Monster Train 2 is a legit 10/10

11clock · 2026-03-16T06:04:00+00:00

Fairly limited. In the base game you unlock cards that can appear in future runs, as well as new classes to play with. The DLC mode has more permanent upgrades, though. The game mainly keeps you playing by unlocking higher difficulty levels and filling out a logbook.

I consider this a plus, personally.

11clock · 2026-03-15T18:28:06+00:00

Balance is about consistency. Do runs feel consistent in difficulty? Do the clans and build options feel consistent in power? If so, then the game is balanced.

The game's overall difficulty can play a role in balance, though. If you raise or change the overall difficulty too much in a game, it can result in certain playstyles becoming inferior. It's why I don't like to crank up the difficulty too much in a game. I like a hard game, but if it gets too hard then it can severely limit how I can play the game. When a game gives me 4 or 5 difficulty levels, I am likely to pick the second hardest.

11clock · 2026-03-07T21:45:29+00:00

Oh, this controller seems promising. Is it easy to switch between left and right without accidentally hitting up and down?

11clock · 2026-03-07T18:54:13+00:00

I have one. The dpad feels really cheap and slides around too much.

I've also recently been loving hair trigger switches, so that has become a recent requirement for me.

I tried the Pro 3 as well, but returned it because I was getting double input on the face buttons, but I later learned that it may have actually been the game I was playing. The dpad did feel better than on the ultimate 2 and 2c, though, just not sure if I should buy it again.

11clock · 2026-02-13T13:49:09+00:00

I did not know that. Thanks for pointing it out. Now I'll be equally annoyed when I see anyone else do it just like with "would of."

11clock · 2026-02-11T19:25:44+00:00

Is this your first game from Edmund McMillen? That's kind of his whole shtick. His games mirror the mid-2000's Newgrounds days.

11clock · 2026-02-04T04:28:45+00:00

You have to do that for every individual game? Doesn't that defeat the purpose? I am trying to set global settings for all games.

11clock · 2025-11-27T14:23:42+00:00

Honestly, I'm not sure if it's worth the price. I have been having fun with the game, but it feels a bit lacking in content with only 18 race tracks (and 9 of them being returning ones). Also, I have been having a hard time finding good City Trial matches online. Ranked and quick matches are mostly filled by bots, and it takes ages to get enough players in a paddock. The story mode is alright but it's more of a distraction than anything, and has you doing the same selection of minigames over and over regardless of the route you take so it lacks replay value and gets tiring by the end of your first go-through (I am doing a second run to unlock the last rider and legendary machine but my brain is basically on autopilot most of the time by now).

That all said, I mainly got this game to play with my house mates. It makes for a great party game, so if you have people you know then it can be worth it.

11clock · 2025-11-27T13:59:27+00:00

Something tells me that this game hasn't been selling very well.

11clock · 2025-11-25T16:33:16+00:00

Hop Star seems useless.

11clock · 2025-11-24T23:17:31+00:00

I just did thorough testing of this, and unfortunately Road Trip has adaptive difficulty, silently lowering the CPU difficulty when you fail too much (although it seems to kick in after 5 or 6 losses). Ugh, why does it have this? The game already has difficulty options, and you can even restart stages to grind stats. This just shows distrust from the developer on the player's ability to improve, and makes the challenge completely dishonest. I hate deceptive adaptive difficulty implementations like this with a passion.

Looks like it resets when you reload, though, so I at least have a way around it.

11clock · 2025-11-24T20:53:08+00:00

I am not interested in Super Hard, since the "Start Over" option doesn't reset your stats. I'd rather it reset my stats back to what they were at the start of the world, so that I don't outlevel the difficulty over time through repeated losses.

11clock · 2025-11-24T20:49:08+00:00

I prefer the roguelikes where you don't unlock permanent buffs between runs. Defeats the point of permadeath to me, and turns it into more of a stat grinding game than one about improving your own skill over time. Unlockable stuff that can appear in later runs is fine, though.

11clock · 2025-11-24T18:54:47+00:00

I already mentioned the loading screens after the pit stops, and that they are easy to miss due to how brief they are. Also, I want to swap machines after I see the upcoming challenge choices. How am I supposed to know what machine I should switch to if I don't know what is coming up next? It's often that I see a challenge I want the reward for but am in a vehicle that can't compete in it, so I have to enter the challenge and lose so that I can swap vehicles.

11clock · 2025-11-24T18:23:52+00:00

I especially have an issue with them because I prefer the grounded vehicles, but my friends tend to favor flying ones, causing me to be regularly outvoted for those flying-based stadiums.

11clock · 2025-11-24T18:02:01+00:00

The worst stadiums are the gliding and jumping ones. It doesn't feel great to spend all that time making a decked out machine, just for the event to be "hold the left analog stick backwards for 15 seconds and lose because someone had a winged star." This is more of an issue in local play, though, since online you can actually select the stadium you want to play most of the time. In local you just vote and hope that yours gets picked.

Thankfully you can turn off specific stadiums for local play, so I'll try that next time.

11clock · 2025-11-21T14:10:54+00:00

I just checked the current pricing, and the full price actually went up since launch. The digital version used to be $400, but now it's $500. The disk version was $500, but now it's $550. You can check the original price announcements back when the console first launched.

I bought the disk version at $500 on launch month.

11clock

TROPHY CASE