Moonlighter (2018)

‘Rogue-lites’ have always been a little frustrating for me, I really feel like I should like them. Mechanically they're very similar to my favorite genre of videogame, the ‘Metroidvania’ with its self iterative gameplay and looped condensed traversal, yet the result is very different. Where I feel a constant sense of progression in a Hollow knight, an Enter the Gungeon is static, each dungeon blending into the next as I spend hours rolling and shooting and rolling and shooting only to find myself exactly where I started and yet with no memory of exactly how I got there.

Moonlight seems like a direct response to a player like me, complimenting the more or less copy paste dungeon crawl with a surprisingly satisfying Capitalism simulator as you fight for ingredients and materials in the depths and the gamble on just how high you can get strangers to pay you for them on the surface, slowly expanding your shop and the ways you sell, adding clear purpose to each grind.

Wish I could have finished this, lost my save file in the move to a new PC 12hours in but I had a damn good time with it and genuinely can't wait for the sequel.

Moonlighter is an indie game that offers an intriguing mix looting items and managing a store to sell them.

It's a simple game at its core. You go to top-down-Zelda-looking random dungeons to kill monsters and gather items and then get back to your store to sell them. Selling is basically just monitoring what the customers think of the prices, adjusting them and occasionally stopping pickpockets and the like. Money from the sales is used on shop upgrades and new gear (although crafting gear also requires loot items as well). There's a also short, functional story to follow that mainly progresses after beating a big boss at the end of a dungeon. Presentation-wise, the music didn't stick with me but the sprite graphics are really well done and animated.

I spent something like 12-13 hours with the game before I saw the credits roll. Moonlighter is by no means an earthshattering experience but it's an all-around fun, short romp that hooks you for a while. It's also on Gamepass so it was really easy to test out.

Moonlighter is a fine way to pass time fairly mindlessly, but not much more than that.

The shop-running system is boring but mildly engaging in a Diner Dash kind of way, and the dungeon crawling is boring but it still scratches that "collect all the things" itch.

The combat is extremely basic, which doesn't pair well with the overall high difficulty level (although you can change that fairly dramatically in the settings). That said, I beat the final boss by just standing in front of it and stabbing it with my spear.

The equipment system is also extremely basic. While you have different upgrade tree options, there's no real reason to tinker. Just get a weapon you like and upgrade the crap out of it. There is an elemental or physical option and it really doesn't matter which you take because there are no elemental weaknesses that I could tell, it's just for fun.

There is basically no storyline. The pixel art is nice enough, and the soundtrack is pleasant.

All said and done, if you are looking for something to just switch your brain off and relax with, Moonlighter is a fine option. But don't expect to come away with any more lasting satisfaction than you get from Candy Crush or its ilk.

This is certainly a game. You choose a weapon type to use through the game (swords, spears, bows), dive (4) procedural dungeons, and try to leave with junk and crafting materials without dying. Your looting lets you upgrade your character's stats and store's size. Then you do it again until you've cleared each dungeon while the small town gets charmingly more populated. You've played this game before.

Rating Moonlighter on build quality, it outshines a lot of small studio projects. It doesn't have a cheap or nonfunctional UI unlike many craft/farm/community games that have been streaming in since Stardew Valley. It does not feel like a skin on top of an open-source crafting system in a game-maker product. The art quality is completely and all there with the variety to boot. Reskinning is kept to an acceptable rate and includes actual changes to sprites.

Technical challenges were seen but not felt. Sometimes you'd roll into a room and your character would snap into position. Little things. The only complaint I can muster to the construction of the game is that the rekeying feels like a port-job and did not play nice with the keyboard. It simply did not want to allow me change the bindings, falling a bit short of the 'keyboard is cool too' tagline.

Outside of that, you can experience the best of the game in the first 30 minutes. I would not say that the first dungeon has the best enemy design, but you're going to have the same roll and the same attack pacing for the rest of the game. Later enemies just force patience and spacing onto you instead of suggesting it.

Progressing actively will make you immediately feel the repetition. By the end of Dungeon 2, you'll have perfected item management and advancement. Dungeons are typically cleared on the second attempt. The remaining choice is simply to grind for cash or to make half the optimal stats work and never open your store. I rate most games on how meaningfully it strives to be perfect, but Moonlighter shows that perfect can be boring. While being accommodating and kind to the player, once you've learned the rules, you are simply playing Scrabble against yourself until you've won an arbitrary amount of times.

This ecosystem just can't be a game on its own. It needs story, graphical or numerical spectacle, or masochistic difficulty. Ultimately, you shouldn't only aim to perfect Recettear, but I respect the attempt.

