The original Moonlighter came out in 2018, honing a burgeoning but still young, modern roguelite genre into a wonderful rinse-repeat of item grab-and-sell that I’ll admit, I fell for pretty heavily back then. Now, a full eight years later, the genre has become massively mainstream; it’s everywhere, and there are roguelites released virtually every day. It’s impossible to keep up. So we customers are forced to be incredibly picky about the tat we spend our cash on.
Moonlighter 2 hits full release after a little shy of a year in Early Access, and enters this new market still largely unchallenged in its little niche of running a shop with your pillaged items (except for maybe Dave the Diver and its imitators). But with all that time to cook, it manages to hone and distil every advancement in the genre into an addictive roguelite loop. Does it still have the charm of the original? Follow me through a Blob portal and let’s find out!
Return of the Retailer
Moving the setting from Rynoka to the new 3D town of Tresna, the story has it that a malicious being known as Moloch took control of the portals in that town for himself and banished the townsfolk, including ol’ Will. Nice that he didn’t just kill them all, to be honest. Will is now making his way as a merchant pillager all over again, setting up a new shop and beginning all over again. It’s a hard life even in cozy fantasies.
The Rynokans have been taken in by the odd, multi-species inhabitants of Tresna, who are more than happy to buy every broken trinket Will can find from across the dimensional blob portal thing. Story isn’t the most important part of Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault, and even with the full 1.0 release, not much more was added except being able to fully open a strange cube in the centre of town, and then challenge Moloch.
Overall, narrative and even character interactions are pretty secondary here. If you’re getting addicted to the combat and selling loop, the story falls away completely to the point I basically forgot it was there, but it’s a nice backdrop to continue getting stronger, repeating the dungeons, and selling your loot. There’s also now a New Game Plus, so even when the story is done, and really is superfluous, you can just keep playing.
On the one hand, it seems something of a missed opportunity not to have a bigger story, but the developers have already added more narrative than there was in the first game, and are striking a balance I feel.
Back To Business
What story there is speaks of a change from one dimension to another when the town was taken, and whether it’s correct or not, my head canon is that they mean from two dimensions to three dimensions. The step up, the glow up, the evolution, whatever you want to call it, of Moonlighter the 2D indie darling, to Moonlighter 2, the 3D cel-shaded beauty, is nothing short of incredible. I was a massive sceptic of the transition from 2D to 3D when first announced (why alter something so perfect), but when you are handed 3D so intensely beautiful and somehow in keeping with the tone and pastel vibe of the original, I was on board and then some.
A Persistent Hunter
Somehow, despite the change to 3D, Moonlighter 2’s combat doesn’t feel that different to its predecessor. Which is quite the feat in a completely different engine. Will still has his signature weapons; he rolls and combos a simple special, and he moves quickly despite a very heavy backpack. A favourite part of the new system is when you really pummel an enemy to low health they’ll rupture, glowing purple, and you can whack them across the room with said backpack. Enemies are a nice mix of simple and difficult, and even getting to the final boss room on a run can prove tricky early on. Best to get a few upgrades, some armour, some potions, and try, try, try again.
Glitches that appeared in the Early Access build seem largely to have been dealt with, and the only real issue I found was some pretty intense slowdown, frame rate drops, etc as the game tried to load assets. Even tuning the graphics down and turning off features and anything else on my computer didn’t seem to stop it, but those with a more powerful machine may not have the same issues.
The run features are strong and robust, offering a ton of different types of perks, or treasure rooms, or battles, whichever you want for maximising your intentions in that run. Maybe you want more items for sale, so it’s best to prioritise treasure rooms and sales multiplier perks, or maybe you want to reach the boss with minimum damage accumulated, so make for the battle perks only and speed past that treasure. If you can resist.
It’s a testament to Digital Sun’s experience that every system feels simple to navigate and has easy-to-use interfaces. There are literally hundreds of roguelites out there now, many of them managing to be overly complex, or implementing systems in ways that require masses of learning and work to understand. Moonlighter 2 just kind of gets on with it, and virtually nothing becomes an obstacle in your way of just playing and enjoying.
Market Recon
The other side of Will’s coin is, of course, his shop. He’s not just out kicking monster butt for fun; he wants to make bank! It seems, from the many hours I’ve put into the constant loop of item grab-and-sell, that there’s simply nothing more addictive than gathering my items, getting home, arranging them lovingly on plinths, setting their prices to get the best returns, trying to get tips and perks, and then opening my doors to the village folk, and hawking absolute junk to them at inflated prices. It’s somehow thrilling, and Moonlighter 2 has lost none of the magic from the first game.
If anything, it’s even better. There are games within games in Moonlighter 2; the backpack item management that burns items or increases their value, or crystallises them, or turns them into dolls; the back and forth with customers trying to find that sweet spot price where they aren’t discouraged, but instead go away both happy and poor; the constant choices to be made about increasing your loadout, item spaces, potion number, or weapons, or instead to spend it all on upgrades to the shop, so that you can rake in more cash next time. Moonlighter 2 refines the systems and makes them even more satisfying and just-one-more-run than ever before.
The Price Of Greed
Early Access for a trustworthy publisher like 11bit Studios and a trustworthy developer like Digital Sun wasn’t as dodgy as it can sometimes be. Much of the game was already in place. By which I mean that the full 1.0 release actually feels less meaty for those who had already poured time into the game. If you are coming at this new with 1.0, I kind of envy that.
When released in Early Access Moonlighter 2 already had all three unique biomes (with night and day variants) filled with enemies to battle, and the 1.0 release doesn’t have another one to add, which was a shame. There are over 150 relics to sell in your shop, but that’s not much more than there was in Early Access. And again there’s only a scant increase to the weapons; a dual wield for the guns, in addition to the gun and four main melee weapons that were already in the early build. What seems to have been the most expanded is more the cosmetic side of things; the 1.0 release has many more cosmetic upgrades to customize your shop, a Greed! Alert on setting prices, a full glossary/encyclopedia, and two or three entirely new families of perks to power up each run – Bombs, Poison, and Hex powers. And of course you can now finish quests and narrative that you couldn’t before. I enjoyed the compact challenge runs, which were close to a boss rush.
What’s nice, considering the game is called The Endless Vault, is that there is a New Game Plus now, so you can just finish upgrading your shop, acquire all the cosmetics and perks, and just continue to live as a merchant adventurer in Tresna for as long as you stay interested in the game. I was very glad to see this included.
It’s hard to rate a game where, in the Early Access stage, you thought the full release would be much bigger, but you really liked it, but almost liked it because you assumed there’d be more. I end up thinking that coming to the game freshly in September 2026 you’ll have the whole package and a great experience and wouldn’t be expecting more. However, coming back to it only to find the cosmetic lists completed and the story can be completed really is kind of underwhelming. In the end, I’m forced to find the final package didn’t live up to the expectations created in Early Access.
Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault is available 2nd September 2026 on PC via Steam (review platform), PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S|X and Nintendo Switch 2.
Developer: Digital Sun
Publisher: 11 Bit Studios
Disclaimer: In order to complete this review, we were provided with a promotional copy of the game. For our full review policy, please go here.
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