This game seems to be a wonderful blend of Commandos with some Frostpunk-like survivalism ala "vehicle survival" that we consider to be a new game genre. The following is some criticism that we consider constructive perhaps for a followup release of more of the same.

• Legionaries lack any AI and must be micro-managed ad nauseam. which means that the player must manually move them around inside the train posts. Even if some of them are mortally wounded, they will not go to the hospital car on their own and must be manually moved there, which seems silly because "The Last Train" is a game of scale unlike Commandos such that over 20 units or so will have to be manually micro-managed. Either some rudimentary AI has to be added, like making them automatically occupy posts when need be or automatically heal themselves or the number of legionaries must be cut down to some manageable size like Commandos.
  • The game includes a priority table, something that seems to be becoming more and more common in 2025 in order to assign legionaries to their posts. However, keeping in mind that the legionaries have no AI whatsoever, it's less of a priority table but rather a micro-management table which is fairly redundant given that it is much nicer to just click the train units. Either AI should be added or the table can be scrapped because the player can micro-manage the players from the train and there are not that many posts.
  • From the former, when a post is clicked and some legionnaire can be assigned, the game prompts a selector with lots of buttons that can change the sort order: by rank, alphabetically, by profession, etc, but there is no button to sort by "not busy". Short of taking notes, this means that the player will more than likely end up going through the whole list and clicking each one of them individually in order to hopefully determine which one is not busy such that some other post does not end up abandoned. This is a surprising omission given that the game has great controls for everything.
• There is some lack of variety in terms of a "technology" or "development" tree because there is not too much to unlock. Admittedly, the game features a train such that it's unsure how much variety could be added and still be in tune with the first world war. Nevertheless, the upgrades seem to be fairly "simple" - This War Of Mine, is a similar game where, also similarly, it would be difficult to come up with a technology tree given the context, but perhaps some inspiration from that game could help devise a more involved development tree.
  • The "Winter is Here" is triggered after the Nizhneudinsk town and it is the main point when the temperature drop should become problematic. Unfortunately, due to the development trees being short, at this point the player would have already made all the upgrades. The game is very long up to this point and the research trees are not that large. It is fine, but it takes away some of the suspense because any heat-resistance should already have been maxed out at this point.
• Crafting, even in terms of trivial jobs to be found in every game, is a bit trivial, without too many recipes available or too many things that could be crafted.
• Interestingly, a whole lot of crafting, say, both for "cooking" and "medicine" require herbs however this must be one of the few survival games where you cannot build a plant growth structure. This would make a great addition because clearly herbs are needed for many recipes and having a place to grow plants also falls in-line with the expected principle of least surprise that pertains to survival games where a player would expect to be able to grow plants.
• The game seems torn between wanting to be a strategy game and a Commandos-like tactical game and it feels like this has not been settled. The missions are too small for loads of units; in fact, loading up the recommended unit size per mission is way too redundant and most missions can be accomplished with less than a quarter of the suggested party size. The idea here is that there are very many unites to take care of, they all do not have any AI so micromanagement is expected and missions are mostly too restricted in terms of map size to even accommodate that many units. Either the number of units / legionaries should be decreased in order to match a more specialized Commandos-style game or the game needs larger missions that would warrant controlling 10 units at the same time short of turning the game into a strategy game.
  • From the former, there are situations in which the game plays rather like a hack and slash rather than a tactical RPG given the game mechanics where a single unit can easily be used to take down a bunch of enemies single-handedly. This seems pretty bad for the intent of the game given the display of a "scaling army" as well as the mission requirements that suggest taking a dozen units on a mission.
• The game does warn points of no return but only when the player crosses the map. However, and as a simple example, once the player leaves a train station with the train, the same train station cannot be reached again. Although this does not seem all-too-important, it does matter because some of the stations are crucial in terms of what they have to offer, such that the game has to be reloaded. Another simple example is that some train stations, in particular when picking to face the Red Army by following the southern path, contain lost-legionnaires that must be picked up by the player. Iff. the player reaches those stations with a train that does not have any more slots for personnel, then the only option is to either reload a save game or to just abandon them (the latter of which, more than likely, no player that would play this game would do and it would irk everyone). Some of these can be fixed, for example, the player could allow the excess personnel to board the train and then given a deadline by which they could fix the train to allow for more compartments in order to overcome these, almost purely-technical due to the interface, points of no return.
• One of the train upgrades consists in "Strengthened Combustion Chamber" which is described as "Increases the top speed of both speed modes." However this is not necessarily an upgrade or a helpful trait. The speed of the train affects the speed of decay of the threat level (the faster the speed the faster the threat level decays) and given that it is part of the game mechanics to send teams off to points of interest, ideally the train would be in continuous motion to ensure that the threat level does not increase too much whilst at the same time not going too fast in order to ensure that the squads sent off to collect resources at various points of interest have time to catch up with the train. With that in mind, making the train faster would just mean more fiddling with the start and stop button of the train - ideally, a more beneficial feature would intuitively be something that would make the train go slower, closer to the necessary speed to keep the train from accumulating threat.
• During our playthrough the legionnaires with "beneficial traits" that would increase the reaps when collecting resources were not too many and the traits were not all that diverse. Perhaps bumping up the amount of beneficial features that are automatically generated for legionnaires would be a solution.
  • A related problem is that when selecting the rooster for resource gathering squads, the beneficial traits do not light up on the points of interest unless the legionnaire with the beneficial trait is first added to the squad itself. It would be useful to just be able to hover over the squadron and be able to select legionnaires with useful traits. Note that the problem of not being able to select legionnaires that are not currently busy still stands and ultimately selecting people that are not otherwise assigned to other posts is just a matter of brute forcing the whole list.
• The storage car cannot be heated and will constantly show sub-zero degrees when it is cold. From time to time soldiers get ill, even though their quarters and the entire train has heaters turned on and all heating upgrades completed. We could only theorize that the game considers that given that one wagon is not heated, that de-buff will proportionally apply to soldiers such that some of them end up ill from time to time. Intuitively, the cold def-buff should be removed entirely from the storage wagon if it is not needed or presents the player with an unsolvable solution.

