If I hated Slay the Spire would I like this?

[Ghostface]

It's really weird, I Love card games a TON. But I couldn't stand slay the spire, but I don't know why, I just found it incredibly boring. And I didn't have the motivation to do run after run and I just never got addicted.

This game looks like a like of fun from videos, but disliking Slay the Spire as much as I did makes me hesitant. Considering a lot of people compare this to Slay the Spire.




Thanks for any responses in advance.

[aidanfilson25]

it depends on what you disliked about slay the spire, the gameplay itself is pretty different but the basic premise of the gameplay is pretty similar (ie you pick a character, start with a basic deck and add cards to it that are semi-random, travel through "floors", draw hands of your deck in a random order each "turn" etc)

although one notable difference is that while both games probably take approximately around the same time to complete a run Monster Train could feel "shorter" because there are only 8 battles in a run of monster train

[DiscountMortician]

Same boat here. I found StS too repetitive. Not enough variety in enemies and bosses, and the decks started to feel same-y, too. MT has none of these problems. There's a lot more mixing and matching, more synergies, more ways to build a deck, and the RNG is more predictable (in a good way - you can take calculated risks when trying to get specific cards, creatures, spells, artifacts, events because you can predict the odds more reliably). You always play with 2 clans, which already makes it feel a lot less repetitive than having only a single character. You don't always have the same creatures even if you use the same clan combo. Clans have unique mechanics, so it doesn't feel like playing the same thing with a different skin. Now each clan gets a new champion, which doubles the starter card options and combos. I don't find MT to be that similar to StS - yes, the very basics: it's a card game, it's a roguelike, you have a map with shops, you have random events, energy, artifacts, - but it feels very different due to the creatures and their placement on 3 levels instead of a single character on a single floor. I'd say it's a more colorful Darkest Dungeon in that regard.

[GreatquestionFran]

The main difference between the two is the minions. You can build your deck hundreds of ways, in fact you don't even need the champ. Variety is something Spire doesn't have.

[Ghostface]

Thank you guys so much for your responses. That must've been what turned me off to StS tbh, the lack of variety, I just couldn't quite put my finger on it. I just got bored within an hour of playing every single time. Which I found odd, because not only do I LOVE card games, but I also LOVE roguelike games like Binding of Isaac, so I thought it was right up my alley. Now I'm thinking this game may actually be the way to go for me, think I am gonna go ahead and pick it up. Thank you.

[Elliele]

exact

[11clock]

I played a lot of Slay the Spire on the Switch and wasn’t a huge fan of it. The game was pretty enjoyable during the first two acts, but whether or not you get through act 3 felt extremely reliant on having good draws at the right time. An enemy could, say, not attack on a turn where you draw all your block cards, and attack on the next turn when you don’t have any more block cards to draw. I felt like I kept losing because of RNG out of my control. There is also the issue that each act 3 boss is designed to counter certain decks. You are not told who the boss is until the start of act 3, which by this point is usually too late for you to make any major changes to your deck. Made a powerful draw deck, but rolled Time Eater as your act 3 boss? GG, go start over.

In Monster Train, however, I actually feel like that I am losing because I am playing badly, rather than getting screwed over by my draws. It is much easier to play around your card draws in Monster Train’s battle system, since it takes several turns for the enemies to reach your pyre. Each time I lost, I was able to clearly see why. Maybe my deck felt messy and didn’t have a lot of synergies. Or I made a competent deck but the final boss completely countered it. “Wait, but why is the final boss countering certain decks a problem in Slay the Spire but not Monster Train?” Because you are told what the final boss is at the very start of the run. And not only this, but even if the final boss counters your deck, usually there are still some ways to try to play around it thanks to having a lot more options in Monster Train’s battle system. In Slay the Spire you are mainly just going through the motions and playing the cards you draw, sometimes in a specific order to activate synergies.

So in short, I gave up on Slay the Spire after beating the Heart for the first time (but I may go back to try the new character later). Meanwhile I am absolutely addicted to Monster Train. I get the appeal of Slay the Spire, but I personally had a lot of issues with it that I don’t have with Monster Train.

