Not Recommended 4.8 hrs on record

In my ongoing and likely futile effort to write a Steam review for every game in my library (#491 out of 633)... it's time for Moonlighter.



Despite its fantastic presentation, Moonlighter is one of the most uninspired roguelikes I've encountered, which—given the state of the genre—is almost impressive. I wish I could tell you Moonlighter was just as fun to play as it is to watch—few roguelikes can boast such polished and appealing visuals, or as atmospheric and moody music. But at the end of the day, no matter how pretty a game looks, it all comes down to the combat, right? And here's where Moonlighter falls flat on its face.



So much is unpleasant about combat in Moonlighter that it's hard to know quite where to begin. Fundamentally the game is built around simple melee combat—you can attack, dodge and block. Pretty simple, basic fare. The most immediate problem is that the player character and enemies have the full range of movement, while attacks can only be directed in four directions (vertically or horizontally). If you're not perfectly aligned with your enemy, the attack will miss—even if they're grinding up against the player character.



Further, there's a noticeable (and perpetually distracting) lag between inputting an action and performing that action. Want to attack or dodge? Better get used planning slightly ahead to accommodate the delay. Altogether this makes combat feel slow, clunky and imprecise.



And then there's the dungeons. While enemies, at least, are varied and interesting (often boasting unique attacks and intuitive weaknesses you can exploit) the dungeons are very samey, composed entirely of same-sized rectangular rooms. Randomly arranged, sure, but one room is not appreciably different from another aside from the enemy types contained therein and the terrain. Which is another problem (who'd've guessed?): the thing about pixel graphics is that they are, by their intrinsic nature, very simple Only so much information can be conveyed—so it's a mistake to try and depict complex environmental details with this aesthetic. Which is a very roundabout way of saying that the dungeon floors are littered with bizarre design elements: broken rubble you can safely pass over that is visually indistinguishable from impassable rubble; a sticky floor material colored red, and glowing like hot lava, that is perfectly safe to traverse—it simply slows you down. Obviously these are things you can eventually grow accustomed to—the point is you shouldn't have to. If terrain is dangerous or impassable, that should be immediately apparent. When it's not, a game has a serious design problem.



But Moonlighter isn't just a dungeon-delving combat game, no, it's also yet one more entry in an increasingly long line of games trying to mimic Recettear, while utterly failing to understand what made Recettear so special in the first place.



In the vein of that cult-classic RPG shopkeep subgenre progenitor, your time in Moonlighter is evenly split between diving into a convenient nearby dungeon to collect treasure, and managing a local shop to sell it off to adventurers. What's the difference between the player character and a generic adventurer? Good question. Anyway, that's where the title comes from: you play a shopkeeper who moonlights as an adventurer. Clever, right? Shame they wasted all their wits on the title. If you were expecting an interesting or compelling or amusing narrative to frame this adventure, you'll be sorely disappointed: Moonlighter takes place in a generic RPG town straight out of a generic NES-era roleplaying game, where one day a very generic dungeon popped into existence. Populated to perpetually respawning monsters, treasure chests, and randomly-shifting floors. Insofar as a game premise goes, I can think of none more creatively bankrupt. And the colorful cast of characters populating this town we're stuck in? Yeah, they're all fellow shopkeeprs—and boy oh boy do they have a lot of fetch requests if you want to unlock any new inventory.



If that setup sounds so familiar it's giving you migraines, it may be because it's lifted wholesale from the most insipid of Japanese Isekai stories—constructed in worlds based off a generic archetypal roleplaying game (typically Dragon Quest. It's a bizarre thing to see: a game borrowing the generic premise of a genre that created by reducing game cliches to their most generic.



Recettear worked because it paired the routine of dungeon-delving and selling with an engaging and humorous narrative – character that grew and changed as you progressed – with a clear goal and dramatic arc. Yet Moonlighter, like most (all?) Recettear-likes only sees the superficial structure of Recettear and mimics that, omitting all of the personality and charm.



Pretty though it may be, Moonlighter offers only clumsy action combat and randomized NPC customers to create a profoundly tedious gameplay loop tied together by a narrative lacking any self-respect. It is a game that hopes to get by purely on the novelty of the its premise (to be fair, Recettear-likes are pretty uncommon), clean minimalist visuals, and a simple Skinner box gameplay loop.



I need more than that. I hope you do, too. It's something of a sad truism that the most engaging and compelling and captivating roguelikes tend to have simple, arguably ugly visuals and an overall lack of polish. I keep trying out games like Moonlighter, hoping for one to finally marry the mechanical and systemic depth of my favorite roguelikes with gorgeous visual flair—and every time I walk out of the affair disappointed. Maybe Moonlighter could be improved substantially in a sequel, or possibly even (substantial) DLC, but aside from the presentation I feel like Moonlighter makes so many missteps that you'll forgive me if I don't hold my breath.

Posted September 11.