That can be a bit of a problem if you're crossing a bed of lethal spikes at the time.įortunately, the island layout is designed in such a way that players should rarely lose much progress even if they fumble hard. For the most part, everything feels quite intuitive, though you might find yourself firing a shot when you meant to air dash. These skills will carry her through to the end of her quest, and they are augmented by abilities tied to various items. She's also able to double jump and, later in the campaign, to air dodge. The heroine can dodge to escape danger, swing her weapon, fire a ranged shot, use a special item (which usually forces her to stand still for a moment and may cause her to take damage if she doesn't wait for a good opening in a heated boss battle) and jump. Players are walked through the available moves, based on their control scheme. It's just as likely they'll set the controller down with a smile of satisfaction and look for thrills in some other game, though, because five hours feels just fine in this case.Īs you might expect, the game begins with minimal challenge on offer. Then when they have survived the final encounter, they can save over their current file and start fresh with a few tweaks in store. Reaching the closing credits on the Normal difficulty likely won't require much more than five hours of playtime for a lot of players, even with the map fully cleared. Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight is definitely a game in that vein, but it does away with one of the the features you may have anticipated: a lengthy quest. Finally, you can see what waits on the other side of that suspicious gap or behind that locked door. It instead lets you access a new portion of the world you're slowly beginning to master, one that was formerly off-limits. Genuinely rewarding adventures are often the result, because success means more than simply advancing to the next linear stage. Such games often fuse the sense of exploration found in games like Super Metroid and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night with the harrowing, action-oriented sequences for which the games in those franchises were once known. The "Metroidvania" has become quite popular over the last decade or so, and it's easy to see why. Soon it is evident the source of this evil is the queen herself, but reaching her throne room will require bravery, determination, and a willingness to explore every nook and cranny in Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight. Even the local monastery is no haven, and the queen's castle itself is shut off from the populace. Towering trees give way to the all but abandoned ruins of a town, where the people live in obvious fear and keep to themselves as much as they can. Her mission is to find the realm's queen and ask for her assistance, but as the noble heroine ventures deeper into the island, it quickly becomes clear she has stepped right into the middle of a nightmare. " Reverie Under the Moonlight presents an intricately designed world filled with bosses and treacherous corridors, and lets players enjoy it all in fewer than a half-dozen hours."Ī priestess arrives at the edge of a foreboding forest, armed only with a magical leaf. Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight (Switch) review