What a pleasant surprise this one was! I have no experience with Touhou, but I decided to try this game out before it left Game Pass and I'm glad I did. While the main Touhou games are shoot 'em ups, fanmade ones explore every genre out there and Luna Nights just so happens to be a Metroidvania. This is the hardest genre to stand out in, but Luna Nights manages to do so thanks to creative mechanics and a successful incorporation of bullet hell ideas like grazing.
The story follows Sakuya Izayoi the maid as she finds herself trapped in the mysterious world of Luna Nights with her powers mostly stripped away. While there's a bit of intrigue that comes from discovering what exactly Luna Nights is, the story is never the strongest driving force the game has to offer. Much of the dialogue is between characters who have past history with each other and the game doesn't have an interest in bringing newcomers up to speed. This honestly didn't bother me too much though, since the personality of each character still came through in their interactions. This is a fun batch of characters with weird quirks, chemistry or the lack thereof, and hidden agendas that inevitably clash.
The highlight of the game lies in its combat and boss fights. Sakuya is armed to the teeth with knives and is able to throw them in various ways and at various angles. You can't just throw willy nilly though, because a MP system enforces a limit upon how many knives you can throw. MP is a precious resource that's also required for powerful skills and you can't attack at all without it, but you're encouraged to stay in the fray thanks to the grazing mechanic, which awards you with HP and MP healing if you can narrowly dodge enemy projectiles. You can also manually reclaim knives in the ground or walls to get a bit of MP back. All of this encourages a gameplay loop in which you fight boldly, keeping up the offense while never forgetting your defense in order to ensure that you always have enough gas in your tank and it works extremely well, resulting in some of the most dynamic bosses the genre has seen. Bosses in this game are no joke and will expect you to get their patterns down - they have loads of health and can take Sakuya out in just a few hits, so you need to maximize your MP efficiency while avoiding their attacks the entire time.
Sakuya also has time stopping and slowing powers that can be used in combat and for solving puzzles. Stopping time is an easy way to set up stylish kills or avoid foes, but it too runs on a resource that slowly recharges over time, so you can't rely solely on it. Slowing time obviously isn't as drastic, but it is effective for dodging attacks that linger and for solving certain types of puzzles. Plus, it doesn't pull from the same pool as your time stop, encouraging regular use of it. This game might have some of the best implementation of time-altering mechanics I've ever seen because it immediately feels natural and balanced in a way that's powerful without feeling cheap or finicky.
Strangely, exploration is the area where Luna Nights falters the most, being something that's typically essential for success in the genre. While the individual areas are inoffensive, containing several ideas like castles and clock towers pulled straight out of Castlevania, none of them feel standout or particularly interesting. They're more linear than they look and not all of them contain traversal puzzles, so you end up finding many areas that are just straight lines. Metroidvanias typically love to shower you in hidden treasures and paths, but Luna Nights is also conservative in this regard. While you can find and buy upgrades for your time gauge and knife capacity, these upgrades rarely feel substantial and the map doesn't mark their locations even if you spotted them before you were able to get them. The mobility upgrades you get feel powerful but are widely spread out and not used particularly often, with one of them being reserved for a single instance in a post-game area. The ill-advised, borderline useless placement of teleporters plus the game's heavier reliance on skill-based play made it so I never felt excited about backtracking, which is a shame in a genre like this.
Luna Nights is a very short experience, clocking in somewhere between 5-10 hours depending on how much exploring and post-game content you do. While this worked out well for someone like me who was trying to finish it on a deadline, I also found it disappointing since I was having a great time and didn't want it to end so soon. It really feels like a game that could have used another area or two to let some of the exploratory abilities shine more, and I certainly wouldn't have said no to more boss fights either. It's a shame that it was taken off of Game Pass because it really is a perfect fit for the service. It's breezy, mechanically thrilling, and it has a killer soundtrack - all of these things make it an easy recommendation to anyone into the genre.
The story follows Sakuya Izayoi the maid as she finds herself trapped in the mysterious world of Luna Nights with her powers mostly stripped away. While there's a bit of intrigue that comes from discovering what exactly Luna Nights is, the story is never the strongest driving force the game has to offer. Much of the dialogue is between characters who have past history with each other and the game doesn't have an interest in bringing newcomers up to speed. This honestly didn't bother me too much though, since the personality of each character still came through in their interactions. This is a fun batch of characters with weird quirks, chemistry or the lack thereof, and hidden agendas that inevitably clash.
The highlight of the game lies in its combat and boss fights. Sakuya is armed to the teeth with knives and is able to throw them in various ways and at various angles. You can't just throw willy nilly though, because a MP system enforces a limit upon how many knives you can throw. MP is a precious resource that's also required for powerful skills and you can't attack at all without it, but you're encouraged to stay in the fray thanks to the grazing mechanic, which awards you with HP and MP healing if you can narrowly dodge enemy projectiles. You can also manually reclaim knives in the ground or walls to get a bit of MP back. All of this encourages a gameplay loop in which you fight boldly, keeping up the offense while never forgetting your defense in order to ensure that you always have enough gas in your tank and it works extremely well, resulting in some of the most dynamic bosses the genre has seen. Bosses in this game are no joke and will expect you to get their patterns down - they have loads of health and can take Sakuya out in just a few hits, so you need to maximize your MP efficiency while avoiding their attacks the entire time.
Sakuya also has time stopping and slowing powers that can be used in combat and for solving puzzles. Stopping time is an easy way to set up stylish kills or avoid foes, but it too runs on a resource that slowly recharges over time, so you can't rely solely on it. Slowing time obviously isn't as drastic, but it is effective for dodging attacks that linger and for solving certain types of puzzles. Plus, it doesn't pull from the same pool as your time stop, encouraging regular use of it. This game might have some of the best implementation of time-altering mechanics I've ever seen because it immediately feels natural and balanced in a way that's powerful without feeling cheap or finicky.
Strangely, exploration is the area where Luna Nights falters the most, being something that's typically essential for success in the genre. While the individual areas are inoffensive, containing several ideas like castles and clock towers pulled straight out of Castlevania, none of them feel standout or particularly interesting. They're more linear than they look and not all of them contain traversal puzzles, so you end up finding many areas that are just straight lines. Metroidvanias typically love to shower you in hidden treasures and paths, but Luna Nights is also conservative in this regard. While you can find and buy upgrades for your time gauge and knife capacity, these upgrades rarely feel substantial and the map doesn't mark their locations even if you spotted them before you were able to get them. The mobility upgrades you get feel powerful but are widely spread out and not used particularly often, with one of them being reserved for a single instance in a post-game area. The ill-advised, borderline useless placement of teleporters plus the game's heavier reliance on skill-based play made it so I never felt excited about backtracking, which is a shame in a genre like this.
Luna Nights is a very short experience, clocking in somewhere between 5-10 hours depending on how much exploring and post-game content you do. While this worked out well for someone like me who was trying to finish it on a deadline, I also found it disappointing since I was having a great time and didn't want it to end so soon. It really feels like a game that could have used another area or two to let some of the exploratory abilities shine more, and I certainly wouldn't have said no to more boss fights either. It's a shame that it was taken off of Game Pass because it really is a perfect fit for the service. It's breezy, mechanically thrilling, and it has a killer soundtrack - all of these things make it an easy recommendation to anyone into the genre.