Moonscars (2022)

I miss the days when every metroidvania didn't try to be like Dark Souls. Why does every freaking character has to talk in riddles? I'm not saying that kind of storytelling doesn't work, but c'mon, give me something. ANYTHING! Who am I? Where are we? Why is the cat talking? What's my goal? Why am I risking my life fighting these monsters instead of chilling on the beach?

I loved this game. The difficulty was just hard enough to be challenging but never did I feel like it was impossible to beat. The story is a bit confusing, but it feels at place as the main character seems to not remember much and starts discovering what's going on and what happened along with you. The default controls (with keyboard) are a bit uncomfortable so I tweaked them to use the mouse for the attacks and the parry, I tried using a controller once I had already done this change and found it a bit uncomfortable, but that might be because I had grown used to the mouse and keyboard. A hard game, with hard bosses, good mechanics and an interesting and short story. It might not be for everyone, as it's a platformer that shares spirit with the Souls franchise (difficulty and world-building wise), but I thoroughly enjoyed it, looked forward to play it for the last couple of days. Only thing I would change is the difficulty of the last two bosses, which were a bit too easy in my opinion, at least compared with the bosses that came before them. Overall an 8/10 game.

Overall a great game, paying tribute to Metroidvanias as well as Souls-likes. The beginning was a little rough, but after learning the combat system, it became very enjoyable. One particular boss fight felt a little underdeveloped, but otherwise the boss encounters were quite enjoyable. I liked the story very much, again it is supposed to remind us of Dark Souls style of narration, but the themes touched upon here were even more interesting for me than the originals. Gorgeous animation, art and soundtrack. It's not very grand, quite simple, to be honest, but it's mournful main theme fits the game's art direction perfectly. All in all this was an amazing surprise and I'm glad I decided to try it.

Moonscars exists at the intersection of great art direction and awful design decisions. Did they get through playtesting without being told that spite bonuses are an indescribably annoying system, or did they just ignore the feedback because they wanted to be similar to Dead Cells? I strongly suspect the latter. The combat and platforming feel good, and it's an exceptionally pretty use of PS1-esque pixel art, but everything surrounding that is a hot mess. At least I'm playing through Game Pass, if I'd bought this on Steam I'd probably refund it - and that's not a frequent occurrence.