[aidanfilson25]

tbf i'd argue that a well built deck still beats the act 3 bosses in StS that can counter them, ie i've beaten Time Eater using a Shiv deck or discard deck many times, in fact it completely obliterated him

and if the draws were that bad the deck may have been the problem? you should have enough of both block and attack cards that you draw a bit of each every turn without very bad luck, also the deck might have been made too big

tldr at lower ascensions you should have close to like an 80-90% winrate and even at the highest while I can't say this about myself the best players have very high consistent winrates

["Donut☆]

I've spent the same amount of time in both games by now and I prefer monster train over slay the spire. Don't get me wrong, slay the spire is a very good game but:

- StS got kinda repetitive later on
- In StS I could somehow always predict if I was gonna win the run at the end of the first boss.
- StS felt frustrating at higher ascension. MT on covenant 25 feels 'right'. (dificult, but not unfair/frustrating)
- Decks getting hardcountered by certain bosses or elites in StS really annoyed me.

[aidanfilson25]

Originally posted by "Donut☆:

- StS felt frustrating at higher ascension. MT on covenant 25 feels 'right'. (dificult, but not unfair/frustrating)

tbf about this point originally the game only went up to ascension 15, they made ascension 16-20 becuase the best players thought 15 was too easy so they were like "oh yeah then try this"

those ascensions are literally designed to be insanely difficult

and i'd argue none of the bosses or elites really "hard counter" a deck type that bad if you design your deck to be able to handle a variety of things but I haven't reached ascension 20 so idk about that difficulty

[DuckSonata]

I mean, the point is barely worth making since the people in this thread are pretty much done with STS, but what's really going on in these compare/contrast things here is that MT is just easier and holds your hand more.

"Lack of variety" in STS is a misperception likely due to inexperience/lack of skill. There are way more cards, enemies, relics, and events in STS, not to mention more floors per run. But you might have to go looking for the "variety:" runs are less structured, there are fewer ways to guarantee that one run will be different from the next. STS relies on probability to ensure that runs are different, MT has a lot of structures that guarantee it. But those same structures ultimately limit MT to a smaller possibility space (which I can't prove, but would wager heavily on based on the vastly larger number of game pieces in STS). Yes, you can choose from 20 different clan combinations (and now also two different champions) in MT, whereas STS has only 4 characters. But if you did something like take the set of all the Stygian/Hellhorned/Tethys runs and compared with the set of all Silent runs, Silent runs would almost certainly have more variety, since there are quite obviously more permutations of cards and relics for the Silent.

"Boss hard counters me" and "losing due to bad RNG" are also just symptoms of not mastering the game yet, so no surprise that they disappear when you switch to an easier game.

[DJDiceZ]

Originally posted by Saint Pestilence:

Same boat here. I found StS too repetitive. Not enough variety in enemies and bosses, and the decks started to feel same-y, too. MT has none of these problems. There's a lot more mixing and matching, more synergies, more ways to build a deck, and the RNG is more predictable (in a good way - you can take calculated risks when trying to get specific cards, creatures, spells, artifacts, events because you can predict the odds more reliably). You always play with 2 clans, which already makes it feel a lot less repetitive than having only a single character. You don't always have the same creatures even if you use the same clan combo. Clans have unique mechanics, so it doesn't feel like playing the same thing with a different skin. Now each clan gets a new champion, which doubles the starter card options and combos. I don't find MT to be that similar to StS - yes, the very basics: it's a card game, it's a roguelike, you have a map with shops, you have random events, energy, artifacts, - but it feels very different due to the creatures and their placement on 3 levels instead of a single character on a single floor. I'd say it's a more colorful Darkest Dungeon in that regard.

Funny, i found MT to have much more predictable and less varied runs compared to StS. In StS you have a big pool of cards for a single character with a lot of cards that may not be relevant to eachothers (and despite that, still a lot of different strategies and synergies), whereas Monster Train makes you pick from 2 small, limited deck pools that are filled with cards all mostly useful to each others.

Finding cards that do not synergize with eachothers (and thus having "bad card rewards" / RNG) seems much less likely to happen in MT. Not that StS puts you at the totally and helpless mercy of RNG mind you, but MT takes it a few steps further and makes sure it almost certainly can't happen. It does remove the fun of finding combos as some of them in MT are practically handed over to you, but the game is still well designed and has quite a few interesting, obscure combos you can come up with.

