Written by dne27, this is a review of Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight, available for the following platforms: Windows, Linux, OS X, Playstation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch. I am reviewing the Switch edition, bought with my own money, for £10.99 on sale (original price £11.49). Momodora: RUtM was developed by Bombservice and published by DANGEN Entertainment and had a initial release date of the 4th of March 2016. It sits at a 9/10 on Steam and 82% on Metacritic.
THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE ENTIRETY OF MOMODORA: REVERIE UNDER THE MOONLIGHT, READER DISCRETION IS ADVISED.
Here's the tl;dr: Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight is a definite sale-only game to be played when you have fuck all else to do. A pixel art metroidvania in a tsunami of pixel art metroidvanias, drowning in a sea of unsustainable uncreative repetition.
THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE ENTIRETY OF MOMODORA: REVERIE UNDER THE MOONLIGHT, READER DISCRETION IS ADVISED.
Here's the tl;dr: Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight is a definite sale-only game to be played when you have fuck all else to do. A pixel art metroidvania in a tsunami of pixel art metroidvanias, drowning in a sea of unsustainable uncreative repetition.
Well, with that out of the way, let's relax and review! ... or try to relax, this review is brutal ngl.
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Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight.
Imagine being pierced by a fine, sharp-pointed rapier, it's long blade slowly running through the sinew of your fleshy body. At first, you might not even realise that you've been stabbed, the blade is so fine and thin it feels more like a prick than a stab or jolt. But eventually you'll start to feel cold, the warmth of your blood trickling down to the floor, forming a thick puddle as it seeps around and between the tips of your toes. You stare empty and perhaps bitterly at the lack of realisation to your situation. My experience with Momodora felt something akin to that. Except the blood is my patience, flowing out of my body as I watch it drift away, my eyes suddenly transfixed on Kahos' idle animation. She's yawning. A tug of the rapier - why is her idle animation her yawning? Is she not taking this end-of-the-fucking-world narrative seriously? Another tug of the rapier causes me to wonder - wait a minute, what the fuck is going on?
If LongStory was the loser of the race and Opus is the grinning champion of good game design/story telling, then Momodora is the middling 2nd place - the one you always truly feel sorry for. They didn't quite make it to first and but they weren't even shit enough to laugh at. This might seem harsh, but my patience is wearing thin for these lacklustre indie games that are all starting to blur into one big indie cesspool of uninspired copycat nonsense (a little bit like that sentence eh). I don't know how many more times I'm going to say 'oh really, it's another pixel art metroidvania' and not fucking lose my mind.
The anime-meets-dark souls vibe the game's trailer gave off really intrigued me and was the game's largest selling point, at least to me. But as soon as I launched it I felt a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach as I started to crawl sluggishly through Momodora's poor imitation of Dark Souls 3 world as the unfortunate realisation that Momodora was no different to Metroid - or Castlevania. A fairly lukewarm criticism, but hear me out. Repetition and imitating something isn't inherently a bad thing. Jurassic World Evolution is not really that much different from the games it's inspired by, but the unpredictable element of dinosaurs breaking out and wreaking havoc adds a new layer of gameplay that leaves JWE feeling more like the difference between Pepsi and Coke, rather than Diet Coke and Coke Zero. (I really hope that makes sense to people oh my god haha). But Momodora feels and plays like it's contemporaries, instead of trying to show you that it's different and worth playing. You've got to remember being in the business of being (excuse the cringe for a sec) a 'gamer' is rather quite expensive and you have to be making strategic decisions on what games are going to be worth your time and money. Why should I buy the latest Fifa, usually worth around £60, when I could play the version I already have which is virtually the exact same? Why should I play Momodora when it's no different to Metroid Fusion?
The thing is it's hard to talk about Momodora because I could easily paste in someone's review of Hollow Knight or Castlevania Symphony of the Night and it more or less be the same critque. Momodora suffers in the same ways they do and (kinda) excels in the same way they do. There's almost nothing new to say about this game that hasn't already been said. But I guess you're not here to hear me lament, but I'm going to do that anyways and at least try to critique this game in a interesting way. Hopefully.
