Monster Train 2 Review: A Familiar But Great Deckbuilder

Monster Train 2 May Not Lay New Tracks, But It Still Delivers An Excellent Ride

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The original Monster Train came out shortly after roguelike deckbuilders started exploding in popularity, as the space pushed past only appealing to Dominion-obsessed oldheads and pulled in many of the card game curious. Structured around defending a multi-layered train from angelic invaders, the game’s massive lineup of cards and different Clan combinations was a genre sicko’s dream, leading to carefully balanced chaos and countless runs through the layers of Hell.

Five years later and the scene has only moved further into the mainstream. An overwhelming number of deckbuilders are released each year, some of which have taken big swings: Dicey Dungeons replaced cards with a D6, Balatro introduced poker-based shenanigans, and Inscryption delivered a metatextual spin that broke the mold entirely. Moreover, the giant that helped popularize the space, Slay the Spire, has a sequel fast approaching this year. That’s all to say, there’s a lot of competition nowadays.

So, where does this leave Monster Train 2, studio Shiny Shoe’s follow-up to their 2020 deckbuilder? While their latest is admittedly a “more of the same” style sequel, thankfully, it nails almost all of the little details, with nuances that set up brainbending combos, delightful virtuous cycles, and tense battles. Like a smartly designed booster set, the new cards interact with each other in explosive ways, with clever keywords and abilities that offer room for experimentation. Although there’s power creep that might have been a problem in a PvP game, it compensates for this by cranking up the heat with more challenging foes, resulting in a strategic experience that usually feels quite fair. It’s less a reinvention than a refinement, but considering how well it fits together, that’s fine by me.

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For those who didn’t pick up the first game, the basic premise was that you played as the Clans of Hell during a war against angelic invaders, and to turn the tide, your goal was to guide a train downward and rekindle the Underworld’s flame. In the latest game, things are flipped somewhat, and after saving their home, the denizens of Hell team up with some of their former enemies as they journey together into heaven. After the dastardly Seraph seizes the celestial throne with the backing of the Titans, the Angels and the Hellhorde come together to face this bad guy and save both worlds.

As for how this struggle shakes out in terms of gameplay, like most roguelike deckbuilders, you pick cards throughout a run to add to your deck, slowly building up your capabilities in the hope of beating the final boss—if you die, it’s back to square one. As for this game’s specifics, you pick two Clans at the start of a playthrough that determine which Champion you can choose (a powerful card with evolving abilities) and also which card pools you’ll be drafting from. For instance, if I were to pick the Pyrebound, a legion of Dragons and Whelps who apply explosive gels and farm currency, and the Banished, the previously mentioned fallen angels, this means almost all the cards I can add to my deck over a given run would be units and spells from these two factions.

As for how these cards are used in battle, fights take place inside your train, as foes work their way up four levels to destroy your engine. You’ll play creature cards and spells to beat them back, lining each floor with allies that chip away at these invaders like a turn-based tower defense game. Each turn, you draw cards and gain energy that can be spent to play units, spells, and more. Between these battles, you’ll customize your loadout as you choose additional cards for your deck, pick artifacts with powerful passive abilities, and decide which shops to visit. Together, these decisions make it so that decks branch off in myriad directions and give ample opportunity for skilled players to overcome much of the run-to-run randomness.

As for what makes this take on deckbuilding goodness work so well, one central element is how each run begins with selecting not one, but two card pools to draw from, setting up combinations that make drafting novel from run to run. Like the base version of the previous game, there are five new Clans in Monster Train 2 that combine for 20 combinations of deck pools, and that’s not even factoring in how each Clan has two different Champion cards to choose between, each of which can drastically influence your playstyle. Although the first two clans introduced, The Banished and The Pyreborne, function relatively similar to the last games’ cards, albeit with all new keywords, mechanics, and a somewhat more offense oriented spin, the next three are weird and compelling in different ways, setting up unique playstyles that make you feel like a big-brained genius when everything goes according to plan.

My favorite run so far came from the Underlegion, a group of mushrooms-themed warriors who, among other things, can spawn adorable walking fungi at the front lines. Although these tiny guys were unimpressive alone, they could stack on top of each other, with each stack improving their overall health and damage output. While at first, I had a hard time pumping out enough of these diminutive dudes to make much of a difference, I eventually found a specific unit and a piece of equipment that further proliferated these toadstools. On top of this, my Champion Bolete the Guillotine would get powered up each time “Harvest” was activated, a keyword that triggered when a unit died. Where things got interesting was that when the legion of small shrooms on my front line took enough damage, it would trigger the Harvest keyword as individual shrooms died, meaning that as my vanguard took damage, my backline bruiser became stronger and stronger until he could cleave Seraph in two.