• Due to the possibility to craft soup that doubles stacks of 10 food items turning them into 20 at the expense of 20 herbs, food shortages are overrated in the game. The soup could be bumped down a notch or even something else added instead if the intent was to make food scarce. Even after hitting deeper Siberia, due to soup, the food rarely becomes scarce.
• Soldiers tend to drop dead from time to time with no discernible reason. Sometimes one soldier becomes ill but even with a full health bar there is a chance that the soldier just dies immediately. Reloading the game seems to re-roll the soldier death so clearly it is a probability check. This does not seem too sensible since most of the game is based on survival such that the player must know what went wrong. It would be nicer if the soldiers developed conditions progressively as warnings till they die.\
• Grenades are shared within a squad meaning that taking multiple grenadiers with each grenadier having their own stack of grenades is not possible. Having multiple grenade stacks will also no work for multi-spec legionaries that mix skills.

The following is a collection of save-files for the Last Train Home game.

The following save file is taken right after the Penza mission when the game branches into taking the northern path or the southern path which admittedly is a irreversible choice and a point of no return. After making a choice, the player is also granted one additional cart type.

• fuss_last_train_home_north_or_south_penza.zip

The archive contains the save-game files that can be placed in the game save folder. After loading the save game, extract from the Penza mission that is almost complete and then follow the short story in order to make the choice.

The difference seems to be that the north path is longer, colder and with less resources and the south path is shorter but with more red army encounters.

• fuss_last_train_home_north_or_south_karymskoye.zip

The save file is taken right before Karymskoye such that riding into the city will trigger the choice.

The Pattern 1914 Winchester Sniper Rifle Mk. I is deemed to be the best sniper rifle in the game and one of them can be obtained via a random event named "One Weapon Can Change History". An individual labeled "Man" will show up and claim that they have a rifle they want to sell. There is a small scenette where one of the legionnaires ask whether it's stolen. After that an offer can be made for the weapon starting from 800 but paying 800 is sufficient and the individual hands the legionnaires the rifle. Admittedly, the Pattern 1914 is deemed to be one of the best sniper rifles in the game. Usually these things are scams but the weapon is actually very very good so it should be bought.

