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.
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.