Monster Slayers: Fire and Steel Expansion (PC) Review

Originally, Monster Slayers is a pretty fun game, but one of its major flaws is that the primary goal quickly comes to 'just beat it once,' due to a difficulty that often only hits right at the end. Dying repeatedly over and over is as aggravating as it is oddly addicting, swearing that next time will be different.

For a very quick overview, if someone did not play the base game, it is essentially a roguelike mixed with collectible cards, so each run is trying to get the best cards, and if you die it's back to the starting deck. The cards in this case are moves, such as attacks or healing.

This expansion adds some smaller things, like new enemies and locations, with the big feature being two new classes: the merchant and the dragon. The merchant is a heavy money-focused class that can gain gold quickly and use it to win fights. The dragon is way different in that many of the normal features do not work, but has powerful cards to start with.

One criticism of the original was that it gets repetitive; luckily, there are new locations, as well as new enemies, which keep it more novel. Many of the enemies have been rebalanced, with some of the more frustrating ones being toned down appropriately. Unfortunately, different levels don't really mean anything as they have no actual impact on what is occurring.

There have been a lot of updates since Monster Slayers' original release, and the developer has done a good job keeping up with the community. Of these updates, one is a graphical change, such as facial expressions, or new sprites. A lot of the equipment has been rebalanced, as well as some cards have been changed.

The game itself has come a long way, and the developer is responsive to comments. The issue, though, is that it still has its problems. It still has odd imbalances and bugs, and feels more like it should be late beta. Bringing out a DLC so early when a lot of basics have not been hammered out yet feels wrong on some levels. Further, given that there are now more base classes in the normal game, this feels unnecessary.