Moonlighter
…the Zelda game you didn’t know you needed.
Between its beautiful 8-bit charm, graceful graphics, airy storyline and epic dungeon crawling; Moonlighter, the action RPG indie game developed by Digital Sun in 2018, plays like a fanciful, lighthearted Minish Cap, Nintendo’s 2004 Zelda release. Moonlighter features Will, a dungeon-crawling Merchant breaking barriers between the intelligent merchant class and the largely extinct, adrenaline-junkie, hero class. It plays like a touching and well-done homage to the Zelda series.
The game feels like its starring a braver version of our beloved Ravio, the traveling merchant and the dark world equivalent of Link, featured in Nintendo’s 2013 Zelda release, A Link Between Worlds. Moonlighter was released for Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and as of a few months ago, has also been ported to the Nintendo Switch. Its a little buggy, but well worth the play through.
The Graphics
The graphics look very much like an 8-bit watercolor art piece. All the movements are graceful and delicate, they don’t take away from the action. The response time on the buttons is pretty good and the experience feels a lot like playing through Minish Cap, especially in Moonlighter’s Forest dungeon, which reminded me of the Picori/Kokiri/Korok forest.
The Moonlighter” Story
As you play through the Moonlighter story, the story of Ryoka, its NPC’s and Will’s life, are all explained through optional fireside conversations with Zenon, a family friend tasked with looking after Will after the passing of Will’s parents and grandfather. With the opening of each new dungeon, Zenon reveals more of the lore behind their home town, Ryoka, his family, the owners of Will’s shop; Moonlighter, and what he learned about the dungeons from his late friend crazy Pete.
Moonlighter is toeing the delicate line between a story where Will is a Merchant by day, moonlighting as a hero by night, and a tale where he is a nighttime hero, moonlighting as a shopkeeper by day, and neatly fills the gap left between the Link we know in the overarching narrative of the Zelda series, and Ravio, the Link we met in “A Link Between Worlds”. During my play-through I very much fell in love with the merchant aspect of the game and I didn’t expect to. Every time it started to get a little boring, something would change enough to spice it up and keep me interested. First it was the addition of thieves, which made me very protective of my goods, next it was the pleasant surprise I got after Will hired a cute new black girl who helped catch those thieves. I always wondered what Ravio’s life must have been like in his world before everything in Lorule went to hell, and I figured dipping in and out of dungeons just enough to grab the loot and then lend it out was very much his style. This part of the game felt very explorative of Ravio’s life behind the scenes, and I loved it!
The dungeons
The dungeon aspect of the game, which I expected to like, also delivered a very satisfying play-through. The dungeons were eye-poppingly gorgeous and filled with a lush array of landscapes, enemies, and music. There are so many aspects of the game that play intelligently and wonderfully. I love the transport chest on the third floor of every dungeon, which make it possible to nearly double the amount of loot that ends up able to be sold in your store the next day. The dungeons, in addition to being pretty and well stocked with enemies and goods, also transform each time you set foot in them in a new day, forcing you to change strategies as you attack different dungeon configurations.
Another favorite is the pendant mechanic which, for a fee, allows you to warp out of a dungeon at any point during your play-through. It is very similar to the magic mirror in “A Link to the Past”, Nintendo’s 1991 Zelda title. I appreciate the fact that with each new floor of each new dungeon, the price extracted by the magic pendant to warp out of said dungeon increases by a solid amount. For an even more steep fee, you can use the warp door, which allows you to go to town and return to the place where you left off in your dungeon crawl one time before disappearing. Its more difficult, but it forces you into really thinking about the decision to flee a dungeon, as opposed to risking your life and all of your items trying to stick out destroying your enemy.
The drawbacks
The only annoying part about Moonlighter are the bugs that it has yet to work out. The game lags and skips for a few frames when there are a high concentration of NPC’s on screen. This is especially harmful in mid-boss battle situations or when a thief is heading outside your shop with some valuable goods. There are also moments where the dodge mechanic completely fails. I personally had to defeat the forest dungeon boss with no dodge mechanic at all because of a major glitch and let me tell you it was a mess. The next day, a thief escaped my shop because I was unable to leap upon him and administer a beating! I had to restart the game in order for the dodge mechanic to reset but, I was pretty infuriated at that thief interaction. I was RIGHT THERE.
My review
All in all, if I were to give the game a rating from one to five, one being a terrible game I want to burn in a fire, and five being a perfectly addicting game that I can’t put down, I couldn’t give it a perfect score. As much as I loved the game and felt that it paid great homage to the Zelda series, there was absolutely no puzzle mechanic to it whatsoever. The puzzles of spatial logic and pattern recognition that characterize the Zelda series are honestly one of my favorite aspects of the dungeon crawls, and I felt it was sorely lacking in the Moonlighter franchise. I would have loved to see what Digital Sun did to tickle my mind in addition to my eyes and innate desire to hoard gold. I would definitely recommend it for scratching a mid-year Zelda itch between titles and loved the way it played when it wasn’t being buggy. Four out of five!
