Very simple and short game which is easy to understand and play. Animation is fantastic and charming. Merchant selling mechanic was really addicting and the town-building was really simple. Soundtrack is great. The ending wrapped around in a really logical and fun way. The grinding in this game wasnt obnoxious either, which is a big pluss.

Organizing your inventory to accommodate curses on items was a really unique and refreshing concept. I would love to see this more often in roguelikes.

Sadly, Moonlighter lacks depth.

Combat feels janky and the ability to experiment with weapons are locked behind rerunning dungeons, which is unfortunate considering I don't want to waste more time when I want to progress, making it feel monotonous and a chore.

Some vendors were either useless or not really useful; take or pick. Your rival merchant shop wasn't useful in any way. The relic vendor was okay, but not necessary at all when I can essentially use my gold on something more useful. The banker wasn't really as useful either considering I could make 10x of the interests he could return.

Dungeons were repetitive and the "random" factor didn't really play a strong factor. Bosses felt repetitive.

Overall, this game was still a good playthrough and I would honestly recommend the game to a kid. It's short and fun. I really love the animation in the game too.

The game however, could have been fleshed out more both in story and combat if it truly wanted to stick out and be remembered.

Stiff controls and delays in combat. After a mediocre combat tutorial and an interesting introduction to the games shop management system you are immediately set free, and what are you going to want to do right away? Obviously go to the dungeons to try your luck at the arguably more fun half of the game.
But then you get dumped into the dungeon only to find that the tutorial didn’t give you any real experience in combat as you are immediately dropped into cramped rooms filled with sometimes over a dozen enemies. Immediate turn off from the game the several times I’ve attempted to play it.

Moonlighter... y'know, I feel bad rating this as low as I do, because its not like I didn't enjoy it. Honestly this game is very cozy, and its just a nice world to exist in for a while. The music is superb, the visuals are bright and vibrant, the location and enemy designs are fun and varied, and you can really feel the love that's been poured into that side of things. But I just think that, fundamentally, this game doesn't really work.

So it's going for a 2-seperate-games-bolted-together premise, with the idea being that progress in one can be turned into progress in the other and vice versa. The only other thing I've played like that would be Cult of the Lamb, but neither game has exactly sold me on the concept. The two subgames seem a fair bit less disconnected in Moonlighter than they did in Cult of the Lamb, but I still found the structure led to a rather oddly paced experience.

The main compounding problem in Moonlighter is that, frankly, neither of the subgames are very good. The combat in the dungeons is clunky and awkward and felt weirdly unresponsive at times. Add to this the small and unupgradeable inventory size, which means each dungeon run ends up with you spending about 60+% of your time managing your inventory... seriously, the whole game is about looting, why can I only carry 20 things at a time? There are so many games that do this combat style so much better, and Moonlighter's combat comes off as a bit phoned in, as something just made to fill a 'combat goes here' space on a concept board.

The shopkeeping side of Moonlighter is less generic but still really quite undeveloped. The main thing you do is... guess what prices to charge for things. That's it. The core of this part of the game is essentially "Guess what number I'm thinking of". Sure you occasionally have to tackle a thief or assist a confused customer, but the shopkeeping in this game is honestly very disengaging, especially after you've worked out the prices for most things and you're literally just stood there at the till waiting for customers to come give you money.

Remarkably, the aesthetics and tone of the game did actually make these two paper-thin minigames feel quite charming. But that's the thing with Moonlighter; in the moment I was quite enjoying it, but I never felt that enthused to go back to it after each session. I dunno, I think I did enjoy this overall, and I definitely don't regret playing it, but I really don't think I'd be comfortable saying this was a good game.

I wanted to like this game so badly but MY LORD, the combat is terrible. I've played a ton of other indie pixelated games with way better combat than this. I don't understand why they didn't prioritize combat over everything else when this game's main gameplay loop is going into dungeons and beating up monsters.

I really liked the games premise, go into dungeon, beat monsters up, collect loot, come back and sell it, with the gold you make from selling things, upgrade your town, and progress further into the game. Unfortunately, the combat is just so bad I can't force myself to play this janky piece of crap.

A beautiful game with lovely music and interesting sense of aesthetic. Unfortunately, that's the most I could give it. After looking for more commerce sims after having an itch needing to be scratched from Recettear. Unfortunately, this was not it. The combat is ok, but that's really the most I could give it for me, though I do think the dungeon design is mostly unique with the roguelite elements, but the combat is mostly rudimentary in my opinion. While I wasn't expecting a full-fledged in-depth combat system, given how much this game relies on going into dungeons to collect loot to sell, it felt a bit monotonous at times.

When it comes to the commerce part, it feels kind of like an after thought. The first chunk with it was good, figuring out prices and juggling low shop space with getting stuff from my inventory and chest to put on sale, but after a while it felt more like a chore than anything else, which doesn't seem like was the intended effect of running the business. Work orders you get after you start upgrading your shop feel like an afterthoughts, with the payouts feeling mostly too low for the effort/remembering to get them done. There's things like thieves to take items from your shop, but you usually only get one a day at most and they're so easily stopped it feels like a non-factor. Add in the registers that earn you extra money and decorations that give you even extra tips, and you're swimming in money.

Which is good, considering how much items and upgrades cost, but towards the end of the game I was only opening the shop once or twice just so I could get the last bit of money to get a new piece of armor and some potions, and then gunning dungeons.

It's an interesting game, but ultimately, it didn't scratch the itch I had, as much as I hoped it would.

5/10 - PC
This game was initially intriguing as I enjoyed Recettear but it really failed to deliver despite giving it about 6 hours, this is a game I would recommend anyone to try on Game Pass before purchase if it wasn't for the fact that Game Pass->Steam is a pipeline most devs shoot down aggressively. Getting to the 2nd area the combat didn't get much better and after you beat the 1-1 and 1-2 boss once or twice you can burst them down in under 2s with a great sword. The store side of things is fairly mild, if it wasn't for the fact that it was so involved this is a game that at least has a cozy atmosphere so might be nice to play if you want to get into that feeling.