Road to 100%: Game #14

If I am going by Steam’s metric for game reviews, then no. No, I would not recommend this game to other players. Is Moonlighter a terrible game? Certainly not, although I did want to scream such at the top of my lungs at times. It is clear a significant amount of passion and effort went into this game, seeing as it is the only child of Digital Sun. However, I found this game to be deeply flawed wholistically, and I intend to discuss that in detail.

I have been waiting to write this review since my second hour of gameplay. Let’s start with the good stuff.

The game is obviously gorgeous. The 8-bit, Legend of Zelda Rougelite has such a charming style and color palette, it’s certainly what made me stop by in the Steam Store. The dungeons look great, the bosses are cool, the town is quaint and cozy. Even the enemies in each dungeon have their own way of looking cute, like you could just pick each one up and put it in your pocket. The animators did a really wonderful job here.
What drew me to this game in particular was the concept. Go out, adventure and loot, and then return to your shop to sell to other adventurers. And for the most part, that mechanic was entertaining; instead of the normal “sell all” found in most looters, it’s a core part of the gameplay that requires your attention. I had fun learning what items were the most valuable in each dungeon and planning accordingly. I also liked the item curse mechanic, it made inventory management more rewarding and engaging.

That’s about it. Let’s get into what I hated about this game, because it’s the only reason I’m excited to write this review.

I need to start with the combat. It’s just abhorrent. Attacking in Moonlighter is so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ clunky, regardless of the weapon; having Will come to a full stop when attacking makes combat incredibly slow and cumbersome. The only two viable playstyles were either slow and bow or just dive headfirst with a melee weapon and try to clear the room as fast as possible while tanking damage. This perhaps could have been solved by including more variable weapon types or upgrades, but instead we just had 5 weapons with two attacks each and status effect upgrades. Nothing felt rewarding about the combat. To call it challenging would be giving it too much credit.

Next, I want to talk about hitboxes because they’re also abhorrent. It’s unclear as to whether this is a miscommunication between animators and designers or was intentional game design, but throughout my gameplay I found the hitboxes to be incredibly inconsistent. At times, hitboxes felt pixel perfect, following the exact animation on screen. And other times, they seemed to follow their own set of rules and physics, not related to the animation at all. And this applied to every hitbox: my attacks, enemy attacks, bosses, trees, status effects on the ground, holes in the floor. I swear it was harder to intentionally jump down into a secret room than it was to clear a room in this game.

Remember how I mentioned earlier that I liked the idea of the concept, the shop owner ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥? Yeah, that mechanic lost its magic after the first hour of gameplay. Not because of the store management and finding the perfect price and organizing, no, I actually really enjoyed that aspect of it. It was the way Moonlighter scales the value of its items and in-game market. It was so deflating to spend all this time defeating the first dungeon and obtaining seemingly high value boss items, only for them to be immediately devalued by basic loot I can find on the second floor of the next dungeon. The same went for weapons and armor, these tools that you’ve worked an arm and a leg for on your first play through go from God-slayers to stick and stones in the blink of an eye. The scaling in this game was just so crazy, it felt like they game was just following a formula as opposed to a well thought out and intentionally designed in-game market. It was only an hour in when I realized that Moonlighter was just one small concept, copy and pasted 4 times. 4 Dungeons, 3 floors each, enemies, damage, health, loot, money, all just scaling at the same rate, always just out of reach. It was then that I realized that this seemingly cool concept was not done justice.

A counter-argument to this point above may be, “well, this game is a Roguelite, it is supposed to be repetitive.” I agree with that. But this just ain’t it. Dying doesn’t matter. You just lose items, not the run, not the build. It’s just an inconvenience, not a mechanic. Just because it flows like Binding of Isaac and has random loot and you die sometimes doesn’t excuse this game’s lack of depth.

I will say the achievements in this game were fun to chase, albeit the “perfect” boss achievements and the “Savage!” achievement were extremely frustrating to obtain. To expect such precision in a game that is so imprecise. To expect such commitment to a game that has such low replayability. Have some self-awareness please.

DLC was fun.

And now please enjoy this list of other gripes I had about Moonlighter:
- The Banker is hilariously useless
- Familiars negating Will’s attacks when doing damage
- Audio bugs whenever entering a Merchant Emblem portal
- No button to drop items from inventory
- No button to quick-sell items to the Mirror instead of moving item to Mirror
- Wanderer Items are useless but act like they are somehow OP
- Still unclear why this game couldn’t have been programmed for mouse and keyboard
- Invulnerability when using charge attack inconsistent
- The lore is so bleh, it feels like it was just written to fit the game mechanics
- High and low demand had little effect as the only market changes
- Some enemy attacks tick damage before animation
- Invulnerability between damage ticks inconsistent
- Those flame sprite ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ are the worst and their health bars are glitched
- New Game+ is a joke, highlights what’s fundamentally wrong with this game.
- And more! That I can’t think of right now! But will haunt me!