Okay, I think I will eventually come back to this and try to progress a lot further than I did but I just... felt so underwhelmed a disappointed in this game especially as someone who LOVES shopkeeping-style tycoons and dungeon-crawlers. The idea of tackling complex dungeons with multiple floors to ransack for items to sell in town had me HOOKED. Unfortunately, while the premise is great, the concept ultimately just falls flat.

First of all, a minor(?) nitpick but who the HELL releases a game on steam with no actual keyboard controls? I literally could not navigate the menu because it was so unintuitive that I had to google controls on steam discussions to start. The devs even acknowledge this and explicitly have said they do NOT want to accommodate for keyboard & mouse players, and that the game was designed for controllers. I feel like I wouldn't usually care, except like? You're on steam, appealing to pc gamers, and don't explicitly tell me on the steam page that I won't have fun without a controller. Straight up wtf LOL

But whatever, you know. Its really not that big of a deal and I mean I had a controller anyways so oh well. Except... the dungeon elements were incredibly, incredibly easy after just 2 or 3 runs. I died to the boss maybe once before I was able to beat the first floor every single time & went on to clear the subsequent levels just as easily. Its not like I expected Hollow Knight levels of difficulty or anything, but this definitely feels like you will only find challenge/fun in the dungeoneering if you are new to the genre. I also want to say that I DO consider myself decently good at games that test pattern-recognition and reflexes like bullet hells, so take my experience with a grain of salt.

Despite this, I still felt okay with the game at first. I honestly didn't explore too far after a couple attempts since on top of feeling too easy for me, the combat was kind of clunky, but it was passable enough. Weapons aside from the sword/spear felt not great to me, but I also generally dislike bows in video games especially in a top down where I can't really aim comfortably. But while in dungeons, you're main goal is typically fighting and exploring for loot to sell in your shop. To me, this could have EASILY redeemed the game for me. Instead, in my little time with the game the store aspect felt really... boring? Easy. Also a little confusing? I just kinda want to sigh when I think back on it.

When I think of an amazing capitalism simulator, I think of Recettear. It also has a very mid dungeon system, but MAN the actual store aspect is so fun. I cant help but compare them to a degree. One thing that came to mind in my playthrough is the idea that different customers of different wealth brackets can shop, & you can sell things to each person with different prices because of what they are willing to accept. Similarly, there is a sort of supply and demand system that comes into effect that shows you if things are being sold for higher or lower than normal retail, and I would like it but I felt like. A little lost? In deciphering when it changes, by how much, etc. You have to FIND what the range of prices is for an item through trial and error which is totally okay, but when the specific item is being sold at market none of your recordings are saved in the log book and you arent given any type of ballpark estimate for the resources worth that you find. For example, in Recettear, if you sell a short sword, putting it in your display and selling to a customer will bring up a default price of say 500 gold, and you can adjust to 120% markup or 80% discounted rate or adjust to whatever arbitrary number or percentage you like & work within that system to find the sweet spot in different customer demographics, sales, price drops, etc. It is a really indepth system that takes something simple but elevates it. Moonlighter attempts to do the same and honestly does, but worse. When you find an item, you have no clue if you are pricing something at 100 gold when it should really be 8. This sounds like not a big deal, except the price ranges between items on the first floor alone goes from 3 coins to over 1k. How am I supposed to guess anywhere near accurately? Especially when pricing things poorly also reflects on your relationships with different classes or affects the popularity of items. Its really frustrating.

To speak more on the sales aspect, I really, really dislike the actual ui for it. I like the little idea of setting up items in the boxes you want and customising your store. Its really cute!! Recettear did similar and I truly loved it. Unfortunately, I feel compelled to compare the 2 once again to accurately demonstrate my issue with the games approaches to fulfilling the actual sales. In Moonlighter, an NPC will approach the box with an item, inspect it, then make a face that shows how happy or upset with a price they are. They will then leave the store angry, or leave money at your register and dip. In Recettear, the npc approaches the item, and then prompts a screen where you see the person who wants to buy, the base price of the item/what they are offering, & then are given the option to adjust and haggle. They give dialogue to indicate their feelings and leave either successfully paying or in anger. These function very similarly, but Moonlighter takes the individual sale out of the equation which circles back to the idea of different classes having different budgets and hurts that part of the system. It is impossible to tell who is going to buy what. NPCs approach multiple items and pick what they are going to buy, and you cant adjust the prices in preparation for each customer. It is just so hard to do that. Not to mention that in my experience, distinguishing who is wealthy or poor or what was so HARD for me. In Receattear, you are told what the person wants to buy, they clearly are wearing tattered clothing if they are poor, fancy clothes and dresses if rich, etc and you can engage accordingly and react. In Moonlighter, I could not do this effectively. I struggle to find the proper words, but the system just felt unsatisfying. This piece of interesting depth felt like something I couldn't actually play around, and I wish that wasnt the case.

This game very clearly has so much love in it and so much attention to detail that I want to like it. The art is very pretty, and the various character designs are very cute. I like the aesthetics and the feeling of the town and I love that your business helps the town flourish too. I like that the dungeoneering and the store front feel equally important, and I like the thought put into it. Unfortunately, the balancing and minor flaws add up for me in this game and ultimately made my experience feel like a boring slog, where I never actually had a piece of the game I could appreciate. If 1/2 of the systems were very good, I could rate this well. But for me, I just couldnt enjoy it. It was incredibly underwhelming. I hope you can find more fun with this than I, but unless you are very new to these systems in games, I think your experience will be sullied by its minor but additive flaws.

Started playing this and have less time in it than I would normally like for a review on this site, but I really was impressed by the launch! I am slightly biased, because I came from MHY's sister game Genshin Impact already a fan of their games, but I also tried Honkai Impact 3rd a while ago because of Genshin and wasn't impressed.

This game is the culmination of what I think both Honkai and Genshin do well, but with the apparentness that Honkai is the series MHY loves the most. They definitely leaned harder into the time sink/grind aspect of Genshin that isn't my favorite, but because the game is so new I'm not sure if it will end up much worse of any better. In HI3, the game was more of a beat 'em up style game with, what felt like to me, very little emphasis on strategy. The story was very good, and the characters had so much love in them. In genshin, there is a lot more emphasis on strategy and team building, and I really like the blend of the two in this turn-based RPGish style. While I will always have a gripe with gacha systems in games, I am trying to refrain from passing judgement since it's so early in the game's life cycle, but it seems to be leaning heavily to the genshin style which... I don't feel positive about at all. Though I don't really have much experience with HI3 like I said before.

Anyways, just kinda dumping my thoughts after getting past all the tutorials and completing some of their dungeons & my fair few of fights. Really love the character design and the humor is actually funny. When I saw the Honkai Star Rail booth at anime expo last year, I didn't expect to ever play it or even enjoy it, so hopefully I will continue to enjoy my experience with it in the future!