Geekatana Game Review: Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight

Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight is one of those games I played a long while back but have either forgotten or simply had too much time doing other stuff that I didn't have time to do a review on my Blog. And yet still it's one of those Indie games that can grows on you and I've encountered a lot of these kinds before.

Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight is the fourth game in the Momodora series. Although I haven't played the first three games before I did do some simple research on the previous three games before writing this review to be fair.

Momodora is a series of platform games developed by Bombservice. It follows several priestess heroines who utilize magic maple leaves as weapons against monsters and other cursed entities. The games are chronologically titled Momodora 1-3 and Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight being the fourth game was released in 2016.

It takes place in an unnamed world inhabited by strange monsters and people. Dark forces threatens it and priestesses through ritual martyrdom protect the realm from these evil.

Right off the bat Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight graphics is pure eye candy. It's probably one of the most impressive Indie platform game that came out during the year of its release. It's definitely a great improvement if you have played the previous Momodora games. You can easily tell that this takes much inspiration from Castlevania Symphony of the Night yet has enough concept to make it its own thing.

The story usually takes a back seat in favor of action and exploration this was hardly the case for this game. The game is about a priestess named Kaho as she seeks the aid of the Queen in the corrupted city of Karst. Since this is a prequel of the very first Momodora game both old and new Momodora players can easily jump right in. The story starts out simple but gets intricate as you delve further into the game itself. 

The character designs are decent and both Kaho and the enemies looked like they have taken inspiration from some fairy tale story specially Kaho who looks like a white version of Red Riding Hood. She also has a nice balance of range and melee attack. If you played the Megaman games you will find a little bit of both Zero and Megaman in Kaho's range and melee attack.

The controls pretty well done with the standard range attack via a bow you can power up and a melee attack via a maple leaf that that Kaho wields like a cloak. There are also power ups in the game that gives you other abilities like turning Kaho into a cat to help her get to those tight places or air dashing. There's even a dodge feature that can be exploited by expert players.

Exploration is this game specialty and its best to explore everything if you can to get that special power up or item to give you the edge before that next big fight. Thankfully there are bells that act as save points and replenishes your magic bar and health. These bells also act as teleportation to other bells you already unlocked in your exploration so you don't need to run back to areas you have been before.

The music is the second best thing about this game. It all fits well to the overall theme of it all with each music track giving life to each new area the player finds himself into. I remember letting Koha just stand in a safe side of an area and just enjoy the music playing in a certain area at one time or two.

This game is unforgiving though and lots of times normal enemies will hit you with a range attack off screen within seconds of entering a new area. And they only need to hit Koha a few times to take her out. New players will find this frustrating at first but nothing a little trial and error or keeping at your toes wouldn't remedy. If you ever played Dark Souls you will know what I mean.

There are option boss fights as well and special items you can get if you defeat certain bosses without taking a hit. Something that adds additional replay value and a reason to get good at this game. There's even a one hit kill mode you can unlock when you finished the game for the really Dark Souls like feel.

Overall Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight is one of those great games that easily went unnoticed but has a solid enough game play that any fan of platform games would surely love. Graphics, music, game play...if you're a fan of platform games and Dark Souls and want a game that is colorful, fun and challenging with a chunk of strategy and exploration than I couldn't recommend this game enough.