Monster Train 2

Monster Train 2 is a roguelite deckbuilder where the player controls demons and angels, who have joined forces to fight against the Titans in Heaven. [h1]Gameplay[/h1] • Gameplay follows the same format as the original Monster Train, so if you’ve already played that game, you’ll know what to expect. • Combat is turn based. At the start of each turn, a wave of enemies will spawn on the bottom floor of your train, and you’ll randomly draw cards from your deck which will either be monsters or spells. • Your train has three floors, and monsters can be placed on any floor, although each floor has a maximum capacity. Most spells can either damage enemies, or heal/buff your monsters. Each monster and spell has an energy cost to play, and you’ll have a limited amount of energy to spend each turn. • When you end the turn, monsters and enemies will attack each other, usually starting with the opponent at the front of the floor. Any enemies who survive will climb up to the next floor, hoping to eventually reach the top of the train and attack your pyre heart. The final wave of each fight will include a more powerful boss enemy, and if your pyre loses all health, you’ll lose the run. • The UI includes a very useful damage calculation which is constantly updated, and shows which friendly and enemy units will lose health or die if you choose to end the turn now, which helps the player figure out where to prioritise using your spells. • After each fight, you’ll choose between two paths which contain several nodes, including unit banners where you can recruit new monsters, shops where you can upgrade monsters with more health, damage, or special abilities, upgrade spells to make them more powerful or cheaper to play, acquire relics which provide passive bonuses, and other nodes where you can remove cards, duplicate cards, earn more gold to spend in the shops, restore pyre health, and random events. [h1]Improvements and Story[/h1] • This sequel has a few improvements compared to the original game. • The most significant is that each fight now starts with a setup turn where almost all of your monsters will be drawn, allowing you to choose which to summon, although you’re still limited by their energy cost. This helps to eliminate situations in the original game where the player would lose a fight simply because your best monsters were randomly placed on the bottom of your draw pile. • There are new room and equipment cards. Room cards are played on a floor and often provide passive bonuses to all monsters on that floor. Equipment cards are weapons or armour which can be played on a monster to increase their damage, health, or provide other abilities. • Some monsters have activated abilities which you can use at any time during your turn, and are limited by a cooldown of a few turns. • You can unlock different pyre hearts which have different values for health and damage, and often have a special ability. My favourite so far provides more energy during the setup turn, allowing the player to summon more monsters before the fight starts. • There’s an undo button which lets you reset to the start of a turn if you made a simple mistake, or want to change your tactics. • The only slight negative that I can mention is that the sequel has a story, but unfortunately the cutscenes have no animations or voice acting, and the dialogue is just kind of boring. [h1]Tactical variety[/h1] • There are five different clans to play as, and at the start of each run you’ll choose a primary and secondary clan, which allows you to recruit monsters and acquire spells relating to both clans. This provides lots of tactical variety for each run, as you try to identify ways to combine the powers of each clan. • The most enjoyable part about the original Monster Train, which is still true for this sequel, is finding crazy combos that allow your monsters to deal incredible amounts of damage, which feels like you're almost breaking the game (at least until you see how many health points the bosses have). • For example, the Pyreborn clan can acquire golden eggs, and trade them in for extra gold and relics. However, they have a dragon monster which gains health and attack for each golden egg you own. By acquiring the maximum number of eggs, this dragon will have around 100 health and 100 attack. I upgraded the dragon with multistrike so that instead of attacking once, he would attack three times, dealing 300 damage per turn. Then I duplicated the dragon twice, so that I could have three dragons on the same floor, to deal 900 damage per turn. • Meanwhile, the Underlegion clan can summon trash minions at the front of a floor, which is a good way to protect your more important monsters by blocking enemy attacks. This clan’s champion can permanently gain health and attack every time you summon a monster on the same floor. If you constantly summon these minions on almost every turn of every fight, by the end of the run, the champion will have massively increased stats. • Some monsters have a sweep attack, which allows them to hit every enemy on the floor. Upgrade them with quick, which allows them to attack first, and they could kill multiple weaker enemies before they get a chance to attack. Upgrade your most powerful monsters with endless, and instead of being eliminated from the fight on death, they’ll be placed back on top of your draw pile, allowing you to resummon them next turn. What other insane combos will you find? [h1]Recommendation[/h1] Monster Train 2 is an excellent deckbuilder, and can be ranked alongside the original game, Slay The Spire, and Balatro in the top tier of the genre. This is an absolute must play. I’ve already got value for money and so far I’m only half way through the covenant difficulty levels, and I haven’t even unlocked the fifth clan yet, so there’s still many more hours of gameplay ahead.

