Momodora: Moonlit Farewell

Genre: Metroidvania

Players: 1

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Review:

Momodora: Moonlit Farewell is the fifth game in this series of Metroidvania titles that dates all the way back to a 2010 freeware release on PC, though Nintendo Switch players may be more familiar with the more recent Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight, released on this platform in 2019. When I reviewed the game, I was conflicted – while its gorgeous presentation and world were absolutely wonderful, I found its challenge level to be unforgiving to the point of frustration, and its progression happened at a snail’s pace. While I’m always hopeful that a sequel will improve on the flaws of the prior game, it’s rare that I see my complaints addressed as thoroughly as they have been in Momodora: Moonlit Farewell, releasing in 2025 on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch. Yeah, I’m not burying the lead here – this game manages to retain what made its predecessor great, and address all of that game’s major problems.

First, the difficulty. Let’s be clear, Momodora: Moonlit Farewell is still a challenging game, and I’ve even encountered boss fights where a boss could potentially chain together multiple attacks resulting in what amounts to a one-hit kill. However, even apart from the easy mode that was present in the previous game (now with the option for dynamic difficulty, something I really appreciate), I don’t think that this game’s high challenge on the normal difficulty rises to the level of outright punishing – that aforementioned boss, as with all of this game’s enemies, had a clear attack pattern, and after dying a half-dozen times, I was able to absolutely demolish it in a future encounter without even taking a glancing hit, something that made it all the more satisfying. What’s more, Moonlit Farewell doesn’t make you earn back everything you collected since your last save – it just returns you to the last save point with all the rest of your progress intact.

When it comes to my complaints about progression and level design, this is a huge improvement. There are now upgrades and hidden items seemingly around every corner, including simple stat boosts, sigils you can pick and choose to customize your various buffs and upgrades, and “companion” helper characters that occasionally assist in their own unique ways. To be fair, my biggest complaint about the game is that it doesn’t go quite far enough, as you’re extremely limited in how many sigils you can use, and companions won’t help you in boss battles at all, meaning you’ll often get more use out of the boring stat upgrades you’ll find.

Once again, the presentation here is absolutely fantastic, with gorgeous, detailed pixel art visuals with great animation and a lot of personality (er… and occasionally large monster girls with enormous chests), backed by a beautiful somber and subdued soundtrack (apart from the occasional battle theme), with lovely songs like Springleaf Assault, Shrinekeeper I & II, Sacred Hollow, Black Cat Lin I, Noblesse, Defiled Hollow, and Silent Reliquary, to name a few. And what’s really impressive is that all of this is somehow squeezed into a mere 300MB of file space in your memory!

I don’t think Momodora: Moonlit Farewell quite reaches the height of my favorite Metroidvanias of all-time, as its progression and level design could still do with improvement, but it’s still an outstanding Metroidvania, which is an enormous improvement over the prior game in the series, which had potential but I don’t feel like that potential was truly realized until now. I can only hope we see a sequel to this game that has the same level of improvement, because that could very well compete for that “best of all-time” status. But until then, this is still an absolute must-play for fans of the genre.

tl;dr – Momodora: Moonlit Farewell is a Metroidvania that greatly improves on the previous game, Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight, resulting in a game with a gorgeous presentation, challenging but satisfying combat, and pretty good level design and progression. And while I do think there’s room for improvement, this is still an outstanding Metroidvania that every fan of the genre should play.

Grade: A-

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