I’m not mad, I’m disappointed… The premise of Moonlighter is appealing, manage your little shop by day, slay by night, very reminiscent of Rune Factory. It works! Just not most of the time. This game was addicting when I first started playing it, the formula is just so charming. The shop aspect was the most endearing if you can believe it. The problem is progress is slow… very much so. It gets to a point where you know you’ll make more money if you progress the dungeon instead of managing the shop, but the upgrades to help you do so get very expensive. The money you’re getting isn’t enough since you’re stuck in the lower floors. This leads to the grind, don’t misunderstand me, clearing the floors is very doable it just becomes boring. This isn’t helped by the fact that once you move from one dungeon to the next, there isn’t much there besides a new colour palette. The same grind as the last dungeon but with higher numbers. I would guess they did this to squeeze some more playtime hours from the player, but if the devs had tweaked the sliders more in favor of faster player progress it would’ve made the experience more digestible.

I played the complete edition in 2024, possibly the best Moonlighter experience. Looking up trophy guides and wiki entries it seems this was bug riddled mess on release, with most issues persisting for years. I didn’t find any of that, but I found myself pleasantly surprised the glitch to get infinite money was still present. It trivialized the shop aspect, but the faster progress made up for it. That is until I reached the dlc.

The Between Dimensions DLC fits the definition of “more content”. It’s higher numbers and more grind, I quite liked the idea of it, but many of the base game problems are made even worse here. For starters “Le Retailer” doesn’t sell you any of the items found in the new interdimensional dungeon, you’re either on your own looking for them or trading them with the new Rat vendor. These new items are essential to get through the new dungeon as with each floor the damage values get absurdly high. This isn’t helped by the fact you can only trade the rarest items. Carbon Plate Fiber for example, has a low value amongst the new materials, it only drops in the very first two floors and it’s not a very common drop. It’s loop after loop after loop after loop until you can get enough materials to craft new armor, make it a bit further and then loop again.

You’d think I rate this game lower with all I’ve said but there was a lot of care and love put into it, the art work is charming, the gameplay is pretty decent as well as the core idea. This game had a lot going into it but it just didn’t know how to fit all the pieces properly. It’s not bad for a first studio’s release, I’m looking forward to see what they put out next and hope they learned from the cracks this game had.

Moonlighter is one of those titles that suffered a little because I played it as an early adopter. I enjoyed Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale, and so I was immediately sold on that concept as a modern experience.

Moonlighter, for the most part, was a fun time in its early state. The weapons provided a nice variety of options, and the gameplay was simple but satisfying. It was a clever angle to have an upgrade tree that either focused on raw power or speciality weapons that inflicted status effects.

Finding secrets by falling into pits provided a nice additional angle to exploration, and the item curses gave item management a twist. The dungeons were varied with a specific theme; the forest frequently caused poison and the technology dungeon is heavy on enemies that shoot lightning. Although the dungeons are formulaic (written off in the story as being that way on purpose), they are just the right size to make an overwhelming number of items a blessing and curse.

But, whilst the earlier version of the game was fun, I thought it suffered from balancing issues. I quickly bought the upgrades and had no reason to keep the shop running. With things heavily money orientated, I could gather loot and get my shop assistant to sell what I didn’t need for upgrades. Maxing out the character and defeating the final boss made for an extremely short endgame. With the game finished and the remaining achievements feeling tedious, I felt that I had no reason to go back at the time.

With the Between Dimensions DLC giving me incentive to go back, I am glad that I did, because things feel much improved with costs being balanced with improvements. The DLC adds a much-needed endgame dungeon with a steep difficulty curve that requires plenty of funds to obtain the upgrades to survive. Prices feel adjusted accordingly, with the Banker offering more of a gamble, and I soon found myself running out of cash and having to run the shop. There is also a new haggling system, with villagers offering trades for rare items and giving more much needed incentive to occupy the store. Villager quests and materials needed for upgrades give more incentive to go back to earlier dungeons.

Although it is often simplistic, Moonlighter is a fun time. My only real gripe with the updated version is how confusing the DLC can appear to be sometimes. There are new wanderer dungeons in the regular dungeons, offering both an alternative route to the next floor, or an additional floor with chests. Cool? Yes. But it’s easy to assume that’s all the DLC is, as the real wanderer dungeon doesn’t appear until after the main story.

But considering how cheaply the whole experience can be picked up these days, I recommend it as a fun week-long RPG with a neat shop gimmick.

Pretty simple roguelite dungeon crawler. The difficulty varied in difficulty a little unevenly for me. I was stuck on the second dungeon for ages but then finished the final one on my second attempt.
There are way too many mechanics in the shop section with no real benefit, or frankly possibility, to seriously engage with any of them. Narratively, it doesn't really hold together very well. The ending doesn't feel like it was set up by the preceding parts.
The ability to leave a dungeon and then resume it at the part you left will make this much more approachable for people who find roguelites too difficult but it did mean that the central loot risk/reward mechanic is basically irrelevent and arguably this is where the game should have assigned most of its focus.
Stripping out some of the mechanics and rebalancing would have made this good rather than merely fine.

The concept is probably the most interesting part about this game managing a store by day and playing a rogue like dungeon crawler at night attempting to get treasures to sell at your store, its really cool and upgrading your armor and the town itself feels rewarding however the content is lacking, there is literally nothing you can do to forge relationships with people inside the town and too much emphasis is put into the dungeon crawling segments, more expansions to the town more decorations and more memorable NPCs that you can befriend or romance are sorely lacking