With so many games and so little time to play them, I’m usually not too bothered when one doesn’t click with me. That word usually is important though, because sometimes a game is so beloved and exciting that it sucks to feel like you’re missing out. I remember this happening last year with Hades 2 , which felt so much like a game I should adore. This universally praised Roguelike obviously doesn’t need my love to be a huge success, but I’d really love to love it. After months of grief I’ve now finally come to terms with missing out on a very good video game, and a lot of that is because Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault scratches the same itch and is a gosh darn masterpiece.
I don’t actually have any experience with the first Moonlighter, but the sequel begins right after it. Protagonist Will and his buddies have lost their home, with dimensional portals pushing them into a new desert world. The only way Will knows how to live is to sell goods, so he sets up shop and looks to make a bit of money. It doesn’t take long for something weird to arrive in town though, in the form of the titular endless vault. This massive cube tells Will it has lots of rewards if he makes enough money, and this becomes the main quest of the game. There are loads of characters you’ll meet on this quest too, with different quirky and (generally) likable personalities.
To stock your store you’ll have to hop through a portal into a Roguelike dungeon, which is where the more Hades part of the game takes place. The isometric combat of Moonlighter 2 is absolutely sublime, with a variety of melee weapons and guns to use to deal with foes. More important than all these offensive tools though is your dodge roll, which you’d better believe you’ll be using to dodge all sorts of lasers, bullets and sword swipes.
At the start of Moonlighter 2 you’re offered four weapons to try out, each with different strengths and weaknesses. I started out using the spear, which provides some nice reach and spawns little projectiles you can draw in to deal damage to approaching foes as a special ability. I was expecting this to be my firm favourite, until I unlocked a particularly powerful heavy sword and fell in love. To keep the strength of this slower weapon up you need to sharpen it with your incredibly weak special attack, but if you can balance this then the enemies of the desert and futuristic library have no chance.
The variety of enemies and environments in Moonlighter 2 is seriously impressive, and forces you to learn how to deal with a variety of hazards to your health. Some enemies can be shot out the air and stunned if you’ve got the ammo, others fire ranged attacks that you can reflect with your backpack. Areas have different offensive options to use to your advantage too, like flowers that shoot thorns at enemies on impact or towers that stun foes in place with a beam. It adds even more variety to the combat, and ensures each run provides the fun.
At least one half of Moonlighter is a Roguelike at heart, and one with a constant flurry of upgrades. On each run you’ll get to choose the path you want to take on that genre staple web of nodes, and can choose if you want to focus on unlocking permanent updates, buffs for that specific run, or gathering treasure to sell in your shop. No matter what you’ll never come back empty handed, which means that choosing riskier options is often a good idea (even if you have to portal out of a boss fight before landing the killing blow).
The reason you’re putting yourself in all this danger is for the loot, so you can stock the shelves back at the store. Collecting this is a puzzle game in itself, as you only have limited space in your bag and there are different effects to manage. In some stages you find items that shock adjacent loot, which buffs their quality a bit but will make them break if you shock them again. Other bits of loot will remove the shock from items in a single row if you place it in a corner, and all these effects interact in interesting ways especially when you find rarer relics. The effects change in each biome too, just to shake things up even more.
Once you finally limp safely back from a run, it’s time to open the shop. I was worried I might get bored of the cosier side of the game, but it’s a ludicrous amount of fun. Each item you bring back has a different value for the people of the village, but the only way you can work this out is by guessing. When a customer walks up to an item they’ll react to it in one of four ways, indicating they’re way too happy with the price, accepting of the price, annoyed but they’ll pay it, or so frustrated they’re never coming back. Balancing prices back and forth for repeat items will ensure happy customers and bonus perks to earn you record profits, and all these systems are seriously fun to play around with.
There would be no point selling so many items if the money wasn’t important, but Moonlighter 2 has an almost ridiculous amount of upgrades to unlock. You can spend your cash at the potion shop to gain more healing items each run or power them up. You can spend at the blacksmith to improve a weapon or unlock a new one. You can buy extra slots in your backpack, or decorations for the store to make more money. You can unlock perks at the store to get better customers who tip more, or spend your money to make the relics you find rarer and more valuable on your adventures. Honestly this is just the tip of the upgrade iceberg too, so if incremental improvement is your jam then prepare for a sweet new addiction.
Moonlighter 2 has become the game I just want to play every hour of the day, and as such I don’t have many bad words to say about it. In fact pretty much the only issues I have are based around performance, specifically while playing the Switch 2 version of the game. The framerate on Switch 2 isn’t perfect, but worse than that are the load times. I can’t think of a single time I’ve cared about load times in a game off the top of my head, but between every area or even from your shop to the village you end up waiting ages. It’s wild, and does affect the flow rather significantly.
Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault is one of the most compelling Roguelikes I’ve played in a long time, with so many clever systems and upgrades to unlock. Whether you’re slicing through robots or selling teeth at a reasonable price, it’s somehow always an enjoyable experience. Other platforms may be preferable to the Switch 2 currently, but regardless Moonlighter 2 is a must play.
