to see all the actions play out. Call it paranoia from my competitive Yugioh and Magic the Gathering days; I don’t believe your combo works unless I see it play out. I appreciate that Monster Train lets me take my time and evaluate every detail.

The five clans actually do have unique properties that impact how you play the game. Monster Train features one of the most balanced game environments I’ve ever encountered. Whether or not I succeed with a clan combination is dependent on my use of the deck, not one clan being particularly less powerful than the others. I’m favoring Umbra with Awoken right now, though I do well with Awoken with Stygian and Hellhorned with Stygian. I’m still getting the hang of Melting Remnant, but that’s a me problem.

Full disclosure: I tend to like squirrely decks that just escalate out of control with unusual combos in any gaming system. It’s a slower playstyle which is a big risk, but the reward is huge when it pays off and your opponent can do nothing. Monster Train has the flexibility in its gameplay to let a weirdo like me find adapt with upgrades to this style of play.

The gameplay is fun outside of combat, which is pretty rare in card building games. The various merchants sell you upgrades for fighters, upgrades for spell cards, or new trinkets that change the conditions of the train. The flags let you pick new cards to add based on clan and the various other pits, piles, and tombs offer gold, the opportunity to remove cards from your deck, the chance to duplicate a powerful card, or more health for the Pyre. There’s also an ice cavern that offers you a variety of different randomly chosen rooms that can give you good or bad items or even let you kind of duplicate a powerful card five times over. You choose which elements of the map you interact with based on what you need. Go left and you might get health for the pyre, a pile of gold, and the chance to upgrade your spell cards; go right and you might get a trinket shop, the chance to upgrade your monsters, and a pit to destroy cards you don’t want anymore.

In addition to having genuinely fun combat and deck building systems, Monster Train has a great sense of style. The card design is clear. The dots on top tell you how many spaces a fighter will take in the train car. The number in the fire is the cost to play. The sword number is your attack and the heart number is your defense. The border tells you which clan your card is a part of and the text clarifies any specific powers, like getting armor after being attacked or getting rage (a combat boost) after defeating an enemy.

The monster design is great. That’s not surprising. Card games have to look good to really get people to play them. What I really appreciate is how the color scheme of the clan is consistent throughout all the characters. The Hellhorned are all orange and red; the Umbra are all black and gold; the Awoken are all green and purple; the Stygian Guard are shades of blue and gold; and the Melting Remnant always feature a firey glow against dark blue/green/purple fabric. When the characters come to life on the train, you can still tell which clan is which.

I also have to give a special shout out to the sound design. It’s very good. There is a wide variety of original songs that play during the different battles. The combat sound effects are clear, helping to distinguish exactly what is happening when the many effects start layering on top of each other. There’s also a readily accessible mixer in the settings option that lets you tweak it to exactly what you want for your experience.

Monster Train is the most fun I’ve had with a digital card game in a long time. The main mode alone has plenty of replay value before you add in daily challenges, a mode where you compete against other players on a randomly generated course, and user created challenges. The devs are also releasing free updates to the game to add in more cards and features to the game. Monster Train came out in May and just got its first free update two months later. I look forward to seeing how the game grows over time.

Monster Train is available on Steam for PC. You can purchase the game at a discount using the Humble Bundle store.

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