Moonlighter 2
Game Title: Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault
Released: September 2, 2026
Game Length: 40 Hours
Grade: A
Route
Paths: There are a total of three biomes with six different locations. You get to choose upwards to three directions on a path to the mini-boss and final boss encounters. The encounters in the rooms can be rather random from multiple waves of enemies to no enemies at all. They are marked to show one or two chests, their rarity, or whether they offer one of two possible damage perks. These perks are very important as they are your only means of increasing your damage. They can range from inflicting wounds that deal direct damage or hexes that damage overtime. Each run will have one timed room in order to obtain a bloblet token to adopt a pet and one recipe room for a new furniture to place in your shop. You can obtain a maximum of five at each of the six locations.
Rooms: There are three specially-marked rooms. The blacksmith modifies your weapon attack pattern. Eventually, you will unlock a potion room that adds one (or sometimes two with perk) potions. The third room is a pool of water right before the final boss that restores a set amount of health. Then there is the question mark room that will either give you a challenge that restrains you for a little while before giving you a bonus or a treasure bonus that modifies relics in some fashion.
Greed: After you made some progress, a character will permit you to enter a sort of bonus arena mode after defeating the final boss. You are placed in a room with a wave of enemies that expect you to have collected weapon perks ahead of time. Once you defeat the enemies, you are immediately sent to a second room. The third room is a mini-boss room with two elite monsters tucked away throwing projectiles at you during the fight. They immediately die once the boss is defeated.
Enemies
Environment: There are a few important things to know that are in almost every room. There are breakables that drop crafting material for your weapons and furniture. There are traps that can deal damage to both you and your enemies. Each biome has their own interaction device that target enemies: enclosed flowers that shoot spikes when struck, genies that fire projectiles when you shoot down yellow globes in the air, and tasers that will freeze enemies in place after you power them on with a couple hits. Be aware that you can "waste" these devices if enemies are buried underground, on higher ground, or out of range. Any items that drop after defeating the last foe will automatically gravitate towards you. Anything still not destroyed will need to be struck to obtain their exclusive resources.
Enemies: In addition to the things you can break down in the environment, enemies too have a chance to drop their own type of crafting material. Slimes will need to be defeated to improve your potion potency. Mini-bosses drop a higher tier material. Defeating a boss will drop something exclusive needed to upgrade or craft things in town. Sometimes, you will encounter an elite monster who will have twice the health and attack power. They might fire three bullets instead of one. You can bring down flying enemies with a bullet from your gun.
Rupture: Some enemies will provide you with an opportunity to phase them out of your dimension. Each enemy is different. Stronger enemies will have a purple arrow halfway on their vitals. Some enemies that fire bullets will send a purple one every third shot. Breaking an enemy's shield or having them ram into a wall can also cause it. Whatever the case, this allows you to use your backpack to send them flying. Depending on their position, you can send them into a trap, collide with another enemy, or ram a wall. If the indicator is a circle where there is a cliff with no railing, this indicates you can instantly send them out of the game. A number of perks can trigger if you do this correctly.
Boss: Defeating the final boss not only gets you the special crafting material but two legendary chests. Each boss will have moments where they are invulnerable to all attacks. Opportunities will form where you must use your backpack to send some sort of object to break down their purple shields. Each boss has three phases. As a reminder, you are able to pause the game to organize your bags and use your pendent to escape while on the move if things get too difficult. In town outside the standard portal, you can enter a boss mode by conversing with certain characters. No relic will be found and the path is shortened with only a couple of different weapon perks.
The Shop
Progression: Very early in the game, selling items can be rather difficult. Your bag space is limited, there are only a few pedestals to place relics on, and you can only store five in storage. You might end up filling your bag before reaching the boss. The Endless Vault will ask you to accumulate a set number of earnings that doesn't roll over for each of the first six upgrades. Do not panic when it asks you to earn a set amount in a single day. This just means that you must earn a set amount before your shop closes for the day. There is a set time your shop can remain open, or you can manually close the shop using the hologram you use to open your shop.
Decorations: As you unlock recipes, Velvet Parlor will permit you to purchase new pedestals and furniture with perks. Ms. Scratch will exchange a random cosmetic for 5 vouchers that can placed inside or outside the shop using the K33P3R chest unit. Once you have unlocked them all, she will then offer premium decorations at high cost for completing certain achievements.
Bloblets: After you accumulate two tokens, you can adopt your first pet at Zany Jane. You can switch the pet out with any others you purchase. You must pet them during open hours to activate their ability. It is not automatic! Some will calculate your bonus on previous sales made during the day. Later on, you will be able to have two pets and pet them more than once.
