Momodora: Moonlit Farewell is beautifully simple, perhaps to a fault. Switch owners who take the chance on this 8-hour metroidvania will enjoy its fluid combat, glittery spritework, and mild platforming. I’m sad to see the Momodora series conclude, but I have hopes that developers Bombservice continue to design gorgeous metroidvanias.
The pantheon of metroidvanias are known for their innovative thematics, exploration, and additions to the gaming genre. Over the past few years, I’ve played several that have gone on all in on separating themselves from the pack in unique ways. Hollow Knight won me over on its charm and deep combat. The Last Faith challenged me in all the right ways, testing my resolve in keeping up with its steep difficulty. DOOMBLADE flipped the metroidvania script thanks to its hyper-mobility. Blasphemous was simultaneously difficult yet visually striking, pushing the envelope through its tone and commitment to its Roman-Catholic motifs. The list goes on.
To its credit, Momodora: Moonlit Farewell incorporates several praiseworthy elements of metroidvania gameplay that other recent titles have utilized well. Originally released in 2024 on the PC (Steam), Moonlit Farewell was the fifth and final entry in the Momodora series and follows the events of the original Momodora series. It is now available on consoles, bringing console owners full circle to the conclusion of the Momodora universe.
Thankfully, I didn’t need to be caught up on the events of Momodora before diving into Moonlit Farewell. It stands apart from the earlier titles by keeping its events contained within itself, only including a handful of Easter Eggs for longtime fans who are most familiar with the series.
Momodora: Moonlit Farewell takes place long after the events of the first Momodora games and features Momo Reinol, a new main character. Momo Reinol is a high priestess of Koho Village, a small community threatened by a demonic invasion. Equipped with her Awakened Leaf (which turns into a red blade), Momo is to stop any and all demons in her way and recover artifacts used to summon the demons.
The early game of a metroidvania is typically sluggish and stiff, placing the player in the shoes of an underpowered protagonist. From exploring, the protagonist obtains mobility-boosting powerups like double jump, dashing, and wall jumping. Moonlit Farewell follows some of these progression beats to a tee, but it accelerates the early game thanks to its stamina system and the sprinting upgrade. Yes, sprinting is one of the first unlocks, and it kept the sluggishness of the typical metroidvania earlygame to a minimum.
Momo Reinol had two primary attacks: a melee strike with her Awakening Leaf and a ranged arrow. Attacks could be chained together into simple combinations (like melee into an arrow into two other melee attacks) and evolved when Momo sprinted. Melee strikes are elegant yet impactful, but arrows felt underutilized barring some specific niche use cases. I would have liked some boss fights or enemies to have weaknesses to ranged attacks, if only to encourage the player to use all of the tools at their disposal.
The Sigil System is Moonlit Farewell’s means of character building and giving Momo Reinol some unique powers. Sigils can be acquired from simply exploring, completing some side missions, or bought from an NPC, but I could only equip a set number at any given time. These sigils add some light variety, but they don’t take big swings in drastically modifying Momo’s powers.
Coming out of playing Gestalt: Storm & Cinder and Nine Sols, Moonlit Farewell felt like a walk in the park. Even when I upped the difficulty to the highest available setting, I was able to clear through the game with little issue. I died exactly five times during my playthrough: the first two times were from the bleed status effect inflicted by enemies (not bosses, but regular enemies in the second-to-last biome) and the remaining three were from an optional post-game boss.
The rest of the bosses were simple and required me to just melee attack them with Momo Reinol’s Awakened leaf, pummeling them into oblivion. It wasn’t until the final few bosses where I was pitted against multi-phase bosses that had specific attack patterns, but even then, I was able to defeat them the first time through.
The other part of Moonlit Farewell’s easier difficulty stems from its biome and level design. Yes, each of Moonlit Farewell’s biomes are beautifully designed and distinct in their own right. When I realized that most of them primarily differed by the enemies within and lacked platforming or mechanical shifts, it felt like there was a missed opportunity in pushing Moonlit Farewell to greater heights. For instance, in a demonic biome, why not have fiery traps? In a fairy-themed biome, why not have moments to “fly” and emphasize the biome being one of magical airiness? In diversifying the platform designs on a biome-by-biome basis, it would have given the game some much needed variety.
As a metroidvania, though, Moonlit Farewell is quite well done. Simple? Yes. Innovative? Sort of. Fun? Absolutely. Despite my minor quibbles with the lack of biome variety and my wishes for deeper combat, Bombservice went above and beyond in ensuring that the player’s time is respected. Every room was uniquely designed. There were ample opportunities to explore and find powerups that permanently improved my stats. I’ll take a simpler level design if it means that the world is full of small rewards just like how Moonlit Farewell is designed.
I guess I’m beating around the bush here, when perhaps I shouldn’t. Momodora: Moonlit Farewell is a very easy metroidvania. It’s potentially one of the easier metroidvanias I’ve played in the past few years. I don’t have a problem with that, though, and nor should you. I can confidently say that, despite its ease, I stuck with it to its conclusion and finished it in its entirety (side missions and secrets and all). It felt satisfying to reach the end, have the map fully explored, and Momo Reinol fully equipped against some pretty difficult postgame content.
I loved Momodora: Moonlit Farewell’s spritework and pixel art. It contains the same rudimentary charm of Cave Story but with less guns and more magical fairies, demons, and kitties. Environments (especially the villages) are lush, chock full of particles and shimmering effects. The fluidity of the worlds and spritework is worth praising, especially in the Switch version.
Before wrapping this review, let’s comment on the quality of the Switch port. In short, it runs great! I was pleased to see that there were no hiccups or lagginess despite environments brimming with animations and particles. Even in handheld mode, Moonlit Farewell had no issue in maintaining a stable framerate.
Momodora: Moonlit Farewell is beautifully simple, perhaps to a fault. Switch owners who take the chance on this 8-hour metroidvania will enjoy its fluid combat, glittery spritework, and mild platforming. I’m sad to see the Momodora series conclude, but I have hopes that developers Bombservice continue to design gorgeous metroidvanias.