Okay so Momodora was developed by Bombservice, a development group headed by the original creator of the previous Momodora games known as rdein. It's impressive stuff for what I can only assume is a small group of people, and despite what you may think I don't hate pixel art - I only hate it's overuse. I am all here for how smooth the pixel art looks - because if you're going to be boring and use pixel art like every other fucking indie game out there, at least make the stuff look good - and it really really does. The animations are possibly some of the smoothest and invigorating I've seen in a long time. There's something in the way that Kaho (the protagonist) has been animated that really helps to ground her as a character, forgoing the usual mach speed that metroidvania characters seem to move at regardless if they're a super solider infused with a alien or a young adventurer exploring an underground cavern of endless corridors. Kaho moves like there's genuine gravity at play here, her roll slow but fast enough that you feel like it was a close call and her jumps feel more calculated than unpredictable. This made the platforming segments much more bearable than usual as I always felt in control of Kaho's jumps and speed, any mistake was usually down to my misjudgement of the platform rather than poor quality of animation or games design. Boss fights were a delight because of this too, with easy to read but still challenging boss moves that were both clear and impressive, never really leaving me feel like it was a cheap death if I ever died to them. The way the animation was able to give me a sense of the character without dialogue is a testament to the strength and quality of the animation on display. I can't stress enough how enjoyable it was to see Cath (one of the few NPCs in the game) slug her enormous two-handed longsword over her back or seeing how Fennel looks like she's dancing when she's spinning her rapier towards you. It gives Momodora this brilliant sense of cohesion which helps to ground and immerse you into it's atmosphere. Momodora takes the FromSoft approach of medieval iconography infused with eldritch Lovecraftian horror with the bizarre addition of turning sad skeletal British men into sad anime girls instead. And surprisingly enough, it works. The artist, Hernan Zhou, has managed to make a world that is both gothic and anime with neither feeling out of place as you might initially think it would. Cath has the typical steel breastplate and arms, the enemies are all slightly cute but also kind of scary suits of armour piloted by the undead - to quote a great man, Momodora's art and stylistic choices 'just work'. But that doesn't mean that it's interesting.
Games from the previous generation, when looked back on in retrospect, often get yelled at for the same thing - they were all grey or brown 3rd person shooters. I believe a similar problem is haunting the metroidvania genre of games, with Momodora being a victim of this - they're all the same, dark corridor simulator set in a grim-dark environment, be it a chasm or space station, overrun by a [insert apocalyptic problem here]. It's the same evil shit we've seen before; the undead, creepy insects, ghosts and ghost dogs. It's the same brick-wall castle, adorned with the typical flicking candle lights and spooky dungeons, with the single dripping droplet of water that goes off every five seconds. There's big tiddie anime girl versions of these enemies too, because fuck it it's anime and if we're going to use metroidvania tropes we should also over use anime tropes. One boss is so close to the boss Vicar Amelia that it's verging on a lawsuit. There's nothing creative in the enemy or location designs, nothing you haven't seen in another game - a better game - which is a absolute shame because here you've decided to go with arguably one of the most diverse genres of art - anime - that doesn't really have a defined structure and they've somehow managed to come up with zero unique enemy types/designs and have fallen prey to sticking with what they know. It just comes across as lazy and uninspired; especially when it's apparent that it's paying homage to games like the Dark Souls series that has some of the most disgusting and visceral boss designs I've seen in a long time that are so unique in their design that when you look at them you think that they're undoubtedly a 'dark souls' boss and not easily mistaken for another games' boss character. Whilst Momodora might look unoffensive from an aesthetic point of view, it's just boring to slog through the games' bland and samey visuals.
Let's talk briefly about the way the game plays. Kaho is nice to control and platforming is kept to a minimum. You have a basic attack that forms into a combo ending with a heavy attack. You also have a ranged attack, given to you at the beginning and a dodge roll that grants a 1 to 2 second invincibility frame. There's a item system split into equipable items that work like Paper Mario's badge system and consumables like healing items. Some of these consumables have activation animations and so some thought has to be planned when using them but I never found it to be as strategic as Sekiro or Nioh. Passive items are equipables that are usually found spread out around the world or unlocked through challenges such as beating a boss whilst taking no damage. These might grant stuff like poison damage or buffs/resistance to status ailments. There are multiple difficulty modes and you can only change it if you're playing on New Game, on which you keep everything but the upgrades to health etc. Finally progress is saved by hitting bells and eventually fast travel is unlocked and used at the said bells. Enemies respawn every time you enter a new area and always in the same place. Phew, okay, boring status shit out of the way lets discuss why this is fine but ultimately boring. First off, a few positives. I thought that the bells were stretched out enough that it wasn't too long of a distanced between each one but neither too short that it was usable for save scumming and the like. I thought that the easy mode was a nice ease in for players, granting easy-mode only items that will help those who might be having a tough time playing especially if it's their first metroidvania. The platforming was decent and not overdone, there was enough that it felt like it wasn't taking the piss like it usually does, not quite challenging but a fun element nonetheless. The cat upgrade, whilst being a little bit too late into the game and not really being that useful, was still a fun touch and added a bit of fun to the gameplay. Thankfully the game's biggest credit is that it doesn't have that much fucking incessant backtracking which I loathe, you still have to do it but with the help of fast travel Momodora made the smart move and ditched that relic where it belongs - in the past.
