Crimson Moon

DISAPOINTED IN 16 MINS OF GAMEPLAY NOT WORTH $1 Let's get this out of the way: I did not come to Gildenarch to be gentle, and Gildenarch did not come prepared for me to be gentle either, because apparently nobody at ProbablyMonsters play-tested this thing with an actual controller in an actual human hand. I know, I know — "it's an early access roguelite, cut it some slack." No. I paid twenty dollars to reclaim a demon-infested gothic city as a divine warrior, not to spend forty-five minutes fighting the camera in a hallway while a zombie eats my face because the lock-on decided my target was a torch sconce. The 16-Minute Wall I want to be precise about something: it took sixteen minutes. Not sixteen hours of grinding to hit some late-game jank, not a boss six zones deep after the honeymoon period wore off — sixteen minutes, the length of a sitcom episode with the ads cut out, for this game to fully reveal itself and go "yeah, this is it, this is what you paid for." Character creator, load in, one hallway, one janky parry, one camera meltdown, and I was already mentally drafting this review. A game is allowed to have problems. A game is not allowed to hand you its entire rap sheet before you've even finished your first coffee. The Parry: A Cruel Joke Dressed as a Mechanic Every Souls-adjacent game lives or dies by one sacred contract: when you press the button at the right time, the game rewards you, and when you don't, it doesn't. Crimson Moon has apparently never read this contract, skimmed it once at a gas station, and decided "vibes" would suffice instead. The parry window here doesn't feel tight, it feels haunted — like there's a second, invisible Nephilim standing behind you who decides on his own schedule whether your input counts. You will time a parry perfectly, frame-perfect, monk-like patience, and get bonked anyway. You will also fumble one out of pure panic-mashing and get rewarded like a genius. It's not difficulty, it's a coin flip wearing a difficulty costume. Combat Has All the Weight of a Pool Noodle The word the actual critics keep reaching for is "floaty," which is a polite way of saying your sword swings like it's being conducted through a pool of lukewarm gelatin. You're a holy warrior smiting the damned. It should feel like a hammer. Instead every hit lands with the dramatic weight of tapping someone with a rolled-up newspaper. There's no crunch, no feedback, no "yeah, I did that." Just a number that pops up and a monster that staggers slightly like it tripped on its own robe. The Camera Would Like a Word — Actually, It Wouldn't, It's Too Busy Staring at a Wall Put more than one enemy in a room smaller than a cathedral and the camera simply gives up on its one job. It swings, it clips, it decides the inside of a pillar is a great place to spend the next three seconds while you get combo'd from off-screen by something you'll never actually see coming. For a game about "mastery," an alarming amount of your deaths are going to be "I could not see the thing that killed me," which is not mastery, that's just an eye exam. The Angelic Form: One Button That Deletes the Entire Game Design Document Somewhere in development, somebody had the bright idea to give you a big glowing "win the fight" button, and nobody had the nerve to say "hey, maybe this makes every boss we spent months designing completely pointless." Pop the angelic form and bosses stop being encounters and start being a light show you stand near until they die. It's not empowering, it's a mute button for the game's own difficulty curve. Why did you build a Souls-like combat system just to hand players the noclip cheat with a halo on it? Roguelite in Name Only The entire pitch of a roguelite is "no two runs feel the same." Crimson Moon's runs feel the same because the levels are static — same layout, same rooms, same dead ends, run after run, with the randomness apparently confined to which slightly different flavor of zombie mobs you and your friends will be kiting in a circle for the fortieth time. Call it what it is: a level you replay with extra steps, not a roguelite. Verdict Somewhere under the fog and the Unreal Engine sheen there's a decent hack-and-slash trying to get out, but right now Crimson Moon plays like a tech demo that shipped by accident. Floaty hits, a parry system that lies to your face, a camera that actively works against you, and a win button disguised as a superpower — this isn't "built for mastery," it's built for refunds. Two stars, and one of those is for the art team, who clearly showed up to work while the gameplay team was still in the parking lot arguing about frame data. Score: -2/10 — Return to sender, Nephilim.