I’m midway through a run. My train barrels along the divine tracks, and heaven streaks past in the background. I carefully coordinate my motley assortment of dragons, angels and welps across its three levels, only for titanic enemy forces to come barging through the entrance. Spells fly, numbers flash endlessly back and forth – initially, my forces seem overwhelmed, but a few rounds in and the number of buffs on my units begins to exponentially accumulate. By the time the boss arrives – a hulking knight with a spear for a hand and spines out its back – they’re dispatched in two rapid strokes thanks to the amount of damage I had accumulated on my hero.

Moments like this – the effect of it, the swirling numbers, the ebb and flow of a combat encounter going poorly then well – are common playing Monster Train 2. It’s a rhythm likely very familiar to fans of roguelike deckbuilders, and it speaks to how assured and satisfying a game Shiny Shoe has made here. Monster Train 2 is a roguelike deckbuilder par excellence – a game whose design demonstrates the understanding and love the developers clearly have for this subgenre, and the mechanical and emotional satisfaction it can elicit. It’s a game with big numbers, satisfying combos, dizzying synergies and new tactical possibilities that build on the first in ways that kept me tied to the tracks for dozens of hours, and will likely haul away dozens more in my future.

Monster Train 2 is a roguelike deckbuilder with tower defence elements developed by Shiny Shoe, published by Big Fan and a sequel to 2020’s Monster Train (also developed by Shiny Shoe). Like the original, Monster Train 2 sees the player taking control of a four-levelled train barrelling across a celestial landscape (this time heaven instead of hell) while stopping intruders from destroying your pyre, which acts as the train’s engine. You do so with cards – placing monsters, equipment, using spells and more – that you accumulate and improve across heaven’s eight rings of obstacles. At the start of each run, you can choose two factions – one primary, one secondary – out of five and choose between pyre hearts that offer different buffs before setting off.

I previewed Monster Train 2 earlier this year, and at the time, despite already being a big fan of deckbuilding roguelikes, I had never picked up the original Monster Train. I, however, enjoyed the demo so much that I went back to play the original afterwards, which also means I now have a full point of reference for this review. And compared to the first, and the roguelike deckbuilding genre as a whole (roguedecks? Should we make that a thing?), Monster Train 2 is first-class in how it bursts with a remarkable variety of deckbuilding possibilities and a strong understanding of the genre it’s playing within.

Much like Balatro last year, Monster Train 2 really understands what roguelikes are secretly about: big numbers. While perhaps an oversimplification, playing Monster Train 2 was a constant experience of managing numbers – gauging health points, determining required damage output and, most importantly for synergies, multiplying positive buffs on my units and negative buffs on my enemies. There is a strong satisfaction to watching big numbers get even bigger, and while it may not compete with Balatro regarding how exponential they go, there nonetheless remains a joy to finding just the right combination of cards to pull big numbers off in such a way that it almost feels like cheating; like finding an exploit that simultaneously feels like it was not meant to be, and yet brings immense levels of joy.

While it became familiar quickly, my feelings on Monster Train 2’s presentation haven’t changed from the demo. It’s still distinctive and crisp, with some very inventive character designs that take advantage of its divine setting. The Hades-esque heavy metal guitar riffs were particularly punchy and effective at elevating the heart rate during various boss encounters. Particularly after playing it so soon after the original Monster Train, the sequel feels more refined and ambitious in its designs, and captures the look and feel of heavenly anime with its exaggerated characters and detailed models.

I was surprised to find that Monster Train 2 has an ongoing story between runs, and while I appreciate the effort, it does feel like a bit of an afterthought. The writing is simple, the interludes are mostly short and comedic, and there is little effort to create meaningful character arcs. It didn’t detract from my experience, but Hades, this ain’t. The story cutscenes also feel quite rudimentary, with static images and textboxes, which I found surprising given how clean and polished the rest of Monster Train 2 feels.