Many of my thoughts here are going to be expansions on what I thought initially about the Momodora franchise that I outlined in my Reverie Under the Moonlight review from earlier this year. If I had to describe this game in a sentence, it would be that this is like the Super Nintendo sequel to RUTM, which in this example was a NES game. In other words, it’s RUTM with a grander sense of scale in everything, or Momodora with a budget lol.

Moonlit Farewell keeps Momodora’s Metroidvania style of being simpler in design and shorter than most, but don’t let that fool you into thinking that it’s worse or inherently lesser because of those qualities. The combat is largely the same, with the same type of weapon, the sacred leaf, used like a dagger and basically unchanging the whole time (although with minor alterations since the last game) and essentially the same bow as last time as well.

Where this game becomes deeper is the Sigil system present, which allows the player to equip any 3 (max of 5 later in the narrative) different Sigils, which give different effects or abilities to Momo in combat and during exploration. There’s 28 of them in all, and I found myself using far more than I expected throughout my playthrough, defying my expectations initially to just stick with the same loadout the whole way through. This is a great system, and perhaps my favorite addition, due to it adding a ton of depth and even replayability to the game (particularly with “the fool” Sigil, which lets you play like you have 1 HP only), while not sacrificing the inherent simplicity of Momodora and its game design at the same time, which I imagine was a hard balance to strike.

The one core mechanic introduced here that I actively disliked was the stamina mechanic. About a quarter into the game or so, you get an upgrade that lets you sprint around, which sounds fun and great, right? Well, you get a stamina bar to go alongside this, and that’s where my criticism lies. In a game like this, being 2D, a Metroidvania, and having a sprawling map, having a VERY short stamina bar was quite frustrating to me. For balance in combat, I understand the limitation, but in exploration as well? Even though you get upgrades that reduce the cooldown refilling of the bar, nothing changes the length of the stamina bar itself permanently, which irked me. The Hare Sigil gives you unlimited stamina during use (while increasing the damage taken if hit while running) but having to always have a slot taken by what I wanted as a core mechanic was a detriment to exploration, especially when fast travel is introduced so late. It’s not an extreme issue, but it annoyed me basically the whole playthrough in my opinion.

Minor issues aside however, everything else this game had to offer was great, and I’ll rattle off a few things here. First, the map labelling all secrets once you’ve entered a room to aid with completion is a GODSEND, and a fantastic addition way more Metroidvanias should utilize. Second, there are a LOT more bossfights than last game, and the vast majority of them were a blast to play through, especially with how smooth combat is overall. Third, I must also say that this game is a lot more linear than RUTM, and a lot of people may dislike that. I come to this franchise more so for the combat, bosses, and movement, so it didn't irk me at all, and I even quite enjoyed it, but if you preferred the choice to go anywhere out of the four major area options in RUTM, that level of choice is not present here, so don't go in and disappoint yourself on purpose, else you make away hating it more than RUTM due to the precedent it set previously. Overall though, I think I enjoyed this game more than RUTM, but they are so vastly different it’s hard and almost unfair to compare the two, so I’ll enjoy them both for their individual strengths.