Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault combines roguelike dungeon crawling with roguelike shop-keeping

We all have our blind spots. I never finished the original Moonlighter, despite hearing a good bit of praise (including our own review) for the game's interesting combination of roguelike dungeon crawling and shopkeeping simulation. Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault is set to release later this year, and I had a chance to play a demo at Summer Game Fest Play Days. If you are interested in hearing the impressions of a relative newcomer, read on.

I'm coming at this sequel demo a bit blind, which I know may not be useful to people who want to hear thoughts on how the game is shaping up compared to the original title. Obviously, the art style is new, and I completely understand any hesitation in the shift to 3D models. I adore good spritework, and personally, I think a lot of the charm is lost in turning a top-down sprite-based camera into an isometric one.

It's clear that developer Digital Sun wants to try new things in this follow-up, however, and a change in art style is only one of several significant adjustments made to the core of the original game.

According to a post on Steam from earlier this year, Moonlighter 2 will not only feature more randomization in both the game's dungeon half, but also in its shop-keeping half. From an outsider's perspective, it seems like shopkeeping has seen the most mechanical changes, with the shop minigame more feeling like a roguelike itself, with randomized bonuses available each time you set up shop.

Selling items no longer centers on figuring out an item's price to sell and bartering with customers. Instead, the goal is to stack up various bonuses as efficiently as possible to get the highest selling price possible. Bartering is not really a component of the merchant half of the game anymore. You are trying to make money, and you hope the game's random elements align in such a way as to maximize your profits. 

Developer Digital Sun has stated a desire to make the item selling less repetitive, which is the reason for these adjustments to the item-selling half of the game, but it looks like this has largely left players ambivalent at best. Perusing through the Steam reviews on the demo page (which currently sits at 54% positive with a "mixed" rating), changes to the shop style account for a large component of the more critical feedback. Performance of the demo also seems to contribute to a considerable fraction of the criticism.

As someone who has not put too much time into the original Moonlighter, I can't thoroughly state how the new system compares, but any significant adjustment to a core game mechanic is bound to be met with some resistance. I can see positives to both approaches, and hopefully, Digital Sun can fine-tune the systems in place with the feedback given in the demo period.

The combat structure in the titular Endless Vault in Moonlighter 2 is generally what you would expect for a game like this. It is a real-time action RPG, only now set with an isometric perspective. You'll go from room to randomized room, taking on various enemies and picking up loot to sell in your shop.

As you progress through the dungeon, you can select the types of rooms you'd like to explore to some degree, which isn't uncommon in roguelikes of this nature. You want to find loot to sell at your shop, but you also want to find perks to improve your battle capabilities. The goal is to get as far as you can in the dungeon, pick up as much loot as you can, sell it at your shop, purchase upgrades, and repeat.

Combat itself is fairly standard fare. You essentially have a heavy attack, a light attack, a ranged attack, and a dodge roll. This itself is fine, but as I played through the demo, I felt like the controls were less responsive than I would have liked, and the isometric vantage point seems somewhat at odds with my depth perception with it came to landing hits and dodging attacks. 

Another significant component of Moonlighter 2 is inventory management. While this is true for many role-playing type games, Moonlighter makes this into a mechanic in its own way. As you pick up items, their description will detail how it will affect the items it is placed next to in your grid-like inventory screen. Placing certain items next to other items can raise an item's value, or it may destroy an adjacent item entirely. So, unlike most games where you just simply pick up everything you can find and stuff it in your backpack, here you are constantly considering each individual item's placement in your stash.

In the demo, my objective was to earn 5000 gold in a single day. In order to earn gold, you have to enter the game's randomized roguelike dungeon, pick up sellable loot from treasure chests, return to the store, and sell it to the shop's clientele. You can use your earnings to purchase permanent upgrades — either to your combat abilities or to your shop — head out, and try again.

In my short time with Moonlighter 2's demo, I can easily see that 'one more run' roguelike appeal. Each time you return from an expedition, you are making some permanent progress that will make the next expedition more likely to be successful. Digital Sun seems to be making big changes in this sequel in trying something new. We'll have to see if the right balance of fresh ideas can avoid alienating fans of the original title.