2024 is here, and with it comes the inevitably doomed New Year's resolutions. Rather than try to focus on something useless like exercising more or keeping my house cleaner, I’ve resolved to try and actually keep up with Metroidvania games as they come out, rather than file them away to be featured on a Metroidvania Corner article several months later. What better way to kick off that resolution than with Momodora: Moonlit Farewell, a fairly laid-back experience designed to ease us all into another uncomfortable year full of its own catastrophes, angry political arguments, and the seemingly prerequisite slate of workers' rights violations by Elon Musk.

The Momodora series is a bit of an odd entity; while many series have spin-offs or adjunct titles that dive into different genres, Momodora is one of the few that has swapped back and forth between genres within its mainline titles. The first entry in the series was a short, linear platformer that could be beaten in an hour; the second switched to more of an open-ended, exploration-heavy experience with side characters and a Metroid-esque map; the third title then reverted back to the more linear, arcade style; then the fourth entry - Reverie Under the Moonlight - embraced non-linearity again, firmly committing to being a Metroidvania. Eight years later, Moonlit Farewell has finally been released and it sticks with the Metroidvania theme… just in time for the series to end. Better late than never when it comes to finding your series’ identity, I suppose.

Fortunately for the average player who probably hasn’t played a Momodora game before (which seems even more likely than usual given how much the series has ping-ponged all over the place in terms of genre), the plot of Moonlit Farewell requires fairly little knowledge of prior entries. You play as Momo, a priestess/one woman army, who has her village assaulted by demons. The matriarch of the town is convinced that these demons are being summoned by a bell somewhere, so you're sent off to explore the caverns below, find the demonic bellringer, and ask him politely if he wouldn’t mind taking a break from summoning hellspawn for a bit.

Momodora pre-dates the modern trend of indie developers deciding that a Metroidvania is just a free roaming 2D platformer, so thankfully we actually have item-gated progression. And it’s, broadly speaking, pretty thoughtfully implemented, giving the player lots of little teases for things that they’ll be able to acquire later once they've found cool new powerups. You’ll see a ledge out of reach, or some red vines blocking the way, and later on acquire the ability to double jump, or a special technique to let you cut said vines. It all works pretty well, and creates that nice, warm, fuzzy feeling of remembering where something is and coming back to it that Metroidvanias should have.

Unfortunately the powerups themselves are a bit lacking. I don’t mind more basic powerups, like the ability to cut vines or… the ability to sprint, for some reason, but the main upgrades you acquire here don’t do a whole lot to give a sense of character progression beyond just allowing you to get to parts of the world you couldn’t reach before. Ideally, the main upgrades should give you a sense that your character is getting stronger and more versatile, and Moonlit Farewell’s don’t really do that.

Fortunately, there’s a good selection of optional discoverable items that do fill that role pretty nicely, from your typical stat increasers, to sigils that apply a variety of effects to your character in the middle of gameplay, extra slots that allow you to equip more sigils, and different AI controlled companions that accompany you into battle, each completely and utterly useless in their own unique way. It would’ve been nice if some of these were a little better hidden, or at least required a bit more skill to obtain; as it stands nearly every optional pickup is kind of out in the open, sitting there for the taking. This is definitely preferable to some other titles that concoct the most devious hiding places for items ever, making them virtually impossible to discover outside of random luck or consulting GameFAQs, but with a giant question mark being left on the map every single time you pass an item, the system in Moonlit Farewell seems a bit overkill in the opposite direction. I finished the game with 101% completion without really making much of an attempt to backtrack and collect items, so there’s quite a bit just out there for the taking.

The level design is pretty much exactly what you’d want from a Metroidvania, with interconnected levels that fold back on each other and allow for shortcuts to be discovered to make traversal easier. Areas do a pretty good job of standing out from each other, with there being a cove, forest, cave, and a creepy wasteland area. The area leading up to the final confrontation is very well put together and absolutely nails the atmospheric component; it’s really easy to get sucked into it.

A large reason for that is the game’s fantastic visuals and music. The soundtrack is absolutely sublime and arguably worth the $15 price of admission alone; it always manages to hit the right beats for the setting and is genuinely enjoyable to listen to on its own. The pixel art-heavy visuals also (mostly) deliver in spades, managing to be both charmingly simple and surprisingly detailed, with a fantastic mixture of colors throughout. My only complaint here is some of the enemies can look a bit too cartoony, which can sully some of the moments that are meant to be more emotional, such as when a character discusses the tragic tale of how a loved one lost his life to a previously fought boss with googly eyes that looks like it was taken from a children’s book.

Combat is the big focal point of Moonlit Farewell outside of exploration, and it’s a bit hit or miss. Your moveset is pretty simple: there’s a standard three hit melee combo, a dodge, and a projectile. Not exactly complicated, but it mostly doesn’t need to be. Enemies move fast and hit hard, forcing you to react and respond quickly. Boss fights, at their best, are fast-paced and intense, and really force you to make the most of your toolkit and the Sigil system. Towards the end, I found myself constantly swapping cards out and trying new builds to help with the surprisingly challenging final area.

Unfortunately, boss fights are often not at their best. Some bosses have extremely limited or predictable movesets, and will just cycle through the same two attacks over and over while you just wail on health bars that are probably far too big for something so limited. Others, like a certain late game boss, have larger movesets but are very slow/limited in range, making it very easy to just keep your distance and spam projectiles if you’re so inclined. I suppose one could argue that’s a good reward for identifying a boss weakness, but I would argue a boss (let alone multiple bosses) should never be so vulnerable to cheese strategies that it can be easily dealt with by cheese that players are likely to discover on their first playthrough.

But consistently amazing combat isn’t a prerequisite to succeed in the Metroidvania genre, and Momodora: Moonlit Farewell succeeds at enough other things to ultimately make it a solid recommendation for fans of the genre. It understands good item-based progression, makes exploration rewarding without undervaluing its powerups, and presents a varied & interesting world that invites players back and makes them want to explore more. If this really is farewell to the Momodora series, it’s ended on a fairly high note with a lot of potential, and I’m curious to see what Bombservice comes up with next.