Last Train Home review: One heck of a train ride

You might think if you’ve seen one historical RTS game that you’ve seen them all. In the case of Last Train Home, you’d be very wrong. Developer Ashborne Games has a more ambitious vision for this blend of management simulation with military strategy, and while it might not be as deep as similar games, that vision pays off in uniquely satisfying ways.

Are we home yet?

Last Train Home drops you, a lone squad of from the Czech Legion at the end of World War I as the Russian Civil War began - an underused setting and an even rarer perspective on it. The prologue unfolds right when the situation with the new Bolshevik government reaches a critical point. With its allies alienated and the country’s economy in shambles after the war, the party abandoned its original ideals in favor of authoritarian control. The government ransacked the countryside in a desperate attempt to feed the starving cities and set in motion disastrous events that eventually led to Josef Stalin’s brutal plans for progress.

What that means for you is that you’re no longer considered safe, and the prologue opens right as Leon Trotsky demands all Czech soldiers give up their arms if they want guaranteed safety. All you want to do is go home, newly liberated from the old Austro-Hungarian Empire. You play no important role in Russia’s struggles, but the war and its effects on the countryside mean nothing to you other than how they might make your departure easier or more challenging. Last Train Home is essentially a game about escaping with your small band of comrades before it’s too late, and the outsider’s perspective creates a different kind of intensity that feels more immediate than you usually get in war games. To escape, you have to guard your train, travel across Siberia, and make strategic stops for bartering, scavenging, and dealing with random hellish messes that pop up from time to time, all while maintaining some semblance of order among the soldiers who look to you for guidance.

Trains have layers

Last Train Home borrows from Frostpunk and cherry-picks bits and pieces of Company of Heroes, Valkyria Chronicles, and some light management simulators. Think Bomber Crew for that last one, but with a train (and actually good). While that might sound like a lot of styles mashed together, it’s Last Train’s biggest strength and gives the grim journey across Siberia a sense of intimacy that’s often lacking in more traditional RTS games.

It helps that Last Train makes your comrades and your train such an important part of the experience. You literally live or die by your allies and their actions. If you have too few, the train can’t function and it’s game over. Morale fluctuates depending on how you respond to the events that pop up during the journey, and since everyone has different personalities and quirks, you likely won’t walk away from most encounters with all your friends wearing smiles on their faces. Make them too angry or throw them into battle too often, and they might abandon you.

While Last Train doesn’t delve much into relationships between these characters, the switch from faceless masses sent out to die to one where individual personalities matter is a welcome one. Those personalities seem stronger thanks to a unique dual setup, where everyone has a combat role and a train role, such as grenadier and cook. You can unlock new roles and invest experience into new skills, though every character can only have a set number of skills equipped at one time. How smooth your journey home is depends on how much thought you put into developing your characters, both on and off the train.

Your train is the same as Frostpunk’s reactor: your only hope for survival and the thing you need to pamper and nurture more than your squad, which makes sense considering that no train means death or worse at the hands of the Red Army. It needs fuel and repairs, and in return, it gives you shelter, escape from danger, some covering artillery fire if you’re lucky, and a way to haul all your squad’s necessities across Russia’s tundras. Keeping it in good shape means figuring out which squad members’ talents and experience are best for what task, which is where Last Train gets even more like Frostpunk.

Keeping the train going is easy to learn at first, but the demands quickly stack up after the prologue. Ideally, you’ll have the right person for the right job – an engineer for the engine, a doctor for the infirmary, and someone who knows how to cook food that actually makes you want to stay alive long enough to return home. Even when you have enough idle hands, maintaining the train requires a steady rhythm of allocating resources smartly, and making tough calls about what is and isn’t important, and hoping you don’t regret your choice later. It’s frustrating when you do have regrets, since Last Train only lets you keep one save file, but you always know where things went wrong and walk away with a better idea of how to succeed next time.

Battlefield buddies

Even a fully functional train can’t carry an entire army, which has a bigger effect on how Last Train plays out than you might think. Missions require at least one squad, and you can have up to eight people in a squad. Those limitations shape mission structure and how you approach objectives. Sure, your scout and rifleman might function the same as their counterparts in the likes of Company of Heroes 3 and even have similar abilities; however, you have to think more deeply about how your squad’s abilities fit together and weigh the emotional and practical risks of a wrong decision. Losing your medic could spell disaster for more than just the current mission, and if your dead grenadier was also your best cook, you can expect morale to suffer pretty quickly.

Battles play out on fairly contained maps that reward stealth and careful planning. If you’ve played an RTS, you’ll likely recognize the basics. You direct your squads, position them behind cover, and use their skills at the right moment to turn the tide. Having single units instead of 30-man-battalions makes controlling movement and keeping up with everything so much easier, and the time and planning you put into characters lends a more personal touch to every battle, even if those characters barely have any personality outside a handful of story events.

Best of all, the smaller scale means battles actually feel meaningful and require planning, and not just during the fight. You can’t win by throwing all your troops into a fray and hoping for the best. Knowledge of the environment, good use of resources gathered beforehand and spent wisely on the train, and the right combination of skills and roles are what matter the most. Victory is a satisfying payoff for all the strategy that came before: every tough choice, foraging mission, and thoughtful allocation of skills and roles.

Last Train Home might not be as deep as some management sims or as broad in scope as other RTS games. However, it combines the best of both styles with some smart and welcome improvements that give it a strong identity. Combine that with a unique story and brilliant presentation, and you’ve got yourself a strong candidate for one of the best in the genre.

This review is based on a copy of Last Train Home provided by the publisher. Last Train Home launches for PC via Steam on November 28, 2023.

Josh Broadwell

Contributing Editor

Josh is a freelance writer and reporter who specializes in guides, reviews, and whatever else he can convince someone to commission. You may have seen him on NPR, IGN, Polygon, or VG 24/7 or on Twitter, shouting about Trails. When he isn’t working, you’ll likely find him outside with his Belgian Malinois and Australian Shepherd or curled up with an RPG of some description.