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This is a beautiful metroidvania x souls-like game. The pixel art is truly a treat for the eyes. The music compliments the mood and setting, and never distracts from the rest of the game.

The level design is solid, but the timing of platforms seems to be designed to waste as much of the player's time as possible. While the colours suit the world of the game, the resulting title sets, and appearance just blend together in my memories into a dully coloured blur. The map is awful; the single pixel lines, lack of details, and lack of delineations made some parts less useful than classic style maps of just squares representing a room with a coloured door. I found it extremely difficult to use.

Gameplaywise the controls aren't as tight as I would prefer for a game like this but are otherwise fine. The boss fights are not particularly difficult or satisfying, but more of an annoyance. I found the doppelganger battles to be more interesting than the bosses, but even they became annoying after a dozen. The final boss fight is by far the best fight in the game.

I would say Moonscar is an okay game, with terrific pixel art, and a decent but somewhat generic souls-like story. Weird that soul-like games often have a story about immortality and a decaying world. I would recommend this game only to hardcore fans of metroidvanias. Side scrolling metroidvanias I have played relatively recently and would recommend over this game include Sundered, Carrion, Metroid Dread, and An Elysian Tail.

Streamed on 2022-11-20
https://www.twitch.tv/kruge