this or slay the spire?

[rav]

What do you prefer and why?

[Gabriot]

Both are great, this game is a million times easier at the highest difficulties. Hard to pick between two 10/10 games, I’d get both if you enjoy card game roguelites

[The_Technomancer]

Both are really quite good but STS is definitely more complex and difficult. If you want a more casual deckbuilder that still requires you to pay attention get monster train first. If you're looking for much more challenge I'd recommend slay the spire first.

[Hearts™]

Monster Train feels a little less luck reliant. It's really well balanced, which comes at the cost of some of the fun broken synergies in Spire. Monster Train I think also has significantly more depth due to the clan combinations opening up a lot of varied playstyles. The difficulty in MT is less punishing, it really ramps you up the difficulty at a good pace to help you learn the game as you play, where Spire can feel somewhat abrupt in its difficulty at times.

A major difference, though, is the mod variety. Spire has an enormous amount of mod content and characters that add tons of replay to the game, and MT still lacks that.

If you like the "luck" side of roguelites and the trial&error feel of them, I'd say Spire fits that more closely. If you like the strategy and planning ahead stuff, Monster Train does that better.

[rav]

thanks guys you helped me a lot :)

[Songbird]

MT is definitely more luck-based than StS by a VERY significant amount. MT has so many games (if you play random/random or all faction compositions) where you just start with no cards that do anything (this is a real problem for Little Fade and the Umbra clans especially) and die on the second or third fight because you don't get offered units that do anything or get offered units that are literally unplayable because they cost too much: Morselmaker, Shadoweater without morsel generation, a lot of the Hellhorned units) or spells that do anything. Little Fade is definitely most likely to have issues because she also doesn't do anything on her own most of the time and generally is complete garbage before her first upgrade, plus comes with a starter card that is literally a dead card on the first several turns and doesn't work well with anything you start with but herself (and not even herself on one upgrade path) as killing bosses with burnout 1 train stewards is not a thing, but the alternate Stygian and Hellhorned champs can have similar problems as well (Stygian usually sneaks by off the fact that they just need some decent damage common spells and can at least survive until the third boss off that alone).

StS never just kills you at the start of the run before you have a chance to make any significant number of meaningful decisions like MT does. Basically every run feels winnable because you have so many things you are guaranteed to see at stores, you don't get nearly as many junk cards and your starter cards are usually significantly better than MT starter cards, and the game doesn't suddenly just kill you in one turn like MT bosses do. StS constantly throws luck-mitigating factors at you: potions drop more often if you haven't been getting them, rare cards show up more if you've been seeing more commons than uncommons, stores are guanteed to have potions that can drastically swing fights and a distribution of different types of cards, you get tons of choices for act pathing, etc.

[NE0SPACE]

Apples to Oranges my friend. Both have similar aspects but are ultimately 2 very different games. It all comes down to personal preference.

[Planned Economy]

MT is an excellent game.
StS is a better game.

[stealthassassin]

both are great, I prefer monster train. fresher mechanics and less stale runs + alot nicer graphics. StS is just a bit too bland

[SHAKEN, NOT STIRRED]

I prefer Last Evil.

[Kaerius]

Originally posted by stealthassassin:

both are great, I prefer monster train. fresher mechanics and less stale runs + alot nicer graphics. StS is just a bit too bland

This.

[Salufo]

Personally I prefer monster train. I think the clan combinations are more interesting than StS's different classes. I also like that monster train offers more variety in the card upgrades, which makes for some really interesting decisions.

[Lilbabycat]

I played StS first and spent a long time to get to Rank 5. I picked up Monster Train and haven't played StS since. My feeling is that if I went back to StS that I'd jump in the ranks very quickly now that MT has shown me (with much larger room for error) how different synergies in deckbuilders exist.
MT definitely for newbies to the genre but I've enjoyed both.

[FreshKimchi]

Slay first, than this

[DogFrog]

Both excellent games and honestly both should be experienced, but Monster Train is better to begin with for multiple reasons.

Consistency: The game has 3 floors and challenges early, so unless you have a incredibly bad deck you can always bide your time and reject challenges to come back later in a run. This combined with the champions being very strong and reliable means you can always come up with something to beat the game.

StS you can also make reliable decks but it requires so much more math and planning to get a good ratio of block to attack and even then due to the limited card draw you can get screwed on a turn and just instantly lose or be put in a tailspin. Yes this can be overcome with experience but its far too punishing to start out with, Monster train will teach you good habits that will ultimately make StS more enjoyable.

Monster train also has better presentation and a stellar difficulty curve which means its far more inviting to newbies, once you have the mechanical complexity and habits built up you can hop on over to StS and progress far quicker if you were to swap the two games.

[PsYcHo_O]

I played StS quite a bit and think it's a really good game. Compared to MT it always felt way more unforgiving, like hit or miss. That's the main reason I quit playing StS. Fighting the first battle with your starting cards always sucks in StS because they are so weak compared to the enemies. But there are lots of customization options for your runs and a really nice endless mode. If you don't like climbing ascension levels, just don't. You can build some really crazy combo decks and even quite a few endless turn decks.

MT feels much more balanced overall and the learning curve is much much smoother. You have quite a lot of tools to counter bad luck and I would say you also have more room for error. You also have more options and variety with all the different clans and champions.

In summary I would say StS is more luck based and more challenging and MT has a smoother learning curve and more variety.