Moonlighter

 Switch
User Score
7.7

Generally favorable reviews- based on 139 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 93 out of 139
  2. Mixed: 34 out of 139
  3. Negative: 12 out of 139
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  1. knirfie
    Jun 8, 2020
    5
    A fun and addictive game that is unfortunately plagued by some annoying bug and glitches that will most likely make you stop playing before completing it.

    Complaints: Performance on Switch: prone to frame drops and stuttering when entering rooms or defeating an enemy. Not acceptable with the complexity and graphics. Gameplay bug: Occasionally the dodge rolls get you stuck in the    A fun and addictive game that is unfortunately plagued by some annoying bug and glitches that will most likely make you stop playing before completing it.

    Complaints:
    Performance on Switch: prone to frame drops and stuttering when entering rooms or defeating an enemy. Not acceptable with the complexity and graphics.

    Gameplay bug: Occasionally the dodge rolls get you stuck in the middle of objects or outside of the level. The only thing you can do is teleport home, or restart the game, and you will loose your progress. Played the game for 6-8 hours and this happened to me about 40 times or so.

    Longevity: Around the end of the 3rd dungeon you loose interest in selling stuff as there is nothing to spend your money on. When I stopped playing (because I got trapped in an object during the boss fight and died, again) I already had 14 million credits with nothing to spend it on.    … Expand
  2. SebboBastian
    Dec 24, 2018
    7
    I got big Azure Dreams vibes from the early trailers for this game. Don´t get me wrong, it´s a ok game, a nice little adventure. Besides all the bugs I had I was missing some puzzles and more secrets in the dungeons. Hit a wall, move a statue, hit stuffs in a special order, find some strange writings, anything that will give the dungeons more interesting deep and exploration. And why notI got big Azure Dreams vibes from the early trailers for this game. Don´t get me wrong, it´s a ok game, a nice little adventure. Besides all the bugs I had I was missing some puzzles and more secrets in the dungeons. Hit a wall, move a statue, hit stuffs in a special order, find some strange writings, anything that will give the dungeons more interesting deep and exploration. And why not have strange random characters in the town that both give you missions, strange items or whataver, just to make the town more interesting and a reason to explore it more.
    But I can understand, probly money and time like always when you have to kill your darlings in game production. But overallt, a ok game.    … Expand
  3. Blackdog22
    Sep 19, 2020
    6
    So after getting the RogueLike itch I looked up some games and stumbled upon this little beauty. Tons of great reviews, nice looking art, dungeon diving. Seems good. The game starts off fantastic. You have tons of stuff to unlock, multiple upgrade paths, you manage a shop on the side. Holy smokes this game has a lot!

    Then I kept playing. Dungeon 1, nicely paced. Took me a good while to    So after getting the RogueLike itch I looked up some games and stumbled upon this little beauty. Tons of great reviews, nice looking art, dungeon diving. Seems good. The game starts off fantastic. You have tons of stuff to unlock, multiple upgrade paths, you manage a shop on the side. Holy smokes this game has a lot!

    Then I kept playing. Dungeon 1, nicely paced. Took me a good while to get my equipment upgraded and beat the first boss. Then comes dungeon 2. I get more gold from the shop, I upgrade my equipment a tad too fast, and down the second boss. No real.... mechanics thus far from the bosses. Just basic moves. Then onto the third and fourth. I upgrade all my gear within 1 run of the dungeon. The gold you get from items vastly outpaces the cost of the items themselves. I 2 shot the 3rd boss and 1 shot the 4th (The fourth was stupidly easy). Simply put, the pace is garbage, the bosses are bland. The idea was fun just as an idea, it wasn't fleshed out very well once you get later into the game.

    Also, the game on Switch has a memory leak worse than my grandmothers **** I don't know why, but after playing for a bit the game starts glitching out and your framerate drops to nothing doing basic things + you skip everywhere. Items just randomly disappear. Mobs will randomly glitch into you. Text will read wrong (Say you have 2 items when you actually have 5) A pretty embarrassing showing from a stability standpoint.

    Also, your Grandfather is the most BASED dude ive ever seen. He pretends he wants to keep you safe, but keeps telling you about new dungeons opening, clearly baiting you to go die. Idk wtf is with that dude, but hes definitely an ****.

    The writing is also garbage. No animations on shopkeepers, no real point to the town at all and I would say half the stuff you can unlock serves no purpose. Oh, and all the rings from bosses do the same thing. The same fkn thing. There is no variety. Very lazy gearing concepts.

