Moonlighter / Between Dimensions (DLC) (2018/2019, PC STEAM Gameplay 2020)
1Moonlighter is a Rogue-Like Dungeon Exploring Shop-Sim RPG, (LOL!), it was released in 2018. It's DLC Expansion, Between Dimensions was released in 2019. The game was developed by Digital Sun, and published by 11 bit studios.
Not my usual type of RPG I play, the whole shop-sim thing.. kinda turns me off, along with the rogue elements. I'll try and keep this as fairly reviewed as possible.
STORY: 18/20
You play as Will, a guy who wants to explore the ruins of Moonlighter to figure out the many unanswered questions to peoples views on them. He also want's to figure out the meaning of The 5th Door and how to get through it. In the mean time, you are helped by an old man to run your shop that you inherited from your father and to try and return it to it's former glory.
GRAPHICS: 18/20
Graphically this game is pretty awesome, has these types of graphics been done before? yes, but it fits the game's style very well. The town looks great, the npcs and Will looks great and fits in well with the surrounding graphics. I find that some areas could have done with a bit more vegetation about the place, such as when you are heading up to the 5 dungeon doors, that area looks quite empty on the floor.
Dungeons look great, using the same type of graphics as outside the dungeons but once you've been inside a specific dungeon a few too many time for grinding out gold and items you find that they start to look boring because they don't change until you progress and move onto the next dungeon, that's a shame really. The bosses all look great and have their own unique style of combat and skills that will challenge your skills also.
SOUND: 16/20
The game's music is nice, it's nothing special that stands out but it does it's job. Town music is cheery and nice, dungeon music is broody and spooky, and other music tracks are nicely done that fit the purpose they are for. You can now actually buy the OST from the STEAM store if you are into collecting all aspects of a game.
The game has a TON of sound effects, not quite as many as other games that I have played and reviewed in the past but it has all the usual bells and whistles, attacking sounds, monsters dying, attacking and magic sounds, etc, all fitting in well with the game's style of gameplay.
GAMEPLAY: 17/20
The Gameplay in a nutshell consists of you exploring random generated dungeons, building your cash up, building your shop and Moonlighter town up. Figuring out how to get through the 5th door and finding out the whole mystery of these dungeons and how they keep changing. It don't seem a lot but trust me, it's enough to keep you busy for hours and hours.
The grind for the items and gold needed to buy things from the towns stores will take you a while. Building up your shop will give you bonuses such as 10% more Gold gains on sales,, so it's really worth thinking about building your store up also. The problem I think that some people will have is it will get boring pretty quick doing the same stuff over and over to progress.
SYSTEMS: 15/20
The game has a few systems in place that mixes up this game's genre of an RPG. SO! there's a random generating dungeon system where every time you enter a dungeon it will be different in it's layout, treasure chests and rewards. There's a cash system where you gain Gold and you can do various things with it. There's also a shop system where you can set prices on items that you want to sell.
There's a day/night system where you can only open your shop at day, the time cycle can be sped up by sleeping in your bed in the backroom of the shop. There's a storage system also in place, that's in the backroom of the shop, where you can store all your extra items you get in dungeons to sell. There's a weird mirror item you get where you can drop items into that will return some quick gold for you.
There's another nice system where you can donate Gold to Moonlighter town to build the town up. You can open other shops where you can buy stuff and even upgrade your store. Behind all these systems I think if you removed them the game would be extremely small so they compliment the game, though making it progress slower but over all adds to the game as a whole.
OVER ALL: 84/100
Over all, the game game is not bad, it's certainly one of the better shop-sim RPG games i've played, and mixed in with it's graphics and music it is certainly a step up from the TONS of pixel games of the same genre. SO! would I recommend this game? yeah sure, but have reservations about the time it will take to finish and how quick you will tire of the dungeon graphics if you stay in there too long.
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If you're interested in trying this game out you can find it on STEAM here..
https://store.steampowered.com/app/606150/Moonlighter/
Have you played this game? What did you think? Let me know in the comments below.
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