Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight

I am terrible with platformers. I consider pixels the bane of modern graphical design. This game became an exception. It's beautiful and has really smooth gameplay, while immersing the player into the atmosphere. Even though I'd still consider it being beautiful not because of pixels but despite them, it's a work of art.

Let me just say up front that the game’s pixel art and map design is fantastic. The game borrows Dark Souls map tropes, like unlocking doors to make way to shortcuts to later areas as well as subtly hinted backtracking opportunities. The pixel art backs up the polished combat and the serviceable movement. I, personally, can’t wrap my head around why the plot captivates others. To me, it all seems like average fantasy fodder; while it does, in fact, present a grim atmosphere, I feel as though I’ve seen it many times before, so then I see it as bland and void of unique character or personality. Therefore, I don’t feel obligated to 100% the map. Then again, I haven’t even bothered to read the item descriptions because I was so jaded by the presentation, so don’t take my word for it if you find it enjoyable after all. Pros: - Excellent Map design - Good Combat - Serviceable and Simple Plot (on the surface maybe) Cons: - Bland-ish Exposition, Dialogue, and Atmosphere (“grim”) – Some subtle combat elements Neutrals: - Good but Slightly Forgettable Soundtrack The combat is impactful, especially when you finish off an enemy, in which your sprite momentarily freezes upon the finishing off an enemy. The problem with this little tick is that your sprite is the only thing on the screen that stops, so when you finish off an enemy and another one is approaching you, you’d have no way of dodging the attack in that moment. This would be especially irritating for a player who’s in a pinch for health and ends up dying due to this effect. The soundtrack was good when I was listening to it, but as of this writing, I cannot remember a single track that was in the game. Just letting that out there. 7.4/10. Get it. It’s cheap and good.

Momodora was quite exactly what I imagined it to be: a nice little Metroidvania with retro look. Maybe it's a bit too much on the retro side regarding menus/inventory etc. Things like leaving the game with Escape or better menu control would have been nice, but it's not a big issue. Design wise, it was a pleasant surprise to see that the game was not utterly frustrating like many other retro titles. There are enough save points, usually there's one close to each boss room and even your items are restored at save points which is a nice touch. From what I can say, there is no possibility to get stuck but it still would have been nice to save some control over your save game(s) like changing the slot or copying save games to other slots. It's possible manually from OS level though. Anyway, Momodora plays nice, the boss battles are not the peak of clever design but also not very frustrating. There were only about three boss battles which I needed to repeat more than a few times to learn attack patterns etc. It's not a perfect game of course. The story is forgettable, there are some slightly unfair places and most of the bonus items are more or less useless. It's relatively easy to reach 98% or 99% of the map, from what I can tell, I missed only one room because I hit some spider early in the game. Plus some items can only be acquired by flawless boss battles (not getting a single hit). I'm not a big fan of this kind of game design, but it's only one room and a few items, so I don't think that I missed much. I needed a bit more than 8h to play the game in the default difficulty and played it again ("Game+") in around 7h to unlock a few more secrets - which shows that I actually enjoyed the game quite a lot. So yeah, not a perfect game of course, but I'm very happy with my purchase and had a good time playing this.

Because that's what this game is. Controls are tight, all enemies attacks have a pre-attack animation and a defined pattern, heals are scarce, and boss fights are fair but punitive. The art and music go very well together, and while not release-it-on-cd worthy, goes nicely in gameplay and improve the atmosphere. Remember to beat all bosses in perfect to get their unique items, make the game more interesting and easier.

If From Software decided to create 2D Dark Souls game it would look really similar to Momodora.