So here I am in Momodora, fighting my way through dingy corridors with my maple leaf and slapping a dead witches' enormous anime tits as she repeats the same awful broken-sounding laugh track and suddenly I have become aware of the metaphorical rapier again, as it's piercing my sinew. It's not a particularly enjoyable fight and as she disappears in a puff of smoke as if she were the Wicked Witch of the West (she is green by the way) I wonder what the fuck the point of that fight was. It's bad enough that most of Momodora is completely forgettable but now I have to try and recall the story for you so that I can tell you that there is no story - but of course if you had read the reddit threads and game manual you'd know there's a super deep lore n shit. I want to quickly preface this part of the review by mentioning that whilst I have not played all of the aforementioned games I am well aware of the story and did the appropriate research before playing the story of Momodora. To no one's surprise Momodora also borrowed it's method of story-telling from Dark Souls, a game notorious for it's non-linear storytelling and countless dedicated youtube videos attempting to piece the story by deep-diving into the available lore from the series. Momodora had all the grace of a new-born doe when borrowing this style of storytelling, seemingly believing that vague, floaty ambiguous writing is all you need when creating a non-linear story. Everyone talks in this cryptic manner that's obviously trying to seem mysterious but comes across as just pretentious instead. Dark Souls and it's ilk have both cryptic and narrative serving writing, sometimes intertwined, but Momodora misses out the narrative serving and heads straight for the kind of writing that makes you say 'what?' instead of 'ah, okay'. I'm inserting this during the editing phase of my review because ironically I forgot to mention it. The music, if it exists at all, is completely forgettable and I am not entirely sure what to say because I can't actually remember if music did ever play during my time with Momodora - I'm not exaggerating this either, you can read Destructoid's Nick Valdez's review he mentions the same thing about how it's 'unmemorable, and not functional at all times'. Frankly I don't really know what's going on but let me try to recount it for you without inputting my opinions - maybe if I can help it.
You play as Kaho a priestess from a small village called Lun which is now being threatened from a undead curse that has supposedly emanated from 'the east'. Kaho travels there as the anointed problem-solver and arrives at the Kingdom of Karst, ruled by its now mad Queen. Upon her arrival, after making her way through the last lands untouched by the plague, she meets the young knightess Cath who informs Kaho the only way to stop the plague is to kill the Queen. To do this, Kaho must acquire four pieces of the Knights Crest to open the sealed doors of Karst Castle. During her travels across the Kingdom of Karst, Kaho meets Elisa, a mysterious woman who urges Kaho to murder the Queen in order to lay her spirit to rest. Kaho then meets Fennel, pardoner of the Convent of Esselin - a god long since abandoned by his plague-stricken believers. Fennel however, is corrupted by her own spite-filled heart and is weary of anyone who steps into the monastery after the Queen had encouraged the general population to disregard the Convent's liturgies. Shortly after defeating Fennel as well as Lubella the Witch of Decay, who's sole goal is to usurp the royal throne, Kaho finally acquires the four pieces of the crest and rushes towards the throne room. Just before the final battle, Kaho is reunited with Cath who is dying from wounds sustained in a vicious battle with the Queen. On Caths request, Kaho relieves her and moves on to stop the Queen. In a three-stage boss fight, Kaho eventually stops the Mad Queen but not without having to sacrifice herself by drawing in the curse into her own body - to rescind it's control over the lands and seal it away for good.
Wow that lowkey sounds really cool you might be thinking and in theory that's how it should be. In theory. Except a lot of what I've told you came from the steam user manual, linked down below and a couple of steam/reddit threads. Some of this is told to you, the more simple stuff but a lot of this is left out and/or doesn't make any sense. For example, who in god's name is Lubella. As far as I'm aware this is her first and currently only appearance in the franchise and it's so fucking laughable how her 'story' plays out. Whilst exploring you might accidentally fall down this drop, like I did, and fight a weird minion-esque thing, before being inexplicably launched into a fight with the lovely Lubella. You fight her like twice and it's just so bizarre because her whole role is unexplained. You get that she's dead, her name is the witch of 'decay' after all, and that she's fucking bonkers but beyond that who is she what's she doing here why does she want to be queen etc. No word of a lie you fight her and she dies and that's it like no NPC really mentions her if at all and like that she's fucking GONE. Fennel is another disaster. Whilst being possibly the coolest boss fight she just simply exists as a angry bitch and then dies. I should briefly mention that Kaho is silent and appears to give very little of a shit when she brutally murders Fennel and casually strolls out of the monetary. The character Elisa is introduced by her steward, who says only one thing the entire game, and she herself is seemingly only there to spit exposition at you. Of course she's surrounded by cats and is a sexy milf witch so does it really matter? Cath is the only really interesting character, having something that kind of resembles a personality and a cool moment towards the beginning of the game in where you join her for a fight against some lava demon from DOOM. But she isn't really that present after that until you find her dying and asks you to kill her. It's this weird moment where Cath is acting like you're really close, like you're her dear friend or lover and she's asking you to kill her she's in so much pain and can't go on and I'm sitting there thinking like bitch I barely know you and you're asking me something like that? It feels undeserved, almost unreal and unfortunately comes across as a last ditch effort to make you care about Momodora's literally and metaphorically empty world. It's all written under the guise that what you're reading is actually deep the same way tween fiction is.
