Moonlighter

Graphics are nice, but combat feels stiff and sluggish, enemies can attack from any direction but you can only attack in the 4 cardinal ones. The game constantly stops you early on so you can watch the slowest NPC walk across the screen or listen to them ramble on about the standard boring story. If you're looking for your next rogue-lite game, look elsewhere.

It's tough to manage money in this game. I spent so much in town portals just to get more loot out of the dungeons. Upgrades are expensive as well.

VERY GOOD GAME!!

love all the mechanics, it's a fun simple dungeon crawler, and the shop mechanics are really cool. It's got an interesting storyline as well, and every loose end gets tied up thats directly related to the main story line. The other characters are fun, and the art style is really endearing. There's not much information provided on some of the end game stuff that happens is left unanswered so I'm hoping in the sequel we get more info on that sort of thing. Very excited for the sequel and totally love this game.

very charming store management game, with very robust dungeon crawling and combat.

a very interesting concept and some nice artwork and mechanics to go with it, but the concept doesn't evolve further and gets very repetitive. Fun to play for a little while though.

One of the most boring and repetitive games I've ever played in my life. It was hyped up to me, and it let my down so heavily I'm still trying to understand what people saw in it.

Such a fun game! Rarely do I beat games and then revisit it, but here I am doing just that! Beat it a couple years ago and I just want to experience it again. It was so much fun! I loved the store management just as much as the combat

Moonlighter represents a unique take on the traditional dungeon-crawler sub-genre of gaming by expanding the scope of the player to dabble in mercantile ventures. It stands out from its ability to encourage players to revisit previously cleared dungeons that offer useful loot and equipment. Overall, I can't wait to see Will's story in the upcoming sequel.

Fun for a few hours. There are some very fun mechanics, but overall, it's lacking. Really, this game makes me sad they didn't expand upon it more. It's so close to being so spectacular, but let me explain:

- Combat is knee deep at most. It never advances past dodging and swinging your weapon / shooting a bow. While this would be mostly fine, it's not helped by the fact you can't aim your attack: you can only attack in the direction you're facing. This makes the combat extremely clunky at best, and infuriating at worst.
- Enemies are varied, but shallow. While the enemy variety is good, both in visuals and attacks, the shallow combat really harms them. Fundamentally, there are only a few kinds of enemies with remixed attacks, skins, and combos. While this is _fine_ it's not great.
- Bosses are actual garbage. Every single one boils down to face tanking, or dying to impossibly poorly telegraphed attacks (stone golem teleport and trees nuts are just two examples). Combined with the handful of largely similar weapons, this is exhausting as well, and feels REALLY shit when you die to "oh, guess I don't have enough health. Let me just run that almost identical dungeon for the 100th time"
- Prices finding is a very fun idea, but in practice is just annoying. Having to guess prices based on customer reactions is a really fun, clever idea I really wish was fleshed out more. But the prices always being the same except for the +/- 20% for high and low demand completely invalidates the mechanic to being annoying.
- Inventory management is great. I really, really enjoy the various curses and trying to line them up, it's very fun. However, having 100 different items that are just sell junk is pointless and annoying. It makes the game feel more full, but doesn't contribute to anything other than worrying about what you should sell.
- Story is almost completely absent. While this isn't inherently a problem (look at stardew valley), the lack of meaningful characters and dialog sucks. The art is so good, the world is so lively, and it feels like there is so much to do. But other than a few sign posts with legs as merchants, there isn't anyone to inhabit this world. The fucking _builder_ has more character than the blacksmith and alchemist you interact with regularly. Seriously, wtf???

I really love the graphics and controls of this game. It's a bit annoying to lose items and start over when I lose, but it makes the game quite challenging

I have a bit of history with this game. I initally got it for Switch back in 2019-2020 made it to the desert dungeon and dropped it.
Replaying it on the Steam deck made me remember why. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoy the “economy parsing” of this game. I just think that it overstays its welcome a bit.

After some shop upgrades, more systems are introduced. Townsfolk requesting certain items for a higher price, an attendant that can take over the shop for you while taking 30% profit, glass cases that can preserve an items popularity. It’s convoluted and saturated. Items from previous dungeons also become irrelevant due to the price jump in materials gathered in the latest unlocked dungeon. With such a restricted inventory, it doesn’t make sense to have an attendant take over the shop for you. You dont end up with enough sellable materials to make it worth it. Especially wiht how you can extend the time the shop is open with decorations. The mechanics are fighting with themselves to stay relevant and make the town feel lived in and valuble.

