The Christmas game is here, if you don’t mind the blood, the civilian casualties, and the general horrors of war. Beyond that, it has snow and that is good enough for me! Last Train Home is somewhat of an X-com title, in that you control a “base”, build it up, and equip your men in wait for harder tasks – with the mix of Men of War inspired real-time combat when it comes to the fighting. Does it work, and is it fun? Well, let’s get into that, but first a bit about the story.
To go west, you have to go east
Last Train Home is based on historical events during the Russian Revolution that happened in 1917. You play as a Czechoslovakian expeditionary force, with you being trapped in the wrong part of the country when this little shindig goes down. That means you will have to take the long way around, as in going east to go west – through the Siberian cold all the way to Vladivostok to finally board a ship home. You will be doing this on a train, that will act as your base that you can upgrade however you see fit.
The game starts with you rather well-equipped. You even have an artillery attachment to the train for blowing up pesky revolutionaries. But as everything goes, this is just an illusion of safety and soon thereafter your little military orient express is destroyed. This starts the real game, with you and your crew on the downturn with a shabby rat-infested commuter train as a replacement. During this journey, you will be known as “the commander”, with the real protagonist (as I see it) Captain Langer giving you advice and narrating the journey.
During the perilous voyage through Russia, there are a lot of decisions to make, some that affect the direct storyline, but most of the choices seem reflected in the resources you get, and how low or high the morale will be. The presentation has live-action cutscenes with a voiced narration, and the small story segments you discover come along nicely and are a joy to follow. However, the tone is dreary regardless of how well you do, which sadly affects the immersion a bit. For example, I never had any real trouble with food, and not many soldiers were lost to war or other things, but Langer wouldn’t stop going on how everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, sucks and that they were absolutely zero chance that we would make it out of Russia alive. While these cutscenes would make sense if it was a bad run, I just wanted to slap him and tell him to get it together for the sake of the men.
Survival is number one
As not entirely unexpected, survival is one of the main ingredients of the gameplay. On the strategic map where you travel, you also have to make decisions about what places to visit, bases to attack, and who and what to trade with. This you do through creating different squads that you send out. However, the missions that do not involve the Men of War-style combat will tire your men. Their personalities and perks will also affect the outcomes of the places to visit. A good idea is to send people with the burglary perk to ransack abandoned houses, as they will find more stuff compared to others. All this provides a nice balancing act to consider because if you push your men too hard, it might have serious consequences down the line, such as death and mutiny.
Scavenging the lands while traveling is your main way to get resources, and you need much more than just food. You need cloth, coal, wood, metal, weapons, and ammo too. There are also consumables to find, like medkits that heal wounds, and pick-me-up pills that remove the need to sleep. But the primary resources are to upgrade your different railroad cars. Everything from increasing coziness (increase health and morale regain), to expanding the room for more bodies and loot. There will never be enough resources for everything, so you will have to make priorities. Another important danger here is the environment. You see when the game starts, the weather is fine and warm, but the further you go on your journey, the colder it gets, and when you reach Siberia, the deadly cold snakes into every crevice and zaps the strength quickly from even the strongest of men. It’s very important to build up resistance to the cold already from the start not to be caught with the pants down when the freezing evil itself hits.
Now, improving the railroad cars are not instantaneous, you need men with engineering skill, and above all: time. Time might not be in your favor always, as some missions will be time-based. After a while, the Reds will actively pursue you, which is represented in a percentage meter. Every time you stop, for whatever reason, this will go up, making the Reds come closer. However, when you move, this will go down, so it’s another interesting mechanic to contemplate. The wounded in the railroad medical car just have to suck it up will and spend another night in -20°, because crazy Ivan is right on our heels!
X-com train
The railroad cars come in a few different flavors, and so do the locomotives. You have the infantry railroad cars where your men rest and recover. The medical wagon for wounded and hospital staff. There are also cars for making food, building ammo, stashing artillery pieces, and for researching stuff, like better winter jackets. All these railroad cars are upgraded in various ways, and to get these cars beyond the loot wagon and three cars for your men, you will have to buy them, and they are very expensive. I managed to get every car except the artillery addition since it was just out of reach for my budget, and I didn’t see much of a use for it. There are a few different locomotives also, some faster, some stronger, and these can be upgraded too – for example, to use less coal or made stronger to be able to tow more railroad cars.
One main difference here from X-com games (since I keep comparing it to X-com) is that you can’t recruit any new men. You do get new soldiers, but they are mostly part of scripted events. This means that you have to be careful on missions, and make sure the men are as happy as possible not to desert. They all come with different background stories, individual pictures, and perks, which makes them stand out from each other. They are also good at different stuff, and while they come with one (or more) specialization, you can always give them more jobs – and these jobs are all based on stats, like charisma, dexterity, and intelligence. To be honest, I didn’t notice too much difference in these stats while in combat since it’s hectic enough, but for the optimizer out there there is a lot to think about when setting up your work schedule and combat units.
