The games I sometimes struggle the most to write reviews for are ones that instantly get me addicted, playing them for a number of hours, all the while being unable to ignore some issues that I still feel hold it back from being better. To some degree you could call that armchair quarterbacking, but when you’ve played this many indie titles ranging from best-in-class to complete and utter shovelware nonsense, it’s hard not to have an opinion on even small details. I liked the contrast of activities that the original Moonlighter had you engaged in, fighting through tough battles to gather relics, and then being put on the spot to try to extract as much coin as possible from your customers in your storefront, selling the spoils of your time risking life and limb. As this follow-up points out though, that original formula had some room to expand and make the experience even better, even if there still may be areas worth working on.

For those unfamiliar, the basic idea here is that you’ll make nightly runs into a few different alternate dimensions in search of loot. Each world has its own pretty unique enemy types, potential elemental bonuses, and types of goods, some of which have special properties that can either boost your fortunes or sometimes blow them up. Once your bag is full, or when your health begins to dwindle, you’ll be faced with the decision of whether to press on, knowing better riches could be just around the corner, but also that if you die on your quest, the value of everything in your bag will be immediately decimated, just one of many areas where this game puts risk and reward front and center. 

As someone who pushed the limit too often and got burned, especially early on I’d say it pays to know when to cut your losses, as getting money rolling early on and buying upgrades is the quickest path to deeper runs and continuing to build your investment. You could say, as a criticism, that perhaps there are too many things you can choose to upgrade, sometimes to the point where it feels like you’re being nickel and dimed into the ground, especially when you’re just trying to get some momentum rolling. That said, once you work out some tricks like holding materials from a previous run to sell with the wares from the next one, allowing you to try to maximize potential sales bonuses, you can do pretty well for yourself. A consistent frustration that I do hope will get patched is simply how much time it feels like you spend in loading screens. Deep runs feel overlong unfortunately, and amongst the competitors in the space this sequel feels like it drags its feet more than most. If you’re willing to be patient, can get the feel of at least two of the weapons options available to you, and can be bothered to take the time to read carefully over the relics you find, trying to be sure you’re not making a horrible mistake that could cost you, it’s a challenging roguelike that pretty well tests you on every level if you want to be successful.