Sometimes, games sound deranged when you explain them, but when they come together so elegantly in gameplay, it’s almost impossible to sound sane about them, especially when they’re so good you want to rave like a lunatic. To start from the beginning, you have a train full of dragons and demons and fairies and mad scientists and mushroom people and you’re trying to storm Heaven (like, THE Heaven) and fight angels and LISTEN HERE INDIE ROGUELIKE DECKBUILDERS DON’T NEED TO MAKE A LOT OF SENSE DO YOU WANT TO PLAY A SICK DECKBUILDER OR WHAT?!
Monster Train 2
Developer: Shiny Shoe
Price: $24.99
Platform: PC (reviewed), PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch
MonsterVine was supplied with a Steam code for review
The secret sauce that made the first Monster Train great was verticality: Enemies enter on the first level of your train and relentlessly try to climb up to the top floor to attack the pyre, the beating heart of your train. Somehow, making things go up just changes the whole game in a way that makes you rant like Dennis Hopper in Apocalypse Now when you try to explain it: Like now there’s a placement strategy to how you array your defending creatures, because enemies advance relentlessly, so which floor you want to kill them on is part of the strategy, but also do you want your best guys on the bottom floor or the last line of defense at the top?
There’s also a whole depth element to it, because the monster in front tends to take all the damage (and likewise to the monster in front on the enemy side)…unless and until you start playing with ranged abilities, multiple attacks, positional attacks, and of course, if you kill them, there’s a new monster in front.
The levels themselves also become part of your strategy since you can add different effects to the levels, things like “for every kill, you get some gold” or “every time your monster dies, everyone gets a buff” or “for every kill, every mushroom person gets buffed”, so the rooms themselves become part of the battlespace.
Initial setup is fairly simple: You draw a handful of cards. Each level only has a certain capacity (raisable, but it’s difficult to raise, so yet another element of strategy). The currency is called Ember (it’s possible to get more than the default amount, but it’s also difficult to raise that, still more strategy), and you spend Ember to set up your initial board. Usually, you’ll want to put down monsters, but it depends on the draw. You may want to cast spells, put equipment on them, and otherwise get ready for the oncoming hordes of Heaven. Once you’re done, THEY COME.
At the beginning of every turn, you draw cards and spend Ember. You can deploy more monsters if there’s capacity on the floor you want to deploy on. You can cast spells that do things like buffs and debuffs, direct damage, maybe they turn the cycle of the moon if you’re playing the fairies which influences all their magic, maybe you get dragon eggs which can redeem currency, maybe you cast spells that make your guys decay and buff your mushroom guys. Some of your monsters may also have innate abilities you want to play with that may change their position, do damage, play a jaunty tune, buff their comrades…
Combat is pretty easy to predict. You know how it’s going to turn out on both sides in advance, which is a huge Quality of Life thing and one of the things that really pushes Monster Train 2 to the top of the heap. But once you’re done playing cards and doin’ ya thang, the monsters and enemies on each floor fight. At the end of the round, any surviving enemies attempt to advance to the next floor. Their goal is the Pyre.
Plot twist, the Pyre is unguarded. You can’t deploy in the Pyre room. Instead, the Pyre itself has health and an attack value…usually. See, you can also unlock a bunch of cool Pyres that do a bunch of damage, or maybe they have a lot o’ health, or maybe they help you do magic, or maybe they don’t have a lot of health, or they can do heals.
There are usually several balancing acts going on: First is floor capacity. While upgradable, there’s still a hard limit to how many monsters you can put down. The range of monsters depend on the two factions you select for the run, so based on that choice, you’re picking from your big beefy dragon or your mushroom men that are pretty weak at first but can slowly grow into unconquerable behemoths or your vampire lab assistant that’s fairly weak but has lifedrain or your extremely tanky fallen angel or your punk rock bird that is weak but can buff your other dudes…
Second is Ember: You can only play so many cards, which depends on the cards you’ve drawn, the cards from your initial hand, and the cards you’ve picked up along the way. As stated, you can increase your Ember over time, but there’s still a hard limit.
Third is the monsters themselves. Heaven hits hard and they’re probably going to die, so there’s a constant balancing act with your spells, buffs, equipment, your mad scientist injections if you picked the mad scientists, of whether it’s worth buffing this guy because he might chip away at a big tanky angel but the buffs might be better served for your last line of defense but they are already pretty beefy also you’ve got a nice direct damage on deck…
As your train rolls along, you hit the usual roguelike stops: Events that can provide items and cards, merchants that can improve or upgrade your cards or provide new cards, the rare stop that can heal your wounded Pyre, the occasional Secret Mystery!, big boss fights that provide rare cards and upgrades.
It all sounds complicated, but it is not at all complicated when you play it, it’s actually incredibly beautiful and works so well, like oh my god I sound deranged when I talk about it.
We haven’t even covered the boss fights, the special abilities, the Daily Challenges, the Community Challenges, the Covenants that increase the difficulties of regular runs, Mutators that can completely change various aspects of the game, the story covering what happened with the whole “storming Heaven with a train” the first time, Dimensional Challenges that are gimmick-type games like “equipment is good but everything else kinda sucks”, all the factions have alternate leaders and a ton of cards to unlock. There’s a lot to do and explore, and the game keeps opening up new and interesting things, and just when I think I’m out, they pull me back in, man.
On top of that, the new addition has new factions (creatures like the aforementioned mad scientists and mushroom people, etc.), new challenges, the ability to customize your train, and, of course, you’re still overseeing a train full of creatures trying to storm Heaven.
CHOO CHOO CHOO CHOO CHOO CHOO WE’RE RIDING ON THE MONSTER TRAIN.
The Final Word
Monster Train 2 delivers a smart, wildly creative, and compulsively replayable roguelike deckbuilder that builds meaningfully on its predecessor. The mechanics—particularly its verticality, floor-based strategy, and layered factions—make for exhilarating and varied runs. The writing’s energy reflects how fun the game is in motion, with just a few complexities that may slightly overwhelm newcomers. But for fans of roguelikes and deckbuilders, this is a masterclass in chaos and cohesion.
MonsterVine Rating: 4.5 out of 5 – Great
