Who knew train-themed deck-building roguelikes would become an entire genre? After countless hours withMonster Trainand this year’s sequel, I was eager to try outBattle Train, a completely different take on turn-based locomotive combat. While Monster Train uses train cars as the setting for monster battles, Battle Train turns the trains themselves into weapons. It’s Ticket To Ride meets Thunderdome. Explosions on the Orient Express. The Taking of Pelham 123, if Denzel’s plan to stop the terrorist was to ram another train into the first one. I’m overcomplicating this, it’s just Battle Train.
I’m a huge sucker for anything deckbuilding and anything roguelike, so when you smash the two together, oh baby, now we’re talking. My first few hours with Battle Train gave me everything I could have possibly wanted: fast matches, deep strategy, and loads of cards to discover. Unfortunately, Battle Train’s strong premise and inventive mechanics don’t hold up for long. A bizarre narrative-based progression system makes Battle Train’s rad track-building feel bad, wack, and bewildering.
Do You Vant To Vatch Ze Battle Train?
Let’s start with the premise. Battle Train is a game show in which contestants take on a gauntlet of conductors in an attempt to prove themselves worthy to take on the Duke of Demolition, Supreme President Conductor Aalvado. Aalvado, a German megalomaniac who loves battling trains more than anything else in the world, has been the star and undefeated champion of the show since the beginning. He’s the prototypical angry nerd who grew up to be successful, and therefore unpalatable.
The plot is presented as a documentary about the making of the show, told through a series of short vignettes featuring behind-the-scenes antics and The Office-style confessionals. Aalvado has become a pain in the side of host Hank and producer Joice, and to add some extra conflict, the show’s ratings have been falling behind their time slot rival, a children’s show hosted by a talking turtle called Todrick’s Tower.
Is it necessary to go this in-depth on the plot of a roguelike deckbuilder? No, and Battle Train centers its narrative in a way that feels completely out of step with the genre, and even goes as far as to violate some core principles that define what a roguelike is. I love games that shake up their genre by subverting expectations, but in this case, those departures from the norm are to Battle Train’s detriment.
Story Gates Do Not Belong In Roguelikes
After you select a contestant to play as, you’re given a deck and sent into battle. In typical roguelike fashion, you have the option between several paths marked by nodes, each one featuring a boss fight, shop, puzzle, or random encounter. This culminates in a mini-boss battle at the end of your selected path. Repeat that process three times with three mini-bosses, and you’ll have reached the end with a much bigger and stronger deck than the one you started with.
I defeated the second boss on my first-ever run, which surprised me a bit until I discovered Battle Train’s unique structure. Once you’ve fought your way to Aalvado and defeated all three mini-bosses, it’s finally time to face the Supreme Champion himself. Unwilling to give up his throne, however, no contestant is ever deemed by Aalvado worthy enough to face him. Your run will end here, in a deeply unsatisfying way.
So, how do you actually get to the end? On each run, before you face each mini-boss, one node on one track will be a story node. When you reach this node it plays a scene that advances the story, and the only way to progress is to watch all of these story scenes. They are the only thing that matters, and getting further into a run won’t make things easier or faster. In fact, if you want to be efficient, it’s probably fastest to go directly to the first story node, then die on purpose to the first boss, and repeat that until you’ve progressed.
There’s so many things wrong with this structure. You don’t really have a choice about which path to take because you always have to take the one that has the story node. Finishing a run and losing a run are exactly as rewarding, because all that matters is seeing all of the cutscenes. In a roguelike, you need to know it’s possible to get to the end if you’re good enough, so that when you finally make it there, there’s a real sense of achievement. Knowing that your progression is locked behind the unalterable flow of story scenes robs you of one of the most important parts of a roguelike.
Most importantly, the story just isn’t good. It’s meant to be a comedy, but the characters are one-dimensional and all of the jokes are based around them doing and saying obvious and stereotypical things. The pirate guy says pirate stuff, Aalvado says villain stuff, the turtle wants to give out hugs and make everyone smile. There’s conflict, but it’s not interesting, and the fact that I knew I couldn’t progress until I watched all of these scenes made me feel like a hostage.
What About The Train Battles Though?
I am almost at the end of this review and I haven’t had a chance to tell you about the actual gameplay yet, but that’s the overbearing effect the narrative has on this game. Yes, the train battles are fun. There’s a lot of depth to the way you build your tracks and how you time your attacks.
You and your opponent will almost always end up connecting your tracks, making one long track that reaches across the battlefield. This can help you pull off sneak attacks on their bases, but they can do the same to you. There are a lot of ways to block, interrupt, sabotage, and out-build your enemies, and I had a lot of fun with Battle Train’s unique game of chicken. It’s all about building quickly and efficiently, but nottooefficiently, lest you give the enemy a free path to victory.
It took me 15 hours and 22 runs to finish the story, completing a little over a third. But with a limited number of bosses and maps, I found it to be incredibly repetitive, even with just over 20 runs total. I’ve done hundreds of runs in Slay The Spire, Into The Breach, and Dead Cells and never gotten bored, but by the end, I couldn’t wait to be done with Battle Train.
It’s a shame this one misses the mark so widely, because there’s a really strong foundation here. Maybe it would work better as a PvP game, or maybe it just needed to ease up on the story and focus on delivering more variety. The first couple of runs of Battle Train feel magical, until you realize that’s pretty much it, and the rest of the game is just a lousy version of Archer and a lot of trips down the same old tracks.
