Recent reviews by Kopiok

I have 200 hours on Slay the Spire (StS) and 70 hours on this game. I have a little bit of a history with card games, playing Netrunner for many years (never did get into Magic, though) and I consider board gaming to be one of my primary hobbies. Context for my review (I make quite a few comparisons to StS in here).

Monster Train is a rogue-like, creature combat, deck drafting game, essentially. "Heroes" are your units that battle the enemy units. You play them to occupy floors. You can think of the floors as almost a "lane" system, with enemies advancing from the bottom floor, to the middle, to the top floor each after a single combat round. Hopefully you kill them before they reach the top. Eventually, a boss will show up. The boss stops at each floor, from the bottom up, and rounds of combat are continuous until the floor is cleared or the boss is dead. Any units that overflow your top floor attack your "pyre" (like your health pool). The pyre has an attack value and will fight back a bit in continuous rounds of combat until its health runs out or the attackers die. When you run out of pyre health it's game over.

This is a great drafting game. The structure of the drafting is interesting. The majority of your drafting is for support spells and minor monsters. You are only able to draft a limited number of heroes during special draft events, and those drafts are front-loaded in your run. You fairly quickly have to figure out what your limited hero-pool will be and how to best synergize your team. From there you have to make sure that the support cards you draft match your hero makeup. This helps keep things a bit fresher, as most cards are situationally good and there aren't always the same "best value" cards in every run. I like this in contrast to StS, where it often feels like I'm trying for the same builds or using the same cards every time. You can further upgrade your cards to really customize how your deck is working. Many of my runs came together as I put powerful upgrades on particularly synergistic spells or heroes. And boy, when you find a power combo, it REALLY goes off in this game and that feels quite satisfying.

Card draw tends to be somewhat limited, so it's important to be choosy about what you draft-- you don't need a card from every draft pack! Thin decks are better decks, and card removal is also relatively plentiful in Monster Train. This is in contrast to StS, where sometimes it make more sense to dilute the "bad" cards in your deck by drafting large and playing best-value. I like that this game has you focus on making a "tighter" deck. The decision points at each draft opportunity feel a bit more impactful for it.

I had waned on Slay the Spire due to the same-ness that a lot of my runs felt. How similar my drafting strategy was as certain builds just seemed blatantly better than others. I came back to StS after The Watcher was released since she felt fresh and like there were more options. I continued to play her exclusively for many hours. That's the kind of feel that I get with this game. There are five factions (colors, if you will) in Monster Train and you combine any two of them for each run. The sheer number of combinations keeps the game feeling fresh. Sure, I have my "favorite" cards for each faction, but they are still a bit more flexible than, say, StS. Different faction combinations give different value choices for heroes and spells, and that leads to continually interesting value choices as the hours go by.

If you are a fan of deck drafting games, I cannot recommend this one enough. I'm usually not one for creature combat, but the variety of mechanics among each faction, the satisfying and powerful combos you can develop, and the progression system (much more forgiving than StS) keep me coming back time after time. 10/10 would play again.

It's like AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! except more. MORE. That's like saying "Here's some ice cream. Also here's some more ice cream, but with chocolate sauce and jimmies." It's the jimmies, man.

These all can be mutually exclusive:
Do you like RPGs? This game is for you.
Do you like Dungeon Crawlers? This game is for you.
Do you liked Puzzle Games? This game is for you.
Do you like getting your D S'd (Dungeon Solved)? This game is for you.

tl;dr: BUY THIS ♥♥♥♥, IT'S AMAZING.

At first I thought the water stage was really immersive. Then I realised I actually wet myself.

A high energy, pick-up and play masterpiece. A short but sweetly intense experience with each jump.