    All this besides I gave the game a 6 because the Music is badass and also because the concept on its base is actually a ton of fun. Just seemed like the devs got bored of it and phoned it in at the end, or ran out of money. Either way, it shows.    … Expand
  4. R1_gryf
    Nov 10, 2020
    6
    la première moitié du jeu est très sympa dans la progression cependant un fois avoir fini le deuxième donjon je me suis retrouver finir le troisième en une dizaine de try et le dernier en seulement deux essais pour moi ce jeu manque d'équilibrage et est inconstant dans sa difficulté et sa courbe de progression
  5. TempoTheMan
    Aug 12, 2021
    5
    a boring cycle of going into the dungeon, using your teleport to save your location when your bag is full, selling and repeat, pretty boring.
    also the combat becomes boring in the 50th time you go into the dungeon, there are better rougelikes on the switch, buy them instead
  6. Maverick_ZA
    Nov 11, 2018
    7
    Great game, with great objectives. However the games needs some patching/optimizing, as the game seems to suffer from some insane frame drops.
  7. Vedm55
    Mar 29, 2019
    6
    Time to complete the game is short.
    Mechanics and gameplay are simplified and uncomplicated
    Enemies is boring. Music is inexpressive that does not interest. The visual part of the game is soft and heartwarming. After watching the first trailer, I have been so captivated by the idea of mysterious dungeons, lots of items, trade and my own store. But in fact, everything turned out to    Time to complete the game is short.
    Mechanics and gameplay are simplified and uncomplicated
    Enemies is boring.
    Music is inexpressive that does not interest.
    The visual part of the game is soft and heartwarming.

    After watching the first trailer, I have been so captivated by the idea of mysterious dungeons, lots of items, trade and my own store. But in fact, everything turned out to be easier, boring and has fallen short of expectations.    … Expand
  8. Tiank
    Jan 3, 2021
    7
    I was disappointed with this game. While the graphics are really nice, and the idea of making a hybrid of rogulite game with shop simulation elements was really good, the execution of it is mediocre. Game gets repetitive very quickly, I didn't really want to finish the 4th dungeon as I didn't feel engaged in the game, or the scraps of a story for that matter, enough. Might be good to playI was disappointed with this game. While the graphics are really nice, and the idea of making a hybrid of rogulite game with shop simulation elements was really good, the execution of it is mediocre. Game gets repetitive very quickly, I didn't really want to finish the 4th dungeon as I didn't feel engaged in the game, or the scraps of a story for that matter, enough. Might be good to play for a bit, and to get it on 60/75% sale, but it's definitely not worth the full price, sadly.… Expand
  9. bl1rt
    Mar 3, 2019
    6
    This is a pretty fun game that does what it sets out to do, but comes with too many bugs and glitches.

    The game's formula is simple but fun: kill enemies for items in dungeon until you run out of energy, go back to town to sell items and buy better equipment, and repeat. Emphasis is put on managing your inventory: You can only carry a limited amount of items, so you constantly have to    This is a pretty fun game that does what it sets out to do, but comes with too many bugs and glitches.

    The game's formula is simple but fun: kill enemies for items in dungeon until you run out of energy, go back to town to sell items and buy better equipment, and repeat. Emphasis is put on managing your inventory: You can only carry a limited amount of items, so you constantly have to decide which items to discard. And instead of selling the items to a shop, your have to manage the shop yourself, which includes figuring out a good price, restocking the shelves, catching thieves and such. It is a bit like a minigame, which offers a nice change to the routine, and an interesting addition to the otherwise well-known formula.
    All of that is pretty addictive and fun - within limits, and I like how the game does not overstay its welcome: you can get through it in less than 30 hours. I'll forget about it pretty fast, but it was fun while it lasted. There is not much replay value in there for me.

    Still, it would be a solid game, if not for all the glitches, and there are tons of them:
    You constantly go through doors without triggering an entry to the next room; when you duck-roll while being hit you can go through walls and find yourself outside the room; boxes in the inventory can be stuck in highlighted mode for pretty long time; there is an enemy that explodes on death, but the area of the explosion deals damage to you about a second longer than its animation; the controls are often sluggish, especially during fights and in menus. Most of this is just silly, but the sluggish controls are a bother during boss fights, and become especially damning for a game where you spend a lot of time moving items around - I accidentally discarded the wrong items several times, when I repeated the combination that the game seemingly hadn't picked up. Also, there is a flicker when you switch between your item and the item compendium, which made me noticeably nervous, and ruined a lot of the otherwise more relaxing vibe of the game.
    Made me wonder if there is a github page where I can report bugs to, which I don't want to do for a game in that price range - indie or not.

    The game does not work well in portable mode.