(this review seems disjointed to me, but I'm not changing it, it's just how i recalled my time with the game)

The loop is pretty simple, but still compelling.

You run a shop by day, and plunder a dungeon by night to find things to sell.

There's an upgrade cycle to allow you to delve into harder dungeons and deeper in existing dungeons.

The weapon and gear selection is limited...for the dungeon crawling stuff, and that's not bad. The items you pick up all sell for different prices in your shop. You have to figure out the right price for things by either over charging or under charging and watch the reactions of the patrons to determine the right pricing.

There were a few things I didn't enjoy about the game, but were possible to deal with.

1. the mini game of finding the right prices felt more frustrating to me than anything else. Solved that by just looking up a guide with the prices and that made the game playable for me.
2. the inventory management mini-game doesn't need to be there. So, on a delve, your inventory space is limited. And on top of that, items have curses that interact with items in adjacent spaces that can destroy or copy items. It just didn't feel necessary...and made it harder than it needed to be.
3. WTF does a bird get into my shop every day, and why does that stop everyone from shopping?
4. the pit sparkles aren't really effective at communicating things, but you need to explore those if you're looking to move through...it'll make your life easier.

All in all, the game wasn't bad....except the ending...that was bad.

But the gameplay and the loop was okay in my book. okay enough for me to play it to completion at least.

~David.

Played on Steam using a ps4 gamepad, base game with no DLC.

Moonlighter is a fun little zelda/rogue-like hybrid with a strong focus on collecting items and playing carefully and safely - it has a key feature of allowing you to exit the dungeon at any time, before you die and lose all your items.

While the focus on collecting and selling materials is a novel twist on the formula, I think unfortunately the mechanic isn't interesting enough to be worth going more than surface level on - your best use of time is going to always be sorting your items by valuable and setting prices accordingly instead of trying to follow the game's more esoteric economy mechanics.

Also unfortunately, the game's combat mechanics are fine, but nothing special. You have a basic dodge roll, enough weapon variety that something will definitely click with you, but no real fun factor to the combat. This game would have been amazing on the game boy advance, but on a modern console it feels like a light snack.

I also had a small hiccup where whenever I pressed X (on the PS4) it also switched my weapons even in menus - it seems like this is just what the button is supposed to do, but it often happened at inconvenient times, like while I was navigating a menu or dialogue while in imminent danger.

Try Moonlighter on game pass or a sale if you like the combination of inventory management and isometric dungeon exploration and are looking for something simple and low-complexity.

There is a DLC chapter that I have not played - supposed it adds more weapons and a new dungeon. I may purchase it on a steam sale and update this review at some point.

Moonlighter is an odd duck of a game as it has a problem that feels so preferential, and yet I see so many people echo this issue that it makes me think the issue is more than simple preference.

Moonlighter has a lot of things going for it. Great pixel art. Strong music. Hit box detection feels very precise. Good gameplay loop... the list goes on. But the core issue of the game is one of difficulty. And I don't just mean it is too hard. It is too hard, and it is too easy.

I bought a physical copy of Moonlighter Christmas of 2018. I started playing it on the hard difficulty (this is described when you start the game as the "recommended" difficulty). I was able to beat the first dungeon, struggled for a while in the second dungeon, and put it down. I started it over again on hard in mid 2019. The same thing happened. Got to the second dungeon and felt overwhelmed.

I finally relented recently and played it on normal. I beat the whole game in three light nights of gaming. The game killed me once. I was able to upgrade my gear most every night. The game swung between much too difficult to exceedingly easy. One notch change and this crushingly difficult experience was a baby game for big dumb drooling babies.

I still had a fun time on baby mode. I'd recommend trying it out. One thing I didn't notice until I finished the game but you can always (as long as you aren't in a dungeon) crank the game down to baby mode. If you are looking to just loot and get cool gear, this is a cool game to turn your brain off to.

Pro Tip- Completely ignore the plot. You'll have more fun.

Absolutely gorgeous, but the game lacks depth in every area. The combat is serviceable albeit clunky. The limited variety of weapons is disappointing to say the least. The weapons you start the game with are no different than the ones you end the game with, which would be fine if the actual combat or dungeon design was a bit more engaging.

The upgrade system exists simply to force you to revisit the dungeons a few a times before progressing to the next one, as all it does is give you basic damage/armor boosts. (There is the choice between a raw damage upgrade path and reduced raw + DoT upgrade path for each of the five weapon types, however the difference in gameplay is negligible regardless of whichever you choose.)

The storefront mechanic is novel at first, but quickly grows tiresome as you begin to realize it's just a padded out way of selling off your trash items. I have a few more issues with the game, but I feel like I've already bashed it enough. It's not like I didn't enjoy it to some degree.

