Moonlighter 2 Review (PC): One Small Step For the Series

When I first played the original Moonlighter, I came away loving the idea. Delving into dungeons in order to supply my shop, and upgrading my adventuring gear were things I repeatedly enjoyed doing. There were a handful of gripes I had at the time, with that loop becoming too samey over the dozens of hours I poured into it, though.

Moonlighter 2 course corrected some of those issues, with a new art style, revitalized combat, roguelike structure, and more upgrades to chase than before. The newer take on the gameplay loop helped smooth away my prior problems, and left me with an experience I enjoyed more as a total package. While the endgame and some grindy objectives dragged down the middle sections a bit, I still came away with Moonlighter 2 being my preferred entry for the series.

Diving Deep

From the very start, Moonlighter 2 makes some major new decisions about its gameplay. These choices  echoed genre favorites and kept its hooks in me throughout. Top-down dungeon delving from the original has been switched out for a more roguelike experience, with isometric action combat as we travel to different arenas, reminiscent of Slay the Spire or Hades. Our playable shopkeep Will’s arsenal has also been deepened, utilizing different weapon types, a ranged firearm with refillable ammo, and perks that can alter your playstyle in each run. The ability to chase different builds, augment weapons and utilizing in world traps brings a level of variety I adored, making each attempt to reach the end boss unique.

That variance is added onto with the differing worlds you can attempt to conquer: a desert world, a high tech prison, and a wind swept dream world. All give you new items to chase, enemies to defeat, and secrets to discover that reward new items back at your home base. All of these options allow you to create a gaming session for any mood, and more than enough quests to chase along the way. This diversity bolstered much of the time I spent playing Moonlighter 2, and while 15 hours in I had seen all that the game had to offer, I stayed engaged with these worlds and challenges longer than my time in the previous game.

Commander of Commerce

On the other side of the Moonlighter coin is the shopkeeping aspect, as well as a deeper and more involved town building aspect than I would have assumed. Just like the preceding title, Will is gathering items out on his journey to sell to adventurers, juggling an inventory storing system with item abilities and rarities, creating a game of trying to bring the best loot back for maximum profit. Once back in town, you place your items in the shop for sale, guessing prices and judging client reaction to see how close to the “perfect” price you are. All of that will feel similar to returning fans, and it still maintains as some of the most stressful and rewarding parts of the Moonlighter experience. 

A brand new system, the titular Endless Vault, also rewards you for reaching certain gold milestones and is the main quest of the game, as you try to unlock all of its treasure and secrets, making the chase of money the main crux of everything you do. Bringing back a pack full of high rarity gears, pricing it so the guests are happy while you make the most money, and ending a shop day with tens of thousands of coins is as satisfying as ever. The sequel adds in a ton of ways to spend all this newfound money, with the town vying for you to spend it with them to upgrade. Balancing between buying new weapons and armor, investing into better healing or more health, or items and furniture for the shop to further improve how much you get for selling, are some of the hard choices to be made. 

It’s a delightful grind to chase after, but that’s also my major grievance with Moonlighter 2. Everything you do loops back to chasing coins in dungeons and selling at the store, which is fun for a dozen or so hours, but when I was replaying beaten bosses and selling items I already had the best prices for, that feeling of been there, done that crept in. Chasing after small statistical increases, that get progressively more expensive, just for the sake of grinding starters to wear thin, and it left me in a similar place to my feelings on the original Moonlighter, the rewarding gameplay loop started to lose its shine. While I do prefer this game’s approach to combat, artstyle, and overall town-building, it left me wanting just a bit more variety, or a shorter runtime in the end.

Final Verdict

Moonlighter 2 cashes in on the great idea of the previous game, plundering fantastical dungeons in order to become the best shop salesman in the land. In both cases it’s an improvement, with the new roguelike structure and action combat being a joy to run through, and the town and shop keeping side of things being more involved. It can feel like an endless grind at times, but there’s enough new and varied here to keep returning fans happy on their journey to run the best business in all the land.

Moonlighter 2 was reviewed on PC with a code provided by 11 Bit Studios. It is also available on PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch 2, and Xbox.

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