RPG was never my main genre as a kid, but when I did play, I was always drawn to the item shops in the various towns my party would visit. I always wondered, though, how the items got on the shelves, waiting for intrepid adventurers to spend their hard-won coin? Was there a delivery service? Fantasy Amazon?
Fast forward to 2018, when I discovered Moonlighter, and the answer to my question. Of course, the shopkeepers were stocking up in their off-hours, paying the iron price for the wares they would sell for a profit the next day. I was instantly hooked by the dungeon-crawler/shopkeeping-sim adventure with the retro-inspired pixel art aesthetic.
Now, the eagerly awaited sequel, Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault, from developer Digital Sun and publisher 11 bit studios, has arrived in Early Access, and I’ve been toiling away in the shiny new dungeons. This version of the game only offers what I guess is about half of the total experience (three biomes in all, with an unknown number waiting in the full release), so this won’t be a proper review, but I’m excited to discuss what the sequel has to offer.
Strangers in a Strange Land
The story picks up where the original game left off: After conquering all five dungeons on the outskirts of their beloved home, Rynoka, our hero Will and his fellow villagers were transported through an inter-dimensional gate to an alien land known as Tresna. Stranded there with seemingly no hope of return, Will and his friends face an uncertain future. Suddenly, a mysterious cube appears in the town square, pronouncing itself as The Endless Vault and offering Will a possible way to get back to Rynoka. Now, our hero must dust off his sword and once again hunt for relics he can turn into money, fulfilling the Vault’s requests and seeing where its mysterious overtures might lead him.
Tresna acts as your home base, holding not just your shop but also your friends and assorted new inhabitants acting as vendors and quest givers. There’s a much larger collection of fun and interesting characters than in the first game, and their dialogue is well-written, making it worth the trip to go see each of them from time to time. The collection of shops ranges from the usual apothecary and blacksmith to a haughty woman selling upgrades for your shop and a foul-mouthed alien who will upgrade your gun in exchange for helping him get revenge on those who have wronged him. It’s a fun place to explore between missions, and the promise of growing and upgrading these shops in the full release bodes well for this part of the experience.
Take a Look Around
The most obvious change from the original game is the graphical overhaul that has taken place, transitioning from 2D pixel art to a fully 3D aesthetic. Some will argue that this is a change for the worse (and I often prefer pixel art myself), but I find it to be a welcome and enjoyable upgrade here. While each dungeon in the first game had a different theme (tech, forest, etc), their designs only amounted to the same 4 walls with a different paint job. The three biomes (each with two parts, amounting to six different levels) on offer in the sequel’s Early Access version are all completely different and absolutely captivating in their design and visual style.
The opening desert level might look a bit staid thanks to its color palette, but the existence of multiple levels and the sheer amount of stuff going on immediately elevates it from the flat design of the original’s dungeons. The second biome, known as The Gallery, is where things really start to look marvelous. The background of moving cubes filled with artifacts (some of them living creatures) is a visual feast, and I would often stand around after clearing the screen of enemies just to take it all in. The final biome, a Grecian-inspired level of floating islands, sees you zip-lining up and across the area to reach the next piece of land, where you’ll battle your foes.
The graphical glow-up extends to the characters and enemies themselves. You can see Will’s backpack bounce along as he swings his sword, watch the expressions on the faces of your enemies as they attack and perish, and see the grass waving lazily in the breeze as sparks and explosions cascade across the screen. It’s a level of detail simply not possible with sprites, and it gives the sequel a level of personality that was sorely missing from the original.
Loot, Sell, Repeat
Moonlighter 2 has kept the same general gameplay loop as its predecessor. This is a roguelike action-RPG at heart, where you slay enemies for loot, sell the loot in your shop, buy permanent upgrades, and do it all again the next day. You can pick up side-quests from the villagers, which lead you to special equipment, enhanced upgrade paths, or recipes for new items.
What has changed is the overall focus of the gameplay. Whereas the first game had the shopkeeping and upgrading elements as the background to the exploration and combat, the reverse is true in the sequel. You could beat the entire first game with the base equipment if you were good enough, so selling items to afford upgrades was theoretically optional. But now the titular Endless Vault drives the progression of the story, and it demands you make a certain amount of money in the shop before it will bestow each of the seven rewards it offers to you. Those rewards open up each new area, so selling is absolutely required. The first milestone is 7,000 coins, then 50,000, up to 200,000 as the fourth and final goal of the Early Access version.
You can probably see where this is going. While the basis of a roguelike is repeated runs, and the new areas are doled out at a decent pace, it can feel a bit grindy at times. The emphasis is placed heavily on combat, and the twin metagames of maximizing the quality of the loot you pick up and getting the best sell price for the loot in your shop are absolutely imperative for progression. Many of the permanent upgrades are aimed at giving you a better chance of nabbing the best loot (graded from Common to Legendary) and, thus, making quicker progress through the money-gating, but you still have to pay for those upgrades.
How you feel about this mechanic, and the game as a whole, will largely depend on your view of Moonlighter 2’s combat systems. For my money, it is a significant upgrade over the first game as the 3D environment lends so much freedom to the proceedings. There are still four types of weapons, as before, while the shield has been given way to different types of armor. The ranged attack of the bow and arrow has been replaced by three different types of guns, roughly analogous to a pistol, particle beam, and shotgun. But the true enhancements lie with the fluid animations and seamless integration of each move with the others. Dodge-rolling is hugely important, so rolling away from one attack to immediately execute a lunging attack on a ground enemy, then firing off your pistol to take out an airborne enemy, all while avoiding fireballs and lobbed grenades, is a delightful dance of death-dealing mayhem.
Each run consists of ten to twelve “rooms,” and you are free to choose from several pre-arranged paths on a map. Your route determines what enemies you fight, what potential loot you find, and what perks and upgrades can enhance your run. Strategic decisions abound, with lightning, fire, and ice-based buffs being just some of what is on offer. You can buy upgrades to give you access to extra health potions and weapons upgrades from your vendor friends within a level as well. It all adds up to a level of sophistication that is light-years beyond the original game, forming an enjoyable backbone to what could have been an interminable slog of forced grinding from a less capable developer.
Waiting For More
I’m extremely excited to get my hands on the rest of the game. Digital Sun’s roadmap for Early Access promises more biomes, expanded shop systems, the ability to build and customize your village, and additional NPCs to deliver more story moments. I’d expect a final bit of polish will come along with all that, making an already enjoyable combat and exploration loop even better. I’ll be very interested to see how the Endless Vault monetary levels are handled as this seems to be the main factor in how “grindy” the game’s progression will feel, but I think the new biomes and filling out the weapons and skills should counteract that in the end. If you were a fan of the first game, you owe it to yourself to give Moonlighter 2 a chance, so Will and his friends can get back to Rynoka!
Thank you to 11 bit studios for providing us a code to the early-access version of Moonlighter 2.
