Monster Train 2

Monster Train 2 (MT2) uses deck building and staggered deck use as the primary gameplay mechanics. Build a deck, and then use it to overcome a series of scenarios. During each scenario, there is a single goal:

Defeat all enemies and a boss before the enemy forces destroy your spire.

There are no other conditions - it is possible to win without units, or without spells. Your spire can take damage, and you can heal your spire.

In each scenario, you are faced with the following threats (or a subset):

• Direct damage to units
• Tanks that absorb your damage
• Enemies that inflict negative status effects on your units
• Enemies that punish you for using spells
• Enemies that prevent you from using your team effectively (spikes, mute)
• Enemies that overwhelm you with negative cards
• Overwhelming numbers of enemy units
• Conditional direct damage to your spire

Your goal is to build a deck in such a way that you can overcome those threats in every scenairo.

Between scenarios, you augment your deck by:

• Selecting free cards from limited random pools
• Purchasing upgrades for cards
• Removing unnecessary cards, or duplicating useful cards
• Selecting and/or purchasing artifacts
• Participating in random chance scenarios

Cards cannot be purchased.

The following card types are available:

• Unit
• Spell
• Equipment
• Room
• Scourge

Each card has a subtype that may engage with additional rules.

The primary engaging aspect of gameplay is playing cards in each scenario. This involves placing units, casting spells, and otherwise defeating the enemy. If the deck is prepared properly, and you have a plan on how to deploy it, you can usually secure victory (provided you understand the underlying mechanics). The gameplay and general deck/enemy layout is based on mechanics such as damage, health, armor, spell power, negative effects, positive effects, and different ways to apply or otherwise distribute effects.

In general, the gameplay is easy to pick up, and medium to master. It provides a reliable gameplay loop and consistent experience, where randomization keeps each run fresh in some regard, even if many patterns and strategies get repeated over time.

The graphics are one of the reasons (especially within the genre) to praise MT2. The graphics are detailed, clean, consistent, and work well. Effects are managed well, can be juicy/crunchy, and compound in satisfying ways. It's nice to see a game that leans into big and/or compounding impacts. More would be welcome, but given the limitations of the style I'm happy with what was done. Examples include mass scaling of shroom units, stacked debuffs against enemies during attacks, or certain spell impacts. The card designs are clean and easy to recognize, with enough variety to make decks interesting. All visuals are easy to distinguish and visual cues are used to enhance the gameplay.

Outside of regular gameplay, things like cutscenes are simple but not sloppy.

Sound in MT2 is well done with no real complaints, but no real standouts. The music gets repetitive, but not to the point that it disrupts repeat play. The sound effects are good and synchronized well. Sounds are managed well when the game gets chaotic. Some of the unit sounds are memorable, others are not.

MT2 difficulty is fundamentally based around understanding the underlying systems sufficiently to plan appropriately to deal with some of the following key scenarios:

• Can I kill two 600hp units in a single wave?
• Can I kill backline units or otherwise prevent their special effects from overwhelming my deck?
• Can I survive or eliminate compounding effects?
• Can I avoid direct damage?

There are multiple ways to deal with these in most cases. For example, compounding effects (e.g. forced double corruption) can be mitigated by building in silence/mute if you stumble upon it. Healing and regen with health growth can also work around it.

The trick is learning to build a deck around what is given and knowing what is coming. Given those things, the difficulty is largely around decision making at critical points. It's not trivial to learn, but not incredibly difficult once you get familiar with the gameplay loop.

Difficulty is well-integrated into the game, and difficulty progression is done well for what the game is. Additional depth or more ways to add difficulty that aren't "unfair" would be nice to haves. For example, tighter complexity of the systems. One great example done well by the developers is escalating the waves and increasing the enemy count, which creates a snowball effect. Very difficult to handle unprepared, but very fair as well.

As a repeatable card battler, MT2 is limited in story - bit it does have one! The story is not particularly deep (by design) and is mostly used to convey some form of progression and slice of life fun to the game. It does inform the theme(s), which are executed well and add to the flavor and uniqueness of the game. I think the developers made a great call to make lots of story optional, but lean into the fun factor of the different deck designs.

Click and drag is the tried and true approach to card battlers. The keyboard and controller mappings are good. Since this game is not particularly control-sensitive (by design), there isn't much to say aside from that they do not get in the way for the most part.

This game loses some points for odd interactions like cards getting pushed up or down unexpectedly, sometimes lack of clarity on how to view cards a certain way, etc. but these are overall minor control issues.

MT2 explores depth in terms of different deck mechanics and learning how different benefits/threats interact. At a certain point, it becomes rather formulaic. These do require time investment and are reasonably well designed, which results in an overall positive impact of depth on this game.

No complaints. It's not as efficient as something like Slay the Spire on handheld devices, but it also has substantially more "oomph" in terms of graphics and sound. For what it is, this game has good enough performance.

This is a decent and fresh game for those that enjoy card battlers and seek a casual strategy game. It won't push you to your limits, but it's easy to pick up and let go. I would say it's a bit long, but that's typical for these types of game. The fundamental approach to engine building / deck building usually forces a certain duration.

Designed to be replayed, MT2 holds up well at first. Eventually, as the player completes all available content, the replay value drops substantially - there is only so much depth/challenge to back up the game. One can try all possible combinations to be a true completionist, but I would argue the overall value of play drops off well before then.