3.5/5 ★ – stephenhill777's review of Moon: Remix RPG Adventure.

Almost all of the quirky games I've played in the modern era have a certain level of self-awareness. They vie eagerly for the kooky crowd's attention with over-the-top characters and concepts. Think Sans and Papyrus from Undertale, or the central conceit of Untitled Goose Game. More often than not, the weirdness of those games acts as a sort of punchline, something to make you laugh at the ridiculousness of it all. Moon: Remix RPG Adventure never once felt like it was trying to do that. The best way to explain it would be to compare it to the po-faced seriousness of 1980s fantasy films. Movies like the Dark Crystal, or the Neverending Story. There is an undercurrent of melancholy running throughout the whole experience, which lends the game a wonderful sense of place and sincerity. You play as a young boy, introduced as a gamer who loves JRPGS. In the games' opening, we control him as he controls his character in a stereotypical JRPG. A knight is given a quest by the king, is cheered on by the townsfolk, kills some monster to gain experience and slays a dragon with an overpowered magic spell. Just as the knight is about to land the finishing blow, a voice tells you to turn that game off and go to bed. And much like the fantasy films of yore, you find yourself getting sucked into that magical world and stuck with a mess of problems to solve before you can go back home. Standard gaming knowledge at this point would suggest that the hero has gone missing and you have to find him and/or take his place to slay the dragon. Not so in Moon. The hero is very much present, and can be seen progressing through his quest. The problem is....he's a dick. The townspeople are fed up of him barging into their shops and inns like he owns the place, and an animal rights group from outer space is showing great concern for his bestial killing spree. I'm not making this up, that is genuinely the plot of this game. Everyone accepts that the hero's quest is a "righteous" one, but you must travel the land, restoring characters goodwill after he has taken advantage of them, and also finding ways to return the souls of slain animals to the bodies that lay in the hero's wake. To delve much further into the actual story beats of the game would be to spoil it, but rest assured, it continues along this very strange and winding road until its conclusion. Every problem you solve or soul you capture awards you Moon's equivalent to experience......love. "Love" is more of a thematic element of the game than a gameplay one, but it does also represents your stamina. The more "love" you have, the longer you can stay awake without collapsing. This is especially important early on, as you have to try to solve people's issues in a little under 10 minutes. If you don't make it back to your bed before you run out of stamina, it's game over and you restart at your last save. This is a little irritating early on, but quickly becomes a non-issue after you solve a few problems and gain more items to help mobility. It plays more like a puzzle game than an RPG, with each mini quest requiring a little abstract thought to figure out. There is a day/night system, and even days of the week to contend with, so you have to figure out people's schedules in order to understand what their beef is, and how you can help them out. The characters themselves are wonderfully realised, every single one of them unique in their design. One of my favourite details is the fact that they have garbled game-speak, not dissimilar to that heard in Banjo Kazooie. Unlike Banjo Kazooie, that nonsense is actually made up of random soundbites, from random languages. One character constantly babbled the words "I was the one who~" before being cut off, while another is clearly speaking the same three words in French, ad nauseam. Coupled with the philanthropic monster-soul catching, all of this makes Moon feel like Majora's Mask had a baby with Pokémon, but that baby was abandoned and raised by members of a circus. This very particular vibe is captured perfectly in the unique design of the main character, who has no physical body to speak of. It is essentially his soul, or spirit, that is brought into the game world. People acknowledge this, musing over whether or not you might be a ghost. This melancholy conundrum is comically offset by his cartoonishly oversized boots, gloves and Legend of Zelda inspired cap. That eclectic mix of contrasts is also neatly represented by the amazing soundtrack, an extremely varied blend of genres represented by in-game MDs. You can buy these from a music snob practicing his electric guitar riffs in a cave with in-game currency, adorably called "yenom". Our main character can play these MDs at his leisure with his portable MD player, and this can genuinely change the entire mood of the game. I favoured a lot of jazz and funk as I wandered around solving puzzles, but there is plenty of rock, pop and classical music, in case you prefer something more suited to you as a player. As a player, at no point in the game are you required to fight anyone, everything is dealt with through non-violent means. A charming example sees your way blocked by a large rock. A nearby sign tells you that rocks are alive and largely unmovable, but they get embarrassed easily. Stare at the rock for long enough and it will blush and move out of your eye-line on hundreds of tiny little legs. These early puzzles are an absolute delight to solve, and not just because the world itself is so charming to be in. There is very little hand-holding here, just seemingly random clues that suggest certain mannerisms. One monster soul is found hanging around outside a toilet and is described as being impossible to catch unless you are "pure of body and soul". I managed to deduce that using the toilet was part of the puzzle, but it took me forever to realise I also had to wash my hands before I could catch him. That "aha!" moment is hugely satisfying, when it finally occurs. The problem is, as the game continues, some quests start to fall into adventure game logic, which simply isn't worth the time to try and solve. One quest demands you eat five mushrooms of different colour, at night, in a certain order and in a certain place to resurrect a giant dead fish. The only way to determine the order, time and place is to decipher the foreign language of the tribe of little imps running around that area. It's just about possible to figure out by yourself, but it's a massive detour from logic. I could forgive this if it were a side-quest, but I was required to solve that particular puzzle in order to advance the plot. This also goes hand-in-hand with the other main problem the game has, a lack of momentum. The concept alone carries it for a substantial part of the game, but it does eventually start to meander. Your quest never really changes, so there is little in the way of drama or stakes. It could be argued that this slots very nicely into the cosy-sim genre that is so prevalent right now, but the limited number of puzzles and quests make you constantly aware that there is an ending of sorts that you are striving for. It is simply at odds with the game's central message, that of stopping to appreciate the important things in life and not to focus on the trivial things that SEEM important. So while this is a game I think I am unlikely to play again, I still absolutely loved my time with it. Its puzzles are definitely a little obnoxious in the endgame, but there are so many that it's easy to give up on one and move onto another. Crucially, this is a world that never feels dull to explore, despite how small it ultimately ends up being. And, as expressed in the absolute belter of an ending, that is sort of the point. Why, it asks, would you even want to leave?