Better than Slay the Spire, better than Balatro (yes really). Doesn't mess with the formula from the first game too much, but made a lot of improvements and added tons of additional content.

This game is less fun the more you play it. Most of the cards are unhelpful and you just unlock more bad cards the more you play. Most of the final bosses have very narrow victory windows that require precise builds which drains the creative energy of the previous game. I wanted to like this game.

Monster Train was the only roguelike deckbuilder on the same level as Slay the Spire, and Monster Train 2 is a straight improvement on the first game. The only thing I wish this had was workshop support, but modders have already found a way and, frankly, there wasn't a ton of workshop mods for the first game so it seems like the right call to cut that sort of official support. I love how the way artifacts and gems can modify how you run your deck, the choice of champions, and the sheer number of silly little guys you can include on your train.

Absolutely incredible deck-builder, at the top of its class. Tons of replay value, and discovering synergies between factions and their respective decks is very satisfying. For 25 bucks you are getting every penny's worth and then some. Only complaint is the enemy variety is a bit lacking but the core gameplay more than makes up for it.

This is the perfect sequel, they kept everything that was great and add even more stuff to make the game better, so in every shape way and form Monster Train 2 is better than Monster Train 1. If you have not played the first one then, lets just say the Monster train games are a "Time machine", you press "New run" and before you realise it 5 hours are gone, the type of games that just make time disappear without you even notice

I loved MT1 and played it for 1500+ hours. I am probably done with MT2 after 40 hours. After 80%+ of my runs, I'm just extremely frustrated, especially by the enemy design -- compared to 80%+ of my MT1 runs where I had a lot of fun. MT2's design is much more constraining of strategies and anti-fun compared to the first game. Too many enemies that are just anti- fun/strong strategies, too many clan combos that don't synergize with each other, too many narrow cards. MT1 struck gold and based on Shiny Shoe's games since then, that appears to have been completely by accident.

Monster Train 1 was great. Monster Train 2 is Monster Train 1 but Even More with each new faction working interestingly within itself, as well as with their combinations with the returning old factions. Its wonderful.

Not much has changed in terms of game design, but the character design of the game has gone to the dogs. The original had simple designs and silhouettes that had their own charm. The enemies and characters in this sequel, however, are horribly over-designed.

Absolute top-tier roguelike. With 10 clans, and therefore 180 possible clan combos to pick (yes, the MT1 clans return, sans Wyrmkin - it just takes time to see the option to unlock them), the amount of replayability in this game is absolute miles above the genre standard. The 5 new clans added solid mechanics and are all fun to play. Pyrehearts have been added as another mechanic that can significantly increase the diversity of the play experience - and there are 12 in all (although, to be fair, several of them suck and need some balancing) In addition, both champions from each new clan now feel relatively balanced against each other. If there's a bit of a downside, however - it's that they didn't quite fix that flaw for the MT1 clans - Most of them still have 1 champ that is clearly stronger than the other. Another bit of a flaw for the old clans is that they don't have the new room or equipment cards, so they feel a little bit left behind. Still, the good overwhelmingly outweighs the bad, and Shiny Shoe has now made 2 of my fave roguelikes of all time in this and Inkbound.

I find this game super enjoyable despite the fact the I have a mind-shattering fear of Trains and a severe allergy to Monsters. But this is fixed because it has a '2' in it. If you ever needed a moment where you thought "Hey, I sure wish I had a train right now." then this is the game for you. However, be aware, there is an endless horde of monsters who also wish to have the train. You must mentally, physically and emotionally prepare for this fact. All in all, I'd give this game 6monsters out of 12trains. 6/12 - would reccomend.

The first Monster Train game is one of my favorite roguelike games- a seriously addictive deckbuilder roguelike with a complex and rewarding roster of characters and cards that support a surprising number of distinct playstyles. Monster Train 2 improves on the formula of the first Monster Train exactly how I hoped it would- it's basically a game-sized DLC for the original Monster Train that preserves the original gameplay loop while adding a boatload of content. Very highly recommend!

So many improvements from the first one. More clans. Lots of additional content. Love the indie collaborations presented in events. Really enjoying this game :)

Way better than I expected Wasn't sure what to expect from a sequel, but Monster Train 2 really surprised me. There's a lot of new mechanics, creative faction combos, and overall just more to mess around with. Feels like a proper upgrade over the first game, not just more of the same. Easily in my top 3 roguelite deckbuilders now.

