Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault

This is definitely one of those painful reviews in that I like the art style, the basics of combat, items and the shop, progression, pacing, yada yada, but there's just one crippling massive flaw that holds me back from enjoying or recommending it. The enemy design, especially bosses and minibosses. (Note this is from exclusively playing on the highest difficulty - damage sponginess may be less bad on lower difficulties, but then I imagine the situations where I find the game too-easy-but-tedious would just be even easier.) Most bosses in this game have a design 20-30 years out of date, depending on multiple prolonged moves that make them totally immune to damage for like 5-20 seconds during which you just dodge stuff. There's some "normal" stuff where you can dodge their swings, sneak in a few hits, repeat, but if you have a strong build going the fast majority of a boss fight will just be waiting for it to stop being invulnerable AGAIN. For minibosses, this flips around the other way - they are 100% predictable. For most minibosses, if they finished their previous move and you are close to them, they will always do the same next move. So you dodge that move, then go back to being close to them, get a few hits in... you see where this is going? Partway into the Endless Greed Colessium I might have a miniboss where I just stab him 4 times, dodge his one move, go back in causing him to start the same move as I stab him 4 more times, and just repeat this for literally like 2 minutes while the stupidly unnecessary HP bar for a one-note enemy gets ground down. Off the top of my head I can't think of a single miniboss that doesn't work this way - as soon as you clean up the adds (not that you can't still do this while also dodging adds, it just makes stuff even slower) you can and will get them caught in a cycle of using whatever move they use at short range over and over as you keep avoiding it. Oh, and that's the enemies where the moves are quick and easy to doge. Some enemies go into a mode where they just chase you while dealing instant damage if you get near them, so you spend 70% of the fight just kiting around in a big circle waiting until they're between moves. You're 100% certain to win without taking any damage, and spend multiple minutes doing it, if your current build isn't wildly OP (say, because you're focusing on getting high quality chests instead of more combat perks). Not that OP builds are particularly exciting, they all really just amount to "some stuff triggers some other stuff and it makes your numbers very big" - it'll almost never involve actually mixing up your gameplay beyond perhaps slightly changing around your main damage combo. But yeah, like, when I have a good run going I dread the idea of "well I should do a few rounds of Endless to get extra loot" because I know the majority of my time will be spent just doing a dodge-loop versus minibosses that have no chance of hurting me once I learn to dodge their *one* move while I grind down their HP bar. If my damage was higher all that'd mean is I'd get through endless faster until their HP bars get long enough that it's back to taking ages. There are other combat issues - some enemies are prone to like "red projectiles aimed at red projections while red waves cover the ground" making it hard to tell apart different aspects of what's going on, but mostly the game is pretty decent about color contrast. What it isn't decent about, though, is visual effects - players burning, hexing, poisoning or such enemies have WAY too vivid visuals. If you have multiple status effects on an enemy it becomes significantly harder to tell apart their telegraphs - you can't tell if someone is glowing if they're already glowing super bright red while VFX keep spraying out of them. You'll still figure out over time what to look for despite this, but it's still a massive hamper on clarity, especially for enemies that are already smaller and have much less clear tells. For what it's worth I also found the game kinda crashy, especially since you can't continue a dungeon run from an autosave it randomly freezing after you open a chest can kinda suck. But yeah, it's a real shame. I remember liking the first game and was feeling really optimistic about this one the first 10 hours or so, and I keep playing thinking the combat will get mixed up, but now that I'm trying out the Endless Greed Colessium and such it's instead pretty much just turned up the everyone-knew-this-wasn't-fun-20-years-ago type of enemy design up to 11, where I spend like 60% of the endless time just doing identical dodge-and-damage loops vs the same handful of one-note minibosses. And that's when I'm lucky enough that their moveset isn't one where I have to spend 70% of my time on the "dodge" part as they just have an instant damage radius bigger than your melee reach... (Did you find my complaining about this repetitive? Yeah, that's kinda the problem, ain't it?)

