Moonlighter is a wonderful game that uses a delightful separation of tools to make you want to keep playing. It innovates the dungeon crawler genre in the most ingenious way possible.
Moonlighter manages to perfectly balance the best bits of Stardew Valley, Dark Souls and Binding of Isaac for a game that just keeps you coming back for more.
I was always looking for a game, where you just loot dungeons to collect items, but I could never describe what i specifically meant. This morning a friend of mine recommended this game to me, i checked it up and it was on playstation plus. I am two hours in now and i can say that this game is exactly that, what i was searching for. Can totally recommend it, even after only two hours!
What a great concept for a game! Go through Zelda-style dungeons, kill monsters, get loot, set up a shop and sell the loot you don't keep for yourself to customers, and then use that money to upgrade your gear, town, and shop. You figure out how to set prices based on customer reactions. It's a simple but satisfying gameplay loop that is addictive as hell. The only real weakness is that the game isn't longer/there isn't more stuff to upgrade in the town or on your gear.
The music in this game deserves special mention. Moonlighter has my favorite OST since Mass Effect in 2007. I recently purchased the soundtrack for $6.99 on bandcamp which comes in a variety of file types including 320kbps mp3s and FLACs. David Fenn is now a name I will follow.
If you’ve been looking for your next dungeon crawling fix, I think Moonlighter is an easy recommendation to anybody who’s a fan of the genre. With the addition of merchant simulation, the game manages to stay refreshing throughout.
Moonlighter builds good will, even in the face of some of its design choices. The grind from lowly dungeoneer and shopkeeper to an adventurer in your own right is enjoyable and, thanks to the gorgeous pixel art, you won't want to take your eyes off it. [July 2018, p.82]
Moonlighter is an incredibly enjoyable jaunt through some interesting ideas and some fun fights. While the combat gets a little easy as you progress, the fun of watching money pour in as you play is immensely satisfying. It would be nice if there was more reason to play after completion as is normally the case with roguelites, but equally having an actual conclusion is a breath of fresh air for the genre. It is a lot of fun and one that will keep you entertained for a fair while if you want to sink your time into it.
Moonlighter is a beautiful game that combines simplified versions of two game types into one. It’s a novel attempt that plays it too safe on both fronts, and is held back from being something truly fantastic because of its lack of variety.
The story is barely present, and persistent elements that tie the rogue-lite experience together – like crafting and store expansion – have too little impact to convey a satisfying sense of progress. When viewed on a smaller scale, the accessible combat and simple formula make it easy to pick up and enjoy Moonlighter casually. However, my excitement and enthusiasm were at their highest during the brief window when I didn’t know exactly what to expect next.
En resumen tienes que "hacerte cargo" de una tienda y explorar dungeons para vender lo que encuentres ahí, es la mecánica.
Su sistema de dungeons (4 con sus respectivos BOSS) y su generación aleatoria de estos ayudan a que sea muy rejugable. Tiene aceptable número de armas, 5 tipos con distintas variables y 3 tipos de armaduras ligera/media/pesada. También tienes un corral de Pets que te dan distintos boost a la hora de explorar los dungeons.
Mi único PERO sería la escasa posibilidad en cuanto a mejorar y personalizar tu tienda.
Solo tienes la opción de 3 upgrades de tamaño y 4 upgrades de operatividad (con sus variables), lo que limita ENORMEMENTE la sensacion de progresión y de sentido de tanto grindeo.
Te la pasarás la mayoría del tiempo buscando objetos en los dungeons para venderlos hacerte de dinero y "mejorar" tu tienda así como para tus armas y armaduras. Tiene NG+ pero el único sentido de este es probar un nuevo tipo de arma muy prescindible.
La historia es totalmente un 6, no esperes mucho. En general el pixel art es bastante bueno asi como la música.
