Moonlighter is a special kind of RPG that successfully takes advantage of its tried-and-true genre while subverting it with unique ideas and addictive gameplay. Plundering dungeons of their rare items while creating your own financial market from selling them makes for a self-fueling cycle that makes Moonlighter a lot of fun, despite its use of the somewhat tired roguelike formula.
Moonlighter
Developer: Digital Sun Games
Price: $19.99
Platforms: PS4 (reviewed), Xbox One, PC
MonsterVine was provided with a PS4 code for review
The plight of the RPG shopkeep is one that has long gone unseen. In each Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, players buy items and leave within moments, sparing not even a moment to consider the woes of those in the noble shopkeeping profession. Moonlighter sets out to change this long-standing injustice by putting players in the role of the RPG shopkeep, and it succeeds with flying colors.
You play as Will, a young man who is a descendant of a family of shopkeepers. Unlike heroes or adventurers, Will explores dungeons only to procure new stock for his store to sell each day. Against the warnings of a local curmudgeon, he aspires to follow in the footsteps of his father, who explored the dungeons in the hopes of unlocking their secrets. By beating the bosses at the end of each dungeon, Will collects four keys that will open a mysterious door that holds the true mystery of the world’s dungeons. It’s a well-structured and perfectly sufficient story that channels the stories of SNES-era RPGs while creating its own solid identity.
Moonlighter’s story perfectly sets up its roguelike gameplay, which makes it feel more fitting. The genre (or subgenre) has been used exhaustively in this recent generation, so having a story that works with the concept is a welcome feature. While the dungeon layout changes every life, you can pay gold to keep it the same once while returning to where you left off. This makes bosses easier to deal with, but it puts a sizeable dent in your savings. Weighing your options makes every dungeon plunder feel heavy and important, even if the dungeons are always changing.
“Keep in mind that if you die, you lose everything, so aggressive avarice is certainly not encouraged.“
Moonlighter’s combat is straight out of Link to the Past, as it takes the form of a top-down hack-and-slash with RPG elements. As you slice foes up, they drop a variety of standard RPG materials and items, ranging from healing water to gold nuggets. So long as you can escape the dungeon alive, you’ll return to Will’s shop with these materials in tow. Keep in mind that if you die, you lose everything, so aggressive avarice is certainly not encouraged.
This is where the second major part of Moonlighter takes place. In Will’s store, you have to put items up for sale at prices of your choosing. As customers browse each item, you have to gage their reactions to each price. Using these reactions, you alter the prices for each item in order to make maximum profits on each purchase. It’s an unusual but thrilling way to make dungeon-crawling feel entirely worthwhile, especially as you get deeper into the financial side of things. Upselling items too much diminishes the market for that item in specific, while flooding the market with cheap items weakens it overall. There’s a lot to consider when setting prices, which could be an entirely separate game itself.
“The variety in what you can spend gold on is much appreciated, as it makes you want to earn enough gold to do everything possible.”
You can use gold earned from selling items to build up the village Will lives in. From bringing in new shops and citizens to upgrading your own store, there’s no shortage of things to do in order to make the village bigger and better as time goes on. You can also use this gold to buy equipment, which makes dungeon-crawling easier to do, or potions to help keep Will alive in boss fights. The variety in what you can spend gold on is much appreciated, as it makes you want to earn enough gold to do everything possible.
Visually, Moonlighter has a rather stylish retro look that conveys its smooth and whimsical art style quite well. Enemy designs, both the original designs and trope-based ones, are creative, while each boss is impressive to gaze upon. The different dungeons and their themes are fitting of Moonlighter’s RPG inspirations, while still being different enough to keep exploration interesting.
The music of Moonlighter is quite strong, though a couple songs can become somewhat grating if you dungeon-crawl too much. The soundtrack is quite pleasant overall though, with quite a few memorable tracks.
The Final Word
Moonlighter is a different kind of RPG that boasts a great deal of depth while serving as an interesting subversion of the genre it’s a part of. While the roguelike genre is certainly well-worn, Moonlighter brings enough to the table to make it one of the most interesting games of the year thus far.
– MonsterVine Review Score: 4 out of 5 – Good