This is just one example, and the new factions’ well-considered skills lead to plenty of unique interactions like this, whether it’s the Luna Coven, who manipulate phases of the moon to activate abilities and buffs, or the Lazarus League, mad scientists helmed by a man who looks like a combination of Dr. Frankenstein and Herbert West from the Re-Animator (this Clan even has a keyword called Reanimate which brings back units after they bite it, which proves outrageously potent in the right situations). Although the basic strategy is the same as the previous game—shore up a way to scale damage and sustain your defenses against increasingly difficult bosses and their minions—the ways you get there are different enough that these battles have their own flavor.

Another place this sequel further differentiates itself is with fresh card types and additional ways to customize your run. Now there are equipment and room cards, with the former letting you improve units with weapons and armor, and the latter applying buffs or debuffs across the floor they are deployed on. These both fit naturally with the game’s core design while adding even more layers to strategy. Add in a later feature that introduces even more variables to each run, and there is an almost intimidating number of ways to play.

On top of this, in addition to picking your Clans at the beginning of the run, you can also customize your Pyre (the train’s engine) to grant different abilities, which further differentiate playthroughs as these abilities often feel quite substantive. For example, one Pyre adds a random upgrade to the cards you draft from, which can result in huge payoffs if things go your way. Add in countless tiny decisions during each battle about how to play each hand and deploy your units, and there is a non-stop procession of meaningful choices that make this sequel even richer than its predecessor.

Another interesting change is that there’s more of an overarching story this time, with conversations playing out between runs as you unlock new Pyres and Clans. Although it’s all relatively light and boilerplate, it provides just enough structure to the experience to keep things on the rails between runs. It’s no Hades, but it shows that even the faintest hints of narrative can help spur along roguelikes. The other means of progression certainly help as well, and you’ll steadily unlock Clans and new cards as you play. You’ll even find new game modes, like the Dimensional Challenge, where you attempt to complete runs with set modifiers, like equipment effects being doubled at the cost of units only having one upgrade slot.

All that said, there are admittedly a few bumps along this journey. My main issue is that, like the last game, some of the modifiers introduced with higher difficulty settings (called Covenants) can limit some of the deckbuilding fun. Once you reach Covenant 5, there’s a pair of impossible-to-remove Blight cards that always start in your deck, have no positive benefits, and damage your Pyre if you don’t play them. These are likely here so that you can’t create an extremely thin deck that always gets to your ideal actions, but I think it would be much more interesting if that game allowed you to create whatever unhinged engine you want, while upping the enemy difficulty to compensate.

Additionally, although it’s nice that this follow-up’s enemies are entirely new, there can be a bit too much variance in the difficulty of the bosses. In particular, there’s now a status effect called Corruption that deals increasing amounts of unblockable damage to your afflicted units each turn, and feels more punishing than almost anything in the game at the moment. Of course, one iteration of the final boss loves to slather you with this stuff. It’s not that you can’t counter powerful abilities like this, and you’re given intel at the start of a run on what abilities the bosses will have, but preparing for these encounters can sometimes make the deck building more restrictive than it should be.

Lastly, although this game’s similarities to its predecessor are mostly a benefit, it may be a bit too familiar for those not interested in diving into the nitty-gritty of these mechanical interactions. This fusion of tower defense deckbuilding was much more novel when the original came out, as this genre has gone in far wackier directions in the last few years: what it boils down to is that this follow-up is excellent for those in love with this core formula, but it doesn’t quite reach the same out-there heights of some of its peers.

Still, while Monster Train 2 very much follows the path laid out by the previous game, the most important thing is that it still offers a large pool of cleverly designed cards and a range of weighty decisions that differentiate each run. Do you draft a unit that will be incredibly powerful if you happen to pull a particular complementary card later on, or do you choose a safer option that doesn’t have the same potential? Do you activate that Trial before a battle that will give you more coins to spend in shops, but may tip the entire run towards disaster if things go even slightly sideways? Do you recruit the dog with a mushroom on its head because it is very cute? Despite throwing an almost overwhelming amount of questions your way, this sequel’s measured changes often result in nothing less than deckbuilding alchemy. It may not reinvent the wheel, but Monster Train 2’s clever modifications ensure this train keeps chugging along smoothly.

Monster Train 2 was developed by Shiny Shoe and published by Big Fan Games. Our review is based on the PC version. It is also available for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and Switch.

Elijah Gonzalez is the assistant Games and TV Editor for Paste Magazine. In addition to playing and watching the latest on the small screen, he also loves film, creating large lists of media he’ll probably never actually get to, and dreaming of the day he finally gets through all the Like a Dragon games. You can follow him on Bluesky @elijahgonzalez.bsky.social.

Monster Train 2 May Not Lay New Tracks, But It Still Delivers An Excellent Ride