Dungeon runs are fun. Item curses that can send items back home, transform items, or erase curses are a cool concept. I enjoyed that. Enemies are well designed, learning patterns and how to deal with each was a nice challenge.

In conclusion, I enjoy this game a lot. Its core features are GOOD, the bloat however is not. It’s overwhelming and uneccisary.

I really wish they made the economy more complex. near the end of the game i was completely ignoring ALL of the shopping mechanics to just bum rush the bosses. It WORKED. which speaks to how it eventually becomes obselete. which isn't really a problem, more a nitpick

Pretty solid time all around. I'm a big fan of rouguelites and games where you run a shop so the premise had me very interested. However, while both parts are good, I feel like they could've been better. I will now go into further detail on both aspects. A note though, while I will criticize them a lot, I still overall had a good time with them; wasn't outstanding, but wasn't bad either.

Roguelite Aspect: The combat in this game is pretty simple. The only two things you can do in combat are attack and roll. It's not a very complex or satisfying combat system, but it got the job done. It was mildly difficult at times and it was satisfying to upgrade my gear and be able to kill enemies in less hits or tank more damage. I would've preferred having some way of making my character stronger, but the equipment was a decent enough substitute. I will say though, having three types for each of the armors was stupid. The only difference in speed is so negligible between the armors that you should always go with the armor that gives you more health. At the very least, each of the weapons functions differently enough to encourage different playstyles, but that's the only thing in the game where you can choose how you fight. I enjoy killing baddies up close enough that the combat never felt like it got tedious, but I could see that being the case for other players.

Shop Aspect: The shop was also incredibly simple. You put out items to sell and wait for people to grab them and walk to the register. It is as simple as store simulators get. However, I quite enjoyed slowly honing in on what was the exact highest price I could get away with selling an item at, which had me actively engaging in the store each day. Given how few people have the achievement for overcharging customers, it seems most were either fine with selling things for cheap, or just used a guide. If so, I could see most people seeing the shop as a mundane experience, and given that you can hire a lady to run your shop for you for a whopping 30% of the profits, it seems the developers also thought the shop would be something players would want to skip. It makes me sad to see, especially when there is fun to be had in the shop. So while I did enjoy the store aspect, I can see why others didn't, and I wish the developers put more effort into it.

As for the other aspects of the game, they range from meh to great. Firstly the NPCs are boring and their dialogue serves no purpose, clearly there were lore ideas with these NPCs, but they didn't really do anything with them. The pets are fine, but most don't really do much for you. I had the slime always equipped since stunning enemies are broken in every game. Again though, it's weird how such a small inclusion is listed as a selling point. I will say, I do quite like the art, I think it's very pretty. However, the art does look like traditional art being converted into pixel art, as if pixel art was something they settled on rather than being a deliberate artistic decision, which especially seems true since the second game doesn't even use pixel art.

Overall, if you like roguelites and store simulators, then you'll probably have a decent time with this game, just don't expect anything spectacular. 7/10

It's a good game to play, I'd recommend. You can't attack in an angle, so that's where the clunky fighting people keep mentioning comes from. I got annoyed finding the best price for items, so I just wikied the right one...

Money management isn't bad. If you sell all your items at the right price, the equipment/weapon purchasing is reasonable.

Give it a shot. The price is affordable on discount.

subpar combat mechanics. boring merchant phase.

Solid game. Entertaining game play, nice variety of weapons, shop aspect of the game is nice

Cannot sing this game's praises enough. From the pixel art, to the soundtrack, to the game play, it hits all the buttons for me and I've barely started!

Who’s excited for the second one?! ME!! I absolutely loved this game—I even played it on my lunch break because I just couldn’t put it down!

I wanted to like this game, but it is not a good design. I'm really disappointed. I would refund, but I didn't realize the bad elements until just over the 2h mark.

The combat and movement are extremely janky and on the slow side. The dodge roll is ok, I'll give them that... but the problem is mainly the dungeon design.

You lose all your loot if you die except for one row of slots. In a dungeon, you can either beat it and escape, or you can pendant recall to the town. The problem is that, at the beginning, you don't have weapons and potions to make it through the dungeon really... and the pendant costs 200g to use, which means all your cash is tied up doing that. It basically means the whole early game is just a loop of getting very little done, because you are either dying and losing 90% of your loot, which means you earn nothing, or else you are paying 200g per recall which means even if you escaped with loot, you lost all the money you made.

It's a really poor design, I really don't like this game, and I'm tossing it on the garbage heap since I cannot refund at this point.