In this game it feels easier to build a nice deck, more than in Monster Train 1. Especially as they have changed some values and mechanics known from Monster Train 1. They have also added some nice QoL changes compared to the first game. This is a very good continuation to the series and i highly recommend it as the gameplay, animations and sounds are great and made with a lot of love to details, it is also simply very fun deckbuilder. There are also a lot of options for interesting and fun decks. Playing at higher covenant levels can requires patience and a lot of effort/time due to being heavily dependent on RNG, sometimes more than actual decision making.

The game just keeps getting better the more you play it. As you unlock more clans, cards, champions, difficulties and battles that put more lairs on it. If you enjoy other roguelike deckbuilders like 'Slay the Spire', then I'd highly recommend for you to try this one. Although I will add that my first impression of the game was that it was a little bit too straight forward, lacking in depth and variety. But that was seemingly just the games way of slowly easing me into the learning curve of the game. As to not overwhelm you with learning how every single clan works at the same time. I will add that this seems to not have been a problem for the vast majority of players.

Yes. Like MT1, but better, you even get all the original clans eventually. Great sequel, just like the original but more.

Addictive in a good way. Similar to Slay the Spire but different enough to be a worthwhile experience. Plays great on Steam Deck.

An amazing sequel to an already great game. Easily one of the sequelest sequels that ever sequeled. It's so sequeliciously sequential that my sequelometer exsequeloded when I tried to sequantify its sequelisity. But seriously, this game is a strong contender for the best roguelike deck builder of all time. Whether you've played the first game or not, give this one a shot.

Great game and great changes/updates in game play from MT1.

It's just Monster Train 1 but better. Highly recommend if you like deck builders.

Monster Train 1 & 2 are the only games that came out in the wake of Slay The Spire that I feel actually add something both positive and meaningful to the base gameplay loop. Highly recommend.

Fantastic deckbuilder, improves greatly upon the first.

Great sequel that improves on the first game. [spoiler] The new clans are all great, and just playing those combos is already a lot of content. The OG clans are a bit underbaked with only some small number changes. There are future updates coming them to modernize them though so I will probably get 3x more playtime once that is out. [/spoiler]

The game is very good, some of the art is amazing, but some is so bad it looks like it's either AI or was given 10 minutes of the photoshop airbrush tool treatment. 9/10 If they redo the worst art

Monster Train 2 is such a great release. I really badly wanted to like the first game but it just didn't click with me, the mechanics, the lack of turn/encounter re-do. This one has it all. The mechanics are much more intuitive and the replayability is insane. I'm no where 100% this game yet, because I just reached covenant 10 but I feel so excited each time I'm about to start a new run, and I feel so great after finishing one. Like I already mentioned, you're free to re-do the encounter if you feel like you could have done something differently. I know lot of my builds are capable of clearing the stage but many times I mess up and I'm just I get the chance to try a new strategy. 100% recommend, even if you aren't a big fan of the first game, just like I was. MT2 is a perfectly crafted deck builder.

If you liked the first game, you'll probably like this as well. It's reasonably fun, especially so if you consider the price. It's nothing amazing, nor is it GOTY, but if you buy it assuming it'll be like every other turn based roguelike card game, it's pretty enjoyable. Gameplay loop in a nutshell is the good old standard with some extra stuff. Pick main clan (+hero +available cards), pick secondary clan (+available cards), enter fight, do your strat, get rewards, pick reward route, buff cards, get relics, get new units, enter new fight, and repeat. Might be more further down the line, but so far, it's just the pretty standard loop done well. Corruption is... fine? But, without any strong consistent healing (or cleanse, if it exists) you will just auto lose the fight against Seraph. Skill, tactics, etc. is irrelevant in the fight. And anything you can't overcome with skill or tactics, is gonna have to be a no from me. And, no, having to unlock something that can deal with it does not change my stance on it. If there's something that actually can deal with it, I'll at the very least change my review, possibly recommend it depending on when or how you get something to deal with it.

Lives up to its predecessor and surpasses my sky-high expectations for the sequel of one of, if not the, best card rogue-lite ever made. Buy it.

