Monster Train 2 is the follow-up to 2020’s surprise hit deck-building roguelike with a train full of demons. This follow-up will be instantly familiar to anyone who played the first. From the looks, to the decks, music, and progression, I instantly felt at home. I’ve had a lot of fun in my many dozens of runs over the past few months. It’s coming to Game Pass day one, an incredibly late surprise! Let’s see if it’s worth checking out.
Heaven or Hell, Let’s Rock
Monster Train 2’s story setup sees Angels and the denizens of Hell once again working together to topple a common foe. There are five factions in this one, each with two heroes and you’ll take them across the rings of heaven as you try to overthrow some real shitheads.
Monster Train 2 is your classic deckbuilding roguelike where runs earn you experience and various unlocks to empower you on future sojourns. Your train will have two ways to go on each level. Will you go left and get some gold, a new card for the fiery demon faction, and a new artifact? Maybe you’ll go right and get a powerful random card, some health for your train’s Pyre (aka its heart), and the ability to duplicate a card?
There are dozens of equipment items to buy for creature cards. Adding health to tanks or multistrike to damage dealers. Those choices shape each run as you attempt to run through 9 levels, beating bosses across dozens of battles. It’s a tried-and-true system that feels better balanced here. I won my 2nd run, immediately running again on the newly unlocked difficulty. These are all the trappings around the combat going on in your train.
Choo Choo Chooooooose to Murder
Monster Train 2 retains the original title’s four-tiered combat setup. Your train is the arena with base, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th floors. The first three floors are where you’ll set up your creature units. The fourth houses your Pyre, which is the heart of your run. Your job is to kill all of the invading angels before they can reach the Pyre and damage it.
By default, you’ll have three energy to use with your cards at the start of a run. Cards have an energy price, with creature cards also having a price per floor. That system limits how many cards you can have per floor. Often, I’d have my hero card on the first floor. Tank heroes would go in front, and if I was using a support, they’d go in the back.
Positioning is everything, with a ton of mechanics on your and the enemy’s side when it comes to forced movement, who is hit, what buffs or debuffs are applied, and it’s great. The game isn’t hard at all, early on, but boy, it can be devastatingly tricky as you progress through the difficulty tiers. The main mechanics of fights never change, though, kill everything before it hits your Pyre, with a series of waves for each fight. Once that wave count is up, the boss locks in, and it’s a non-stop fight to the death per-floor until either the boss or your Pyre’s HP reaches 0.
There are more than just creature units, just like in the first game. Each clan has a unique set of spells, room cards, and more to try and turn the odds to be ever in your favor. While there are no potions like in Slay the Spire, there are unit abilities. Your heroes and certain card types can have abilities that operate on a turn-based cooldown. The starter hero can turn a buff into extra damage and shield, making them incredibly powerful as fights go on.
Meta-leveling
As you play, experience is gained and cards unlock for each clan, alongside a 2nd choice of hero. Your deck will always have a set of “train stewards”. These are a handful of basic tank and low-damage cards.
For the rest of your cards, there will be a random assortment from your main and secondary clan choices. You start with the angels and denizens of hell who are fighting the a-holes in charge of heaven. To unlock the other clans, you’ll need to do specific tasks like using consumed cards, those that only get a single use per fight. Unlocking new types of Pyre Hearts is the game’s main leveling mechanic. Those are similarly tied to various in-run achievements.
Monster Train 2 gives a constant sense of progress that the best roguelites need to keep you engaged. There are trials to run and various unlocks, again tied to systems like unlocking Pyre Hearts, and I love how they set it up. At first, the game’s main menu seemed barren, but after a few hours, I had unlocked cutscenes and more mechanics and had a blast doing it.
Chill Vibes
The graphics are a big step up from the first title. While similar in my mind’s eye when I went back and saw the first game, I realized how much better this looked. I played on PC for this review, as they gave me a code over two months ago for a preview. That code worked damned near the entire time, and hitting nearly 500fps on PC means this one should run and look just fine on any console.
The music is full of bangers, just like the first title. Techno-rock tracks tied to each stage or boss are met with enemy grunts and weapon hits. There is still no voice acting, and it’s fine. The story is whatever for me in these types of games. Monster Train 2’s story is better than average, telling far more of a story than most even try.
In my many hours with the game, I never once had it crash or had a bug of any kind. Zero graphical glitches. No issues with audio or lost saves. In typical Steam review code fashion, it didn’t offer up cloud saves early on, making playing on my Steam Deck a no-go. That was fixed with the final review build, and this is one of the best handheld games out there. Oh yeah, and it’s Xbox Play Anywhere, so if you have a Windows handheld, you can hop from console to it on the fly, a thing of beauty.
Wrapping Things Up
Monster Train 2 is excellent. It takes everything I loved about the first game and makes it just a little better. The looks, music, and strategy will have me playing this one for years to come.
Monster Train 2
Played on
PC (Steam)
PROS
- Solid Progression
- Excellent OST
- Looks Great
- Variety in clans/runs
CONS
- Story was “eh”
