Info about Momodora: Moonlit Farewell:

Official game description:
"Momodora: Moonlit Farewell" is the latest installment in the Momodora series. Join Momo, High Priestess of the village of Koho, as she embarks on a divine mission to save her people from imminent destruction at the hands of the demon hordes summoned by a malevolent bellringer.
Story:
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Momodora: Moonlit Farewell presents the account of the greatest calamity to befall the village of Koho, five years after the events of Momodora III.  
Once the toll of an ominous bell is heard, the village is soon threatened by a demon invasion.  
The village's matriarch sends Momo Reinol, their most capable priestess, to investigate the bell and find the bellringer responsible for summoning demons. It is their hope that by finding the culprit, they will also be able to secure the village's safety, and most importantly, the sacred Lun Tree's, a source of life and healing for Koho...
Features:
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*   Gorgeous pixel art and animation  
*   Action-packed gameplay focusing on melee combos, dodging enemy attacks, and firing arrows at enemies  
*   The "Sigil" system, which allows for greatly customizable play styles  
*   Intense and core-shaking boss battles  
*   Deep exploration into a world rich in lore and atmosphere  
*   Freely adjustable difficulty levels, allowing you to relax and explore the alluring world at your own pace or take on mighty foes for a real challenge
Developer's Voice:
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Hello!  
This is rdein, creator of the Momodora series. Recently my team and I have announced the latest installment in the series, “Moonlit Farewell”. This is a concluding story, following through from the events of Momodora 3. With this new tale, I also intend to close the book on many of the past games’ mysteries and questions.  
I’m aware that many players are more familiar with the story of Kaho, which is set in a distant past. As such, I’m designing “Moonlit Farewell” to be as enjoyable as possible without prior knowledge of Momodora 1 to 3’s stories. Moreover, the series has always been focused on action and minimal stories. So please, don’t worry too much about “catching up”!  
Lastly, we hope to bring you our best game with this new title, using all the knowledge we’ve learned in the past 10 years. Please look forward to it!

Release date: 11 Jan, 2024

Categories: Metroidvania, Real-time Combat, Exploration, Single-player Story, Character Customization, Character Progression


- Hardware Profile: No data
Feature extractions:
- Community Price: No data
- Playtime Metrics: No data
- Time-to-fun: No data
- Player Archetypes: No data


Below are summaries of things people say about the game per category.
Each point is assigned a weight that represents how often it is mentioned across all reviews.
What players like:
- Accessible & Enjoyable Experience (weight 1): The game offers a balanced difficulty and length, making it highly accessible and enjoyable for both casual players and Metroidvania beginners. Its polished gameplay, fluid controls, and overall design contribute to a consistently fun and stress-free experience.
- Stunning Pixel Art & Visuals (weight 0.59): Reviewers consistently praise the game's exceptionally beautiful and detailed pixel art, fluid animations, and charming character designs. The visual presentation is considered a significant upgrade from previous titles, creating an immersive and aesthetically pleasing world.
- Epic & Fair Boss Fights (weight 0.25): Boss battles are frequently highlighted as epic, enjoyable, and well-designed, offering a fair challenge without being overly frustrating. Many reviewers appreciated the varied boss mechanics, clear attack patterns, and the inclusion of post-game boss rush modes.
- Solid Metroidvania Experience (weight 0.22): The game is praised as a well-executed Metroidvania, offering a classic experience with modern refinements. Its design is noted for being beginner-friendly, reducing typical genre fatigue, and providing satisfying progression, making it a strong entry for both newcomers and veterans.
- Captivating Music & Atmosphere (weight 0.22): The game's soundtrack is widely praised for being captivating, memorable, and perfectly complementing the game's atmosphere. Reviewers highlighted its ability to set the mood, ranging from melancholic to intense battle themes, enhancing the overall immersive experience.
- Rewarding Map Exploration (weight 0.1): The game's map design is highly praised for being intuitive and rewarding, with clear markers for explored and unexplored areas. This design encourages thorough exploration by consistently providing valuable hidden items and secrets, enhancing the overall sense of discovery.

