Last Train Home is a gritty RTS game by Ashborne Games that is based on the real-life experiences of Czechoslovak soldiers during the Russian Civil War. Read our review to see what it did well, what it didn't do well, and if it's worth buying.
Last Train Home Review Overview
Last Train Home Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
 Excellent Atmospheric Storytelling Tasteful Depictions of Sensitive Topics Fun and Synergistic Combat |
Game Difficulty Makes it Inaccessible Glacial Narrative and Gameplay Pacing |
Last Train Home Overall - 86/100
Last Train Home is a great RTS by all accounts, but more than that, it is a respectful depiction of real-life events through a gameplay lens. The game delivers its promise of showing a realistic and gritty adaptation of the historic aftermath of WWI. Its rich atmosphere is reinforced by its stylized visuals and era-appropriate sound design, making every moment of gameplay feel as tense and depressing as what one could expect from a civil war. Its gameplay, though difficult, hooks you with its complexity and rewards you for caring about your soldiers as people, not just units. You’d be hard-pressed to find another game that can show the human side of war as well as this one.
Last Train Home Story - 7/10
Last Train Home’s story avoids the cliched "us against them" narrative that many war-centric games tend to fall into. It instead opts to ask important questions about morality and the consequences of neutrality in a war-torn country. It depicts said narrative through careful implementation of atmospheric elements like music, era-appropriate language, and realistic gameplay. What’s preventing a higher score, however, is its narrative pacing. As you’ll see, this mirrors the game’s slow gameplay as well. It’s par for the course for an RTS, but even veterans of the genre might feel the slog.
Last Train Home Gameplay - 9/10
Last Train Home’s gameplay dives into the minutiae of wartime activities, but not at the expense of ease of use. Simply put, it’s designed to be a faithful depiction of the difficulties of war but doesn’t ever get frustrating. Such is a difficult balance to achieve, especially for an RTS that could easily get lost in its own mechanics, but Last Train Home manages. That being said, the game’s pacing is incredibly slow, even for an RTS. This isn’t even accounting for the amount of time you’ll spend paused while coming up with a strategy. This glacial pace might make things boring for some players, but the fun gameplay more than makes up for it.
Last Train Home Visuals - 8/10
Last Train Home presents itself as a gritty vignette of a war-torn central Europe in the aftermath of WWI. It evokes themes of strife and struggle through its harsh tones, dull color schemes, and generally grungy aesthetic. Old pictures and steam-age designs permeate the game’s curated atmosphere, making it feel every bit as archaic as it ought to be. Though initially pleasing to the eye, the lack of color and monotonous UI can eventually become tiring and you’d be begging for something, anything, to bring excitement to the game’s palette before long. At least it succeeded in evoking that wartime depression.
Last Train Home Audio - 10/10
Last Train Home excels with its audio in a rather unexpected way. While other games of this genre try to top the charts with their amazing score, Last Train Home does so with its stellar voice-acting and sound design. Being a commander has never felt so real, as every command and order you give is reacted to by your multitudes of soldiers, each with their own unique cadence, voice, and mannerisms. The game’s UI also has some heft to it, making it feel like you’re operating real steam-age machinery and weapons. Better keep your headphones on for this one, especially when the train blesses you with the sweet melody of its chugging wheels.
Last Train Home Value for Money - 9/10
RTS games hold a particular niche in gaming where their value is inherently inflated by their exceedingly high replay values. This is also the case for Last Train Home. While the game’s main story is linear (literally, you’re on train tracks), randomly generated encounters and events in between each major story mission keep each run-through distinct from the previous. Factor in its two other game modes called Quartermaster and Commander mode, which switch the game’s focus to either its train micromanagement or its combat aspects, respectively, and you’ve got even more of the game to conquer. The game does have a slightly higher price tag of $40, but you’re definitely getting your money’s worth if you can scrounge up the roubles.