All in all, it’s very detailed, and a lot to dive into, if you feel like it. While I did some diving myself, I didn’t go full autism mode, and I made it through pretty okay. With that I mean, it doesn’t seem to be required to finish the game on the difficulty setting “commander”, which is the recommended one to play.
The shooting & blasting
When you are not surviving the Russian wilderness, you will be fighting wild Russians on the tactical combat maps. These scenarios remind me of the Men of War games (as mentioned), and even shares similar design. It’s an RTS experience with cover mechanics at its heart. There is also rudimentary stealth. Every enemy soldier that can’t see you directly, can be sneaked up to and be bonked on the head. While the stealth works, after a while I started to ignore this aspect, even when the missions themselves wanted me to remain hidden.
The reason for this is that I found the combat in general way too easy, mostly because of how effortless it is to lure the enemy into traps. When you are sitting behind a “thick” cover, you are basically immortal except for explosives. The enemy tends to investigate everything and leave cover to do so. One easy trick is just to take one man up to the enemy lines, have them see you, and then lure them into your prepared and entrenched men. This works for every enemy unit, man and vehicle alike, except the static ones like the machinegunner emplacements. Why suicide or stealth around when you can just do this? The men I lost during the playthrough were all to heavier guns, as the enemy infantry by themselves didn’t provide much of a challenge. However, the combat isn’t bad at all, even if it might sound like it. I had a lot of fun, it was unfortunately just too easy, and one simple solution to this AI problem is to have some men never move out of their heavy cover.
Your men are separated into a few different classes like the rifleman and medic. There are more classes of course, and every class uses their own kind of weapon. The medic uses pistols, while the rifleman uses rifles. These weapons come with upgrades too, even if they are rare, or expensive to buy, but they are definitely worth it. Especially the better machine guns, which turn the machinegun class from a killer to a destroyer of armies. When battling the Russians you can also steal machinegun trucks and the rare tank. In the hands of the player, these machines are pure beasts. Sadly, they don’t remain from battle to battle, as they are abandoned when the mission ends, but I can see why.
When your men get better, they unlock new perks, and what is interesting here is if they run two or more classes, you can mix and max perks from them. I can see the potential for a lot of cool builds here, even if I didn’t take it very far. But matching anything with the grenadier class unlocks the ability to throw grenades. Not a bad deal I would say, especially if you want to make your destroyer of worlds machine gunner even more effective by having him be able to take out tanks too.
I do have one recommendation for the combat to make it a bit more challenging. Play it as a self-imposed ironman run, and take the casualties where you get them, if it isn’t too much bullshit involved. Now, you can’t get more men at will, as mentioned earlier, but the game is very liberal with handing them out. I couldn’t even fit them all, and I had to turn people away – bad vibes man, leaving them out to die there in the snowy hellscape.
Visual & sound
One of the best things about Last Train Home is the presentation and the visual style. When you complete a chapter, and when entering a new one you get live-action scenes that are just splendidly done. They feel authentic, and in general increase the feel of the game – transporting you to the era in which the game takes place. Outside of that, the strategic map looks great, and I love all the detail when you zoom into your train. Every kind of upgrade you do is represented visually too. You will see men sleeping, entertaining themselves, medical staff healing people, the train driver navigating the train, and so on.
It’s all very pleasant to watch – to see the progression taking hold of your little base on metal wheels. When it comes to combat, it looks nice too. The environment looks phenomenal, especially the snowy forested landscapes. All weapons have their own models too, which makes the attention to detail very impressive. Another thing that cements the fact that this is a good-looking game, is the scaling of things. Things just look right. The cities are huge for example, which beyond some gameplay elements has a minimum of abstractions when it comes to the environment.
The sound is excellent too, from the machine guns popping off to the voice acting. There is an option to have the narrator and the men speak natively, but I found that I missed a lot of the story by doing so. Much of the dialogue happens during the fighting phases and my mind isn’t quick enough to both read and fight the Russians at the same time. Another nice feature is the music. I can’t say I remember all of the songs, but some of the more melancholic tunes sure are top-notch.
Conclusion
Last Train Home is very enjoyable with a lot of mechanics and gameplay that speaks to me on a deep gaming level – maybe not surprising considering I love X-com-style games. However, what drags it down a bit is the general easiness of the combat, which extends to making the overall game pretty simple to complete. Setbacks will take resources from you, but winning the combat scenarios makes the train ride almost become a joyous thing instead of the dangerous journey that the narration implies. There are custom settings to make it harder, but I think one fundamental problem lies in that the AI is just way too eager to leave the safety of their trenches. I would also love an official ironman mode, so the temptation of reloading is removed. Maybe this will be fixed, or maybe it will not – who knows, but as it is now, you should know that the game unfortunately is not tough enough for something that involves surviving in perilous lands on meager resources.
Regardless, it’s a very nice title, and everything else stands out for the better. It’s just fun to play when it comes down to it. I already feel it luring me in for a second go and this time I might make some custom changes to make it harder, even if I prefer set difficulty settings. I highly recommend the game, since it’s clear the game is a passion of love, and those should be rewarded.
Thanks for reading.
/Thomas
Tom's Gaming Blog 