Am I missing something?

[Moringa]

I like this game. It's fun and the sheer amount of possible upgrades, combinations etc. is neat. But I don't really see how people see this as overwhelming positive with almost no complaints.
I have like 10 hours played and am covenant 6 or something and just wanted to write down stuff I don't really like so maybe you can tell me if I am just missing something important.

1. There are tons of combinations yes but every class has like 1 or maybe 2 possible combinations with the rest being completely filler. Take the umbra stuff for example. You have this "alloyed construct" which looks nice on paper. 25x2. The powering mechanic is also cool. But... it's completely useless like 90% of all cards. Because you definitely need some kind of buffing or damage loop combined with a way to prevent damage to win this game. So even a 1/1 with gorge:+1+1 would be better than this. And the same is true for all the other classes. Everything is focused on this one mechanic (maybe two). In Slay the Spire there was much more variety in the effects spells had and every card felt like it had some kind of impact.

2. The difficulty curve. It took me a lot of attempts to win my first Slay the Spire run. I won like the first 3 runs of Monster Train. I get it, the covenant runs are the real thing and that's okay I guess. But after my first 2 games where I ended up with a deck that could have beaten all bosses with x10 hp and dmg easily, it feels like I've seen most of the game already. The curve of this game is a little off. Winning to that extreme should be something reserved for the very end where all your experience and unlocked cards finally pay off.

Just wanted to see if some people agree with me or I could change my view to get in the mood for playing a little more.

[Kahvipannu]

I still find new combos to go with, outside of the obvious ones. Alloyed Construct is really strong, and not useless, or 90% of the cards, I have no idea what you mean by that. IT's a deck builder, ofcourse certain cards will be useless in decks, where they don't work, the whole point is to make them work.

And yes, game is piss poor easy at start, gets harder as you keep playing. I don't agree you should need unlocked cards to win, that sounds boring grind to get to the fun part, deck-building and combos. Experience and skill still play huge role in this game.

[Leopanther]

Just a mention about the difficulty.

Yeah, it is easy sometimes to make a really overpowered deck that could beat the final boss even if it had 10x of its HP / dmg. Part of it is luck. A large part of it is the covenants. Without covenants, you have very little holding you back from creating a super crazy deck that works just as you want it to and gets going fast enough to get you through all battles. But every rank of covenant makes it a bit harder - not just by making enemies stronger, but also making it more difficult to build an 'optimal' deck. Your starter deck gets clogged more by basic starter cards of the chosen clans and a few deadweights, making card removes more valuable. Prices for upgrades and trinkets go up, also for card removal. You get 1 less capacity on a random floor. Bosses get tougher. Basic enemies get tougher. Covenant by covenant, it gets harder and harder to make a deck that can make it till the end.

Personally, I enjoyed it a lot so far - and am still enjoying it (currently up to covenant 22). There's a lot of fun in figuring out synergies between cards and making stuff work that doesn't seem obvious at first. And the increasing difficulty helps making it feel like a challenge to overcome, each time a bit more difficult - failing at times, more often the more difficult it gets.

It's been a long time since I've had this much fun in a game, and I hope it keeps being interesting to me for a long while yet.

[Moringa]

Well thanks for the replies guys. I also think the game is good so maybe I just haven't played enough to see some synergies between the other cards. It's just that sometimes you get offered 3 cards and you're like "why would anyone choose this card over the other". But I can see that with more restrictions (covenants) in some rare cases the other card would be the better choice then.
It's a very unusual gameflow mechanic as usual you start restricted and experience freedom at the end of a game but here it's kind of the opposite. But I can see how this is part of the fun with the right mindset.
I'll give it a few more tries and maybe I get sucked in.

[Lagoon]

Alloyed is godlike with a morselmaker+morselmaster behind it on the top floor. Put some solid upgrades into it and use a divine shield potion just before the boss and he can solo the game (permafrost on the X divine shield card is great btw).

[Moringa]

Originally posted by Lagoon:

Alloyed is godlike with a morselmaker+morselmaster behind it on the top floor. Put some solid upgrades into it and use a divine shield potion just before the boss and he can solo the game (permafrost on the X divine shield card is great btw).

Yeah sure but imagine crucible warden or even collector with the same set up. If you feed like 20 morsels, you would have 20 divine shields stacked on it. Not counting possible divine shields or life leech from the morsel feedings. That's what I meant with the alloyed looks good on paper but basically all other guys with gorge synergies can take its place. So I was a little disappointed after unlocking it.

[Nogan]

You don't have to like the game for any particular reason whatsoever, but you're basing these statements off of a pitiful amount of playing experience in the easiest difficulty settings before having everything unlocked. Do I have to explain how ignorant that is?

In response to your post, I'll say that there is a lot more variety in play than you're giving credit. The more you go up the covenant ranks, the more cards you'll have to play with, and the more random cards that your deck will start with. Success is predicated on turning that into something viable. So the deck you "stomped" all over the easiest setting of the game with would be a lot harder to build with more features enabled. The fights also get a lot harder, so you can't rely as much on what were the effectively free extra rewards to fuel your success. So you'll learn to play as optimally as you can with the hand you're dealt, and you'll discover that there's more paths to victory than you realized.