Zelda: Breath of the Wild had a similar approach to story-telling, one where you unlock memories in a random order that are sort of linked together but make sense on their own as well. Except Zelda knows that to build a character up so that when they die and you meet their ghosts even though you as the player haven't physically spent anytime with them you still feel like it's warranted and makes sense because you've seen the flashbacks and seen how much Link cares about these people. Kaho does not know Cath, or Fennel, or Elisa or even the weird Sans skeleton guy so when you meet them it's just weird and a one-time excuse to shit out exposition. At this point I'd have rather they just had a wall of white text at the beginning telling me what I need to know and then send me on my way and not bother having these characters and pretend character moments. It only serves to wind me up because I wanted more, I want to like this game's story because it's a simple but interesting set up - maybe if we had more interactions with Cath along the way and/or see her die for our sake then it could have been a more impactful scene. Have Lubella constantly harass you then maybe she interrupts the final boss and becomes it, making it like a Ganondorf vs Link situation of a bitter rivalry that's been building up. Nothing has payoff in this game and even when you got get all the tedious shit for the 'good' ending (which you know I looked up how to get because when I say tedious I mean back and forth and do this at this moment etc) it still feels like a complete waste of time and that you may have just saved the world but that has had as much impact as a tree falling in a forest and no one hearing it.
Sigh.
As you can probably tell, I don't have much to say that's nice about this game. I do want to be nice about this game, and much like my LongStory review I want to stress how much admiration I have for Bombservice like fucking kudos to those guys who went out and made a game that's more than I've done I just write shitty reviews but I want to break the rule that's for some reason a thing that indie games have been sneakily hiding behind, which is that indie games are protected from criticism mainly because they're made by small development team and you shouldn't discourage them by leaving a negative review. But AAA companies are made of teams with thousands of people and people shit on AAA games freely. Petty arguments aside, this defence - whilst I respect it - doesn't really matter because Momodora in the end is a product I paid for and am greatly dissatisfied with. If I were to make a game I would want people to fairly criticise it in spite of how it might make me feel so that I can better myself for the next time. And I think this applies to Momodora greatly because this isn't the first game in the series, not by a long shot. This is the fourth game in the franchise and whilst it looks a lot better than the first it is also almost the same, nothing has changed yet Momodora sits at a 9/10 on Steam. A fucking 9/10, the god tier rating one away from a perfect score. To me it's absurd because on the one hand sure, objectively Momodora is a good game I won't argue with you there; it works, there's next to no bugs and it runs fine (certainly didn't drain my switch battery or cause it to crash) but I guess I can't help but be amazed at how people are settle for the same shit over and over again in their indie titles yet are just as passionate about the out of control stalemate AAA games find themselves in. I referenced in both my previous reviews about the state of the Switch's storefront and how it's essentially a sea of indie garbage mixed in with shovelware and recycled games on life support - and I'm not saying that Momodora is shit in the same way - it's just become a symbol of the state of indie games nowadays that are beginning to slip into the comfortable mindnumbing familiarity that AAA titles like COD established a long long time ago. I don't want to open the eshop and see a wave of metroidvanias and equally done to death genres with goddamn pixel art anymore and yet here we are rewarding uninspired repeats with nines out of fucking tens.
Sorry I got a little bit heated there but believe me when this comes from a place of passion, not hatred as foul as my language might make it appear to be. I wanted to like this game, and for the most part I wasn't completely insulted or anything. I finished this game, uninstalled it and moved on. Because in the end Momodora fails to be interesting in both gameplay and narrative, never amounting to much beyond it being a perfectly fine fall-back game if you have nothing better to do than waste 4 or so hours on a completely by-the-books nothing ventured nothing gained metroidvania. If you're the kinda person who likes to always order a vanilla ice cream with a 99p flake then this game is perfect for you, but if you're looking for a bit of a fruity twist or spice you're better off scouring elsewhere because frankly this is the most run-of-the-mill game I have ever encountered in my life. Once this review is up I don't think I'll ever think about this game again and when I inevitably look back on these reviews I'll probably think, 'oh yeah, that metroidvania with pixel art. yeah that was alright, bit shit though.'