It is a good idea to carry 800 in cash around while playing the game waiting for the "One Weapon Can Change History" in order to buy one.

One choice when picking the southern path in Last Train Home, after a few missions, is to change the locomotive and pick between the "Locomotive Hound", the "Locomotive Towing Bull" or just pick to keep the "Locomotive Grandpa". Aside other properties, the difference between the three choices is in terms of wagon capacity:

• the "Locomotive Grandpa" can pull 8 wagons,
• the "Locomotive Towing Bull" can pull 9 wagons, and
• the "Locomotive Hound" can only pull 7 wagons

Even though the choice should be just subjective, there is some reasoning to the choice, given other game parameters. First of all, the possible "utility wagons" are the following:

• a kitchen,
• a hospital,
• a storage wagon,
• a workshop,
• an artillery wagon

which makes a total of 5 wagons in case the player intends to have the entire technology available.

In principle, if this is the first play-through, something that is always assumed, and without any foreknowledge of what the rest of the game contains, it would be a bad idea to give up on a technology wagon. As an example, from what we have looked up, the kitchen wagon is considered by other players to not be that important, however other players and even our own observations that corroborate the story that the cooking wagon uses up very little resources and passively generates meals that can then be traded with at trading posts.

Given the locomotives, the number of places per locomotive now reduces to:

• the "Locomotive Grandpa" will be able to pull an additional 3 wagons,
• the "Locomotive Towing Bull" will be able to pull an additional 4 wagons,
• the "Locomotive Hound" will be able to pull an additional 2 wagons

From that, the "Locomotive Hound" cannot be picked because at that point the game, the player would have three infantry wagons, such that by getting the "Locomotive Hound" the player would have to give up on an entire wagon of legionnaires.

Additionally, knowing the total number of legionnaires that will join for the rest of the game-play, it turns out that 4 full wagons of infantry are necessary to save every single soldier that would join, which rules out refusing the offer to change the locomotive and keeping the "Locomotive Grandpa" because one more personnel wagon would be needed.

As it turns out, the single solution to:

• have all the technology available, and,
• to have space to save everyone

is to swap out the locomotive and pick the "Locomotive Towing Bull".

Apparently, it's not that much just a matter of choice for the sake of completeness.

There seems to be some sort-of bug but regular units except the scout that has an aiming capability cannot really destroy nor attack vehicles. When the attack button is clicked and then a vehicle selected, the button bounces back and there is no crosshair placed onto the vehicle as one would expect and, furthermore, the unit does not attack the vehicle.

On the other hand, the scout is able to use the "Critical Hit" skill to aim for a vehicle and sometimes even manages to blow up the entire vehicle with one shot especially if the Pattern 1914 is available.

If there are more vehicles than scouts, one option is to use a near-by machine gun, man it and then shoot the vehicles. Note that unit machine-gunners will not work and the same problem will occur with selecting the aim button, then the vehicle and then the machine gunner will do absolutely nothing. Fortunately, in-game machine-guns will do the job extremely well and it just takes one or two shots to completely destroy a vehicle.

After the choice in Penza, the threat bar will start working and will fill up in case the train is stationary. This means that while upgrades can be performed by stopping the train, while the train is upgrading, the threat bar will fill up to leading to an attack. One solution is to perform the upgrades in the train-station immediately after a main story mission. Interestingly enough, the threat bar does not seem to fill up in those train-stations so any upgrade can be performed while waiting.

If you run out of money at a train depot and unable to purchase a train car, be aware that usually the depot also acts as a merchant all-in-one so you can click Train Inventory and then Merchant on the other side in order to trade goods. This is great is you are out of money at the depot but still have loads of goods to trade for.

The battle of Novovostochnyi takes place on a battlefield POI right next to the town. The mission is one of those missions where listening to the recommendations is a wise choice because the mission is fairly difficult and unlike most other missions given that it is a timed mission with multiple timers running at the same time. Most missions in "Last Train Home" that employ timers and where tasks must be accomplished before the time runs out tend to be difficult missions that require more players than the player is used to taking on a mission.

The mission has several stages, all of them being on a timer and they must be accomplished with little time to adapt such that going for a trial run with a save is a good idea.

