Left in the wake of Salt and Sanctuary was a tantalizing concept: Dark Souls as a 2D metroidvania. Ska Studios showed it was possible—with a one man team of all things!—so indie studios got to work on creating their own Frankenstein's monster. Numerous notable titles emerged from this trend such as Blasphemous, Ender Lilies, and GRIME, with the tally only growing each year. But this sudden burst in popularity brought with it a muddying of the genre, blending many of these gothic-medieval games into a gray soup of stamina bars, cryptic lore, and corpse runs. It became harder to stand out, harder to tell at a glance what your game did different from the myriad of others.
Moonscars tries to leap ahead of its kin thanks to a strong art style and gorgeous animations, but it never fully emerges from the muddy swamp. Rather, it is stuck waist-deep in mediocrity, vainly reaching for the feet of its golden idols.
Before I begin, let me just state that Black Mermaid should be proud of the work they've achieved here. To come out of nowhere and drop such an impressive, gif-juicy game like Moonscars is admirable, even if the experience is far from perfect. There's a lot of praiseworthy material here: the world is somber and alluring, attacks have great weight and flourish to them, and the smeared, smudgy art style is a clever fit for the game's earthern theme. The magic system is also an interesting departure from genre conventions, utilizing a replenishable resource that doubles as your healing pool. Since magic can only be recovered by attacking, it stops you from having to constantly return to a save point to restore health, while simultaneously encouraging a risky, aggressive playstyle. It's a smart system...
... would that I could say the same for the rest of the game.
The boldest idea Moonscars brings to the table is its roguelite perks: transitory passives that reset upon death. Although you can hold up to five perks, there are a scant six in total to choose from, with a majority allowed to be taken twice. This means you're likely to end up with the same exact build every time: two 25% heal increases, two 10% crit increase, and whatever fifth suits your needs at the time (like the full hp heal). Toward the latter half of the game you'll come to lean more on the spell cost reduction perks, but it hardly feels like a game changer. Eventually you'll realize that perks largely serve as a "death tax", momentarily weakening you until you slaughter a handful of enemies to get back up to speed. And considering how the game bizarrely has endgame enemies provide the same amount of experience as its starting foes, expect to warp back to the beginning to do some menial, risk-free grinding over and over again.
What you won't grind for, strangely enough, is experience. And that's because there are no level ups in Moonscars—only spells, trinkets, and permanent upgrades scattered throughout the wild. This renders the power curve distinctly flat with a slight uphill slant; although you'll be stronger at the end of your journey than its start, it'll be mostly due to the hours of play time you'll spend studying enemy attacks, as well as your own. The only vital items to hunt for in Moonscars are the damage upgrades, but they suffer from a bizarre artistic flaw: looking like every other sparkly item on the ground. This deflates the joy found in exploration, as you have barely any upgrades to keep an eye out for—and those you are in need of look like every other useless trinket that'll clog your inventory.
Plus, it's not as if exploration is one of Moonscars' key features. Despite having all the telltale signs of a metroidvania, the world of Moonscars is practically on rails, guiding you from one area to another. You can't stumble upon anything you aren't supposed to, nor fight any of the bosses out of order. Only when you find the game's lone mobility upgrade does the world open up a little bit, but even then the new paths will lead to dead ends until you visit them in a specific sequence. The final act in the game kills the metroidvania comparisons outright, devolving into a string of dull arena fights against enemies in flat arenas that you've dispatched a dozen times already. Lastly, the in-game map is horridly unwieldy, lacking markers for both switches & doors, as well as scrolling agonizingly slow (seriously, what is it with metroidvania games having glacial, impractical scrolling?!)
Perhaps you're hoping that the lore of the world can keep you hooked, but the story is sadly ripped wholesale from From's catalogue. The analogues to Dark Souls/Bloodborne are glaring: the medieval kingdom has fallen into disrepair, Clayborn are Undead, getting cleft is going hollow, the moon is a major antagonist, and every NPC is an asshole that speaks in riddles. There's a kernel of a good idea here—namely, every death letting you slough off a useless skin that may or may not come back to haunt you—but the storytelling in Moonscars is needlessly convoluted and poorly explained, throwing line after line of dialogue at you that ultimately reveals nothing. The gargoyles in the hub are the worst offenders, prattling on without end while glibly mocking you the entire time. While there are major character reveals and plot developments, nothing in Moonscars is surprising because nothing is expected; the story is a nonsensical proper noun salad that vacates your mind as soon as you turn off the game.
Combat stays strong for the most part, but even it starts to stagnate by the end. Despite the alluring animation of the game's heavier weapons (like the hammer and painwheel), Moonscars values quick attacks over outwardly impressive ones. This, combined with the slow start-up of spells and high damage of parries, funnels you into a rapidly striking playstyle where retaliation is king. This only becomes more true as the game gets harder, with enemies lobbing off half of your health bar in a single, wide strike. And even when you realize the power of the parry, it remains a temperamental and finicky maneuver, no matter how often you use it. The best tip I can give is to try and parry enemies before you think you need to.
Speaking of enemies, Moonscars could've benefitted from a larger bestiary. What's here is thankfully varied, but the game runs out of new monsters in its last third, a problem further exacerbated by the shift to arena battles. To mask this shortcoming, old foes are reintroduced with an immunity to physical attacks—a gimmick you're either going to find mildly interesting or painfully annoying. While this does prompt the player to reexamine their spell loadout, flying foes are an eternal nuisance, as there aren't a lot of quick and effective aerial spells. It doesn't help that the skybound enemies are some of the worst in the game, whether it be the floating priests that spam a powerful AoE heal or the tiny gargoyles with their deceptively wide spears. Bosses at least provide an interesting challenge, but not only are they few and far between, but half of them are also aerial foes, meaning your solitary midair swipe will be getting quite the workout.
Moonscars makes a valiant effort but ultimately falls short of greatness. Everything besides its animations comes up lacking: an uninspired world, lifeless map, hitchy combat, low build variety, and square room after square room of enemies made immune to 70% of your combat repertoire. Despite my cartoonishly long list of grievances (that continue to unfurl and bounce down a staircase), I nevertheless had fun with Moonscars, and would recommend it only to diehard fans of the genre. The game has inarguable foibles, but the worst of its sins are still forgivable, merely needing more polish rather than a drastic overhaul. If I was to make a single, potentially-damning comparison, Moonscars feels like the Mortal Shell of the 2D Soulslike genre.
No comments:
Post a Comment