Also, a minor gripe, the Switch version is poorly optimized and becomes noticeably laggy after an hour+ of continuous play. It can be fixed by exiting out of the game entirely, which is annoying, but at least it's better than an always laggy game.

Introduction

Moonlighter is some of the worst trash i've had the misfortune of wasting time on. It's basically a collection of gameplay elements i loathe:

• Grinding
• Inventory juggling
• Boring combat
• Lazy upgrades
• Shit crafting system
• Huge penalty for dying
• Boring randomisation
• No classes
• No character development
• Tedious busywork
• Can't type numbers
• Only straight attack directions
• Mouse not used for attack direction
• Some of the worst controls in human history

Gameplay

1. You play as Blando McNoclass. You pick the difficulty and that's it. No classes, traits, starting equipment, whatever.

2. Every night you go to the starting dungeon and awkwardly attack enemies with your single attack. You either die or make a small profit.

3. Every day you put 4 items on tables and awkwardly set a price using up/down arrows. Then the same rando's come every day and buy your stuff or make a sad face. Every time someone buys something you have to walk over to the table and add a new item. If someone doesn't buy the thing you have to walk over and re-adjust the price awkwardly.

4. If you get enough money you can buy a + for an item or an enchantment for an item. Switching to a better item resets this progress. Yes, you literally get a +. You can also buy a healing potion. Oh and these things require items to craft, obviously. Enjoy juggling that tiny inventory space.

5. Go to step 2.

Conclusion

Moonlighter is practically a free-to-play game where they waste your time and gate content to make you spend real money. Except here you can't even pay real money, unless you hire someone to waste their time for you.

You know what i expect when something is called an "ARPG"? I expect grinding, no doubt. But that grinding doesn't have to be excessive. And it doesn't have to be too tedious because the combat is fun. And your character grows more powerful. Moonlighter grinds the shit out of you, spits in your face then makes you sit through the worst aspects of both RPGs and simulators.

I was going to say that i felt embarassed for anyone who gave this a positive review. But i won't, because i think that if you like this game you may have an addictive personality.

The longer I play this game, the more I feel like I need to write a dissertation about it. It has so many issues yet the core gameplay itself has such potential that I keep pressing onward. At this point I feel obligated to finish it, a feeling that I rarely give into, but as Link's Awakening is still quite far off I have the time to push through it, no matter how much of a slog it sometimes becomes.

At this point, I'm in Dungeon 4, I have my assistant selling off all of my items, and I'm grinding out as much money as possible. I have a level 4 Bow and Sword/Shield, as well as most of my gear, so I'm just blowing through millions to give to the Witch to upgrade my gear even further.

The main issue I keep running into is that the balance is very off. Each dungeon has taken longer to clear than the one before it, but not due to a lack of skill - more like the enemies scaled up in attack patterns and damage, the bosses got harder, but the gear never really evolved to the point where it matches. In other words, Level 2 gear in Dungeon 2 worked great and it was reasonably difficult. Level 3 gear in Dungeon 3 was not a huge difference, as the enemies got much tougher. Now, Level 4 gear in Dungeon 4 hardly does anything. And of course, the price of each upgrade gets exponentially more expensive as you progress, so you need to grind out items to quickly flip them.

The whole selling process of guessing prices for hours at a time is worth a post in itself. To save time in my grinding, I've been letting my assistant handle all of the selling - although there is no explanation of how the assistant prices your items. Do your room decoration buffs have any effect on the selling prices? I have no idea and none of it is explained. She takes a 30% cut of your item sales, which would be easily negated by tip buffs, but who knows?

The concept of the assistant also removes 50% of the entire game. Rather than learning some skills or getting an upgrade to make selling easier or faster (like something that would give you more precise pricing floors/ceilings), you just blindly hand over items and basically get handed some cash afterwards.

I can go on, but I need to turn this into a proper blog post. I literally have pages of notes that I've scribbled down. Bugs, questions, frustrations.. this game has confused the hell out of me while also providing a unique and entertaining experience. Bizarre, huh?

Some nice ideas that just didn’t pan out as well as I could have hoped.

I’ll start by saying I liked the game and enjoyed playing it. It scratched that Binding of Issac itch while still bringing some novelty to the table. However I will say that I was also glad when it was over after what steam tells me 15 hours of gameplay.

The game is about running a shop and dungeon crawling. You explore the dungeon to get the loot or artifacts as it’s called in the game. You sell those to get money and upgrade your weapons. You use the money to upgrade your shop and buy new weapons or potions or enhancements. And you use the weapons to progress further into the dungeon to get better loot. And that’s essentially the loop the game takes you on.

