Seven years after the release of Moonlighter, Digital Sun’s action-RPG roguelike, it’s almost time to welcome Moonlighter 2 into the world. I played a solid slice of it in Poland during an 11 Bit event in a cool art space with even cooler people, and I’m here to say that it’s looking like a supercharged sequel that improves on its predecessor across the board.
And that’s no slight on the original Moonlighter. It was very much a product of its time. Whether it holds up well today depends entirely on how your tastes may have changed. It’s a little slow, a tad clunky, and generally more suited to those who long for the Gameboy days. Moonlighter 2 makes a spectacle out of combat, refines the original roguelike game‘s store management, and brings in a gorgeous new art style that’s set to pop on today’s OLED displays and handle beautifully on modern handhelds. Protagonist Will is back and certainly better than ever.
Since the original Moonlighter put developer Digital Sun on the map in 2018, the team has put out The Mageseeker: A League of Legends Story, and even brought another new IP to the market with its well-received RTS Cataclismo just a few months ago. Now, the team is ready to apply the lessons learned from these projects to Moonlighter 2.
It’s a major departure from the original, which combined Binding of Isaac/Zelda-like dungeon romps with a tycoon aspect that had you risking it all to collect more treasures to sell back in town. That first game was likened to an early Steam hit (and personal favorite of mine) Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale, and Moonlighter 2 doubles down on this inspiration while also drawing from more recent roguelikes.
Digital Sun transforms its aesthetic and kinetic appeal to bring it closer in line with Death’s Door or even Hades. Combining soft palletes with fluid 3D animations, Moonlighter 2 sheds the SNES-era aesthetic in favour of polished polygons.
While the visual appeal has taken a major turn, the core loop of Moonlighter remains intact. Kicking off directly after the first game, you’re quickly reacquainted with the core cast. Now displaced from Rynoka and its legendary Moonlighter store, Will and his party return to dungeon diving for riches and relics they can peddle to get back on their feet and fund their journey home.
Once the tutorials were out of the way, the Endless Vault (or the Capitalism Cube, as I called it) demanded I make 5,000 gold in a single shift at the shop. This meant heading back into the dungeons to smash and grab what I could.
Rather than the original’s top-down perspective of small, square rooms, Moonlighter 2’s delves are isometric runs through brightly colored dioramas. You’ll beat up the baddies (or simply sprint to the exit) and then choose your next room.
Icons above each transporter highlight the room types, so it’s up to you to decide whether to risk it all in a boss room, tempt fate in another gauntlet, or scurry off to a simple treasure room for a game-changing perk or final chest.
How you manage your loot matters, too. With many relics having effects that trigger on collection or react to others, you have to carefully consider what you collect, where you place it, and how it might respond to its neighbors.
A fine example was one relic that burns the adjacent item. Slotted next to one that duplicates when burned, you could come out with double the goods if you plan accordingly. Another boosts the value of typically useless sticks and logs, making it worth grabbing to turn around a lacklustre run.
Back at the store, a revised bartering minigame looks to right the wrongs of the original’s rather simplistic shop management process. Here, you apply tokens to increase the price of items that a buyer expresses an interest in. One increases it by a set percentage of the current value, while the other bumps it by a set amount.
The more goods you sell, the more perks you unlock for that shift, creating a sort of domino effect that makes it possible to sell something like wood, originally valued at 1 gold, for 1,500 gold – a gargantuan markup that makes absolutely no sense but is incredibly satisfying to pull off.
It’s all about managing how, when, and why you apply these tokens to maximize the value of what’s for sale. Though you start with barely any, if you get lucky with perk rolls, you’ll end up with too many to use at once.
Paired with microgames, presented like general housekeeping duties that lightly increase an item’s value, this elevates the shopkeeping process from a simple game of wait-and-see to a strategic take on Whack-a-Mole. Smartly selling through low-price goods to bolster your perks before bringing out the rare relics makes this bite-sized management activity a great palate cleanser between stressful dungeon runs.
Combat is frantic, too. You wail on different baddies enough to stun them, then smack them with your bag to smash them into walls, bounce them off other enemies, or eject them from the map, Smash Bros. style.
Each hit slowly recharges your ranged weapon, letting you weave between combos on close enemies and debilitating shots on distant ones. I’m hoping the swing gets heavier but more powerful the more items you cram into your sack, but I saw no evidence of it during my brief playthrough. Fingers crossed it’s an unlockable perk.
Buying a new weapon back at base also completely changed the feel of fights. There’s lots to play around with, be it permanent upgrades or entirely different weapon types.
I did suffer from a lack of obvious visual cues (like a flash) for incoming attacks, though. This made dealing with unavoidable swarms a tad tricky and a quick way to end a run prematurely. I can chalk it up to a skill issue, having only played a couple of hours, but some kind of signal would help sell this as more of a roguelike than a soulslike.
Ending a run, voluntarily or through death, displays a progress meter. I never managed to reach a boss at the 1/3 mark, but I was always itching to give it another go. Right after flogging a toasted branch for the price of a used car, anyway.
Moonlighter 2 is shaping up to be a fulfilling sequel for a new generation. Where the original felt like a wholesome take on The Binding of Isaac, this reimagining is a natural amalgamation of today’s cozy games mixed with the fast-paced action of most recent roguelikes. It’s Recatear meets Hades, and I can’t wait to play more (and lose more) sometime this year.
If you’d like to take it for a spin yourself, the Moonlighter 2 demo hits Steam today.
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