One of the best deckbuilders in existence, if not THE best. If you have any interest in this genre. You just HAVE to play this. The second game improved on the few flaws of the original, and is even more worthy of it's great steam review score, as well as my more subjective, unbridled praise for what is probably my favorite indie game series of all time. Monster train 2 has more content, better balance, and basically better everything than the first one. And that's saying quite something considering how beloved the first opus was. And, thanks to a story twist I won't spoil, you can even, eventually, re-use a good chunk of the content and cards from the first game into this new one. So, unless you absolutely want to save a few bucks by getting the first game, you should get this one instead, as it basically contains the majority of the first game's content as well, and allows you to mix and match the old cards with the new ones, for even more content and possibilities! Some people have criticized the Monster Train series for its complexity, and while I won't deny they aren't the simplest games around in terms of rules, I also want to point out that not only is everything explained within the game (just read the tooltips calmly. they are there for a reason!); but also, unlike in some other games, all of this complexity is properly leveraged into meaningful strategic decisions. It never feels like something was tacked on to make the game "appear more deep than it is" : every effect comes with interesting decision making and strategizing in return. So, while some learning and memorizing is required, it pays off beautifully by making the game interesting, and worthy of being experienced again and again throughout many runs. If you love deckbuilders, this game is a must have. Otherwise, it all depends what type of player you are. For if you play video games to kind of turn your brain off and relax (which is fair), this game might not be your thing. But if you enjoy puzzle and/or strategy games? Then Monster train 2 might just convert you to the whole deckbuilding genre, and is, at the very least, worth a try! Now, excuse me, I'm going to start a new run again. :D

Bigger than the original, but not necessarily [i]better[/i]. New stuff like Rooms and Equipment are cool and a logical progression to the series, as are the new Pyres. The new clans are hit-or-miss. The devs have succeeded in making them all feel unique and play differently from the MT1 clans, but the "complexity creep" gets a bit annoying in practice - I firmly believe that we've passed a point where there's [i]too many[/i] keywords. Sure, more keywords saves space on the card text, but have you seen the essay of keywords you get when fighting the 3 Titans? Good lord... Lastly, something's off about the card art. I can't quite put my finger on it, but it's less... "visually distinct" than MT1? Understandably all the enemies are corrupted by the various Titans, them being monstrous and chimeric, but the end result on some of the art is silly. In MT1 the motifs were distinct - you had a mix of armored and unarmored, winged and non-winged, human and avian enemies. Meanwhile in MT2 you're basically fighting what look like amalgams of different body parts. I'll let the point rest though as this is subjective. In conclusion, not a bad game by any stretch, but I don't see myself putting in as many hours or trying to 100% it like MT1.

I've beaten the game now with every clan and at the highest covenant level (10) and I've seen all the content on offer. If you're familiar with the first game and enjoyed it, I can't see you not enjoying this second installment. At first, I felt like there was less content on offer, playing through the new game, with the new clans, battling the new bosses. There is no variation of the bosses in the core game like you would've seen in the first, in terms of the two alternating ACT1-2 bosses. They still have diverse modifiers, but you'll always fight the core bosses in the same order. Once you unlock all the clans and beat the game at its highest difficulty, you'll discover there is as much content, if not more, than the first game with it's DLC. You'll even be pleasantly surprised to find all of the original clans and cards are here for you to mix/match with the new clans. All the new clans are well balanced and fun to play. There are now varying Pyres with special abilities and modifiers, as well as equipment, which can placed on your boarded allies. This is my favorite Rogue-Like Card Battler. I own most of them and it's not even close. The game design around the combat is perfect balance between randomness and skill.

Much like what you'd expect if you've played the first game. But on the high side of expectations; it's really very good.

The game is good. You can read all of the other reviews to learn why. My opinion is negative for two reasons. The first is that the grind to unlock all of the cards is genuinely insane. After 22 hours and a Covenant 10 win, I have unlocked fewer than half of the cards in the game. This unlock system was bad but tolerable when the first game had half the number of playable clans. Here it's just awful. The second is a series of wonky balance decisions. Artificial difficulty spikes like the 1500+ HP waves during Savage Seraph aren't a fun puzzle to solve. Many of the old clans are underpowered for the new difficulty curve and are just straight up missing new mechanics like equipment and rooms. Several clan configurations are incapable of winning the first battle on Covenant 10. I hope these issues are addressed, because the game is an improvement over the first in almost every other way.