Interesting at first but the balance between the dungeons and waiting at the shop is not well balanced. Not really my thing waiting at the counter for customers to buy things and reshelve the store. Not so many upgrades and customization of your character is limited. Controls are not great but OK. Gets boring fast.

I love this game.
you can make a lot of money really quickly and killing stuff is fun

This type of game could already be a separate niche genre - where you get some kind of shop as inheritance or whatever and go on with developing it along with hunting for stuff to sell in it. Shoppe Keep, Cuisineer, Moonlighter would all be representatives of this sub-genre. And such general direction of gameplay is quite to my liking.

What you do could be separated into two parts - dungeon crawling to get bunch of loot from defeating foes and finding treasures and selling things in your shop situated in city hub, that also contains some vendors and upgrades for both combat and trade. This loop of adventuring in dungeons and selling stuff to get better at both and be able to go further in your expeditions is rather engaging.

Graphic design is pixel stylised one. Audio is decently fitting. Plot's simplistic to not bother you much distracting from core gameplay.

This game is the perfect combination of rpg/rough lite and cozy store maneagment

I loved every moment of playing this and never felt like the game was repetitive or boring
The difficulty progression was really nice and kept things interesting without being super frustrating
I looked forward to every new dungeon and selling new items

I have talked about this game constantly since playing and will always come back to play it all over again

I'm going to keep playing this game for a few sessions but I can't give it a positive review for a few reasons. It feels like a Zelda ripoff to me, from the gameplay, to the music, to the enemies. The dungeon crawling and maps are very simplistic. The shopkeeping is not dynamic or interesting. I was looking for a fun dungeon crawler with a little more depth but this didn't scratch it for me.
I liked the art direction at first but then I think the color palate wore on me. I love pixel art but this seems like "air brushed" pixel art if that makes any sense. The edges are too soft.

I feel it is important to stress that for what this game is, it is a ton of fun in its simplicity. But then you reach the Tech Dungeon and the bugs rear their ugly heads… aside from getting stuck in my shop one time requiring a reset, the game played smooth as butter.

But once I got to the Tech Dungeon it seemed to trigger what I feel is a game breaking glitch. I constantly was getting knocked into or dodging into the walls and was going through them and getting stuck in the wall. This required me to constantly warp out, costing me the rest of the day. This leads to quest failures and difficulty making it all the way through the dungeon. This also seemed to trigger glitches around town leading to getting stuck inside the potion shop or forge.

Now, I get glitches happen. But the developers were made aware of this glitch six years ago and advised they were working to fix it. That has not happened. And now they are finalizing a sequel to come out this year. I can’t recommend this game despite all the fun I was having because this glitch is terrible and the developers did not fix it as they said they would. Very unfortunate. Up til this moment, I’d been telling people how great it was and to get it. Now I have to walk all that back due to a terrible glitch. Very disappointing.

I would have loved this game. But it had two flaws. It has 4 directional movement which to me made it feel clunky. And also the dungeon felt too repetitive and not that fun compared to shopkeeping

I think this game is really cool and fun to play - It can be a bit repetitive at times (but that could be due to my low risk play style) and is more of a dungeon crawler than a shop management game but I really enjoyed the gameplay. Combat is smooth.

super fun and beautiful graphics. the back and forth between fighting through dungeons and running a little storefront is actually quite a nice variety to mix up the grind. and the story shows up in little bits making you want to find out more. also, gorgeous music.

Fun game, game loop peters off a bit near the end though when the shop is fully upgraded. The DLC seems a needless, but okay.

If you would prefer to play with mouse and keyboard I would advice against this game.

I do not use a controller so Keyboard is fine but default key setup is not arrow keys and enter or ESC its
W = up
S = down
J = confirm selection
L = back
so if you do not play with a controller and you don't want to push every key on the keyboard to navigate the menu
now you know, oh and Menu up down movement is locked to character movement and cannot be set separate so change how you navigate the Menu change how your character moves. I might try to play again if I ever get a controller but the control on keyboard makes game-play difficult. In order to post a review have to recommend or not their is no just post so its a down-vote without a controller.

Fun action-rpg with a neat shop mechanic to drive progression.

Overall I can't recommend it but I did play it to completion and thoroughly enjoyed the gameplay loop. Even got the achievement for less than 40 deaths on the hardest difficulty so I feel I've experienced the mechanics to their limits.
Fantasy shopkeep is a pretty peak genre to tap into. But I feel that the devs might've spread themselves a bit thin with this one because between the shopkeeping and the dungeon crawling there's a few missed opportunities that feel a little underdeveloped and quality of life issues pretty evenly between the two halves of the gameplay loop.