But this is learning and implementing strategy, and that takes investment. If the core game doesn't appeal to you, then it's not worth your energy. But don't complain about a lack of depth before you know what the ♥♥♥♥ you're talking about, lmao.

[Ellye]

Originally posted by Moringa:

But I don't really see how people see this as overwhelming positive with almost no complaints.

Because Steam reviews are binary. You either recommend or don't recommend.

If a game is good enough that most people find it recommendable, even if many of those people do have some issues with the game, it will result in a Very Positive or better review score.

[Moringa]

Originally posted by Nogan:

You don't have to like the game for any particular reason whatsoever, but you're basing these statements off of a pitiful amount of playing experience in the easiest difficulty settings before having everything unlocked. Do I have to explain how ignorant that is?

In response to your post, I'll say that there is a lot more variety in play than you're giving credit. The more you go up the covenant ranks, the more cards you'll have to play with, and the more random cards that your deck will start with. Success is predicated on turning that into something viable. So the deck you "stomped" all over the easiest setting of the game with would be a lot harder to build with more features enabled. The fights also get a lot harder, so you can't rely as much on what were the effectively free extra rewards to fuel your success. So you'll learn to play as optimally as you can with the hand you're dealt, and you'll discover that there's more paths to victory than you realized.

But this is learning and implementing strategy, and that takes investment. If the core game doesn't appeal to you, then it's not worth your energy. But don't complain about a lack of depth before you know what the ♥♥♥♥ you're talking about, lmao.

Sorry but the only ignorant thing in this thread so far is your answer. There is no law that you have to 100% a game before you can have an opinion about it. Playing for 10 hours can give you a pretty clear image of what a game is about and what issues there are. If, for example, a game consists of pushing one button for 25 hours before it introduces a super fun new gameplay mechanic it's still valid to criticize the game for a lack of gameplay.

As I mentioned I felt that a lot of combinations are meaningless and obviously inferior to other combinations even though they sound cool on paper. That's because the classes are kind of focusing on one key mechanic (like mosel with umbra). Even if at covenant 25 this might be different it's still a legit critique point to make at this point. That's why I asked how other people feel about this and maybe if it gets better when you play more. A lot of people have tons of fun with this game so I will definitely try to bring it to covenant 10 or higher and see if I get hooked more or not.

[Dlanor]

Well first of all saying every clan has 1 or 2 win conditions is just wrong. Let's look at Hellhorned, the simplest clan. They can win by stacking armor up high and blasting enemies with the spell that does damage based on Armor, they can win through Rage synergies from multiple cards and artifacts, They can win through the basic "strong DPS behind Tank" strategy, which is easy with the Champion getting things like Multistrike and Slay buffs, they can win through overwhelming force with their multiple spells moving units between floors to create massive floors way past capacity, and they can win through crazy Imp decks with summon triggers left and right and massive Trans Imps and Consumer of Crowns demolishing enemies. Oh, and of course that's 1 clan, every deck has 2 clans and you can win with pretty much any win condition from either clan in some runs.

It's funny you call Alloyed Construct useless, it's a unit I've won runs with easily. Yes, you need to protect your units. Umbra has Damage Shields, in fact some morsels GIVE damage shields. They also have Lifesteal, and some morsels give that, or cards that give either of those, which Umbra has, or plain health, which morsels give, or heck, you can drop morsels in front and they'll absorb hits that otherwise would hit the Construct. In fact, you want a damage loop, and there are actually morsels that give damage buffs as well, which work twice as well on Alloyed Construct because it hits twice. It sounds like you ARE missing something, using morsels to buffed Alloyed Construct provides essentially everything you need outside of upgrading the unit in shops. You probably want to give it Quick, so it can kill stuff without being touched, and giving it more damage and health is beneficial too, especially the Largestone. You compare it to the 20 attack units that have better defense, but that's silly: A 20 attack unit with better defense is going to let far more enemies slip through the cracks to your pyre, as they not only do less damage, but only attack 1 time and not 2. There are upsides and downsides to each of them, the 20 attack units in question are great at boss slaying, but bad at minion slaying, while the Construct is good at minion slaying and still pretty good at boss slaying.

Your complaints about difficulty make sense, but here's the thing: You're obviously a very good player if you're winning that often, and you're ignoring that you're a veteran with experience in extremely similar games like Slay the Spire. Here's the truth: You're winning easily partly because your experience in Slay The Spire translates well into Monster Train, and if you played Monster Train first you'd struggle with it, and then when you moved to Slay The Spire you'd have a much easier time because you'd already have Monster Train experience.

The difficulty gets harder as you keep going. It's not all more health and attack. If you manage to keep winning at Cov25, congrats, you're great at the game, and should be proud. The devs have mentioned the possibility of adding more Covenant levels, in a stream recently one of them said that if players at the top keep winning and want more difficulty, they will very likely add more Covenant levels to make it harder for them too.