• first, the player must defend three outlook towers,
  • at the same time take care of turncoats,
  • and blow up a bridge,
• two trucks will then show up as supplies and they must be destroyed before they drive off (very short time!),
• the player is then attacked again by two vehicles on either side,
• yet another attack takes place on the base,
• finally, the player is told that they can rush the red base and from then on the game plays like a regular mission without other timed triggers

The defense of the base is not that difficult given that the base is lined with cannons and machine-guns but ideally at least three or more people should be brought along to man them. Similarly, there is artillery around and it needs two people to be functional.

On the other hand, the rest of the mission up to after the trucks should be done in one continuous motion. That is, some defenses should be set up at the base and then the rest of the soldiers should go to the left and then up to clear out the turncoats, blow up the bridge and then continue all the way around in order to get in position to blow up the two trucks when the event triggers. This missions takes place fairly late in the game so a trained sniper with "Focused Shot" should be able to pop both trucks, one after the other, quite easily but the distance that the trucks drive is short such that there is little time.

The video quality is not great and it is sped up considerably because most of it is not important and it just shows the tactic where a few legionnaires flank the whole battlefield by going all the way around. For the last sequence, the video is cut because that part can be played like any other mission and there are no time constraints - it is not even required to storm the red army base along with the rest of the white soldiers and the player can take their time.

One of the missions after "Achinsk" is a smaller mission that consists in capturing a few keypoints. The mission is handed out in "Achinsk" by some individual that seems mildly suspicious. However, the game proceeds anyway so the mission becomes available.

The mission is rated with the maximum difficulty and the game suggests bringing 10 soldiers which is also the maximum that a mission can be started with. In reality, the mission is easy to accomplish with just one scout (with a sniper rifle) except for one single side-quest that involves capturing a small grain mill hut.

In reality, the game mechanics are a little strange and it works for the player in this situation. The grain hut must not necessarily be captured, but rather the side-mission starts when the player enters the capture range - in other words, after entering the range, the player can move the characters out of range and the mission is still on-going. After the side-mission is triggered, the player will be faced with about 20 or 30 soldiers running towards the grain hut. When and if the soldiers reach the hut, they will set it on fire and the mission will fail. Similarly, the mission is on a timer such that the player is only expected to defend the hut for half a minute or so. Compared to the rest of the mission and without any explosives left over, this is an unwinnable fight.

The trick here is that the whole battalion of enemy soldiers can just be maimed a little by the scout with the sniper rifle and kited a little out of range of the hut. Once the enemy soldiers are maimed, they sort-of change priority so they forget about setting the hut on fire and, after vainly searching for the player units, will just sit around aimlessly. Funnily, after a while, the soldiers will just get bored and run off, forgetting entirely to set the hut on fire. When the time runs out, the mission is considered successful even though the player just maimed the soldiers away from the hut a little without killing them.

As can be seen from the screenshots, the mission was completed with just 3 units compared to the recommended amount of 10.

The mythical Baba Yaga appears three times in the game as sisters of herself with the last one being the final appearance. If the player persists in the dialog and picks to stay every time Baba Yaga shows up as a random event, the second sister will offer a hint and then vanish.

After a while, on the third appearance, the player is supposed to perform some actions in sequence as it was instructed by the previous apparition.

The sequence is mostly straightforward but there is an easy mistake that can be done by not noticing that the second sister says to first ask the third sister for permission before blowing any horns and instead going ahead thinking that only the horn sequence is important. Note that the multiple-choice question has the option to ask for permission, such that that's the option that must be chosen first.

One technique to complete missions without too many reloads and unexpected tragedies is to attempt and avoid triggering keypoints during a mission such as talking to NPCs in favor of taking a few soldiers and exploring on your own. By exploring on your own, excess enemies can be killed and pathways cleared such that when events start triggering the pressure to complete the mission is much smaller. Ideally, a scout followed by a grenadier and a medic should suffice to prowl and take enemies out quietly in advance before even attempting to complete the mission itself. Once some NPCs trigger there is no way to stop the ordeal and from start to end it will be non-stop improvisation without really knowing what to expect ahead.