Firstly the pixel art is mwah. Very cute sprites for everything and the animations are solid and neat to watch. No notes I love it.
The plot was pretty forgettable sadly and being able to skip town upgrade animations would go a long way.
The mechanics are where the game falls apart for me though:
On the dungeon side the combat feels stiff and clunky. There was a neat tech I found that made me use gloves for most of the game where the three hit combo could be animation cancelled with a charged attack and then the heavy would hit twice if you space it right at the tip and turned around during the end lag after the charge forward. Giving it a sweet spot that felt real good actually to pull off even though it feels like an exploit but wasn't gamebreaking since it usually was impossible to pull off without getting hit once or thrice and has the same dps as spamming lights, just fun. The majority of enemies usually felt quite obtuse to deal with and could combo you with very little windows to actually attack unless you use the greatsword or bow, they are easily the most threatening and it's mostly because of 1d attack directions in a 2d space. But then the dungeon guardians are complete pushovers compared to the floor bosses that are pretty engaging but most fall to 3hit-dodge 3hit-dodge without much thought.
The shopkeeping aspect felt a little unfinished. Few of the decorations mattered when have 4 tip jars was almost doubles profits. The multitasking is a non-issue for the register can be accessed on both sides: a beige flag but worth noting. And profiling criminals and always being right has funny connotations. Setting prices could have been supplemented with a haggling system which kinda exists because of the demand but having low demand for an item never meant customers tried buying for cheap. And no matter how many goods I managed to stockpile there was never any reason to open bc items never spoiled and there's always enough time to sell absolutely everything in your inventory for a frankly ridiculous amount of money without fail.
What affects both sides is the lack of weapon variety. Customers don't try selling you armour or potions so you're limited to finding maybe one weapon or a potion during a run and there's no reason to sell potions since you'll stock up on 20 to breeze through a dungeon and it'll be chump change because it's extremely generous how much money the game gives you at every stage of the game. And there's no contest between physical dmg (unless you use the bow) in weapon choices and move speed for armour since the gameplay loop gets quite tedious.
The game tries to introduce time management at the 3rd dungeon but it was really difficult to keep track of and half the time the customer never showed up to tell me I failed so without a calendar it's pretty underdeveloped and there was no other reason to backtrack through past dungeons so I think having all the loot be recurring with all the dungeons would have curved a lot of these problems. The last complaint was about cursed goods, it's a neat idea but the worst thing it does is not let you stack it on non-cursed goods and it's just tedious to sort through. Also having crafting materials be nigh worthless to sell makes the decision making of loot moot since you either want one or the other and just mirror the rest. It would also be nice to toggle the mirror to auto trash items as it's also tedious and the menuing tends to be jolted when using it.

I'll leave the dlc as another review. But it's a solid foundation for the sequel that I saw was coming out soon and am interested to see how it goes.

A small and clean little game. It does what it sets out to do and does it well without any unnecessary bloated mechanics.

Moonlighter is a wonderful mashup of dungeon crawling and management of your merchant store. The progression into new dungeons with new items and new upgrades(for both your adventuring gear, and the store) is incredibly well designed, and keeps you engaged. I highly recommend this to anyone looking for a fun one-time game.

Just tried relaunching it and it wont get past some binding error screen.

After an ad to buy their next game.

I think the 7 hours was me leaving it on overnight 5 years ago.

Its a nice game to complete the first run. the are is nice, there is a simple but good storyline, the combat feels good.

I just dont see the value on the replayability of the NG+,

Game has potential, but there are few things which ruin it. Hope devs will make notes for the second part.