That's the feeling i got so far on my climb to covenant 25 at least, but i'm only a bit more than halfway there.

I can't agree that this game has so much more variety than StS, the enemy pool is actually very limited (and even in that enemy pool, enemies tend to have very similar attributes when they fall within a category: for example, the weak backliners either heal, put blights in your deck, or do a lot of damage in exchange of a low hp pool), and the 2 clan system, while i think is a good thing, creates too many situation where your deck feels "samey". If anything, one of the more run defining aspect of MT to me is probably the champion upgrade, and even that is limited to 3 upgrades, at least 2 of which you're guaranteed to see.

I've enjoyed MT a lot, and everything in it, but one of my biggest disappointement with it has been the map: You have only 2 path to choose from, and these paths always have set reward types you'll find every runs. The events only come from the cave, and are fairly limited in their variety. The update just added a few more bosses, and hopefully they'll keep adding content, but it was only 3 bosses before, compared to StS's 10 bosses. All of this works well for this game, but coming from StS, that's not exactly variety, is it?

Especially since you have only 8 big fights, which have similar compositions every runs. StS has at the very least 3~4 times as many, with most encounters being unique within a run albeit smaller.

That being said, due to only having 8 fights with 8 rewards in Monster Train, and very little influence in how aggressively or defensively you plan your path, i imagine it'd be hard to recover from a bad run if you do get one.

I'm willing to bet what draws people to Monster Train more than StS is what has been one of the most recurring complaints in the latter (and it's almost always due to the player's misplays): How much control you have over your run and how the RNG impacts you. How easy it is to attain consistency. StS certainly doesn't lack variety or content, there's 4 official playable characters all with two to three times the ammount of cards a clan has in MT. StS has even more variety if you're willing to delve into the modding community and the alternate gamemodes.

[gachi is manly]

To me they're essentially the same premise with different execution. I couldn't see myself hating one and loving the other.

I am starting to enjoy Monster Train more than my time with StS, though.

[11clock]

Originally posted by faceplant712:

I mean, the point is barely worth making since the people in this thread are pretty much done with STS, but what's really going on in these compare/contrast things here is that MT is just easier and holds your hand more.

"Lack of variety" in STS is a misperception likely due to inexperience/lack of skill. There are way more cards, enemies, relics, and events in STS, not to mention more floors per run. But you might have to go looking for the "variety:" runs are less structured, there are fewer ways to guarantee that one run will be different from the next. STS relies on probability to ensure that runs are different, MT has a lot of structures that guarantee it. But those same structures ultimately limit MT to a smaller possibility space (which I can't prove, but would wager heavily on based on the vastly larger number of game pieces in STS). Yes, you can choose from 20 different clan combinations (and now also two different champions) in MT, whereas STS has only 4 characters. But if you did something like take the set of all the Stygian/Hellhorned/Tethys runs and compared with the set of all Silent runs, Silent runs would almost certainly have more variety, since there are quite obviously more permutations of cards and relics for the Silent.

"Boss hard counters me" and "losing due to bad RNG" are also just symptoms of not mastering the game yet, so no surprise that they disappear when you switch to an easier game.

Variety wasn't my problem with Slay the Spire. My issues all have to do with how act 3 is structured. I don't like that there are enemies and bosses that hard counter certain deck builds. It means you have to pray to RNGesus that you don't roll certain monsters when going for certain builds. You can try going for more of a variety deck to try to counter each monster type, but from my experience that just results in being incredibly weak in every area and will probably die before reaching even the act 1 boss. The only strategy I have found reliable enough to win the game is a block build. I honestly hate how much Slay the Spire revolves around blocking as someone who prefers being hyper aggressive, so I don't even like playing this strategy despite it being probably the best way to win the game.

The moment of the game that really sums up my main issue with Slay the Spire is the heart fight. The second turn with the heart is what made me stop playing the game for over a year before coming back to try again. On the second turn, the heart prepares an attack that basically OHKOes you. If you don't draw a hand full of block cards on this moment, your 2 hours to get here are wasted. One of the act 2 bosses has a similar issue (although I find the hyper beam attack a bit easier to play around). I hate that to even have a chance against the heart, you basically have to flip a coin. It doesn't matter if I have some really good cards in my deck like Blockade and Fortify; if I don't draw them on turn 2 I am dead.

