Hit a point with Moonlighter where I realized the game wasn't getting harder, the numbers were just getting bigger.
Everything you get in the next dungeon makes you double the money, enemies do double the damage and have double the health, weapon upgrades cost twice as much, and until you upgrade to the next tier you're going to be useless - but once you get the next sword and set of armor, you'll tear through the dungeon in one sweep. It's a shallow stat check masquerading as progression.
While you aren't doing that, you're manning the shop which is a mind numbing loop of guessing prices and trial and erroring your way to successful capitalism. Once that's figured out you just toss everything on the shelves and occasionally tackle robbers while you wait for people to buy your shit already.
These two elements are the core of the game, that while I don't really enjoy them, they are very playable and intuitive at least. So many other elements this game has to offer feel just straight up unfinished.
There's a handful of weapon status effects, which all just do damage over time to the point where I'm not actually sure if there's any real difference between them.
There's a town building 'minigame' - you can invest in 5 shops/services that open in your town. Two of these (potion/weapon shop) are absolutely necessary for progress even in the very early game, one is actually a really nice QOL thing where you can buy previous dungeon's items at a premium instead of crawling back through them over you've moved on. The other two I couldn't tell you, one was a banker and I finished the game before he even set up shop.
There's people walking around the town at all times, and people in your shop, but they serve basically no purpose outside of being set decoration - from a trailer or description it looks like there's a dynamic little town you're in charge of cleaning up a la Stardew Valley, but in practice it's just two or three static NPCs you talk to once you have enough money to upgrade your equipment.
There's an inventory management system - when you're in a dungeon, your inventory fills up completely on the first floor every time without fail, so you have to be constantly managing what you want to keep, or toss for a little bit of money. Some items also have 'curses' that affect adjacent items. This is a pretty cool mechanic at first but it just gets old pretty fast once you consistently end up spending around half your dungeon time in an inventory screen.
And I haven't even mentioned the story which gets a bit of attention in the first 5 mins, gets neglected for the entire game and then gets wrapped up in maybe the most unhinged and baffling way possible in the game's final 10 minutes. It really has to be seen to be believed.
As much as I'm ragging on this game, I will say that it looks and sounds absolutely fucking gorgeous. The pixel art and animation throughout this game, while nothing groundbreaking, is incredibly well done. No visual aspect feels undercooked at all - menus, shop screens, the journal pages, enemy and character design all feels so consistently good that it genuinely makes the game much more enjoyable to get through. While the dungeons play pretty repetitive and boring, they at least all look super unique and interesting. The music and sound design is also great. It does a good job of fitting the world and dungeon settings, and the sound compliments the look of the animations really well.
But all the heavy lifting that these can do just end up keeping this game on life support. It made me think about the influx of indie games I've seen being promoted online recently that have a description like "have you ever wanted a game that's like Stardew Valley meets Hades??" And it's like, yes, but those are also very polished and very big games - if your main marketing point or inspiration reference is other games that are really, really fucking well made, it's usually going to put your little Frankenstein monster in the sniper's sightline of harsh criticism, putting it up against what you've already established as fair game for comparison.
Moonlighter feels a lot like this. On its own it's a playable little game that has some unique ideas, but when you look at it next to its obvious points of reference, it gets completely eclipsed. The way it earnestly wears its influences on its sleeve only makes it look all the worse for wear when all you can think about is how much better those games do what Moonlighter is trying to.
Everything you get in the next dungeon makes you double the money, enemies do double the damage and have double the health, weapon upgrades cost twice as much, and until you upgrade to the next tier you're going to be useless - but once you get the next sword and set of armor, you'll tear through the dungeon in one sweep. It's a shallow stat check masquerading as progression.
While you aren't doing that, you're manning the shop which is a mind numbing loop of guessing prices and trial and erroring your way to successful capitalism. Once that's figured out you just toss everything on the shelves and occasionally tackle robbers while you wait for people to buy your shit already.
These two elements are the core of the game, that while I don't really enjoy them, they are very playable and intuitive at least. So many other elements this game has to offer feel just straight up unfinished.
There's a handful of weapon status effects, which all just do damage over time to the point where I'm not actually sure if there's any real difference between them.
There's a town building 'minigame' - you can invest in 5 shops/services that open in your town. Two of these (potion/weapon shop) are absolutely necessary for progress even in the very early game, one is actually a really nice QOL thing where you can buy previous dungeon's items at a premium instead of crawling back through them over you've moved on. The other two I couldn't tell you, one was a banker and I finished the game before he even set up shop.
There's people walking around the town at all times, and people in your shop, but they serve basically no purpose outside of being set decoration - from a trailer or description it looks like there's a dynamic little town you're in charge of cleaning up a la Stardew Valley, but in practice it's just two or three static NPCs you talk to once you have enough money to upgrade your equipment.
There's an inventory management system - when you're in a dungeon, your inventory fills up completely on the first floor every time without fail, so you have to be constantly managing what you want to keep, or toss for a little bit of money. Some items also have 'curses' that affect adjacent items. This is a pretty cool mechanic at first but it just gets old pretty fast once you consistently end up spending around half your dungeon time in an inventory screen.
And I haven't even mentioned the story which gets a bit of attention in the first 5 mins, gets neglected for the entire game and then gets wrapped up in maybe the most unhinged and baffling way possible in the game's final 10 minutes. It really has to be seen to be believed.
As much as I'm ragging on this game, I will say that it looks and sounds absolutely fucking gorgeous. The pixel art and animation throughout this game, while nothing groundbreaking, is incredibly well done. No visual aspect feels undercooked at all - menus, shop screens, the journal pages, enemy and character design all feels so consistently good that it genuinely makes the game much more enjoyable to get through. While the dungeons play pretty repetitive and boring, they at least all look super unique and interesting. The music and sound design is also great. It does a good job of fitting the world and dungeon settings, and the sound compliments the look of the animations really well.
But all the heavy lifting that these can do just end up keeping this game on life support. It made me think about the influx of indie games I've seen being promoted online recently that have a description like "have you ever wanted a game that's like Stardew Valley meets Hades??" And it's like, yes, but those are also very polished and very big games - if your main marketing point or inspiration reference is other games that are really, really fucking well made, it's usually going to put your little Frankenstein monster in the sniper's sightline of harsh criticism, putting it up against what you've already established as fair game for comparison.
Moonlighter feels a lot like this. On its own it's a playable little game that has some unique ideas, but when you look at it next to its obvious points of reference, it gets completely eclipsed. The way it earnestly wears its influences on its sleeve only makes it look all the worse for wear when all you can think about is how much better those games do what Moonlighter is trying to.
karamatsu
1 year ago