It’s rare that I spend so much time playing a game off-stream as well as on it. It’s rare, following a pretty lacklustre few months with Hearthstone, that I find card based games appealing. But if you followed my YouTube or Twitch channels, then you will already know how much I have enjoyed the Monster Train.
I wishlisted this game, I had the money ready and then a friendly streamer offered me a key. So once you have been and showed your appreciation to Cringer by checking out the great content on his Twitch channel, lets review the one game that has kept my attention for the last few weeks.
You might also want to check out my pining half-review of the beta. Basically I just wanted to keep playing, I wanted more, I was very much into the game.
or you can use my affiliate link to Humble Bundle if you like the work I do and support me buying more games!
What is the Monster Train?
The Monster Train is basically is focused on the choo choo to Hell. The story-line is that you are fighting your way to Hell with a pyre to restart the fires of downstairs. Imagine the fourth season of Lucifer (only available on Netflix…. unfortunately) where he is trying to get back into Hell to resume his rightful throne.
You battle across a number of clans that you can control. Each is unique in it’s abilities and restrictions, like the sheer damage of the Hellhorned and the almost shielding tank nature of the Awoken. These are the two clans that you are granted at the start of the game to learn the mechanics and synergy.
The idea of the gameplay itself is that you have to defend your train and your pyre of fire from the eight waves of attacks that you are going to get. Each of the attacks brings a different wave of styles to the battle, so you must keep a lean but focus deck of cards to use against the enemy.
Cards have a variety of different healing and damage styles, as well as your allied characters to do battle. Everything from the clans that you choose to the card you add to your deck makes a difference in the Monster Train. You do however, get a base deck of cards based on your two clan choices, as well as a random selection of cards that you pick up along the way.
Over the course of the game you can weed out the cards that are hindering your progress as well. That is very handy when you find all of a sudden you are starting to kill off your own chances of victory.
Things WILL get harder!
Once you have mastered one or more clans of choice then you will start to get better. You will eventually – and I can not remember how long my first took took – get to kill Sepath and light the pyre.
What this means though is that you can also start to rise up the mastery rankings. Each Covenant you win will allow you to work your way up the difficulty rankings and offer you the joys of more difficult battles, or deadweight cards in your deck. You will find that your strategy in the easier Covenants will lead to synergy changes and a different way that you will play.
What I Like about Monster Train
(Oh…. and I forgot to mention…. it has multi-player too!)
One of the first things that I think is great fun is the chance to experiment with these cards. My personal favourite at the moment is the Umbra and experimenting with the making, duplicating and eating of morsels. Combining that with the small number of upgrades each champion has throughout makes this something that you will find for dozens of game you will not have the same deck and upgrade options twice!
The other thing that I really enjoy is the fact that we have only even talked about the single player game mode. There are a number of multiplayer modes that you can have, where you either share a unique code to your friends and see how well they do, or battle across the Internet in real time.
First the Daily Challenge. Each day, there is a single challenge that at the moment gets hundred of players. You can only play once and that score is placed upon a plinth of a leaderboard.
Then there is Hell Rush. Basically a high-speed multiplayer battle to the hell. (See, I have mentioned it now!) You join an open waiting room, when the Monster Train rolls out of the station, you are racing both the clock in each battle, as well as each other. You all get the same run, same card choices, same foes and it really is against the clock. Why just talk about it, when I can show you!
Lastly, I like the idea that the developers are already promising some tinkering in the background. Data about the way that various cards and trinkets are being used will apparently influence things like future updates and changes to the cost or power of cards.
I know I have already had to change my way of playing Umbra after the Gorge upgrade and Morselmaker damage levels were changed!
What I Don’t Like about Monster Train
There has to be a downside, and with close to 100 hours logged on the game I have to admit that some of the cards are starting to feel …. samey. The whole randomness of the card generation is great, but there is sometimes a bit of monotony about it.
The addition to that is that some of the randomness disappears from the Concealed Caverns as well. Once you get to know what each of the offers will lead to later on, you kind of try to plan ahead.
I hope that once we get to a bit more development and the team at Shiny Shoe are finished with any issues they discovered at launch, then they add a bit more randomness.
The Thing is….
I did not think I would enjoy this game when I first got the key to the beta. The game grew on me and grew on me, and I can’t put it down. Many people seemed to agree with me too, with the servers handling the game slowing to a stop during the first few days of the launch.
Now Shiny Shoe have fixed that though, I am continuing to chuff chuff on the choo choo to Hell known as the Monster Train.
You can buy Monster Train on Steam, or you can use my affiliate link on Humble Bundle.