Does Moonlighter DLC light up your life or is it stuck between a rock in a hard spot?
Story:
It seems like its been awhile for console gamers like myself waiting to play the DLC for the highly successful game,Moonlighter. Developed by Digital Sun and published by 11 bit studios,Between Dimensions DLC promises to expand on the originals 2D dungeon crawler style to add a more lengthy and hefty gaming experience. But does it succeed in completing that objective or does it leave us with a bitter taste in our mouth? Let's see.
Your adventure into the DLC kicks off directly after the original game's ending. After your main hero has saved the day and cleared the final dungeons of the main game, an earthquake and shaking is heard and felt throughout the land,leaving everyone dazed and confused as to what could be causing this. Upon inspection to get to the bottom of what has caused the large earthquakes, the hero comes into contact with the source of the recent events in the form of a giant portal that has opened up. A slime portal, that leaves many mysteries to be solved. It's now up to our hero to once again save the day and to protect the land.
Game Play:
The game play of the DLC works exactly as the original game did,same mechanics,same rule of thumb, however its amped up in difficulty compared to the previous game. Depending on how strong your character was at the end of your playthrough in the main game, will determine just how far you can make it in this DLC. This game comes at you with more strength and force by adding more enemies for you to have to get through that are usually stronger than you or offer you more of a challenge than you may be use to or expect them to be.
Strategy is more important than ever in Between Dimensions. Wheras before you would be able to take down regular enemies in a hit there and a hit here with no trouble worrying about meeting your end,in this DLC, enemies are more of a meat shield and will require you to think about any action you take before making it. Once you're able to gauge just how strong or weak you are against specific enemies,now is the time to get back to the grind and get to crafting in order to get your revenge on all the fiends that have wronged you.
Each dungeon you enter in this adventure requires you to loot and plunder for special items that you will need in order to forge new weapons and gear so that you may be strong enough to complete the dungeons. This is where it might become a turn off for a lot of players considering it takes A LOT of grinding and I mean a lot. You won't be able to grind out what you need or want inside an hour or so, nope,sorry not that easy!. To get yourself up to par with the new weapons and gear you want, be prepared to spend hours just trying to get a few pieces of gear and weapons that you need, it will not come easy and it will not come cheap. Even with as tedious as that sounds, do not worry, the amount of time you spend grinding away will pale in comparison to the amount of satisfaction you will feel when you actually complete the dungeon you've been grinding to beat. It is pure bliss.
As you move up to different floors of a dungeon, make sure you grab and take anything you can as it will be essential to sell for money here and there because items will start to cost a small fortune, so every piece of ''useless'' thing you find,even if you do think its worth nothing, will still help you out in the long run. When searching through your dungeons, you might get lucky to find a secret room and or dungeon as well, when this is found you will find a variety of new enemies and a fight with an enemy boss who if successful killed will drop specific items that will aide you in your quest(items/weapons). However, don't get too excited because some of the items are only usable for that specific dungeon only and wont be usable in another. So be wise not to leave until you've fully explored around to your hearts content.
Graphics:
Graphically this game is the same as the original and that's not a bad thing,no one expected a graphical upgrade from the original game. The animation remains superb and the art style still remains as a great as ever. I really wish more dungeon crawler games of this genre could adapt a similar art style cause the way it moves and flows works really well and it is really pleasing to the eye.
The Bad:
Moonlighter: Between Dimensions does many things really well, but of course there are things that maybe hold it back a little or certain things that cause the experience to either get a slight bit tedious or make you want to take a step back away from the game for a little bit and just play in a few hour spurt here and there. Only a few things that I noticed that could I see being a possible hindrance to new players coming into the series.
One of the problems is the amount of cost some of the items will run you. Some of the items you need in the game can cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars to afford, but before you even buy them you need to loot and plunder to find the required parts before you have to file for bankruptcy. This is real big issue considering everyone is gonna want the best gear but with the way the in game currency works, you need to set up your booth/shop with anything you do not want and sometimes even with stuff you do want and don't want to sell, just to squeak out any bit of money that you possibly can make.
With this money problem, comes the next problem that goes hand in hand with the money issue, the grinding. To be able to get enough stuff to sell, or to be able to make the gear you want before spending a fortune on it, you have to do hours upon hours of grinding for the best gear,or the basic versions of gear alone can run you over 100k outright. Now I'm not a hater of grinding in games, actually its quite the opposite, grinding in games like this or in an rpg doesn't bother me one bit and its pretty fun. However, I can see this being brutal for new comers to this franchise that get turned off by it and maybe if the grinding was scaled back a tad from having to grind out 100-200k for something to maybe lowering it down to like 50-150k to grind out. Keep the developers original vision that they want to give us, but be a little more lax on the player.
Overall:
When it all comes down to it Moonlighter: Between Dimensions continues on the success of the original. While it doesn't do anything drastically new that you haven't seen before, it still delivers on everything you loved about the original and lives by the saying ''if it aint broke, dont fix it''. The players here get countless hours of new dungeon game play,new gear and weapons to obtain and some enemies that will really challenge even the greatest of players. I highly recommend checking out not only Moonlighter itself, but this DLC as well. You will not be disappointed.
Moonlighter: Between Dimensions is out now on Playstation 4.
- Review code provided by 11 Bit Studios/Digital Sun
