Last Train Home: Game Review
The trip in Last Train Home begins with an engrossing beginning. It’s the conclusion of World War I, and a troop of Czechoslovak Legion soldiers are stranded in Russian territory. While the battle is done, there is still instability and uncertainty at home as the government attempts to establish their new independent nation. But, more importantly, the soldiers get caught up in a new fight, the Russian civil war between the Reds and the Whites. Your instructions are to remain neutral and attempt to travel the nation in an armoured train through the Siberian winter to a place in the country’s far east where a ship allegedly awaits to transport the troops home. You may be attempting to return home, but to both the Red and White forces, you are a foreign Legion on their turf.
Of course, in the RTS genre, leading soldiers in battle is nothing new. Nonetheless, the combination of random story events, in-game chats, and background qualities transforms these warriors become more than just NPCs. The game does an excellent job of weaving narrative into its developing and more arduous journey throughout Russia. The fighting is engrossing and furious, and managing supplies, morale, and other factors seems desperate and important.
It helps that Last Train emphasises the importance of your comrades and your train. Your allies and their actions actually determine whether you survive or die. If you have too few, the train will not run and the game will be finished. Morale changes based on how you react to events that occur along the route, and because everyone has distinct personalities and peculiarities, you’re unlikely to walk away from most interactions with all of your pals smiling. If you make them furious or force them into fight too frequently, they may desert you.
The battlefields that players encounter in Last Train Home are varied and exciting. They fulfil an RTS fan’s want for barriers and valuable points of interest while also being tough. If there is one thing that stands out about the game, it is its difficulty. Machine guns mow down soldiers in a second, snipers may eliminate someone from the battlefield before they are seen as a threat, and grenades are an excellent means to remove entrenched enemy.
The game has a lot of text, both in the main narrative and in extra missions, which you may scroll through while different events and conversations take place. The sheer volume of content is likewise astounding.
Keeping the train running is simple at initially, but the duties soon mount after the prologue. Ideally, you’ll have the proper person for the task – an engineer for the engine, a doctor for the infirmary, and someone who knows how to cook cuisine that makes you want to live long enough to return home. Even when there are enough idle hands, keeping the train running involves a consistent rhythm of distributing resources wisely, making difficult decisions about what is and isn’t necessary, and praying you don’t regret your decision later. It’s difficult to have regrets because Last Train only allows you to preserve one save file, but you always know where you went wrong and walk away with a better notion of how to succeed next time.
You must keep track of the train’s damage levels, the status and upgrades of each car, and the main steam locomotive. At several times during the tale, you have the option of purchasing a new leading locomotive, with the choice being whether you want a slower, more coal-consuming train that can transport more cars, a quicker train that can’t carry as many cars behind it, or the in-between option that you receive at the start. More regularly, you will be able to acquire additional rail cars, which can be soldier housing quarters, a kitchen, an engineering station, a storage car, a medic vehicle, or an artillery piece. Because your funding and hauling capability will be highly restricted, the makeup of the train carriages is an important campaign option.
Last Train Home is a challenging, stressful, and amazing event all at the same time. It’s a beautiful and tragic story about endurance and conflict that also serves as a strategy game. Aside from a few clunky-feeling battlefield commands and the, easily evaded, wait-time system on the top-down map, this treasure has no flaws. Last Train Home takes you on a perilous yet alluring trip with an intriguing combination of gameplay types that will keep you engrossed for hours.
