Moon is an incredible game. Every screen of the game is dripping with creativity and detail. The characters are vibrant and full of personality. The dialogue is legitimately funny (which is all too rare in video games). It's a scathing critique of the insidious ideologies that we so often accept as gamers, but instead of just chiding us for that, it shows us the real solution. Moon asks us to love others, to broaden our interests, and perhaps most importantly, to shut off the game and go outside.

A very cool and unique but also deeply flawed. The game is built around a real world day/night/week schedule which was probably pretty revolutionary at the time, but it often ends up in a scenario where if you're sitting around waiting for X event to show up. By the way, you should probably play this game with a gamefaqs page open, cuz there is some obscure stuff.
The game has an awesome art style, and is legitimately pretty funny. I wish a bit more out of the plot, particularly the hero who is well and beyond my favorite character in the game who basically vanishes by the halfway point of the game until the end.
I do like this game, but I def walked away wanting a bit.

the premise sounds a little tired at this point, but moon's promise of an RPG story flipped on its head is backed up with a sincere love for RPGs and games in general. no lame cynicism or tired parody here. everything in this game just makes me smile.

I think I would have liked to have played this much earlier before COVID, and maybe via a fan translation cos I like old playstation more than nintendo and it would make me feel a little smug about playing it, but I'm glad during a time like this it's now available in english for more western players to enjoy. please resist the urge to look up a guide, at least not until the end, and just take pleasure in this lovely adventure game. (remember to read the manual though)

my favourite moondisc is The Other Jet... or it might be Warp Wet Woods... or Silver Thread Spinning Song... actually I think it's

While Moon has been cited as the inspiration for many experiences, most notably Undertale, it manages to be an experience unlike those games in very nuanced and surprising ways, especially considering how far back a progenitor this game is to video game genre deconstruction tropes and common themes. Normally when a game seeks out to satirise a genre it usually comes off as pessimistic, admittedly this is due to the nature of such satires bringing in meta-commentary about the disparity between the world in a video game and the world outside, but Moon struck me as a very optimistic experience despite its premise.

Yes, it features the classic genre deconstruction trope of classical style protagonists in video games coming off more murderous and psychopathic in a more realistic setting but it's not actually where the game chooses to focus, even that trope is played with in that most of the townspeople mock the hero for their behaviour and regard them as a general nuisance more than anything. When the game pulls back and allows you free exploration you find a remarkable ecosystem of characters with their own sets of routines, special events, and reactions to other events and items in a uniquely impressive way, doubly so in lieu of the time and platform it was originally developed for.

These NPCs are where the real optimism of the game shines through, with how they interact with one another and the player still coming off as lighthearted and, most of all, never meanspirited. There are mean characters for sure, such as the old man in the windmill and the hero but both are part of the protagonist's journey to find love, a journey that is the main focus of the game as you find love you also spread love which is a wholly beautiful and optimistic view on a more grounded and mundane kind of RPG quest. Overall, this game is a wonderful adventure, more point and click adventure style than RPG admittedly, that's well worth visiting even now as a timeless classic that will stay with you long after you reach the ending.

This is a REALLY good adventure game with some terrible mandatory mini-games. The writing and aesthetic are spot on and the unique combo of art-styles isn't something that I knew that I needed but am very happy to have had. The cast of characters manage to be equally heartfelt and ridiculous and it feels really special to stumble on an instance or cutscene you might not necessarily have expected.
As the game goes on it leans a little heavier into mini-game type puzzles to progress and while some of them are fun there's one in particular that really marred the experience for me. It wasn't fun not having the mechanics of the mini-game explained beforehand and the way it works in and of itself is so arcane that it makes 100%ing near impossible and just finishing the game quite frustrating.
However, I'll remember this game for its fantastic characters - it's full to the brim with 'moments' that I'm really happy to have caught.

It's not hard to see why many would compare Moon to the Mother games, a series of titles that has been poking fun at the tropes and conventions of JRPGs, and videogames in general, starting at 1989, through the use of cute westernized cartoony aesthetics.

However, Moon stands out from those games by how far it goes along with its premise, making use of a subversive and unique game concept and design. By looking at the landscape of videogames in Japan at the time of it's release through the lens of a western adventure game, Moon examines what games are, how we play and perceive them, and what they could be.

