Monster Train

2024-11-26
Dropping the rating on this from a 78 because genuinely looking back I can't remember that much about it or particularly enjoying my time with it that much.

2023-08-05
Another wonderful little deck battler. Each one has to have its own little spin so what differentiates this one? Instead of one battlefield you have 3. If you fail to kill the enemies on the first floor they ascend up until they reach the 4th floor (where you can't do anything) and can damage your health. Similar to Slay the Spire your health and deck persist as you make your way through various battles but the nice thing about this one is it seems a fair amount shorter than Slay the Spire: you only have 9 battles in total.

Other than that you have artifacts, like Slay the Spire, and creatures and spells. I enjoyed the new mechanics like: Revenge (ability activated on a creature taking damage), Rejuvenate (ability activated on being healed), Cultivate (adds damage/health to the lowest health allied unit), Incant (ability activated on casting a spell). A lot of these are pretty easy to synergize around. Incant -> Cultivate? Sounds like you want a lot of cheap spells and a creature with low health that maybe has Multistrike. It's a uniquely easy-to-pickup game and I was able to beat it in less than two and a half hours due to this. I'm sure some might complain about a lack of depth but I think it's simplicity is one of its strengths.

I talk about simplicity but there are other persistent elements that give it legs. You unlocks clans (sets of cards with different heroes) as you play, you can always play with a mixture of two different clans, you have leaderboards with friends, and a big encyclopedia of every card you've seen.

At the end of the day it's another great deck battler.