tl;dr: wait and see for full release or get it on sale if you liked the first one. I loved moonlighter one, and if you enjoyed it you'll probably enjoy this one too. Unfortunately, as is, it feels pretty half baked. It's early access, so that makes sense, but I'm leaving this review and will change it if they fix issues. I can't recommend purchasing in it's current state unless you liked moonlighter one or really like management/shop games with roguelite combat. If you haven't played the first game, I'd recommend that instead. The good: (I'll spend less time here not cause there's not much to like, but I want to leave useful feedback) There's lot's of stuff to like. The characters are cute, graphics are nice, I love the little town your in. Vibes are immaculate IMO. I haven't gotten through the story much, but it's fairly engaging I'd like to see more. The weapons in combat are varied and fun, and I felt the need to use my whole kit rather than spam one move. There's lots of upgrades to get and meta progression to be had, and the minigame of how you place the relics you get from each dungeon is well done and enjoyable. The less good: I'd agree with other reviewers that the shop system feels a little pointless. I'm rolling in money without spending much time thinking about or engaging with the shop system. That's too bad in a game based around running a shop. The amounts for the vault challenges (part of the main story) also feel pretty underwhelming compared to progress on perks/dungeons/weapon upgrades. It felt like I blew through the first three, but I haven't played further so maybe that changes. The dungeons are pretty good, and I think there's a lot of potential in the combat system (very similar to hades). Unfortunately, right now it's just okay. The perks don't feel like they change the gameplay or your build much; they just apply a debuff or increase some damage by some percent. That takes away the fun of roguelite combat where you happen to throw together a super strong build through some perk synergy. Not to mention some of them just straight up don't work, or have confusing descriptions (like "replica" damage and "wound" damage. Are they the same? do they stack? Idk I never took replica damage perks cause it doesn't seem like it stacks). Basically, there needs to be more opportunities for synergistic builds that really let you pop off. The controls in combat don't feel great. Your character seems to snap to enemies inconsistently and it feels like inputs are missed or delayed occasionally. Maybe I didn't spend enough time getting used to it but it was bothering me enough that I didn't want to keep trying. Difficulty feels weird, some enemies are really annoying but not hard, and some bosses are easier than normal enemies. This one is personal though, others might find it different. Devs, I really loved the first game, and I'm leaving this review cause I want to love this one too. You have the potential for a real gem here. STEAMDECK NOTE: As is, this game is not steamdeck compatible. The load times and performance issues make it near unplayable. I think it's ♥♥♥♥♥♥ for the devs to claim steamdeck compatibility, when they've also said that they are not working on performance in EA and only plan to fix it for launch. Optimization on handheld was a problem in the first one too.

玩3把闪退一把,直接白干

Каждый раз, когда мне везёт, игра считает, что это ошибка и крашится, обнуляя весь прогресс.

Such a fun game, and an incredibly beautiful spin on the first one. I loved the pixelart in the original, but the gorgeous 3D style really works well for this game. The dungeons are fun to play, and I really enjoy a lot of the new features and inventory management choices that weren't available or worked differently in the first game. If you loved Moonlighter, I highly recommend this one!

Достойное продолжение и развитие идей первой части. Многие вещи, которые меня душили в пиксельной версии, были исправлены, допилены и улучшены во второй. Играть теперь фулл кайф. Вдохновлялись тут явно Hades в первую очередь. Взаимодействие с оружием близко к нему + очень отдалённо напоминает Monster Hunter. Мета прогрессия, "избранное" оружие с повышенным дропом каждый ран и всё такое прочее. Сами раны теперь стали выглядеть не как большая карта из первой части, а скорее как сегменты из Slay The Spire. Так же появилась возможность собрать билд на ходу, прикрепляя к себе усиливающие скиллы. Тут тоже передаём небольшой привет Hades. Короче добрая игра. По мне так лучше первой части на несколько голов.

中だるみが酷い ダンジョン潜って拾ったアイテム売ってを金を稼ぎ店を大きくするを繰り返すよくあるやつ 今作は一定金額貯めないとシナリオが進まない仕様、始めは目標金額も低くぽんぽん先に進めますが後半必要金額が跳ね上がります、その頃には強化も一通り済んでダンジョンも楽にクリアできるようになります、そんな楽にクリアできるダンジョンを金稼ぐためだけに何度も何度も何度も周回しないといけません、これがかなり怠い・・・ アクション自体はそこまで悪くないのに前作に無いクソ要素が入ったがためにクソゲー寄りの凡ゲーになりました

This game is very refreshing. As a roguelite novice, after playing Hades, I got this one recommanded and I love the 2-part aspect of it. The part where you play the challenging game and the part where you get to do some management with the shop and lay back for a bit. The difficulty is rather good! I played in the highest difficulty, and at first it was a good git gud moment.

I enjoyed the first Moonlighter game, and this one has improved on it in every way! Can't wait to see what's in store with future updates.

Crash to desktop events and stuttering performance on a PC that should be more than able to handle it suggest that the game isn't quite ready for the prime time yet. Unfortunately it's difficult to assess what others are writing about sustainability of the core game loop if even early steps in the game are marred by these issues. Come back in a year perhaps.