In a sea of Legend of Zelda homages, 2018’s Moonlighter stood out with its beautiful artwork model and a cool hook: What if the loot you collect in your dungeon-delving adventures wasn’t simply power-ups, however the wares you promote as a part of your day job? Following Moonlighter’s launch, a lot of smaller video games, like Cult of the Lamb and Dave the Diver, have discovered success in complementing motion mechanics with gentle administration components, so it is clearly a combo that works. It could have been straightforward for developer Digital Solar to easily give us a shinier, extra polished model of that unique idea in a sequel. As an alternative, Moonlighter 2: The Infinite Vault, which has simply launched in model 1.0 after an early entry interval, surprisingly rethinks what a Moonlighter recreation is at its very core. That makes it comfortably stay alongside the unique, providing an expertise that is distinct sufficient to take pleasure in both–or to come back to the sequence anew with out feeling misplaced.
The visible variations between the primary recreation and Moonlighter 2 are probably the most readily obvious adjustments. Whereas characters like your shopkeeper, Will, are completely recognizable, they’re rendered in a brand new 3D model with an isometric digicam angle. That is already an enormous change from the unique, which was modeled after top-down Zelda video games.
As an alternative of procedurally-generated dungeons, you’re employed your approach by means of isometric roguelike phases with randomized assortments of enemies, constructing your power as you go. You possibly can imbue your assaults with results like Poison and Hex to ramp up for the growing challenges, or take your probabilities with a riskier construct that depends on making the most of environmental hazards like Spikes.
These components make Moonlighter 2 really feel extra like a ground-up remake than a sequel. The core recreation design is analogous, but it surely’s a very contemporary method. Your objective, finally, is to feed your wealth into the Infinite Vault, unlocking better rewards as you progress by means of its tiers. This mission creates a way of meta development, including one other layer to the run-based motion and shopkeeping mechanics. Moreover, the roguelike construction helps the motion really feel extra refined, as you’ll be able to construct your energy set in varied ways in which emphasize melee, gun, or environmental injury from run to run. This sense of selection is heightened even additional by Moonlighter 2’s biomes, which all really feel very distinct from one another.
The perfect differentiator, although, is the brand new stock system. Relatively than merely storing your loot, this new system transforms each treasure chest into its personal little puzzle recreation. Within the first biome, for instance, you will discover numerous objects with particular Burn results that destroy objects positioned subsequent to, beneath, or above them in your backpack slots. That might look like an obstacle, providing you with much less loot to promote at your store on the finish of the day. However different objects will react to burning with bonus results, like enhanced high quality to drive up their costs. You may also counter these adverse results by equipping some objects with Armor, defending them from the burning impact whereas nonetheless getting its advantages. With some intelligent stock administration, you’ll be able to flip a comparatively low-value merchandise right into a priceless artifact.
And that is simply the primary biome. The next ones introduce their very own puzzle components, like crystals that may rework into different relics or dolls that take up surrounding relics to spice up their worth. These differentiated puzzle sorts assist each biome really feel distinct, on prime of the totally different enemy and power-up sorts you discover.
The slight draw back of all these interlocking programs is that it’s a must to take pleasure in all of them. For those who’re in it for the action-RPG or shopkeeping components that made the primary recreation so implausible, however you do not significantly like these puzzles which might be in every single place within the sequel, then Moonlighter 2 can be a drag, particularly with reference to your feeling of momentum. However thus far, I am discovering the inventive software of all these interlocking programs to be a pleasant combine, alternatively tickling totally different components of my mind and swapping between them ceaselessly sufficient to continually really feel engaged.
In some ways, Moonlighter 2 looks like a very totally different recreation than the primary one, however in a approach that makes them really feel like complementary experiences fairly than iterative ones. That makes this the uncommon recreation sequel that is value enjoying alongside its unique, as they signify two totally different approaches to the identical objective, with wildly totally different outcomes.