Common complaints:
- Unchallenging Difficulty (weight 0.92): The game was widely considered too easy, with many bosses being defeated by simple button-mashing or standing still. This lack of challenge, especially compared to previous games, led to a less engaging experience.
- Uninspired Level Design (weight 0.72): The level and map designs were criticized for being boring, monotonous, and lacking creativity or distinctiveness. The small map size and linear progression also limited exploration and replayability.
- Excessive Visual Clutter (weight 0.68): Combat and exploration were often hampered by an overwhelming amount of visual effects, flashing lights, and particles. This made it difficult to see enemies, attacks, and hitboxes, leading to frustration.
- Clunky Controls & Movement (weight 0.64): Players reported that character controls felt unresponsive, laggy, and clunky, with issues like animation locks and sticky jumping. This made combat and traversal feel less fluid and frustrating at times.
- Inferior to Previous Titles (weight 0.61): Many reviewers felt the game was a significant step down in quality, challenge, and overall enjoyment compared to earlier games in the series, particularly "Reverie Under the Moonlight." This comparison often highlighted areas where the new game fell short.
- Bland & Linear Story (weight 0.6): The narrative was often described as forgettable, shallow, and overly linear, lacking depth, character development, and the mysteriousness of prior entries. New players also found it hard to follow without prior series knowledge.
- Poor Replayability (weight 0.56): Reviewers expressed little desire to replay the game due to its short length, lack of new content or challenges on subsequent playthroughs, and tedious achievement requirements. The game offered minimal incentive for additional runs.
- Tedious Backtracking (weight 0.14): The game's lack of early fast travel and poor map guidance led to significant and often meaningless backtracking. Reviewers disliked how secrets were marked on the map, reducing the sense of discovery.
- Monotonous Enemy Design (weight 0.09): Enemies were often described as having monotonous actions, predictable patterns, and poor telegraphing. Many felt like fixed turrets or were easily stunlocked, contributing to the overall lack of combat depth and challenge.
- Useless Companion System (weight 0.08): The companion system was widely regarded as a novelty with little practical use. Companions often had repetitive, cookie-cutter abilities, suffered from pathfinding issues, and were unavailable in boss fights, making them feel like mere decorations.
- Flawed Stamina System (weight 0.07): The stamina system, tied to dodging, sprinting, and bow attacks, was criticized for being restrictive and poorly implemented. Reviewers found stamina recovery too slow and its penalties frustrating, hindering fluid movement and combat.

Gameplay feedback:
- Varied Boss Encounters (weight 0.2): Boss battles are a highlight, featuring unique attack patterns and phases, though many are noted as having simple or repetitive patterns that can be easily exploited. Post-game content includes challenging boss rush modes and harder versions, offering increased difficulty.
- Adjustable Game Difficulty (weight 0.18): The game's normal difficulty is generally moderate to easy, making it accessible for new players. However, difficulty can be adjusted at any time, with options like a story mode with dynamic difficulty or a challenging hardcore permadeath mode unlocked post-game.
- Sigil Customization System (weight 0.16): The game features a "Sigil" system, similar to perks or cards, allowing extensive customization of playstyle, abilities, and even difficulty. Players can equip various sigils to enhance attacks, healing, mobility, or introduce challenges like 1 HP runs.
- Series Evolution & Accessibility (weight 0.14): As the fifth and final installment, the game continues the Momodora series, offering a more casual and accessible experience than previous titles, particularly Momodora 4. It features more in-depth combat and customization while still being enjoyable for newcomers.
- Hardcore Permadeath Mode (weight 0.08): After completing the main story, a "Hardcore" mode is unlocked, offering a significant challenge by deleting the player's save file upon a single death. This mode provides a distinct, high-stakes replayability option.
- Late-Game Teleportation (weight 0.06): A teleportation system, often referred to as a "cat car," is unlocked relatively late in the game. While it improves map traversal and reduces backtracking, its delayed availability can make early exploration feel slower.
- Diverse Progression Systems (weight 0.06): Beyond the Sigil system, the game offers various progression elements including a currency system, collectible cards for passive skills and attribute upgrades, and a pet/companion system. These provide distinct combat differences and enhance character development.
- Helpful Map UI (weight 0.05): The game's map UI is praised for its clarity and helpful features, including displaying the player's location, destination, and hints for uncollected items or secrets with question mark icons. This significantly aids exploration and completion.

Performance notes:
- Excellent Performance & Optimization (weight 0.04): The game is highly optimized, running smoothly even on older hardware, and is reported to be free of significant bugs or processing delays. This ensures a consistent and enjoyable gameplay experience.
- Improved Resolution Support (weight 0.01): The game initially had limited resolution options, primarily suited for devices like the Steam Deck, but a day-one update quickly expanded support to include higher resolutions like 2K.
- Frame Pacing Issues (weight 0.01): Some players reported issues with screen smoothness and bad frame pacing, particularly during parallax scrolling, indicating occasional visual choppiness.
- Barely Playable on Low-Spec (weight 0.01): While generally well-optimized, the game struggles significantly on extremely low-spec machines, specifically those without a dedicated graphics card, making it barely playable.
- Game Time Tracking Issue (weight 0.01): A notable issue is that the in-game timer continues to run even when the player is in the menu or the device is in standby, which can inaccurately inflate playtime.
- 60 FPS Cap (weight 0.01): The game's frame rate is capped at 60 frames per second, which might be a limitation for players with high refresh rate monitors seeking higher performance.
- Slow Movement Pacing (weight 0.01): Player movement is perceived as somewhat slow, which might initially feel unusual, but players generally adapt to it over time.
- Full Screen Option (weight 0.01): The game provides a full-screen display option, which is a standard and expected feature for PC games.