For an entrance fee of £11.49, Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight is a definite sale-only game to be played when you have fuck all else to do. A pixel art metroidvania in a tsunami of pixel art metroidvanias, drowning in a sea of unsustainable uncreative repetition.
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Important Links:
If LongStory was the loser of the race and Opus is the grinning champion of good game design/story telling, then Momodora is the middling 2nd place - the one you always truly feel sorry for. They didn't quite make it to first and but they weren't even shit enough to laugh at. This might seem harsh, but my patience is wearing thin for these lacklustre indie games that are all starting to blur into one big indie cesspool of uninspired copycat nonsense (a little bit like that sentence eh). I don't know how many more times I'm going to say 'oh really, it's another pixel art metroidvania' and not fucking lose my mind.
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| (Credit: Bombservice. Anime girls + Dark Souls? What could possibly go wrong?) |
The anime-meets-dark souls vibe the game's trailer gave off really intrigued me and was the game's largest selling point, at least to me. But as soon as I launched it I felt a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach as I started to crawl sluggishly through Momodora's poor imitation of Dark Souls 3 world as the unfortunate realisation that Momodora was no different to Metroid - or Castlevania. A fairly lukewarm criticism, but hear me out. Repetition and imitating something isn't inherently a bad thing. Jurassic World Evolution is not really that much different from the games it's inspired by, but the unpredictable element of dinosaurs breaking out and wreaking havoc adds a new layer of gameplay that leaves JWE feeling more like the difference between Pepsi and Coke, rather than Diet Coke and Coke Zero. (I really hope that makes sense to people oh my god haha). But Momodora feels and plays like it's contemporaries, instead of trying to show you that it's different and worth playing. You've got to remember being in the business of being (excuse the cringe for a sec) a 'gamer' is rather quite expensive and you have to be making strategic decisions on what games are going to be worth your time and money. Why should I buy the latest Fifa, usually worth around £60, when I could play the version I already have which is virtually the exact same? Why should I play Momodora when it's no different to Metroid Fusion?
The thing is it's hard to talk about Momodora because I could easily paste in someone's review of Hollow Knight or Castlevania Symphony of the Night and it more or less be the same critque. Momodora suffers in the same ways they do and (kinda) excels in the same way they do. There's almost nothing new to say about this game that hasn't already been said. But I guess you're not here to hear me lament, but I'm going to do that anyways and at least try to critique this game in a interesting way. Hopefully.
Okay so Momodora was developed by Bombservice, a development group headed by the original creator of the previous Momodora games known as rdein. It's impressive stuff for what I can only assume is a small group of people, and despite what you may think I don't hate pixel art - I only hate it's overuse. I am all here for how smooth the pixel art looks - because if you're going to be boring and use pixel art like every other fucking indie game out there, at least make the stuff look good - and it really really does. The animations are possibly some of the smoothest and invigorating I've seen in a long time. There's something in the way that Kaho (the protagonist) has been animated that really helps to ground her as a character, forgoing the usual mach speed that metroidvania characters seem to move at regardless if they're a super solider infused with a alien or a young adventurer exploring an underground cavern of endless corridors. Kaho moves like there's genuine gravity at play here, her roll slow but fast enough that you feel like it was a close call and her jumps feel more calculated than unpredictable. This made the platforming segments much more bearable than usual as I always felt in control of Kaho's jumps and speed, any mistake was usually down to my misjudgement of the platform rather than poor quality of animation or games design. Boss fights were a delight because of this too, with easy to read but still challenging boss moves that were both clear and impressive, never really leaving me feel like it was a cheap death if I ever died to them. The way the animation was able to give me a sense of the character without dialogue is a testament to the strength and quality of the animation on display. I can't stress enough how enjoyable it was to see Cath (one of the few NPCs in the game) slug her enormous two-handed longsword over her back or seeing how Fennel looks like she's dancing when she's spinning her rapier towards you. It gives Momodora this brilliant sense of cohesion which helps to ground and immerse you into it's atmosphere. Momodora takes the FromSoft approach of medieval iconography infused with eldritch Lovecraftian horror with the bizarre addition of turning sad skeletal British men into sad anime girls instead. And surprisingly enough, it works. The artist, Hernan Zhou, has managed to make a world that is both gothic and anime with neither feeling out of place as you might initially think it would. Cath has the typical steel breastplate and arms, the enemies are all slightly cute but also kind of scary suits of armour piloted by the undead - to quote a great man, Momodora's art and stylistic choices 'just work'. But that doesn't mean that it's interesting.