Tal vez si hubiera el mismo enfoque que le dieron a los dungeons se lo hubiesen dado al hecho de TENER UNA TIENDA o al menos de mejorar el pueblo sería completamente bueno. Fuera de eso es un juego bastante disfrutable y si valió el tiempo invertido.
Combination of rogue-like dungeon crawler and trading game, Moonlighter is a little lightweight but there's something quite hypnotic and soothing about its unashamed RPG lite level-grinding thanks to the pretty graphics and chilled out attitude.
This is a promising game, the dungeon crawl aspect of it is enjoyable and with many types of monsters and mini events, as well as a pretty good aesthetic and soundtrack fun can be had.
Unfortunately, the limited weapons and no utility in combat makes it a shallow hack and slash that gets repetitive. That, and the game is about grinding ingredients from the same monsters in order to make gold and buy a very limited selection of equipment.
That said, this game would be a 6 or perhaps 7 just off the dungeon part. But, half the game is the shop part. Unlike some other games that do an excellent job of it- this basically just makes selling your loot tedious. It's not fun, it's time consuming, and it makes dungeons take far, far longer than they should to get through- which in turn makes them more tedious and start to wear; without this, you'd be through the dungeons much more quickly and they wouldn't have time to become boring.
This game really can only be suggested to those who enjoy gold and mat farming in MMOs, because that's precisely what it is about.
Again- this could have been a 6 or 7, but by turning it into a grind they've made almost everything nice about the game become boring.
Very promising start though.
ive come back after playing quite a bit more to reduce my rating from 6 to 3. the further you get into this game, the worse it gets. we are punished for exploring, punished for selling items, money means nothing, we cant unlock literally *anything* until we beat a brick wall of a boss fight thats literally never skill based, its just trading hits and hoping your potions last to the end of the battle.
the inventory system is horrendous, the PC controls are so bad that it literally took me more than 2 years of owning the game to even find a layound that was halfway workable. pressing the hotkey to quick transfer ALL items moves your entire inventory the INTO chests in the middle of dungeon runs and completely disorganizes them. hitting sort will completely and utterly unsort your inventory due to 50% or more of all items being cursed. inventory can't be accessed during combat, meaning that tons and tons of items fall into the depths because we can't drop enough junk to pick them up. everything about this is a hassle, and the more that i play, the more i realize that the late game is the worst part. please, don't punish yourself with this crud, it only has good reviews from people who haven't made it very far yet.
besides all of these issues, there's still everything else i had a problem with in my original review, but that can be summarized with "these are some ridiculously lazy devs who will literally charge you for an asset flip before they fix a bug that makes their volume sliders stop working
6 years after the games release and even after dlc came out, the game still has a day 1 volume bug that makes the music and sfx ridiculously loud.
there is a lot of potential for a good game here, but there are some issues with pacing in the mid to late game, and far too few gear options. money is utterly pointless after a while, and loot can be rare, so you are de incentivized to even open the shop.
many boss fights are basically impossible without first maxing out your gear, and you can't get the ingredients for better gear until you beat the bosses because money cant buy anything besides potions once you are about halfway through the game.
not enough upgrades for the shop, some upgrades dont make sense while others are hugely imbalanced to benefit the player's income. there is no guide whatsoever on what prices you should sell your goods at, and the highly successful business next door easily sells goods at 10x the price you could get away with, which can make finding the value of your goods a misleading and confusing endeavor.
movement, especially in combat, is sluggish and limited most of the time, and it's not generally possible to dodge all of the bosses or enemy's attacks with this system, so any serious fight is going to consist of just trading hits and chugging potions. there's a lot of charm in moonlighter, but it feels that the effort wasn't really put in to make it a cohesively paced or balanced title.
playing this after dave the diver, i can't give moonlighter more than a 6/10. the devs need to finish their game, because the DLC is pretty feeble as well.
SummaryMoonlighter is an Action RPG with rogue-lite elements that demonstrates two sides of the coin – revealing everyday routines of Will, an adventurous shopkeeper that secretly dreams of becoming a hero.