TL;DR

• My Playtime: 3d 17h 32m (yikes)
• Best Played: 30 minute sessions
• Verdict: Love it

Overview

A zany roguelike deckbuilder perfect for anyone who’s played Slay the Spire to the point of nausea and are looking for something similar but different (mostly similar).

If you’ve never played Slay the Spire, start there.

Time Investment and Payoff

As with Slay the Spire, Monster Train’s roguelike gameplay loop focuses on runs, with successful runs unlocking more cards/heroes/etc. A run consists of three sections, each with two minor fights followed by one boss. Between each encounter, you will get to make fun choices on how to upgrade your deck (artifacts, spells, units, merchants, chance encounters, etc.), taking some to forgo others and then panic about whether you chose poorly.

In my experience, a run takes anywhere from 30 to 50 minutes, but as with Spire, the game can be quit and picked back up easily without losing progress. The only exception (again, as with Spire) is mid-battle, where quitting and restarting simply takes you to the beginning of the battle, advantageous for the fat finger or “I didn’t mean to do that” moment.

One thing to highlight is that I often found myself less invested in a run had I quit mid-run and come back to it a day or two later, typically opting to just start over. When I had resumed a prior run, I found myself forgetting how I’d specced out my deck and making stupid mistakes I would not have made the day before.

Mental Investment

Once you grok it, you can mostly space out while assembling your deck or choosing an optimal route through hell, though fulfillment from these games often comes from a job done well and done intently.

Final Verdict

I love this stupid game, as evidenced by my playtime. Replayability is endless, thanks to the many combinations of clans and heroes. There are five clans in the base game, with each run consisting of selecting a “main” clan and a “backup” clan of your choice. Each clan has two heroes to choose from. So there is plenty of variability.

Longer Thoughts for Anyone Still Here

While an obvious imitator of Spire, it’s every bit of fun and has plenty of good ideas all its own:

• While Spire and MT both involve choice and strategy, Spire is more strategy focused while MT is more choice focused
• MT involves deploying army unit cards throughout your train in addition to your hero