    This is probably a good game for when you are sick in bed for a few days and need to kill time. I picked it up on sale, and don't regret it.    … Expand
  10. svonton
    Jun 24, 2022
    7
    Port part: run smooth, yeah it will be grate suprize if pixel art style game start to lag. Game itself: rogue like game with interest shop keeper mechanic but kinda boring after several hours.
  11. tokuhirom
    Jan 5, 2020
    7
    Good enough. But...
    Selling items is not so important part when the late part of the game, since every items are high price enough.
  12. Daisuk
    Jun 29, 2020
    7
    The gameplay loop is good, but the separate activities by themselves just aren't interesting enough to keep you playing for very long. Especially the combat gets repetitive and boring very quickly, in my opinion. Still an enjoyable game, lovely graphics, and some cool mechanics, but the lack of variety in combat and shopkeeping lets it down more than it should.
  13. FluffySpartan
    May 11, 2023
    7
    Game is a 7.8 for me , really close to an 8 but couldn't hold up to that for me. The idea of the game is great! The design really charming, the shopkeeper mechanic is awesome but the game lacks in variety.

    Would love to see them do a sequel with giving us more of everything. Would have loved to make my shop even bigger and to some extend automatic or that I can choose to be more of an    Game is a 7.8 for me , really close to an 8 but couldn't hold up to that for me. The idea of the game is great! The design really charming, the shopkeeper mechanic is awesome but the game lacks in variety.

    Would love to see them do a sequel with giving us more of everything. Would have loved to make my shop even bigger and to some extend automatic or that I can choose to be more of an shopkeeper or more of a hero collecting parts. A skilltree would've been nice I think.

    Also I did like the twist in the end. There is a lot of room for more Story now.    … Expand
  14. rebster
    Aug 25, 2023
    7
    I really enjoyed playing this game but I think that there are some adjustments that can be made that can take it to the next level.

    Useless upgrades such as offering higher discounts in sale boxes. Why would I want to sell at a higher discount when everything from the sale box gets sold anyways? Instead of upgrading chest space, personally I never even filled a whole chest, it would be    I really enjoyed playing this game but I think that there are some adjustments that can be made that can take it to the next level.

    Useless upgrades such as offering higher discounts in sale boxes. Why would I want to sell at a higher discount when everything from the sale box gets sold anyways?
    Instead of upgrading chest space, personally I never even filled a whole chest, it would be more helpful to upgrade your backpack.
    If you’re shooting enemies at the top of the screen you can’t see their health bar.
    Would be helpful to buy a magnet to attract loot from enemies instead of having it fall into the abyss or stay floating over lava.
    Retailer should sell potion and enchantment ingredients.
    Things aren’t explained well enough with the diagrams eg. taking requests and seeing them on your calendar
    Last boss can be won easily if you just stay in one spot. Before I found this out I tried fighting it multiple times, and only on the first attempt did the boss do a different string of attacks, on the other tries he just walked around.
    Desert boss fight is super laggy!!!
    Identical items in the backpack don’t always automatically stack.
    There's a problem with the rings. Sometimes my full health will go down, then when I unequip and reequip my rings my health goes back to normal.
    When forging a new weapon, the stats will show something like 200 with an up arrow. This doesn’t show by how much your attack will increase but just the total attack of the weapon. It would be helpful to have this number just show whether it's improving your current equipped weapon or whether its worse by showing the difference between your current attack power and the new weapon attack power.    … Expand
  15. OskarJUK
    Jun 18, 2023
    7
    This game gave me a lot of fun, but was little boring after some time. Playing with something watching in background is good, I like it.

Awards & Rankings

52
#52 Best Switch Game of 2018
39
#39 Most Discussed Switch Game of 2018
91
#91 Most Shared Switch Game of 2018

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
83

Generally favorable reviews - based on 23 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 22 out of 23
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 23
  3. Negative: 0 out of 23
  1. Nintendo Force Magazine
    Aug 28, 2019
    80
    Link may never get a night job. But Will has, and his insomnia makes for a great idea for a game! [Issue #39 – May/June 2019, p. 73]
  2. IGN Japan
    Apr 29, 2019
    80
    Moonlighter is a game that has you experience the life of a hero and a shopkeeper at the same time. You fight enemies to obtain items at a dungeon, and go on to sell these at your shop, allowing you to buy better armor. The gorgeous graphics enhance the experience and the gameplay loop is great. The game could have offered more to do and the story is a bit simple, but it’s an enjoyable ride nonetheless.
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  3. Cubed3
    Dec 28, 2018
    90
    In spite of an ending that arrives too soon, Moonlighter manages to offer an engaging balance of commerce and action up to the very end.
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