Trains? Yes. Explosions? Yes. A pun-filled game show about trains and explosions? Double yes. Battle Train is weird, funny and does a good job of blending a tactical card game with the aforementioned exploding locomotives.
However, Battle Train also feels like it’s struggling to reconcile its identities as a tactical card game, a roguelike, and a story about a game show. At times it feels like the player is being pulled in too many directions, and none are quite landing.
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Losing the train-ing wheels
Playing Battle Train is pretty unique; it’s like a card game meets Ticket to Ride, with explosions. You lay tracks on a board using cards representing different track shapes, and then send a freight train packed with explosives to your opponent’s side of the board.
The battles fluctuate between something you’ll solve in one or two smart turns, to a puzzle that you’ll spend a few minutes grinding your brain into. The minibosses in particular have a nice push and pull to them, and each run they feel unique when you have different cards and abilities at your disposal.
On track, but off track
Outside battles you’ll find a familiar roguelike formula. An overworld map with multiple tracks, connecting shops, enemy encounters, minigames or story nodes. You have three maps to complete and three mini-bosses before the final boss. There’s a slight issue with the last step; we’ll address that shortly.
The narrative wrap to Battle Train is far more compelling than was necessary for a roguelike deck builder about exploding trains. The whole game is a television game show, where the megalomaniacal President Conductor Aalvado, Duke of Demolition and Admiral of Diesel and Steam is the final boss. As his name suggests, he’s high maintenance.
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As I mentioned, there is a problem with this structure. To win Battle Train, you need to find all the pieces of the story to advance the overarching narrative. If you complete three mini-bosses and come to the ending prematurely, you aren’t deemed worthy enough to face him until you tick off those story pieces.
That means in your first few runs, you should charge straight to the first story clip and deliberately fail the run, start again and go to the next story clip.
There’s always a great challenge to roguelikes, knowing that if you were good enough, you could beat the whole thing on your first run. Once I realised that wasn’t possible in Battle Train, I felt a bit cheated.
Putting the engine in the shop
It feels like we have two designers arguing with each other here — one wanted a humorous story about exploding trains, while the other wanted a deck-building roguelike. Unfortunately, they both had to compromise.
Oh, and why on earth Battle Train isn’t multiplayer is beyond me. I kept thinking that the back-and-forth of any of the boss fights is crying out for a simple deck management and quick multiplayer battle. The Gwent or Marvel Snap players would love an irreverent, weird distraction from more competitive card battlers.
Should I buy Battle Train?
Battle Train does something different and unique in its track-placing train-exploding battles. The battles themselves can be great to puzzle your way through. Likewise, the comedic and irreverent approach to the story is weird, funny and mostly entertaining when you see those little story nodes pop up.
But it’s when those quite good elements meet that it feels like everyone is compromising. It’s like the train is being pulled in two directions, and we’re just stuck in the middle.
Quest Daily scores Battle Train:
6/10
Battle Train is now available on PC via Steam.
Access to Battle Train was provided by the publisher.