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| (Credit: Bombservice. Okay, so ngl Fennel is cute.) |
Games from the previous generation, when looked back on in retrospect, often get yelled at for the same thing - they were all grey or brown 3rd person shooters. I believe a similar problem is haunting the metroidvania genre of games, with Momodora being a victim of this - they're all the same, dark corridor simulator set in a grim-dark environment, be it a chasm or space station, overrun by a [insert apocalyptic problem here]. It's the same evil shit we've seen before; the undead, creepy insects, ghosts and ghost dogs. It's the same brick-wall castle, adorned with the typical flicking candle lights and spooky dungeons, with the single dripping droplet of water that goes off every five seconds. There's big tiddie anime girl versions of these enemies too, because fuck it it's anime and if we're going to use metroidvania tropes we should also over use anime tropes. One boss is so close to the boss Vicar Amelia that it's verging on a lawsuit. There's nothing creative in the enemy or location designs, nothing you haven't seen in another game - a better game - which is a absolute shame because here you've decided to go with arguably one of the most diverse genres of art - anime - that doesn't really have a defined structure and they've somehow managed to come up with zero unique enemy types/designs and have fallen prey to sticking with what they know. It just comes across as lazy and uninspired; especially when it's apparent that it's paying homage to games like the Dark Souls series that has some of the most disgusting and visceral boss designs I've seen in a long time that are so unique in their design that when you look at them you think that they're undoubtedly a 'dark souls' boss and not easily mistaken for another games' boss character. Whilst Momodora might look unoffensive from an aesthetic point of view, it's just boring to slog through the games' bland and samey visuals.
Let's talk briefly about the way the game plays. Kaho is nice to control and platforming is kept to a minimum. You have a basic attack that forms into a combo ending with a heavy attack. You also have a ranged attack, given to you at the beginning and a dodge roll that grants a 1 to 2 second invincibility frame. There's a item system split into equipable items that work like Paper Mario's badge system and consumables like healing items. Some of these consumables have activation animations and so some thought has to be planned when using them but I never found it to be as strategic as Sekiro or Nioh. Passive items are equipables that are usually found spread out around the world or unlocked through challenges such as beating a boss whilst taking no damage. These might grant stuff like poison damage or buffs/resistance to status ailments. There are multiple difficulty modes and you can only change it if you're playing on New Game, on which you keep everything but the upgrades to health etc. Finally progress is saved by hitting bells and eventually fast travel is unlocked and used at the said bells. Enemies respawn every time you enter a new area and always in the same place. Phew, okay, boring status shit out of the way lets discuss why this is fine but ultimately boring. First off, a few positives. I thought that the bells were stretched out enough that it wasn't too long of a distanced between each one but neither too short that it was usable for save scumming and the like. I thought that the easy mode was a nice ease in for players, granting easy-mode only items that will help those who might be having a tough time playing especially if it's their first metroidvania. The platforming was decent and not overdone, there was enough that it felt like it wasn't taking the piss like it usually does, not quite challenging but a fun element nonetheless. The cat upgrade, whilst being a little bit too late into the game and not really being that useful, was still a fun touch and added a bit of fun to the gameplay. Thankfully the game's biggest credit is that it doesn't have that much fucking incessant backtracking which I loathe, you still have to do it but with the help of fast travel Momodora made the smart move and ditched that relic where it belongs - in the past.
