Monster Train 2 review – off the rails Slay The Spire

Monster Train 2 review – off the rails Slay The Spire

Monster Train 2 – running on time is the least of your problems (Big Fan Games)

One of the few deck-building roguelikes to challenge Slay The Spire gets an impressive sequel that may be the most fun you can have on a locomotive.

Roguelike deck builders are having a moment. A search for them on Steam will net you an astounding 861 results, making it a category that’s quite a bit more populous than you might imagine. Despite the high number of matches though, it’s a genre that’s been made famous primarily by just two games: Slay The Spire and Balatro.

The latter is regularly cited as one of the best games of 2024 but it’s the former whose content and style is closest to Monster Train, which was originally released in 2020. It was a game about defending the frozen wastes of Hell against the invading forces of Heaven. In its sequel, Heaven and Hell are forced to unite to face the Titans, a new threat that could lead to the destruction of both realms.

None of that’s especially relevant to the gameplay, which once again takes place onboard a quadruple-decker train. The turn-based battles are waged across the bottom three floors, with the train’s penthouse reserved for the pyre, the burning heart of your train, which in a mechanic borrowed from tower defence games is effectively the train’s power bar. Your job is to stop invaders reaching the pyre, because if they do and its health gets down to zero, it’s game over.

In the original that often meant stacking your third floor with the strongest troops you had available. The sequel prefers you to mount a defence across all three floors and to encourage that, there are now room-level upgrades available, that for example will increase valour – the stat that equates to armour – to all troops, or reduce the cost of magic, making different floors more suitable for certain troop types.

This adds a fresh layer of tactics and feeds into the meta game of deck building. There are now a total of 10 different clans to choose from, with each run featuring a main and support clan, both of whose cards you’ll have available as you play. Completing runs earns experience for the clans you’re using and as each one levels up, you’ll slowly gain access to more of their cards. Naturally, the game tends to gate the more powerful ones behind those higher experience levels.

All of this reinforces the fact that Monster Train 2 is very much a roguelite, your power growing as you unlock new cards and spells, as well as adding permanent upgrades that make each subsequent run easier. It also adds a pleasing sense of progress, which persists even after a run that otherwise went badly. Plus, you’ll still earn experience and potentially extra cards or magic items to assist in future escapades.

As with all roguelites, there’s a powerful sense of repetition, with the entirety of the game’s action taking place in the relatively claustrophobic confines of your train’s four storeys. It’s fair to say though, that the random elements in runs tend to make each one feel quite different from the last, especially as you start to unlock more clans and the extra cards they offer.

To add further variation, there are challenges, which you play on a grid, with the next one opening up once you’ve beaten its nearest neighbour. Challenge levels constrain you to the use of specific clans and each comes with ‘mutators’ that add extra conditions, like reducing the cost of spells or giving certain card types extra health or attack strength.

You can also change your pyre heart. Each heart has different attack and defence stats, which come into play when the top floor of your train is invaded by Titans, and each comes with a special ability. These can be anything from reduced prices at the shops you encounter after each level, to more esoteric benefits, like the power to heal the front unit on each floor of the train once per battle.

This adds to the interconnected network of effects that stack to create some truly formidable stat increases, even if it’s not easy remembering what’s active and how each of those different buffs interacts with the others. Obviously, the game automatically calculates all the bonuses on each attack and defensive play you make, but it can be tricky keeping all those layered effects in mind when you’re placing cards or activating spells.

It’s also important to know which bosses you’ll be dealing with and to plan accordingly. There’s only so much you can do when you’re always partly dependent on the luck of which cards you draw, but you can still make sure you have troops available that act to counter bosses’ special abilities, hopefully containing them before they can overwhelm your defences.

There’s notably more focus on character and story in this sequel, the plot playing out in a series of text-only encounters triggered when you return to the game’s hub between runs. Clearly inspired by Hades, it doesn’t quite equal that game’s wit and personality, but it’s nice to see additional elements fleshing out the game beyond its core, quick fire turn-based combat.

If you loved the original Monster Train, this goes further than simply delivering more of the same. There’s fresh new strategic options and combinations of troops and spells to experiment with, as well as cards from the game’s new clans to unlock and slot into your deck. There are many games that try to copy Slay The Spire and yet very few that come close to its quality, but Monster Train 2 is certainly on track in that regard.

Monster Train 2 review summary

In Short: An effective expansion of the original’s deck-building roguelite structure, that adds lots of enjoyable new features and becomes one of the few games to rival Slay The Spire.

Pros: Pacy and easy to understand, with complexity layered in as you progress. Lots of fresh systems and mechanics to try out, and as immaculately well balanced as ever.

Cons: Eventually gets repetitive. Using a controller isn’t as intuitive as a mouse or touchscreen. Some runs can be severely compromised by random factors beyond your control.

Score: 8/10

Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X/S, and PC
Price: £19.99
Publisher: Good Shepherd Entertainment
Developer: Shiny Shoe
Release Date: 21st May 2025
Age Rating: 7

The world’s least authentic train simulator (Big Fan Games)