If you love cosplay but hate spending money don't get this game, the platforming is tight, the controls are sick, all the characters are unique (except for one sucky boy), but the worst part is all the boss designs are so f***ing cool that i had to cosplay them all and now i'm broke!!!!!

reminds me of those old snes games from back in the day, NG+ seems to be needed to complete the entire game so ill do that another time, in the mean time those 6 hours were pretty nice

“IGA-san, our kickstarter campaign for Ritual of the Night gives us a ♥♥♥♥-ton of money, what are we going to do?”
“Don’t worry, fam, I got an idea”

And thus, Curse of the Moon was born. This is 100% legit, confirmed info*, swear for my mother’s cookies. And you know, what is also legit? This game being a true, unfiltered throwback to 8-bit platformers, with all of its glory, jankiness and difficulty. Those who are old enough, probably remember those NES games being unforgivingly brutal and difficult. And sorry to shatter your delusions now, but it was not because developers had pair of steel cojones and respected players, but because cartridges for NES were simply too small to hold more sophisticated, bigger code, so instead making games longer, they simply made game harder, so children would spend more time whacking their heads on difficult games. Plus of course technology back then was seriously limited, so gameplay was not polished enough to give players enough agenda and control during playthrough.

This game is unapologetically like that — It does not pretend to be a modern game with a coat of 8-bit graphics, this game is an NES title to its core. Well, at least if you choose to play on Veteran difficulty. I did that in my first playthrough and got humbled so hard. Why? Said 8-bit jankiness was so prevalent that it took me a good amount of time to override my modern gamer brain and to understand what I am dealing with. Examples? There is no dodge, no dash, no double jump (well, not exactly), not a single I-frame, nor any other way to avoid damage. When you attack, you are locked into place until the animation is finished, and there is no way to cancel it. You cannot attack horizontally or diagonally — at least with normal moves — and the hitbox of your regular weapon is very tight. You don’t have ANY aerial control, once you jump, there is no way to correct your movement. It's a rough and steep learning curve.

The other mechanics are also very limited. The core gameplay is built around having four different characters that can swap at any time, and they have different moves and abilities. Zangetsu — your main man — has a strong attack and the biggest health pool, Miriam can jump higher and have a whip, which gives her more range when attacked. Alfred is like an average boomer — can’t jump, but has lots of spells that can trivialize combat. Finally Gebel has a shotgun-like base attack and can turn into a bat to fly away. You can recruit them after beating each one the first 3 bosses… or kill your allies and absorb their skills. One of them gives you a double-jump, which is god-send when playing on veteran difficulty. There are two differences compared to casual one — you have limited numbers of lives and enemy attacks knock your back. I played on Veteran both normal and nightmare mode and got my ass whooped so hard that I decided to clean the rest of the achievements on casual.

Speaking of achievements, If you are willing to get 100%, prepare for al least six playthrough — half of them are tied to your decision considering your allies. You need to play regular mode, nightmare, play without any side characters, kill all of them, kill one of them, recruit one and ignore one, yada, yada, yada. Thankfully Curse of the Moon here also stays true to its 8-bit roots and doesn't stall with playthrough. On casual difficulty you need like an hour and a half to beat all eight levels. As for bonus you also can play boss rush mode, but to be honest, bosses in this game are a laughing stock — they have mostly three to four moves that they repeat ad nauseum. I can easily no-hit the majority of them.

Oh yeah, I should say something about the story and premise, am I right? But here is the kicker — there is not enough of it. This game is tied to the Ritual of the Night game, it has characters and bosses taken from this game and translated into 8-bit aesthetics. Aside from that, there is no real connection with the main game through story. This is not a prequel, more like an alternative storyline. But, since there is so little substance here, it really doesn't matter. It was a little disappointing, since I played this one before the main game, because I thought there was some connection. But well, even without that, I spend several hours enjoying this game, albeit not without a healthy dose of frustration, cussing on outdated gameplay and limited mechanics.

Now. It's over. Go home or something.

*No, it's not. I don’t know, I heard about it somewhere.