Moonlighter

Good art and music design isn't going to make up for the actual game being not very good. Lack of gameplay variety, lack of crafting variety, lack of store management nuance, and the writing is kinda poor as well.

Don't spend money on this game. EVERY time you leave your shop open until it closes automatically, you get softlocked. Supposedly, this should only happen if you have a customer quest or something (I never even got that far into the game) but even if you don't, the game seems to think that there is still a ghost customer in your shop and thus blocks you from exiting or "going to sleep" (ending the day). And of course the game only has autosave, so if you exit to the menu or desktop and reload, you start again at the previous day. You do have an in-game clock, but that only shows you stupid little symbols for when it approaches night. Why in the world put a clear time indicator in a game... I've seen multiple posts on forums about this problem over 1 year ago. Patches or updates have been released, sure. But this bug has not been fixed. I'm not wasting my time anymore with this. Everything else I've read in reviews is also true. The NPCs have no life to them and the game has barely more to offer after you've been through the first few days... Assuming the game doesn't softlock you to death.

Finished the game, finished the dlc. Music is good, art is good. This game is a very strong foundation if someone would like to build on it. It just lacks depth. There is not enough "gaming" in this game. Go to dungeon, open shop, buy upgrades. That's it. Each element is decent, but none really shines. Basic dungeon crawler, basic shop management, basic upgrading. Bought it on a sale (I think) and I'm happy with what I got. Full price is a bit too much. Overall - nice game for about 5-10$. A lot of potential.

Moonlighter is a game that presents as something potentially complex, but is actually fairly basic and there isn't much mechanical progression beyond what is presented at the start of the game. Combat, while differentiated between five unique weapon types, is straightforward once you find a weapon you like. Similarly the shopkeeping system really just boils down to dialing in on the items max selling price and catching the occasional thief who wanders in. The game suffers mostly from a lack of progression hooks and later game content. The content here though is well polished and I enjoyed the basic gameplay loop enough to see it through to the end. A good simple game, but if you're looking for something with lots of depth perhaps look elsewhere.

The store part of this game is a chore, it is easy and basic with zero challenge or depth that only consumes your free time in exchange for in game gold. The dungeon part is decently enjoyable but your strength is vastly dependant on your gear. The balance in this game feels like a free to play mobile game, without upgrades you are going to have a really hard time, at some points I basically got one shot by enemies. What this means is that the game is all about grind instead of being about skill, this is especially bad when the dungeon part gets boring really fast. After 3-4 runs you start yearning for progression, for something new. That "something new" is a whole lot of grinding and farming away though, first grind the dungeon and then grind the store so you can upgrade yourself sufficently to defeat the next boss and unlock the next stage. Also, remember that fighting the boss and dying means you lose almost all the loot you found in the dungeon. This incentivies safe boring play since the best way of moving forward is boring grind the whole dungeon but do NOT enter the boss room. Use money to upgrade gear and rinse repeat until you have upgraded enough gear to defeat it. The only enjoyable thing in this game is the upgrades, but to upgrade you need to grind. What does this sound like? Free to play mobile game. It is sad, I wanted to like this game so badly.