Kitfox Games' Moon Hunters just isn't up to par, both for it's time and today. There are surely good things to say about the game's grandiose pixel art aesthetic, which is right in line with indie darlings like Hyper Light Drifter and Dead Cells. There's some nice music, a well-constructed world that calls to mind both Sumerian and Mesopotamian mythology, and well-done environmental storytelling. Overall, it is an otherwise serviceable roguelite held by back by shallow combat and confusing narrative mechanics.

Pre-2016, the standout roguelites were games like The Binding of Isaac, Enter the Gungeon, Crypt of the Necrodancer, Relic Hunter Zero, and Nuclear Throne. While these games are quite distinct from Hunters mechanically, which pulls its combat from Diablo rather than something like Mystery Dungeon, they offered more emergent gameplay loops. In this game, there is a very basic skill tree and that is it. Beyond vapid stat upgrades with no appreciable effect on the gameplay loop or its difficulty, nothing changes for your character. Every fight boils down to just stunlocking enemies in place and spamming the primary attack until they are dead. The pace of combat is glacial, even at "normal" difficulty. It appears the developers made every single enemy a damage sponge because the game would be too easy otherwise.

Moon Hunters is moreso narrative-focused, with dialogue choices directly affecting the run (and having permanent effects on all future runs.) Kitfox's Tanya X. Short aimed to leverage the procedural generation to craft personal narratives, but the implementation is flawed at best. While I can appreciate the choices unlocking future characters or opening up the game world, it becomes very confusing when it starts to influence your player character.

Sometimes you will randomly be given a new trait ie. "Brave," "Vengeful,": etc. and this is straightforward enough, but its not immediately apparent how this affects anything. As it turns out, this will only affect subsequent dialogue choices and interactions, which is the core to the "replayability" of Moon Hunters. Each run would have the player approaching situations differently, thus unlocking new story routes. This is a strong point in the game's favor, but the problem is you would have to trudge through multiple runs of the same mind-numbing combat sequences to find that out. The game undercuts itself, as the story could get better, but the combat itself will never change.

Some mention must also be given to the game's poor implementation of co-operative multiplayer. Firstly, playing as a group breaks the combat loop and makes it even more tedious than it already is. Given that each character only gets three skills, and 4 small upgrades to each of those skills, it only takes around 15 minutes to find a combo that will trivialize every encounter (including all the bosses.) The narrative sections are also underwhelming in co-op; as for some reason each character can select an option, but this has zero bearing on the actual choice. The person who initiates the dialogue will always choose the outcome, and thus change the game state. The only agency the second player in this scenario gets is the potential of a new personality trait.

The potential was obviously there for a game like this, and in a scant few years titles like Children of Morta and Hades would find the sweet spot between narrative and gameplay that Moon Hunters failed to capture. Unfortunately, this only hurts any case you could make to give it time. As a complete experience, the game is unable to justify repeat playthroughs outside of a strong interest in its lore and worldbuilding. There could be a world out there to explore and love, if you are willing to sit there spamming left click all the way to end.

An optionally co-op third person action roguelike with a flimsy personality test tacked on. The decisions you make often do not reflect the qualities assigned to your character, and sometimes the conclusion is randomly picked or the player is surprised with it. This removal of agency and the lack of interaction between the personality test and the actual gameplay feels lackluster. The combat itself feels fine, but a lot of the ability upgrades and choices don't feel meaningful enough to really affect one's combat ability. Especially disappointing given the game's very interesting lore and worldbuilding. With a revisited combat system and personality test, I think this game could really shine.

It promises procedural storytelling, with a different myth and outcome each play session. But if it's too good to be true, it usually is. The attribute system is unique (awarding you points in categories such as 'Cunning'), but the randomness of the stages and the unbalanced characters quickly lead to boredom. The treatment of villages as one-time stops, rather than as permanent home bases, unmoors the proceedings – it ruins the potential of community-building that's evident in other short cycle games such as Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask.

Moon Hunters empieza con ideas interesantes, pero poco a poco va perdiendo esa fascinación dada por la novedad debido a la pobre exploración de las mismas.

Si bien en un principio el juego asombra por su dirección de arte, música e introducción del bucle de juego, es este ultimo aspecto el que hace tambalear toda la experiencia. En casi nada, el combate y exploración se vuelven bastante repetitivos y poco divertidos, pues además carga con un reto sencillo que intenta emular cierta complejidad a largo plazo, pero mas temprano que tarde se revela lo insustancial que es.

Si bien ofrece cierto contenido que empuja la exploración y el descubrimiento de la historia del mundo y sus personajes, el mismo no da tanta variedad al bucle de juego lo que hace bastante monótona la rejugabilidad, y eso que esta es un punto crucial del diseño del juego, súmale una progresión fácil de romper y tienes la formula para el aburrimiento.

Como ya dije las ideas que traen son interesantes, esto de ir construyendo tu propia leyenda en dependencia de tu estilo de juego y decisiones en cada partida sonaba bastante bien, pero al final se queda como un test de buzzfeed glorificado. No hace mucho para engrandecer sus propuestas y eso es una pena.

No lo recomiendo, mas que nada porque aburre muy rápido a pesar de ser un juego relativamente corto. Mejor busca la BSO, te prometo que eso no va a decepcionarte.

A roguelike, pixelated game that you can run solo or with friends. I played solo, so my review will only reflect on playing solo.

This game requires you to play through multiple times. You have three days to explore and build stats while you're preparing to fight the sun cult. You can unlock events, characters, costumes, and new locations for future runs. The pixel and watercolor illustrations look fantastic for the whimsical, spiritual adventure. The music and sound effects are great. I really love the main song of the game. It fun playing through and getting new events.

The biggest downfall was combat. Again, I was playing solo and not every class is equal. You will struggle playing a couple of the classes solo. But the combat is sluggish; the AI is either dumb (will stand still so you can easily shoot it) or OP (will shove you in a corner to three shot you). The maps are too large. You will run into many dead ends and it will feel like you're wasting time.

The game could use more polishing for combat and tighten the maps. Otherwise fun experience. Maybe more fun with friends.

Really wanted to love this game because the art is gorgeous and the combat is well designed but it just feels unfinished. Like you can see all the pieces on the board and it seems like they're gonna come together but then they just kinda... don't.

My main complaint is that exploring the areas and encountering the NPCs is really fun, but you are just not given enough time in a single run to do more than a few AND you have to deal with them being randomly generated, so every run results is just a graveyard of abandoned storylines. It's frustrating because I WANT to see all the special events and interactions the game teases but they're constantly denied to me.

Also the load times are atrocious.

I'll still play it from time to time because it can be satisfying to just knock out a run, but don't expect the world.

Moon Hunter, es un juego que prometía más que da, Su apartado gráfico artístico es una pasada, en cambio, peca en ser muy repetitivo y con fallos en su parte multijugador y cooperativo.

La parte buena entre comillas, es que es un juego interminable e infinito, al estilo de otros Rogue like, el juego cambia muchísimo. Los mapas nunca son iguales, y su infinidad de combinaciones de héroes y conjuros, aptitudes, etc. dan esa parte buena.

Su BSO es maravillosa, así como su mitología e historia.

Es un gran juego, pero con fallitos, que creo que después de unos años podían haber solucionado.

http://www.orgullogamers.com/2018/07/analisis-de-moon-hunters.html