Mike

Looks great, plays great, but jesus jimminy christ it gets hard fast.

I know that there are assist options to dial down the difficulty, but honestly the one change I want isn't in there, and that would be to remove the Sniper enemy type from the game all together. The beam weapon guys that you meet on level 5 are a much more interesting riff on that same idea-- notably, you can outrun their attacks without being forced to dodge-roll, and the flames they leave behind become new obstacles in the arena. The Snipers, meanwhile, seem to exist in the game solely to break up your combos and give you one too many things to think about.

Masocore types will like that feeling, but it just wears me out.

I’m giving up roguelikes for 2023, but wanted one more hit of that sweet poison.

I’ve played a lot of deck-builders, and this one is quite clever! I like the three-floor setup on the train, I like the champion units, all that.

The trouble is that every roguelike has two phases: the “feels like I’m dying from suboptimal play” phase (fun!) and the “feels like I’m playing well but dying to random bullshit” phase (excruciating). Unfortunately, because my brain is broken from too much Slay the Spire, I tend to sail through the fun part of these in just a few hours now.

I played 3 runs of Monster Train total:
Run 1. Died on the first boss, having made obvious mistakes with my build.
Run 2. Won! Cruised through easily, in fact, on the back of a gleefully broken deck built around maximizing champion damage.
Run 3. Tried the daily challenge, died in ring 6 to some random bullshit. (Turns out giving a boss Stealth 5 + a 5x5 attack means your frontline takes 150 damage before they even get a chance to swing back? Huh, I… guess you got me, game. I wasn’t prepared for that.)

So, in short, I bought Monster Train for $8, played it for about the length of a Marvel movie, and feel like I got everything I wanted from it. The train keeps chugging along, but I think I’d rather step off here.

🦎 Mike Kelley

🦎 Mike Kelley