Recommendations:
- Generally Recommended Purchase (weight 0.3): The game receives strong general recommendations, often described as worth the price, especially on sale. Many reviewers encourage players to try it, finding it an enjoyable experience overall.
- Recommended for Metroidvania Fans (weight 0.2): The game is highly recommended for fans of the Metroidvania genre, especially those new to it, or players looking for a short and simple experience. It's often seen as a good entry point into the genre.
- Compared to Reverie Under Moonlight (weight 0.18): Reviewers frequently compare this game to its predecessor, Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight. While some recommend playing Reverie first or find it superior, others suggest this game is a worthy follow-up or a good entry point for the series.
- Cautious Recommendation (weight 0.05): Some reviewers express reservations, finding it hard to recommend the game due to perceived shortcomings or a lack of expected quality compared to previous titles. They advise caution before purchasing, suggesting it might not meet all expectations.
- Value & Price Point (weight 0.03): Many reviewers suggest purchasing the game on sale, indicating that its value is highly dependent on the price. Some feel the full price is too high, while a discount makes it a worthwhile buy.
- Anticipation for Future Games (weight 0.03): Many players express excitement and anticipation for future games from the developer, indicating satisfaction with their work and a desire to see more. This reflects a positive impression of the developer's capabilities.
- Petting Cats Feature (weight 0.01): A unique, albeit minor, point of recommendation is the ability to pet cats in the game, which some reviewers found charming enough to influence their positive rating. This adds a touch of lighthearted appeal.
- Exceptional Game (Hyperbolic) (weight 0.01): A few reviewers use highly enthusiastic and hyperbolic language, calling the game "rare and excellent" or "Game of the Year material." This feedback is overly emotional and lacks specific details, making it less constructive.

Other player notes:
- Series Conclusion (weight 0.04): The game serves as the final entry in the Momodora series, leading to a sense of farewell and regret among both new and old players, some wishing they had discovered the series earlier.
- Single Story Ending (weight 0.04): The game features a single, happy story ending, which some players found limiting. There was a desire for more narrative choices or multiple endings to enhance replayability and player agency.
- Abundant Pet-able Cats (weight 0.04): A notable and appreciated feature is the presence of numerous cats throughout the game, many of which can be petted. The game also features "Kawaii" (cute) playable characters and a cat-girl moon goddess.
- Franchise Legacy (weight 0.03): Reviews often place the game within the broader Momodora franchise, noting its connection to previous titles and its status as a beloved series for some players.
- Future Developer Projects (weight 0.03): Players expressed hope for the developers to continue making games, take feedback seriously, and potentially continue the series, indicating a positive outlook on the developer's future endeavors.
- Unique, Melancholic Worldview (weight 0.03): The game features a unique and somewhat fantastic, melancholic worldview, which some players hoped could be further explored in future content. It also shows influences from other games.
- Brazilian Indie Development (weight 0.02): Many reviews highlight that the game was developed by a small Brazilian team, often noting this as a point of interest or pride.
- Limited NPC Dialogue (weight 0.02): While the game increased its NPC count, many players noted that non-player characters still offered little to say, often speaking in short, cryptic lines, which could limit world-building or interaction.
- Small, Affordable Metroidvania (weight 0.02): The game is perceived as a small-scale Metroidvania, which is often seen as a positive given its affordable price point.
- Classic Fairy Tale Theme (weight 0.02): The game's story is characterized as a classic fairy tale of a beautiful girl saving the world, combining Japanese "beautiful girl" aesthetics with European mythological elements.
- Reminiscent of Hollow Knight (weight 0.01): Some players found the game's exploration and overall feel reminiscent of "Hollow Knight," suggesting a positive association with a well-regarded Metroidvania title.
- Lore & Easter Eggs (weight 0.01): The game includes fan-service elements like previous game stories and a developer room as easter eggs, and further fleshes out existing characters, appealing to series fans.
- Contrasting Visual Themes (weight 0.01): The game presents a worldview that can be cruel despite cute characters, and features giant female characters described as slightly erotic yet wholesome, creating a unique blend of visual themes.

Emotions:
- enjoyment (weight 0.05): Emotion: enjoyment
- satisfaction (weight 0.36): Emotion: satisfaction
- excitement (weight 0.07): Emotion: excitement
- disappointment (weight 0.13): Emotion: disappointment
- frustration (weight 0.08): Emotion: frustration
- boredom (weight 0.01): Emotion: boredom
- appreciation (weight 0.08): Emotion: appreciation
- joy (weight 0.06): Emotion: joy
- mild disappointment (weight 0.01): Emotion: mild disappointment
- admiration (weight 0.02): Emotion: admiration}