Prices: Relics do not initially have a set price. You can increase the value to see the maximum amount that can be entered. The range just below that is overpriced and will only be purchased by a rich customer. All other customers will simply walk out of the store. The next range are marked expensive and will still be purchased without leaving a tip. Perfect items leave customers happy and increase the amount of money all customers leave in the Tip jar. Do not be surprised if selling 20 relics for very little come with a high Tip. Leaving a Tip will also increase your perk meter that unlocks potential bonuses throughout the day. Cheap items can reward you extra things with a Tipper Customer or Known Customers, but they also increase the Aroma Dispenser for additional effects.
Calendar: The calendar will inform you when Known Customers will pay you a visit and whenever relics are popular. Popular relics will be marked with a heart icon. These will automatically increase their value by nearly double their initial amount. They can be region-based or tier-based. You do not have to get the relics that day. In fact, you could open and then close the shop really fast until a popular day becomes available.
Relics
Levels: There are five different tiers: Common sells for 20 to 100, Uncommon sells for 100 to 500, Rare 500 to 1k, Epic 1k to 2k, and Legendary 2k to 3k. Pay close attention to what tier shop modifiers add bonuses to. The value that determines how much something really sells for is its Quality. A quality of 100 can double a relic's sell value. Although the cap is 999, this can be raised even higher to 1,999 or 2,999 using the spark bonuses. After you defeat the antagonist of the game, little sparks will appear every few rooms to increase the difficulty in exchange for increasing the quality of relics.
Curse: Each biome has a sort of inventory mini-game you have to work on as you gather relics. The Gallery allows you to shock relics with wires for extra quality and remove charges with batteries. Shocking something twice will cause relics to explode. The relics in Aeolia can absorb other relics or energy crystals whenever you petrify them. These energy crystals will disappear when you end your run. Kalina has relics that permit you to add shields to prevent them from disappearing whenever you burn any of them. Curses disappear after you head home, and there is a quality penalty if you die. The game warns you in advance that relics will become corrupted if you try to carry them into another run, but all relics will be set aside when running in boss mode.
Chests: Rooms can have one, two, or even four chests depending on what sort of perks you may have active at the time. Each chest has two common relics and a choice between two of a higher tier. You can reroll your option for two other relics. The cool part about chests is that they act as temporary storage. If you want, you could place certain relics obtained earlier in a run into chests temporarily so you don't accidentally trigger some curses. You can also cycle between all chests at the end of a room without losing any of the contents. This helps if you want to see if there are trigger relics before picking up a relic you might find in the first chest. At any time, you can delete a relic that is picked up before placing it down. All relics left in chests cannot be retrieved once you traveled down to another room.
Deluxe: Relics can start with about four times the amount of quality (think 40 instead of 10) and help aid you with certain perks when you open up your shop. They will have a shield icon underneath. Not only this, but their curse is usually double the standard amount (think 100% instead of 50%). Copying a deluxe curse for a standard relic does not carry the higher amount over.
Weapons
Short Sword: The most balanced blade allows you to strike three times and follow it with either the Attack Finisher or Special Finisher. At any time, you may use your special attack to swing your blade all the way around. Some of the perks of additional short swords can cause you to shoot your gun without using ammunition or parrying an attack in a defensive stance.
Large Sword: Anyone that wants to go bigger and more powerful may want to use the bigger blade. Unfortunately, you will need an additional second per swing and must use their special to keep their Sharpness up. Future variations modify how this little exchange works.
Gauntlets: Getting close and personal might not always be the best idea, but adding a weapon perk per strike can quickly turn the tables. Unlike your other weapons, you can hold the button down and continue swinging. In addition, your special will trigger what accumulates on your Beserk bar. What this bar actually does depends on which gauntlets you are wearing.
Spear: Perhaps the weakest of all the weapons only swings wide in their attack finisher. Its benefit is being able to hit targets from a distance through environments or a step away from enemy strikes. The special attack is its spearheads that drop each time you hit something. They will float back to you when you call them. Whether they fly back slowly dealing more damage, go straight to targets for less damage, or create a circle around you all depends on which weapon version you have equipped.
Gun: Unlike the other four weapons, your gun is always with you. It's ammunition slowly builds up as you hit targets unless you have the patch that automatically increases it out of combat. Each gun is very distinct with one that shoots from a distance and another that goes wide like a shotgun. Another gun is a bot that you can fire at the same time as swinging your weapon.
Summary
Review: Although the difficulty of the game becomes easy once you learn enemy attack patterns, there is a lot to discover running an hour through one of the six locations. There are many challenges, secret rooms, recipes, pets, and methods to progress. Figuring out how to get the most out of relics on the field and in your shop can be quite enjoyable. There were a few times my game froze, but thankfully the game saved right after you end a run and not when you enter the town. It is definitely different than its predecessor from seven years ago where the main goal was to defeat bosses. Despite the odd direction the story takes, there is enough variety to keep you entertained for hours.