masterpiece. easily the best roguelike deckbuilder of all time in my opinion. spent about 200 hours playing this game (it says 15 hours but I played it offline for about that amount) and I can't praise it enough. This game is like a much better version of the first Monster Train, so if you hated the first you will likely hate the 2nd unless you had particular issues with it (like QoL or content, etc.) This is an overly ambitious sequel. In terms of content its twice as large as first one, has a semi aight story (with funny bits in there) has lots of QoL improvements (restarts/undo, bosses being visible on map, most things working as intended) and the general ideas/balancing is a lot better than first one imo. Basically they did not reinvent the wheel, they looked at what worked in MT1 and improved upon it and changed what didn't. What made MT1 so special was just how great it was in terms of replayability. Replayability is a very nebulous term related to things like balancing and design, and so MT2 is basically the most replayable roguelike I've ever played with exception to maybe Binding of Isaac, but still probably better than that game because of better balancing. If you enjoy roguelike deckbuilders or just roguelikes in general this is a great pickup. Its worth way over the 25 dollar price tag based on content and scope. The biggest flaw with this game is the same as every other roguelike, RNGesus giveth and taketh away. You can get an easy win out the gate sometimes, in other runs you'll lose first battle.

An improvement on monster train 1 in all aspects. There is a lot of game here and a nice slider on difficulty. The number of combinations of champions, card sets and strategies to pursue is massive. This game will eat up as much time as your willing to give it.

It's the original game elevated to a brand new level. All the deliciousness of ridiculous, game-breaking combos, but the devs have outdone themselves polishing the formula.

Good music New clans are fun, but the other half is such a chore to get through I started to ask myself why am I even wasting my time with this "game" it just became a chore for completion

It's great. Tons of content, tons of potential builds, I cannot get enough of it

Fabulous sequel, new clans and mechanics are great, dimensional challenges are fun. Overall setting the bar for roguelite deck builders again.

I'm not good at this game, but that's part of why I want to play it: to challenge myself. I watched hours and hours of the first Monster Train on YouTube and Twitch, and this is basically just MORE Monster Train.

While Monster Train 2 won’t necessarily bring any new converts to the genre of roguelike deck-building games, it is a great addition. I strongly recommend it for any fan of games like Slay the Spire or the first Monster Train. My only gripe is that the difficulty on some of the later covenants and dimensional challenges feels unfairly punishing.

This game is what it means to be a "love letter" to the genre. Absolutely packed full of features that other developers might charge an arm and a leg for, or otherwise not include at launch (endless mode / stat tracking / expansion level content). Each run is unique and the deckbuilding is natural. It really feels like you EARN those massive powerups stacking the deck. But even if you're doing well there's no such thing as "autopilot", you still have to be careful about your plays. The tension and decision making feels really consistent throughout the run. WILD replayability with all the different combinations of clans/starting decks. Also a big fan of the cameos from other great games like Inscryption, Balatro, etc... Above all this game really cares about the player and it 100% shows.

i'm not really a fan of roguelike deckbuilders - i'll even go so far as to say i dislike them but monster train has always been the exception, and this is just an improvement in every way, from massive QOL changes to vastly more exciting clans to use W

Straight up improvements from the first game all around except for the story focus which is filled with cringe, poorly written, dialogue trying to seemingly retroactively install a story into a game that does not need one - skip every dialogue box that shows up, I promise you're only missing characters with one defining trope passing the turn order to make a joke about that trope over and over again. Genuinely awful, hopefully theres a workshop mod to remove it entirely soon.

Fantastic deck builder that takes the original formula of Monster Train 1 and improves on it immensely. There are so many combinations of cards, champions, events and relics each run through feels fresh and challenging. As a stat nerd I also love the stat tracking in this game!

The undo button is the best addition since sliced bread.

Best rogue-lite card game ever made to date. The secret sauce here is that its a single player game. So its filled with crazy "broken" combos, but that doesn't matter, because you're only playing against the computer, and the devs don't have to worry about multi-player balance or meta. You can fine tune the difficulty levels and game however you like, from easy, balanced, or difficult. The game has 10 teams, 20 heroes, hundreds of cards. I'm 150+ hours in and still love it, and I'm still finding new combos. But even if you're just looking for a casual game, its amazing at the price.

Love this game so far, only with a few issues Not sure if I just didn't find the right build but Dragon feels too weak and mushroom is too strong And still no workshop

This is a worthy sequel to the original Monster Train. It features the same core gameplay, but adds a plethora of new mechanics and content. Without giving away too much, once I started getting some of the unlocks the game unlocks some surprising and extremely cool new features. I'm actually a little blown away at the amount of content. I highly recommend this to any fans of the first game.

For me, this is peak deck-building roguelite. I love Slay the Spire, etc. But for some reason, this one scratches that special itch for me. And no need to play the first installment. It's basically included here, plus a second game's worth of content on top. For the genre, 10/10.