1. Price system is just 3 numbers of - base + . No actual fluctations, so you will never be able to sell item with base cost of 1 gold for thousands because market will never go that high. Also you will never be able to drop a price of an item by oversaturating the market below certain point. If you make us play as a merchant, then don't make the merchant system just an afterthought!
2. Speaking of which, you can sell items, and do quests, but what about BUYING items? Well, there's an over overpriced shop which can sell you some in time of need, but all those adventurers visiting you hoping for some potions or weapons never offer any items from their dives? Also why are you, as a merchant, diving into the dungeon to get some materials, but you can't put up a quest for someone to do so for you?
3. Combat system feels somewhat clunky. I don't feel moving that much faster in full light armor? The dodgeroll is always the same no matter how heavy your gear is? If you are trying to implement different playstyles of agile but squishy and slow but tanky then don't do that just as an afterthought! Speaking of which...
4. Gauntlets are just worse sword&board. They are supposed to be a faster weapon, but they feel too slow for a fist weapon, and there is barely any noticeable difference in speed between them and sword&board, but with sword&board you at least get blocking special. Speaking of which...
5. Why all specials besides maybe bow and sword&board suck so much? Why is sword&board the only special you can move while holding the charge, and it blocks pretty much anything? Bow is at least ranged and terrain ignoring, but with all the other weapons you can't move during the charge? Like, maybe slower but you can't at all, and can barely change 4 directions aiming? So no positioning yourself for better spear charging thrust/greatsword whirlwind/ fist piercing blow? Who made this decision and what logic was it based upon?

Overall the game feels bad as a merchant simulator, and bad as a dungeon roguelike crawler. If second game does not improve on both mechanics, just avoid it. So far i am really disappointed by this game, it's really sad seeing all the great potential the idea had - wasted by not polishing the elements enough.

The UI controls are terrible.

You can get soft locked in the main menu while remapping the controls because there is no mouse support on a 2018 game.
I got soft locked and decided I don't care enough to go through the suggested fixes so i refunded before i even played the game. Terrible outdated choice of controls, bad decision by the developer leading to multiple users getting locked on menu.

SICK!

The game isnt bad, but the souls like aspect in it is.
Telegraphs only start like 2ms before an attack, making the die and repeat part mandatory, unless you like to play it very safe and slow (then it gets very boring), movement and attacks are clunky.
But thats about it, i was never a fan of shopkeeping games, so if thats your thing than this could be the game for you.
Again the game isnt terrible, its cute and all but I have the artifically inflating the difficulty by not giving you time to react to attacks and imposing you to die over and over again.

This gamecis great! I spent 5 dollars on it and the dlc and it's good. There are a few complaints and these could be personal idk lol. Inventory space- AWFUL. It's basically an inventory management simulator. They should at least add a way to upgrade it cuz you just do one floor of the 3 floors per dungeon and it's full. You might get lucky and get the chest that sends it back to the shop but if you dont your SOL. Next is the combat, it's good but also kinda iffy. You'll roll up on an enemy and go to attack and miss 17 times cuz your 2 pixels off. In Cult of The Lamb I've beat bosses on half a heart, in this game you could not do the same at all. That said those are my only complaints, I actually love the shop sim part of it and the dungeons are fun enough. The gloves are my personal choice and the spear even tho I don't use the spear at all lol. For the price I would 100 percent recommend you buy it even not on sale, idk about the dlc tho it doesn't really seem to add too much to the game. Also you have to fall sometimes and I wish they told us that lol. You'll see what I mean if you buy it.

Decent implementation as a Roguelike and Visuals but bad enemy design with very frustrating player control.

lovely game, completed the game within 28 hrs, just bought the new dlc- between dimensions during sale to try out, excited to play once more with this new content, and excited for moonlighter 2 :)

Great fun, eventually becomes a little too repetitive after a certain point.

This game has become a bit of comfort food for me. It's quite grindy, but the story is simple and don't require lots of recall. So I'll pop in once and a while and run a dungeon and run the shop. I feel like there's a lot more under the surface if I really want to try for it, but as it stands, this is a pop in and play sort of game, and as Dad now, a lot more games need to be just that.

listen, the game is alright. I will keep playing it until I beat it and ill update this review if I feel different about it.

Its your average rogue-like dungeon crawler, with a story and mystery you want to uncover, and while I dig these kinds of stories, the game itself needs to be fun.

The dungeons are interesting and the enemy variety is certainly cool, but the combat just isn't fun. At all.

Think old school legend of zelda, where you can only move and attack up down left and right. The only difference is that here, you can move diagonally, but you still have to attack in the 4 cardinal directions. Frankly this kind of combat is torture, aiming and hitting ANYTHING becomes a chore rather than a skill, since if you get too close you'll take contact damage, and if you're in the 4 cardinal directions of them, you'll almost always take damage due to their attack speed. Its not like your attacks are fast either, the end lag AND wind up is ridiculous on most weapons, the range is pitiful, and like I said aiming is impossible with only the 4 cardinal directions.

