Nice little metroidvania with a cool setting on a giant living world-creature. You can swap between 4 characters (eventually, towards the end), with different abilities for traversal/combat. Unfortunately, quite a short game, and the concept is not used to its fullest. A longer, bigger game with more difficult bosses would've been better, but, still a good game.

AVOID | LACKING | MAYBE | WORTHWHILE | COMPELLING | UNMISSABLE

Moonlight Pulse is a metroidvania game where you play as four different characters to save a living world.

In terms of what I enjoyed, I loved the art style of the game and the charming cast of characters. The upgrades/new abilities felt meaningful and helped traversal and combat quite a bit. Each character you can play as provides unique gameplay and no one character felt particularly over/undertuned. I thought the story was decent and the soundtrack fits nicely with the environment.

In terms of what could be improved, I feel like the fast travel system was unique and interesting and yet also deeply frustrating at times. Part of that is that due to relying on the fast travel system as a limiting factor in exploration, it made traversal a chore probably close to 50% of the time. There were a few times where I was exploring when I realized I exited when I shouldn't have (or rather, the area I thought might be the next for exploring I still couldn't properly access) and then the horror set in when I knew I had to spend five minutes finding the next entrance. This wouldn't be a big deal if it happened a few times, but it was happening near constantly through to the mid/late game. I also would have deeply appreciated had there been an item/collectable that allowed you to see other items you might have missed (it could be an end-game item) to help with clean-up. There were sometimes very unclear indications of the next places to explore leading to some early useless wandering (which is part and parcel for metroidvanias, but at times it felt excessive with this game).

It took me ~eight hours to complete the game with near full completion, and then an extra hour to do some clean-up. There are three achievements I'm leaving locked (beat the game in under 70 minutes, enter the final boss with the AVM under 60% and win, and fix the lungs in under 40 seconds). Without a guide, the first two achievements seem particularly difficult and I'm not sure how to do them. For the third achievement, the closest I got was ~43 seconds, and I got frustrated at trying to get it lower, so I'm letting it be.

In general, I enjoyed my time playing Moonlight Pulse. Had a few things been different (in particular, the fast travel system), I think this would be an absolute gem. Unfortunately, the few things detracting from the experience were pretty significant. I still think it's worth the time and energy to play, but I would do so with the above things in mind.

Its a decent short metroidvania, especially the price, but there are some issues with it that detract from the overall experience. Its cool with multiple different characters with different attacks and abilities that keep things fresh and all are varied. The environment being inside an animal is pretty unique as well. Combat is good overall, as well as platforming. There's a few items to collect, although they only make a small difference and don't change or enhance playstyle that much. The bosses are also pretty good and different.

Then the bad. The game is pretty short, although for the price seems fair. The game does a very bad job of telling you where to go next, with no objective markers or quest log. The map also doesn't give that much information and you'll constantly need to look for walkthroughs as to where to go which is annoying. The other main issue is the AWFUL fast travel system. I appreciate them trying something different, but it just makes everything more annoying. You have to constantly clear paths which is cumbersome. You have to go along preset paths which only go to certain areas and move 1 direction and is just such a hassle to get around to where you want to go. Fast travel is meant to make things easier but its just such a drag, and how you can screw up such a simple concept in MV's and make it that much worse is unforgivable.

So I appreciated the game but a couple issues with the map and fast travel system which made things worse overall.

7.5/10.