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| (Credit: Bombservice) |
So here I am in Momodora, fighting my way through dingy corridors with my maple leaf and slapping a dead witches' enormous anime tits as she repeats the same awful broken-sounding laugh track and suddenly I have become aware of the metaphorical rapier again, as it's piercing my sinew. It's not a particularly enjoyable fight and as she disappears in a puff of smoke as if she were the Wicked Witch of the West (she is green by the way) I wonder what the fuck the point of that fight was. It's bad enough that most of Momodora is completely forgettable but now I have to try and recall the story for you so that I can tell you that there is no story - but of course if you had read the reddit threads and game manual you'd know there's a super deep lore n shit. I want to quickly preface this part of the review by mentioning that whilst I have not played all of the aforementioned games I am well aware of the story and did the appropriate research before playing the story of Momodora. To no one's surprise Momodora also borrowed it's method of story-telling from Dark Souls, a game notorious for it's non-linear storytelling and countless dedicated youtube videos attempting to piece the story by deep-diving into the available lore from the series. Momodora had all the grace of a new-born doe when borrowing this style of storytelling, seemingly believing that vague, floaty ambiguous writing is all you need when creating a non-linear story. Everyone talks in this cryptic manner that's obviously trying to seem mysterious but comes across as just pretentious instead. Dark Souls and it's ilk have both cryptic and narrative serving writing, sometimes intertwined, but Momodora misses out the narrative serving and heads straight for the kind of writing that makes you say 'what?' instead of 'ah, okay'. I'm inserting this during the editing phase of my review because ironically I forgot to mention it. The music, if it exists at all, is completely forgettable and I am not entirely sure what to say because I can't actually remember if music did ever play during my time with Momodora - I'm not exaggerating this either, you can read Destructoid's Nick Valdez's review he mentions the same thing about how it's 'unmemorable, and not functional at all times'. Frankly I don't really know what's going on but let me try to recount it for you without inputting my opinions - maybe if I can help it.
You play as Kaho a priestess from a small village called Lun which is now being threatened from a undead curse that has supposedly emanated from 'the east'. Kaho travels there as the anointed problem-solver and arrives at the Kingdom of Karst, ruled by its now mad Queen. Upon her arrival, after making her way through the last lands untouched by the plague, she meets the young knightess Cath who informs Kaho the only way to stop the plague is to kill the Queen. To do this, Kaho must acquire four pieces of the Knights Crest to open the sealed doors of Karst Castle. During her travels across the Kingdom of Karst, Kaho meets Elisa, a mysterious woman who urges Kaho to murder the Queen in order to lay her spirit to rest. Kaho then meets Fennel, pardoner of the Convent of Esselin - a god long since abandoned by his plague-stricken believers. Fennel however, is corrupted by her own spite-filled heart and is weary of anyone who steps into the monastery after the Queen had encouraged the general population to disregard the Convent's liturgies. Shortly after defeating Fennel as well as Lubella the Witch of Decay, who's sole goal is to usurp the royal throne, Kaho finally acquires the four pieces of the crest and rushes towards the throne room. Just before the final battle, Kaho is reunited with Cath who is dying from wounds sustained in a vicious battle with the Queen. On Caths request, Kaho relieves her and moves on to stop the Queen. In a three-stage boss fight, Kaho eventually stops the Mad Queen but not without having to sacrifice herself by drawing in the curse into her own body - to rescind it's control over the lands and seal it away for good.
Wow that lowkey sounds really cool you might be thinking and in theory that's how it should be. In theory. Except a lot of what I've told you came from the steam user manual, linked down below and a couple of steam/reddit threads. Some of this is told to you, the more simple stuff but a lot of this is left out and/or doesn't make any sense. For example, who in god's name is Lubella. As far as I'm aware this is her first and currently only appearance in the franchise and it's so fucking laughable how her 'story' plays out. Whilst exploring you might accidentally fall down this drop, like I did, and fight a weird minion-esque thing, before being inexplicably launched into a fight with the lovely Lubella. You fight her like twice and it's just so bizarre because her whole role is unexplained. You get that she's dead, her name is the witch of 'decay' after all, and that she's fucking bonkers but beyond that who is she what's she doing here why does she want to be queen etc. No word of a lie you fight her and she dies and that's it like no NPC really mentions her if at all and like that she's fucking GONE. Fennel is another disaster. Whilst being possibly the coolest boss fight she just simply exists as a angry bitch and then dies. I should briefly mention that Kaho is silent and appears to give very little of a shit when she brutally murders Fennel and casually strolls out of the monetary. The character Elisa is introduced by her steward, who says only one thing the entire game, and she herself is seemingly only there to spit exposition at you. Of course she's surrounded by cats and is a sexy milf witch so does it really matter? Cath is the only really interesting character, having something that kind of resembles a personality and a cool moment towards the beginning of the game in where you join her for a fight against some lava demon from DOOM. But she isn't really that present after that until you find her dying and asks you to kill her. It's this weird moment where Cath is acting like you're really close, like you're her dear friend or lover and she's asking you to kill her she's in so much pain and can't go on and I'm sitting there thinking like bitch I barely know you and you're asking me something like that? It feels undeserved, almost unreal and unfortunately comes across as a last ditch effort to make you care about Momodora's literally and metaphorically empty world. It's all written under the guise that what you're reading is actually deep the same way tween fiction is.