Whats the solution? as far as I can tell its just spamming flat upgrades so you can 1 shot enemies and tank everything they throw at you. Its pretty clear this is what they want from you, since combat is just embarrassing; by the 2nd dungeon i'm already facing enemies with just blatantly unfair attacks, like the tree mini boss that has an super fast RNG spray of orbs, something that is basically uncounterable. The design choice with the weapons is even worse. the sword and shield offers SOME diagonal attack, but the shield is completely useless. parrying is not a thing in the game, and it takes almost a full second to raise your shield to block. by the time you swing, you don't have enough time to block the next attack, and even worse you can only BLOCK in the cardinal directions, if the attack is even somewhat diagonal you risk getting hurt anyways.

After writing this out, I feel even more confident about my feelings. think i'm exaggerating? play the tutorial of the game. the combat you feel there won't get any better.

Bad hitboxes with some bugs along the gameplay. The required grind is somewhat discouraging.
In addition, some RNG achievements (e.g. perfect Naja), with other ones requiring a lot of effort (e.g. Savage).

Besides these drawbacks, its a fair game to spend some time.

The game has UI and basic function bugs 7 years after release. (Some of these have been addressed two years after release, and still occur). My game crashed after beating the final boss in the expansion. I'm hesitant to buy the sequel specifically for this reason.

Usually, when I die, it's because I'm fighting with the herky-jerky combat system. Hitboxes are weird & occasionally unpredictable, and attacks don't flow at all.

Struggling with maintaining interest in this game.

The merchant sim aspect just doesn't have enough depth to it to be interesting, but as a gateway into becoming a Recettear fan, it's fine. My main issue is the combat, the only other aspect to the gameplay.

Combat manages to be both uninteresting with how simple and static your combat options are— which isn't a bad thing in of itself, a lot of games compensate for lacklustre combat systems in other ways, such as exploration or build potential (look at Path of Achra, a game played with literally 2 buttons which is still spectacular due to its build diversity)— and simultaneously, manages to be incredibly clunky and unfun to control and engage with.

You have 5 weapon types: Sword & Shield, Greatsword, Bow, Lance- I mean Spear, and Fists. Each weapon type has 2 attacks, a light 1-2-3 combo (unless you're Bow) and a charged special attack (unless you're Sword & Shield, which just has a guard). You carry 2 weapons at a time and... that's it. Beyond exploits such as properly timing a weapon swap at the end of the first or second attack in a combo to combo into a third hit with your other weapon, that's the entire combat system.

Again, this wouldn't be an issue by itself but your character sure likes to take it slow while attacking, by which I mean they stand completely still, barring some of the special attacks. This, coupled with a distinct lack of reliable animation or attack cancelling beyond rolling (the only universal source of i-frames), the restriction to 4-way directional attacks despite 8-way directional movement and jank analog movement being in the game, *and* enemies having contact damage while your attacks' knockback on enemies range from puny to nonexistent means that going melee also entails a side contract of face tanking.

This is compounded by the fact that the only limit on how many potions you can carry being how many you *want* to carry and your gold with which to brew them— even the best potions in the game can just allow you to brew them with no materials at a higher gold cost—, so melee combat often just devolves to a DPS race while occasionally drinking potions and otherwise ignoring however much damage you take.

The 2nd miniboss in the first dungeon might as well be a perfect microcosm of the issues listed here: this is a reskin of the first miniboss with one change, that being that its sword slash that it prefers at close-range is now somewhat modified. Rather than remaining a simple slash, it now teleports away and cannot be seen for a static amount of time— that being roughly 3 or 4 seconds— before instantly slashing you as it reappears. *This attack does not have any tell whatsoever to signify when or where the boss will reappear, nor when you will be hit*, and is outright impossible to avoid on reaction. This one attack renders the choice of melee for this fight into either pumping your gear's stats up high enough to ignore the boss and simply dump damage on it, packing as many potions as you'll need to soak the unavoidable hits, or abusing the lengthy i-frames on the special attacks for the Greatsword or Fists— i-frames that were almost certainly granted because of your character's awful mobility when attacking, funnily enough.

The combat's design is almost expecting you to just cheese it and as the greater part of what you'll be doing in this game, the other part being somewhat inoffensive but uninteresting, it's incredibly tedious and unfun to engage with.

Also to close, fun fact: if you try to remap any of the controls in this game, you will find that each button still has an arbitrary secondary effect that is input at the same time as your now remapped option for said button— for example, if you remap 'A' on an Xbox controller to, say, remain unbound, you'll find that it swaps weapons and will do so whenever you also use the A button to interact with anything. Keep in mind the A button does *not* swap weapons by default so this is incredibly baffling. The devs have been aware of this bug with remapping controls for YEARS at this point and have done nothing about it!