I don't like the battle system very much in Slay the Spire, either. You're mostly just playing the cards you drew, sometimes in a specific order to activate bonus effects. There are times where you get a really epic turn where you play like 20 million cards and destroy the enemy in a turn, but this isn't the norm. I find Monster Train's battle system much more engaging by comparison.

I wouldn't say my issues with Slay the Spire being absent in Monster Train are simply because of the latter being easier. I am losing quite a lot of runs despite being only on covenant 6. But unlike Slay the Spire, all of these losses actually feel like they are my fault. I am playing badly and I know it, and I can come up with ways to improve my play style, unlike Slay the Spire.

[aidanfilson25]

slay the spire is mostly skill, not luck (at least until ascension 20 heart that's REALLY hard)

It was a while back but Pibonocci, a slay the spire streamer, played 67 games of ascension 15 alternating between ironclad, silent, and defect and won 94% of his runs. it's demonstratable that even just a good player can have around a 75% winrate on ascension 15 (and frankly on the lowest ascensions you can pretty easily reach like a 100% win rate). you can structure your deck so it doesn't get hard countered by stuff.

you should have a deck with some variety in StS, you will probably lose otherwise. there are a variety of things you need cards to deal with like frontloaded damage to quickly end "hallway fights" and scaling to deal with bosses

for instance if you're playing the silent in slay the spire backstab and glass knife are both fantastic cards regardless of what your main thing is because they're frontloaded damage you can use to quickly take out ordinary enemies

[DuckSonata]

Originally posted by 11clock:

hard counter
[...]
pray to RNGesus
[...]
flip a coin
[...]
I wouldn't say my issues with Slay the Spire being absent in Monster Train are simply because of the latter being easier. I am losing quite a lot of runs despite being only on covenant 6. But unlike Slay the Spire, all of these losses actually feel like they are my fault. I am playing badly and I know it, and I can come up with ways to improve my play style, unlike Slay the Spire.

Let me expand on this a little bit:

Originally posted by faceplant712:

"Boss hard counters me" and "losing due to bad RNG" are also just symptoms of not mastering the game yet, so no surprise that they disappear when you switch to an easier game.

If there's some strategic element to a game that you haven't figured out yet, it's going to tend to drag down your play. Oversimplified example: if for some reason you didn't realize that you could skip cards at card reward screens, your decks would tend to get bloated for reasons that would feel out of your control. Furthermore, if you don't even realize that the strategic element exists at all, you won't know why you're suffering these negative effects. You'll just have this vague sense that bad things are happening more often than they should, and "RNG" is usually the easy scapegoat in that situation. In an easier game where you can understand all the strategic elements, this doesn't happen.

This isn't STS forum, so I don't want to draw this out too much, but briefly:
- You deal with "hard countering" the way you deal with a pothole: remember that it's there and steer clear of it.

- "Jack of all trades, master of none" is not as big a danger as you seem to think. You don't have to counter literally every enemy. Most enemies can be handled by building up your deck's overall ability in a few key areas (quick frontloaded damage, scaling damage, AOE damage, defense, consistency/deck manipulation) and then maybe having a couple targeted counters for specific bosses/elites.

- You deal with "bad draw killed me because no block" by crafting your deck to be more consistent (parameters: size, draw/manipulation, average card strength/value), and by learning to consider not just how your deck will perform when everything goes right but also how it will perform when everything goes wrong, particularly when you're gauging how strong you are (i.e., how you'll fare in this particular fight, whether you can take an elite, whether you're already strong enough to beat the boss and therefore don't need to take any more scaling). Discretion being the better part of not dying to Reptomancer, and all.

- Fair enough about the Heart, but keep in mind that it's explicitly designed to be an unfair BS fight, that's why it's optional.

- If you don't like "just playing cards" without unit interactions, that's just personal preference, nothing wrong with that. And that has nothing to do with relative skill or relative difficulty, you're right.