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| (Credit: Bombservice. I should mention this game has a weird aspect ratio.) |
Zelda: Breath of the Wild had a similar approach to story-telling, one where you unlock memories in a random order that are sort of linked together but make sense on their own as well. Except Zelda knows that to build a character up so that when they die and you meet their ghosts even though you as the player haven't physically spent anytime with them you still feel like it's warranted and makes sense because you've seen the flashbacks and seen how much Link cares about these people. Kaho does not know Cath, or Fennel, or Elisa or even the weird Sans skeleton guy so when you meet them it's just weird and a one-time excuse to shit out exposition. At this point I'd have rather they just had a wall of white text at the beginning telling me what I need to know and then send me on my way and not bother having these characters and pretend character moments. It only serves to wind me up because I wanted more, I want to like this game's story because it's a simple but interesting set up - maybe if we had more interactions with Cath along the way and/or see her die for our sake then it could have been a more impactful scene. Have Lubella constantly harass you then maybe she interrupts the final boss and becomes it, making it like a Ganondorf vs Link situation of a bitter rivalry that's been building up. Nothing has payoff in this game and even when you got get all the tedious shit for the 'good' ending (which you know I looked up how to get because when I say tedious I mean back and forth and do this at this moment etc) it still feels like a complete waste of time and that you may have just saved the world but that has had as much impact as a tree falling in a forest and no one hearing it.
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| (Credit: Bombservice. Okay, who is this again?) |
Sigh.
As you can probably tell, I don't have much to say that's nice about this game. I do want to be nice about this game, and much like my LongStory review I want to stress how much admiration I have for Bombservice like fucking kudos to those guys who went out and made a game that's more than I've done I just write shitty reviews but I want to break the rule that's for some reason a thing that indie games have been sneakily hiding behind, which is that indie games are protected from criticism mainly because they're made by small development team and you shouldn't discourage them by leaving a negative review. But AAA companies are made of teams with thousands of people and people shit on AAA games freely. Petty arguments aside, this defence - whilst I respect it - doesn't really matter because Momodora in the end is a product I paid for and am greatly dissatisfied with. If I were to make a game I would want people to fairly criticise it in spite of how it might make me feel so that I can better myself for the next time. And I think this applies to Momodora greatly because this isn't the first game in the series, not by a long shot. This is the fourth game in the franchise and whilst it looks a lot better than the first it is also almost the same, nothing has changed yet Momodora sits at a 9/10 on Steam. A fucking 9/10, the god tier rating one away from a perfect score. To me it's absurd because on the one hand sure, objectively Momodora is a good game I won't argue with you there; it works, there's next to no bugs and it runs fine (certainly didn't drain my switch battery or cause it to crash) but I guess I can't help but be amazed at how people are settle for the same shit over and over again in their indie titles yet are just as passionate about the out of control stalemate AAA games find themselves in. I referenced in both my previous reviews about the state of the Switch's storefront and how it's essentially a sea of indie garbage mixed in with shovelware and recycled games on life support - and I'm not saying that Momodora is shit in the same way - it's just become a symbol of the state of indie games nowadays that are beginning to slip into the comfortable mindnumbing familiarity that AAA titles like COD established a long long time ago. I don't want to open the eshop and see a wave of metroidvanias and equally done to death genres with goddamn pixel art anymore and yet here we are rewarding uninspired repeats with nines out of fucking tens.
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| (Credit: Bombservice. Kaho, you're killing me.) |
Sorry I got a little bit heated there but believe me when this comes from a place of passion, not hatred as foul as my language might make it appear to be. I wanted to like this game, and for the most part I wasn't completely insulted or anything. I finished this game, uninstalled it and moved on. Because in the end Momodora fails to be interesting in both gameplay and narrative, never amounting to much beyond it being a perfectly fine fall-back game if you have nothing better to do than waste 4 or so hours on a completely by-the-books nothing ventured nothing gained metroidvania. If you're the kinda person who likes to always order a vanilla ice cream with a 99p flake then this game is perfect for you, but if you're looking for a bit of a fruity twist or spice you're better off scouring elsewhere because frankly this is the most run-of-the-mill game I have ever encountered in my life. Once this review is up I don't think I'll ever think about this game again and when I inevitably look back on these reviews I'll probably think, 'oh yeah, that metroidvania with pixel art. yeah that was alright, bit shit though.'
For an entrance fee of £11.49, Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight is a definite sale-only game to be played when you have fuck all else to do. A pixel art metroidvania in a tsunami of pixel art metroidvanias, drowning in a sea of unsustainable uncreative repetition.
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Important Links:
Momodora User Manual: https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steam/apps/428550/manuals/MomodoraReverieUndertheMoonlight-Manual(1)(1).pdf?t=1554710110
Rdein itch.io: https://rdein.itch.io/
Rdein Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/rdein