Momodora: Moonlit Farewell Review (KisekiDrillTeam)
As much as I respect the Momodora series for being simple and knowing it, this entry was too plain for me to really enjoy. I think RUtM worked because every element there was just good enough to form a balanced whole, even though none of them were exceptional. Here, it’s clear that loads of effort went into sprites, animations and presentation, yet the core gameplay remained equally simplistic (if not more so), and the contrast actually undermines the experience.
Momodora 2 and 3 worked too, but only since they were both 1-2 hours long. Moonlit Farewell lasts about 10 hours for no good reason, because the majority of this time is spent on a typical "hit, hit, i-frame dodge" combat. There’s no token platforming with spikes like before; only basic traversal.
You get many boss fights, but all of them are utterly straightforward, and the best battles are where the aforementioned contrast gets downright jarring. Beautiful animations, lush special effects, cool cutscene intermissions, badass music… and barely anything to do. The final boss has three completely different stages yet attacks so rarely and simply that many harder 2D action games would barely count this as a tutorial fight.
You could say there’s an attempt to get more mechanically complex using the Sigils system (basically your regular "many perks, limited slots" thing leading to different builds), except there’s really not enough balance for it to work. Some perks barely deserve a glance, while others are too good to not use all the time unless you’re doing a challenge run.
The game also invites min-maxing through its occasional awkward attempts at increasing difficulty, trapping you in tiny areas with large enemies or giving their attacks brutal status effects like bleeding (there is, of course, an immunity perk that negates all that). There’s a post-game boss rush section with no recovery between fights, and it might feel like you’re finally in for some challenging test of attrition… except the mana regeneration perk negates such handicap entirely. So even when you die in this game, the answer is usually "use a more OP build" instead of "git gut".
The story got an upgrade, but only in quantity of conversations and characters, not in their quality. RUtM was more of a typical moody dark fantasy; Moonlit Farewell is a typical JRPG-inspired romp about fighting a god with a double sprinkling of fan service. There’s a new girl Cereza acting as an NPC companion + shop, but she contributes absolutely nothing other than her cute cat ears. Momo and Dora are actually having chats here for the first time, except I couldn’t find any personalities in their lines beyond the most basic archetypes that were already established before.
Lastly, it’s disappointing how the extra modes and achievements have almost zero variety this time. RUtM had a pacifist achievement that meant moving through the same areas differently, as well as higher difficulties that at least invited you to do the battles near-flawlessly, and Momodora 3 had pacifist and speedrun achievements too. Here, instead, there’s a YOLO mode (which forces you to rely on OP perks even more) and the "arrange" mode (which mirrors the map, removes one hit from the base combo, and changes pretty much nothing else), so getting 100% basically means repeating the same thing 3 times in a row. Naturally, by the end of it the already simplistic and overused combat starts to feel like nothing but a chore.
Big props to the developer for making and finishing this game, despite the reported severe burnout, but there’s no denying that larger scope comes with its own set of challenges, and sometimes you just need a bigger team or even more time to make it work.