When Moonlighter released in 2018, it was to a fairly positive critical reception. Players seemed to enjoy the combination of cozy shop simulator and dungeon crawling roguelite, inspired by the Rogue Legacies and Stardew Valleys of the time. Some grumbled about a lack of depth and incentive to keep returning to the dungeon again and again, and seven years later developer Digital Sun is ready to show us what it’s learned from those criticisms. Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault is now available in early access on Steam. I spent several hours with it over the past week, and it already feels like a more focused and refined version of the original.
The premise remains unchanged: you play as Will, a shopkeep-slash-dungeoneer who is looking to turn his spoils into cold hard cash. The core loop involves diving into randomized dungeons, fighting the monsters there, filling your backpack with loot, selling it for a tidy profit, and doing it all again. Inventory management itself is a puzzle, as items interact with each other in your backpack, forcing you to think carefully about how you use the limited space. In essence, it’s three games in one, each section complete with its own rules.
While the concept of Moonlighter 2 is the same, it’s releasing into a very different landscape than its predecessor; where Moonlighter shared space with Enter the Gungeon and The Binding of Isaac, the followup has a whole new stable of contemporaries to draw from, and their influence is readily apparent. It’s impossible not to see the touch of Hades in Moonlighter 2’s combat (it’s isometric now!), or in the way Will gets to know the characters loitering around town. The hub area of Tresna could be a respectable stand-in for the House of Hades or The Crossroads, and I enjoyed familiarizing myself with the town and its residents.
Image 1 of 3
The combat and inventory management have been revamped quite a bit: Juggling your loot is much easier in The Endless Vault as the majority of crafting materials no longer take up inventory space, letting you focus entirely on the sellable relics Will accumulates during a run. This alleviates a big stressor. With upgrading and crafting resources moved to an invisible storage area elsewhere, Will is free to direct his attention to the shopkeeping aspect, sliding Moonlighter 2 into cozy game territory.
Running the shop itself is pretty similar to the previous game. You’ll set prices on your relics, check shopper reactions, and adjust the prices accordingly until you find that sweet selling spot. Curiously, the shopkeeping sections are lacking some of the big features from the demo version of Moonlighter 2 from earlier this year. That build sported a bartering system that let you haggle with customers, and collectible boosts and charms that helped you maximize profit during a shift. These features are gone in the early access build, replaced by a perk system more in-line with the dungeon sections.
Opinions on this decision are going to vary a lot, but I prefer the more hands-off price setting in the early access version. What this says about me I’m not sure, but the idea of having to haggle with every single customer that walks through the doors feels daunting. In this form, Moonlighter 2 is more relaxed—cozier.
Image 1 of 3
The “cozy game” label has very different connotations in 2025 than it did seven years ago—there are now nearly 2,000 games on Steam bearing the tag. What makes a game “cozy?” A low-stakes story? A comfy town hub? Is a cute art style enough? Cozy’s not just for farm sims anymore, but it’s also a well-served corner of Steam—maybe over-served. You can only eat so much comfort food before you’re stuffed.
For me the nature of coziness is more of a feeling than any one style of play. I’m comfy as heck playing Elden Ring or Sid Meier’s Civilization, two games lauded for their complexities and layers of systems. Moonlighter 2 contains many elements of coziness—decorating Will’s store, learning what prices to set for rare goods, chatting with the residents of Tresna—but in other ways it chafes against the chillout vibe it’s going for.
This is a story about a merchant. The primary goal is to make money. Gold is the be-all-end-all. The only way to progress the story is to satisfy the Endless Vault by earning as much of it as possible. And there are a dozen ways to spend your gold: Weapon and armor upgrades, shop decorations, inventory expansion slots, patches for your backpack, character upgrades, and lots more. With so many money sinks it can feel like getting pulled in every direction at once, making me anxious about how much I need to earn and what I should be buying first.
Do I focus on improving Will’s combat abilities since fighting monsters is the only way to earn sellable loot? Do I save for a bigger shop so I can sell more relics at once? That new sculpture would look great in the store, too. It’s enough to inflict analysis paralysis, and I don’t typically associate naked capitalism with coziness.
For me, the pull of so many priorities raises questions about whether Moonlighter 2 is trying to do too much. It feels afraid to leave you without some immediate goal for even a moment, and the mish-mash of genres can be clunky. The dungeon crawling of Hades, the gathering and selling of goods of Stardew Valley, some spatial puzzle elements like something out of Train Valley or Pipe Push Paradise; is it worth playing Moonlighter 2 over any of those? I’m not 100% convinced yet.
Still, Moonlighter 2’s loop is compulsive; returning from a successful dungeon run with a backpack full of relics and selling them for maximum profit feels as satisfying as checking everything off a long Costco shopping list. And the town of Tresna is full of charm and personality (though maybe not as well-realized as the hubs and characters in Hades). As separate as each of Moonlighter’s gameplay pillars stand, they do all work together to prop up a unique total package.
Whether that package is worth opening up remains a long-term question. The answer largely depends on how Digital Sun handles this early access period, and what kind of feedback it gets from players. Right now, if I wanted a fast-paced dungeon crawler with tight combat and fun characters, I’d rather go play Hades. And if I wanted an immersive shopkeeper sim, I’d probably just boot up the classic Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale. Moonlighter’s biggest challenge is combining elements from other games into something that doesn’t feel pared down. But right now, in aping so many other genres, it feels like it’s spreading itself thin.
I suppose that’s what early access is for, though. The vision is there, and the way it’s all put together is novel, so I’m pulling for Will. It just feels like Moonlighter 2 needs a bit more time in the oven.
Best handheld PC 2025
Read the full article here