3 years ahead of Majora's Mask, Moon presents a world with characters that exist beyond your presence and interference, and that asks you to to simply take a moment, look around, and take note of what you can see. What you will see from it will depend on how much you are willing to give to it, and it's an uncompromising experience that demonstrates the power of videogames, without having to pander to the basic instincts and urges from it's players.
All done through quirky and charming characters, creative and off the wall puzzles, an ecclectic and diverse soundtrack and inventive game design.

Playing Moon, the similarities with Undertale are obvious, and its clear where Toby Fox got a lot of his inspiraton from. And just like Undertale, Moon revels in the use of some of the best meta narrative ideas and conepts the medium has to offer.
But its important to note that Moon did it first. And arguably did it better.

I really loved this one! Ended up being one of my favourite games.
I have a soft spot for meta stories like this one, and it sure blew away anything I could have expected!
Gameplay wise, after the introduction you are left to your own devices to explore Moonworld, and with that you meet and help its inhabitants, save the souls of the little critters killed by the hero, and find out the next quirky event!
At first the game is a bit criptic (don't get me wrong, you're probably still feel that way up until the end) but tankfuly, the devs provided the manual on the official website for you to check out at any time!
I'd recommend this game to basicaly anyone who is iterested by it's premisse!

An incredibly charming game. Goddddddddd this game has so much character.

I love how the "anti-rpg" gimmick of the game is actually a positive one, in which instead of leveling up and progressing through killing you do it through gaining and spreading love. I love the different presentation styles the game uses, in perticular the claymation of its monsters and the soft drawing style of the world in general. I loved how the OST for this game is mostly made up of independant musicians from the local tokyo scene of the 90s and you can play their "modern" tunes through an in-game music player any time. I really appreciate the playful and punchy writing and just how much there is to do in the world.

For a game about love I guess it's not too weird to say there is a lot to love in it. There are some negatives to it, one of them being how obtuse some of the puzzle solutions can be and knowing how or when to progress, which can unfortunately lead to some frustrating walking around for hours that can dampen the pacing.

But the one thing that's most unfortunate about it is how this game never came over to the west in 1997. So many of its features and presentation may seem a little bit trite by todays standards, especially within the indie scene, and whilst that didn't effect my feelings towards them whilst playing, I do also have to wonder how mindblowing playing this game might have been back in the 90s. Who knows how influential this game could've been. Ahh well.

Either way, I love this game and I recommend it to anyone who likes playing different, cute games.

when taking into account all the flaws and masterstrokes in each game touched by the love-de-lic spirit, their totality making every one of them interesting in their own ways, let it be said that this game is kinda incoherent in how its constituent parts are stitched together. i like chulip more for making the town and its residents the center of the world, and how it feels more grounded of a story. even the ways chulip is a mess are more compelling to me than the ways in which moon is a mess.

that being said, in terms of raw passion of its developers and the heat of the moment in which it was made, moon hasnt been touched. its strange, insular kind of innovation came out of testing the hypothesis that video games must be worth /something/, its developers (a fucking SUPERGROUP of a team) expressing their love for the artform by changing the rules so drastically, to surpass everything holding them back. by changing an RPG into an adventure game, by having the player practice patience with the flow of time to understand others, by having the world's characters all driven by this thematic force that the designers desperately wanted to impart on you as something that must exist both inside AND outside the game, despite what other games in its time would have you believe. its "what if games were nice instead of mean" type message may come off as precious and hokey but i think the history around its development as a console game in 1997, and the genre-ambiguous space it establishes—built on later by other love-de-lic games, chulip, endonesia, nishi-directed games at skip—gives moon this mysterious and captivating aura, as well as a radical sincerity to explore into the core of what games really are and what they could be. the final sequence is incredibly poignant to me with this in mind

basically there is no other game that just...radiates heart as glowingly as moon, you can see it and hear it and read it and feel it. this game is the untold spark of so much, as the root of highly creative game design legacies from the names attached to this project. they can possibly make better games in different settings, but moon only could happen this one time.

Moon feels like more of an art piece to be appreciated than a game to be played. The 'errand-only' gameplay is charming, and the early jabs at JRPG tropes gave me a giggle at first, though Moon later starts to use those tropes rather than poking fun at them.
As a game though, Moon was frustrating. Lacking signposts or narrative beats, I mostly wandered around at random, progressing sometimes by chance and sometimes by walkthrough help where the game would otherwise require lots of sitting and waiting and trial and error. I put the game down after discovering that the main fetch quest (which is easy to miss and which I failed to trigger until late) would have me basically continue my random prodding.