Digital Sun’s Action-RPG Roguelike, seven years after Moonlighter release, there’s little time to welcome it Moonlighter 2 To the world. I played solid slices in Poland during an 11-bit event in a cool art space with even cooler people. I say here that it looks like a supercharged sequel that will improve on its entire predecessor.
And that’s not a small amount in the original Moonlighter. It was a huge amount of product at the time. Whether it’s held well today depends entirely on how your preferences have changed. It’s a little late, a little clunky, and is generally more suitable for those craving Game Boy Day. Moonlighter 2 creates battle spectacles, refines store management for the original Roguelike game, brings a luxurious new art style set to pop into today’s OLED displays and handle beautifully in modern handhelds. The main character Will is back and is certainly better than ever.
Since the original Moonwriter put developer Digital Sun on the map in 2018, the team has released a MageSeeker: A League of Legends story, bringing another new IP to the market a few months ago with the well-received RTS Cataclismo. Now, the team is ready to apply the lessons learned from these projects to Moonwriter 2.
This is a big starting point from the original, combining it with the combination of dungeon romps like Isaac/Zelda and the aspects of the big names who risked everything in order to collect more treasures to sell in town. That first game was likened to early steam hits (and my personal favorite) Recettear.
Digital Sun changes its aesthetics and appeal to movement, bringing it closer along the door of death and Hades. Combining soft palettes and liquid 3D animations, Moonlighter 2 strips off the aesthetics of the SNES era in favor of refined polygons.
The visual appeal has taken a big turn, but the Moonlighter core loop remains the same. Kick off right after the first game and you’ll be reunited with the core cast immediately. Now, Will and his party, who have been kicked out of Renoka and its legendary Moonlight Store, are able to return to dungeon diving for wealth and relics, step in and head home.
Once the tutorial got out of the way, the Infinite Safe (or the Capitalist Cube I called) required that they make 5,000 gold in one shift in the store. This meant going back to the dungeon and breaking and grabbing what I could.
The dilb in Moonlighter 2 is an isometric run through a vibrantly colored diorama, rather than a top-down perspective of the original small square room. Defeat the villain (or simply run to the exit) and choose the next room.
The icon above each transporter highlights the type of room, so it’s up to you to decide whether to risk everything in the boss room, seduce fate with another gauntlet, or chase away into simple treasures for game-changing perks or final chests.
How to manage your booty. Many artefacts have the effect of inducing collection and reactions to others, so you need to carefully consider what you collect, where to place it, and how you will respond to your neighbors.
A good example was one relic that burns adjacent items. If you put a slot next to what you’ll replicate when burned and plan accordingly, you can get double the product. Another is worth grabs to increase the value of sticks and logs that are usually useless and change the illegal run.
Back in the store, the revised barter mini-game is about to correct the mistakes in the original, rather simple shop management process. Here, you apply a token to increase the price of items that the buyer expresses interest. One increases it at the current setting rate, and the other increases it by the set amount.
The more items you sell, the more perks you will have to unlock for that shift, so you will be able to sell something like wood worthy of 1,500 gold for 1,500 gold for 1,500 gold.
It’s all about applying these tokens to manage how and when and why you apply them to maximize the value of what’s sold. You barely start, but if you’re lucky with Perk Rolls, you’ll be too many to use at once.
It pairs with microgames presented as a general housekeeping obligation to underestimate the value of items, which will improve the shopkeeping process from the waiting game towards a strategic take on the mall. You can smartly sell low-priced products to enhance perks before bringing out rare artifacts.
The battle is also desperate. You lament various villains enough to cut them off, smack them with your bag to smash them against the wall, bounce off other enemies or drain them from the map, Smash Bros. Style.
Each hit slowly recharges a ranged weapon, weaving between nearby enemy combos, and weaving shots that debilitate the faraway enemies. I hope my swing will be heavier, but as more items packed into the bag it becomes stronger, but I did not see any evidence of that during the short playthrough. The crossed fingers are an unlockable perk.
Buying new weapons on the base also completely changed the atmosphere of the battle. Whether it’s a permanent upgrade or a completely different weapon type, there’s a lot to play with.
However, I was suffering from the lack of obvious visual cues (like flash) for incoming attacks. This has made dealing with the inevitable flock a bit tricky and quick way to finish the run early. You can choke on skills issues that you’ve only played for a few hours, but some kind of signal helps you sell this as something like Roguelike rather than something like Souls.
Once you finish the run, either spontaneously or via death, you will see a progress meter. I couldn’t reach the boss at 1/3 mark, but I everytime Itching to go again. Anyway, right after whipping a toasted branch at the price of a used car.
Moonlighter 2 is becoming a fulfilling sequel to a new generation. If the original felt like Isaac’s binding healthy take, this rethink is the natural blend of today’s cozy games and the fast-paced action of the latest Roglique. It records meeting Hades, and I can’t wait to play more (and lose more) one day this year.
If you want to take it for a spin yourself, the Moonlighter 2 demo will hit Steam today.