Last Train Home Review: A Reverent Look At The Horrors of War
If I could rename this game, I’d call it "This Oregon Trail of Mine", which isn’t the snappiest title but it really describes Last Train Home quite well. It has the gritty, downright depressing aesthetic and themes of 2015’s This War of Mine, as well as, the forward momentum and resource management of 1971’s The Oregon Trail. It’s in many ways a good example of realism in video games, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s first go through everything that makes Last Train Home tick, starting with its premise.
Last Train Home is a game about survival, both yours and that of other war victims you encounter. You have one lifeline - an armored train - and a simple goal in mind, get home safely. Doing so isn’t easy, as reaching the end of the line requires neutrality, and it’s hard to stay neutral while war rages around you. This is the dilemma that Last Train Home posits at the start and carries until the end. In this, we see the first of the game’s better points, its surprising profoundness, and reverence for its main subject matter, war.
As you’ll see once we delve deeper, this reverence for the source material is what gives Last Train Home its identity, permeating every aspect of its being down to its gameplay. Let’s begin with its aesthetics and sound, which arguably contribute the most to the atmosphere that the game wants the player to experience.
The game has a score, but it plays second-fiddle to the voices and sound design. This game’s superb voice acting really sells the idea that your soldiers are people, not just pawns to send out and fight battles for you. They have musings and mannerisms that they spout between combat scenarios. Their voices strain when they are injured and they react when given orders. This plays into my previous point, that the game only has its charm because of its reverence for humanity in times of war. Its sound design is just as immersive, giving a chunky heft to all button presses and weapon reloads. It really makes you feel like you’re operating a near-century-old piece of wartime machinery.
The game looks pretty good even if it lacks any real cutscenes. Much of its visual value comes from the artisanal touch that its assets have. Exposition comes in the form of stylized oil paintings made to look like war propaganda, the UI looks like it’s made out of steam engine parts and machinery, and the soldier portraits look like antique war photos. Everything works in unison to convey the atmosphere it wants to and it does so extremely well. This is a very niche aesthetic that a comparatively small crowd would appreciate, however, so it’s an acquired taste for most.
Lastly, let’s talk about its gameplay. In a nutshell, it’s as complex as it should be. Circling back to the idea that the game gains its identity through its depiction of history, Last Train Home’s gameplay oozes with the tedium and unnecessary difficulty of war (without sacrificing fun, of course.) Doing anything requires resources, some of which you might not have in your inventory yet and would have to either trade or kill your way to get. Healing isn’t as simple as using a medkit and takes time, your soldiers have quirks that make them annoying to deal with at times. It’s all invariably human, and I think that’s what Last Train Home is.
Pros of Last Train Home
| Things Last Train Home Got Right |
|---|
|
Excellent Atmospheric Storytelling Tasteful Depictions of Sensitive Topics Fun and Synergistic Combat |
Excellent Atmospheric Storytelling
There’s immersion, and then there’s Last Train Home. This game really leans into its setting, crafting each asset, each menu, and each detail for the express purpose of making it feel like you’re in central Europe. Even things that you didn’t think would be important like the kind of food your soldiers are eating, the model of the weapons they’re using, or even the customs of the locals you meet along the way are all based on real-life equivalents. It’s plain to see that the developers did their homework for this one, and it paid off big time for the final product.
Tasteful Depictions of Sensitive Topics
The gamification of real-life events is a concept unique to video games as a medium. It all comes down to how the historical event was depicted in a title’s gameplay and how such a depiction affects our perception of the historical event. In the case of Last Train Home, which is based on the real-life journey of the Czechoslovak Legion across Siberia after WWI, I’d say it managed to tackle the nuances of war without watering it down or glorifying it.
There is a notable struggle for resources, but not to such a degree that people are no longer willing to trade. Each of your soldiers has their own backgrounds and capabilities (they even have political leanings), and these change how they interact with others. Last Train Home wanted to show that slice of history as it was without any biases or leanings, which, I think, contributes to its authenticity and, in turn, quality as a historical RTS.