Visually it’s quite nice looking 2D pixel art. Although the details of what can be walked on and what not is sometimes hard to distinguish, especially when there’s a lot going on.

Soundtrack is good as well, easy on the ears and doesn’t get annoying after a while which is always an accomplishment.

Now onto complaints. Starting up with the difficulty level. You get to choose one of four labeled “easy”, “normal”, “hard (the way the game is intended to play)”, “super hard”. If you’re going to add in brackets the “the way the game is intended to play” you should make it normal and re-label everything else accordingly. If you’re game is supposed to be hard - so be it - that is normal for that game. I will always pick the normal or the way the game is intended to play - and only adjust later on if required.

Secondly the control mapping are annoying at the very least. LT is mapped to roll jump while I would expect the block to be on it. The A is hit, the X is block. So much to unlearn before being actually able to control the character properly. And no - I’m not changing the configuration myself even if possible.

Now even on the hard difficulty I did manage to finish the game in under 40 deaths which the game gave me achievement for. Now this might be some of the previous Isaac experience but I think it’s the game loop design fault. You go into the dungeon to collect loot with a limited backpack space. At which point you either return or teleport back to town to sell it in your shop. The difference is the teleport costs more but will get you back to your previous point or you start all over. The thing is you get your backpack filled by the end of first level and it’s enough loot for you to get a valuable outcome. What happens is you grind the first dungeon level until you get overpowered weapon and cruise through the rest of the dungeon.

So there are four (five) dungeons. Each with three levels. Each level ends with a boss. The first one is quite easy. The second one is a harder variation of the first one, which usually was the hardest. The third, main dungeon boss was usually easier than the second and died on the first try. This unlocks the next dungeon and there is no point in going back to the previous. You repeat the steps of getting more money, getting better weapon and enchanting it for maximum damage and you reach the final boss on dungeon five. Now the final boss did put a bit of a fight and was the toughest of them all until I learned just how powerful the block is in this game. After that it was pretty easy. The hardest rooms were actually those containing multiple enemies - especially with the mimic chest.

The part where you manage your shop sounds interesting but gets boring pretty quickly. You put up your loot on sale and try to guess the price. Based on customer reactions you get if it’s too high or low. There’s also market fluctuation that comes into play when some items are more desirable than others. But what it gets to is to getting the right price. Once you got that the rest doesn’t matter and you don’t really care about anything else as the difference in gains are marginal and annoying to keep track. You can also do some quests for customers to kill a number of enemies in certain time or to gather certain loot in a given amount of time. But the time given is usually so short that I was unable to finish more than one so ignored that part completely. You also get the assistant later on but splitting the 30% with her is just not worth it.

The general idea is nice. You can choose to push through the dungeon to get more loot and get more profit but at the risk of dying and losing it all. But the limited backpack space makes it more worthwhile to just get back and sell it all and start all over again. The dungeon runs are just too short for that to matter so it turns into a grind of sorts and then just rushing through the dungeon once you’re strong enough. There’s a design flaw somewhere there though I don’t know where. Perhaps having a certain drop off points would have served better - I really don’t know.

Overall though it’s a good game. Not great but still quite good and I enjoyed my time with it. Could have been better though.

(note: as of writing i've finished the game once, during its 1.7.9 patch)

this game makes me a little sad. i love a lot of the ideas behind it, but some of the execution just fell short in unfortunate spots that keeps it at a "enjoyable but ultimately forgettable game i probably won't replay" instead of "oh thank god i finally have another game to play instead of recettear".

the shopkeeping is really fun for me, as the kind of person who thinks spreadsheets are fun. figuring out the best price for everything is neat, running around to replace items, kinda fun. outside some of the slightly clunky stuff with the assistant, really liked it. unfortunately, once you've figured out all the pricing... there isn't much to do. you just leave items there and everything happens automatically enough. in town, other than equipment and potions, you can basically ignore NPCs, which i really wish wasn't the case :(

as for the dungeons, i like a lot of the concepts but some of the combat mechanics feel clunky in a way that alternates between forgivably acceptable and just... not fun. which is a real shame because i want to like them so so bad. everything else about the dungeons i quite like...

the main thing to note is aesthetically this game rules. the music is pretty good, and the graphics are really really good. at first i was a bit dubious because it seemed like an overly simple style of pixel art, but the animations are phenomenal and really bring it to life to a degree that i don't want to say anything but "wow" at it.

in conclusion: i'll probably keep an eye on the next couple patches to see if they change some of the stuff that was bugging me (even if some i think are just there to stay), and who knows, maybe it'll make its way up to a "loved it" eventually. i for one really hope so!