Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault feels familiar right away, but in a good way. The moment you drop into Tresna, broke, stranded, and staring at a town that looks like it barely survived its own history, you can tell the game isn’t trying to reinvent itself. Instead, it builds on what worked in the first Moonlighter. It tries to push everything a little further: tighter combat, smarter dungeon design, and a shop system that actually feels like a business instead of a side activity.
The central loop is still simple: head into the Endless Vault, grab relics, bring them back, and sell them so you can slowly rebuild the village around you. What surprised me is how much cleaner everything feels. The dungeons have more personality this time. The three biomes in Early Access each have their own enemy behaviors and pacing quirks, and fights feel more deliberate. The original game had charm, but the combat often felt loose. Here, weapons hit the way you expect, enemies telegraph their moves clearly, and your dodge actually saves you when you time it right.
You start with four weapon types, which is a nice touch. There’s enough variety to lock onto a style early without feeling like you’re being forced to experiment every few minutes. Paired with the perk system, nearly 100 perks between shop bonuses and dungeon modifiers, the game gives you room to mess around without burying you in complicated builds. You can make meaningful tweaks to how you fight or how you earn money, but nothing feels like homework.
Looting still carries the same tension that made the first game addictive. When you’re deep in the Vault with a full backpack of valuable relics, you always have that quiet voice saying, “Turn around, don’t be greedy.” And of course, there’s the other voice saying, “One more room won’t kill you.” Sometimes you listen to the wrong one. That push-and-pull between safety and greed is still the heart of the series, and it works just as well here.
Back in Tresna, the shop side has seen the biggest improvement. It doesn’t feel like a quick menu you pass through between dungeon runs anymore. You can customize the shop layout, manage customer flow, and shape your business around the relics you actually enjoy finding. Customers react more naturally, and upgrades feel like they matter. The town around you grows as your shop does, which makes the whole loop feel more connected. Even in Early Access, Tresna feels more alive than Rynoka ever did at launch.
The story isn’t front and center yet, which is pretty typical for Early Access, but the tone is clear. The game hints at bigger mysteries surrounding the Vault and what happened to this place before you arrived. It’s not a lore dump, more like breadcrumbs that the developers will probably expand on as they add new zones, bosses, and NPCs. What’s here now is enough to add some intrigue without slowing the pace.
Visually, the game sticks to the series’ style but tightens things up. The art is sharper, the UI is less clunky, and the animations look smoother across the board. It’s still unmistakably Moonlighter, just more refined. The soundtrack follows the same philosophy: quiet, comfortable, and built to sit in the background without getting annoying during long sessions. Like any Early Access release, it has some rough spots. Some progression paths clearly aren’t finished yet, and certain areas feel like placeholders for future updates. If you’re expecting a full story arc or all biomes on day one, you’ll notice the limits. But the core loop, the thing that makes Moonlighter Moonlighter feel strong and surprisingly complete. That’s a solid foundation for the rest of the roadmap.
INITIAL IMPRESSION
Right now, Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault looks like a sequel made by a team that knows exactly what players liked about the first game and wants to give them more of it without drowning the charm. The improvements aren’t dramatic, but they’re consistent, and they add up to something that feels more confident. If the team follows through with the planned content, including extra zones, more bosses, and a more extensive story, the final version could easily stand toe to toe with the best indie action-RPGs coming out.