Fun and Synergistic Combat
Despite the tedium and general difficulty of war, the game still finds a way to make even the most mundane things fun. It also helps that the combat itself is a fun and tactical sandbox that you can approach however you want once you finish the tutorial. It’s an excuse to let loose your inner Sun Tzu and find out which tactics work and which ones don’t. Don’t wanna charge the reinforced encampment? Rain fire from the sky using your artilleries. Holding out on a bridge? Set up that machine gun and mow them down if they try to charge you. Out of bullets? Well, we can’t buy some now, so you better charge that poor sod with your bayonet.
The soldier classes are also very well-defined and perform their designated tasks well. Scouts reveal parts of the map and shoot from afar. Riflemen shoot and move quickly and can charge with bayonets. Medics can save your squad but don’t do a lot of shooting themselves. This serves to make its gameplay easy to grasp and hard to master, which is historically a good thing for RTS games (Dungeons 4, anyone?).
Cons of Last Train Home
| Things That Last Train Home Can Improve |
|---|
|
Game Difficulty Makes it Inaccessible Glacial Narrative and Gameplay Pacing |
Game Difficulty Makes it Inaccessible
This is a difficult game, plain and simple. I would say that it’s so difficult that this is by no means an introductory game to the RTS genre. A lot of nuanced skills like tactical pausing, resource micromanagement, and intense situational awareness are expected from the player right out of the gate, so there really are no ifs and buts about it; don’t play this game if you know nothing about the genre. It tries to hold your hand somewhat with its interactive tutorials, but it all goes downhill once you make it to Moscow, which marks the progressional end of the handholding.
This difficulty is inherent to the RTS genre and is hailed by its fans as one of its appealing characteristics. As it stands, however, this makes it less accessible to more people.
Glacial Narrative and Gameplay Pacing
You’d think that a game about a steam engine plowing through Siberia would be faster (kind of like Snowpiercer), but no. It’s a very slow progression through the European countryside. As you’d expect from an RTS, things play out in real-time, which is often too slow for most players. There is a pseudo-fast forward function, but this consumes more resources as your train is narratively using more coal to barrel faster through the harsh winter.
This glacial pace extends to the game’s narrative as well. There’s so much time between the game’s important story points that you could very well end a 4-hour gaming session without having progressed the story in any meaningful way. Again, this is expected from an RTS, but even veterans of the genre might find themselves snoozing through the game, especially through its lengthy middle part.
Is Last Train Home Worth It?
It’s Worth It If You Like RTS Games, Otherwise Look Elsewhere
The game retails for $40, which is a bit high considering its accessibility and difficulty. If you bought this for that price without any prior RTS experience, you’d be in for a bad time. This is, by no means, an indication that this is a bad game, quite the opposite, actually. This game is a well-crafted artisanal creation for a very specific niche of gamers that it chooses to cater to.
If you’re a fan of RTS games and their derivatives, go for it, it’ll be worth your while. Otherwise, you should get your strategy fix from other games, as this one has nothing but difficulty spikes to offer you.
Last Train Home Overview & Premise
Last Train Home is based on the real-life accounts of the Czechoslovak Legion as they try to get home in the aftermath of WWI. Tensions are rising in Siberia and the stirrings of a civil war are whispered among the populace. Skirmishes are popping up along the way, will you be able to keep your neutrality until the end?
Will your armored train keep you safe, or will your legion fall to the encroaching Red Army?
Last Train Home FAQ
What Real Life Event Was Last Train Home Based On?
Last Train Home is based on the experiences of the Czechoslovak Legion and their fight on behalf of the Entente powers during World War I.
Where Can I Play Last Train Home?
Last Train Home is currently available for purchase on Steam for its PC release. There is currently no news regarding a possible console release for the game at this time.
Last Train Home Product Information
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| Title | LAST TRAIN HOME |
|---|---|
| Release Date | November 28, 2023 |
| Developer | Ashborne Games |
| Publisher | THQ Nordic |
| Supported Platforms | PC |
| Genre | Strategy |
| Number of Players | Single Player |
| PEGI Rating | 16 |
| Official Website | Last Train Home Official Website |
