Moonlighter is a handy RPG that came out on PS4, Xbox One and PC at the end of May, but I will not deceive you, Switch version of November brings the best shape thanks to the opportunity to take it on my way, to tread the labyrinths and whip up completely. It's an indie title that has overwhelmed many at GDC, but that charm is hidden in the gradual immersion in the gaming mechanisms you are trying to acquire before you jump the first 20-30s. Yes, this is the title where it is benevolent to go to harassment, for it will often punish you. But the strengths and the catchy combination of two concepts are worth enjoying.
The Moonlighter talks about the mazes that have appeared in the country and the heroes have begun to sneak into them in an effort to snipe precious treasures and find the mysterious fifth door. Our hero does not have a great chance at such a mission, but he is trying to do it because he wants to secure the operation of a name-based business and needs high-quality items. The first attempt ends in failure, fortunately the old man takes him, gives him some tips, a better weapon (with a hero he has not had many chances) and with the help of a determined player many things can be changed.
You are waiting for two games in one - wandering into hard-core dungeons and business leadership where you are trying to make money and finance your expeditions. The authors surpassed both concepts in one whole. It will be clear to the petitioner that you get the items in the store on the expeditions and that you finance the profit - if you can turn enough money, you can buy better equipment and then you will get to the maze. But grind can come up very quickly if you do not fully understand the rules - after an hour you can get into a vicious circle where you can collect and sell, but if you do not grow your account and grow your business and village, you can still do the same and do not go .
It will teach you the first maze, where you will understand the structure and system. Enemies are keen to take you on the first floor, but second-third will make a lot of effort. Orientation initially drives a random generation of environments - each maze design shows roughly a dozen rooms on one floor, but they are otherwise modeled, stacked, and folded. The advantage is clear - not even the fiftieth visit of the dungeon does not dare. When visiting, you know what you can expect on the floor: a room where the past hero has lived and left you a few notes and a medicinal lake where you will always go to get HP back in full. All other rooms are changing: their content, enemies, the box position, and the composition of the items in them.
Fights are challenging because enemies have been using different types of shocks from the beginning. There are little red slime, but they are attacking in halves. When they are six, you have nothing to do. And when a big slime comes in, it packs you up and HP drops even faster. There are stone stumps in which you have a problem with the interventions: they have the shields on the front and they are resistant, so they need to be attacked from the side or from the back. And there will be strange waterworks that burn you with drops or a stream of water - at the moment you start attacking from another side, they will change orientation to you and HP will blow again quickly. The ingenious top of the first floors are huge stone spheres that will get you dangled and beat out of you by dozens of HP while attacking them unobtrusively or crawling around them and occasionally hitting them. Not to mention that there are enemies flying (they can hit only when they fall below) and the surface will often slow you down (red, green slime), there are obstacles or the floor will fall under you. And I can not remember the passes and holes all the time - but be careful, some of them will also bring the hidden rooms under you, so do a good study of the minimap.
Thanks to it, your journey becomes easier and more transparent. After a few walks, you will find out how much room is on the floor and constantly have to look for the healing pond to make a little quieter walk. Traditionally, I run upstairs and some of the rooms just fly to find out where it is. Authors may have suspected this behavior in advance, so in particularly heated bouts of enemies, you are barred by the exits, so that you can not get rid of them, but they are fighting with full steam. But otherwise, you will learn with clenched teeth to walk through at least one floor and then ... use one of two options. One necklace lets you go back to the town for a few hundred. Good choice, but if you want to go through the whole labyrinth to one stroke, you will most likely fail to do it. The third floor is demanding, full of objects and enemies, and somewhere snoring the boss. Nothing worse than when you die in front of the boss or in the middle of the third floor and you lose everything. Later, fortunately, another alternative appears, but five times more expensive: teleport to a city where you can take off with a full bag of items and then go back to the maze. But beware, there are all the enemies recovering, it is ideal to leave them at the beginning of the new hunt. Decisions when and how to go from maze are fatal - literally and for thousands of money.
And to make it easy for a trader in the soul of a warrior, you will traditionally struggle with the lack of space in the inventory. First, 20 boxes that fit quickly, because some items can be worn after 5 or 10. Later, the problem is that the item must be placed only on the lower, top, or right pockets. And then there are vicious pieces, whose identity you will learn only after leaving the maze or extra appetizer, which after insertion in the inventory have an effect on the surrounding object: destroy, change, and so on. The essential question will arise here: do these things or not?
Finally, you get to the surface and have to go shopping. You pull things out of inventory, pick up on a bid, set prices, and try to guess how customers react. If you set a high amount, the smile on the face of the customer will be sad and he will not usually pay (or angry, but the popularity of the item may fall - even when the market is flooded by a large amount when it devaluates the price again). If you put it down, it is clear that it is enormous, but you will not get as much as you could. When determining constantly the kukate into the properties of the subject, when the price was low, adequate or misplaced and what is the popularity of the subjects. It is up to you whether you want to do your own actions and objects to get rid of them faster (to crackle inventory) or to choose another tactic. The shop works only during the day, so you can go to maze at night. And meanwhile, sometimes you can get a little hungry.
Your business motivates you to make permanent trips, but you will quickly find that if you sell little or fast, you will not be paid a trip to the city. You can go for 200-300 money, but you have to go always from the beginning. If you are going to teleport for 1500 or 2000, you need to set up inventory to make the way for you to pay back your money - why risk selling the "matrons" in a thousand when the trip stood two? And of course, you still have to make improvements to your equipment or town.
The equipment is clear what is going on - the deeper the floor of the maze, the more challenging the rivals. It will help everything against them - more HP, better armor, stronger weapon. You do not have to do it, you do not want to do everything you need, then you will miss the last silver brick in the first swords of the four thousandth of me in the beginning, and the money is also necessary - without them you will not get to the armor, a better item. There is a clearly defined strategy: If you want to get stronger, you need to first make it weaker, the tree of development is strong, as well as statistics, and who does not want to increase health, movement and strength?
Money is also invested in the development of the town. First, a blacksmith and aunt for healing bottles must be repaired, then other bum and traders can handle it. The development of the city and the shops is obvious, but the price of weapons and equipment is increasing exponentially. If you first took something for a liter, then for four, then suddenly ask the blacksmith 40,000. And you need to earn somewhere ...
There are five labyrinths in the game, you first point to the first four, then you get an important key, and perhaps the fifth mythical door will appear and the final one. Everybody has their own design, other enemies, but after time of the day you will find that the system of struggle does not change too much: to attack, to jump, to defend and to survive. There is not an enormous number of environments, but it's an amazing jar of time before you can reach bosses or finishers.
The graphics are nice retro, with a solid color palette and the music is picturesque. When you dive into the game, you will not count pixels. With regard to aesthetic quality, Moonlighter works well with the environment where the atmosphere of the world breathes. Are you golem? You will see a variety of variations on the chord and chill. If you go into the woods, you will be stunned by the green. It does not leave the desert and the technological world will be surprised.
Moonlighter chose a pair of excellent playable principles and mixes them in a demonstration way. The RPG, where the objects are sparkling, gains new tones thanks to their demanding acquisition and monetization, there is an excellent way to work with the economy and direct impact on the gameplay. The fight is tough and your development is not just the size of the sword or the strength of the armor, but overall prosperity. India game as a belt!