Momodora 4: Reverie Under The Moonlight

What is Momodora 4?

Momodora 4 follows a young priestess in her journey into a dark castle to slay some sort of evil queen. If that sounds vague, that is because it is. The story of the game is rather bland and hard to follow and frankly I am not even entirely sure what the goal actually is. Anyways the game is a castlevania/metroidvania style game full of sprite art and 2d platforming that would have been right at home in the 16-bit era.

The Win Condition.

The goal for this game was quite simply to reach the end of the game, no matter what ending is received. There is in fact multiple endings to this game which is usually a nice touch in a game but is held back by the lack of clarity as to how to get each ending. To make that even worse the game clearly has a favored ending as they quite literally call the endings “bad ending” and “true ending.” I am betting you can guess which ending the developers favor. Personally I much prefer when a game makes every ending equally valid but alas I am sure someone out there likes this whole true ending nonsense. Anyways I got the “bad ending” when I played through the game but that is good enough for the purpose of this blog.

The Experience

By now I am sure you have realized I don’t “love” this game. The tone of this blog has been rather negative and we are only just now reaching the section in which I voice the majority of my opinions. That being said the experience for this game isn’t actually dreadful; the game is just rather unremarkable.

So let’s add a little positivity to the post and discuss the elements I do like about Momodora 4. While the combat doesn’t do anything particularly unique it is overall pretty responsive. You do get the feeling you are in control of your success or failure during combat. It never feels like you can just press a button over and over to win nor does it feel like you are at the mercy of the game due to poor or overly complicated controls. This is something many games fail at but Momodora 4 does decently well. The games difficulty tends to be a little frustrating at times but most encounters will be achievable after 4-5 attempts.

The games animation and art seems to vary drastically throughout. The main character is animated very nicely and clearly had a decent amount of effort put in on the developers side to make her move smoothly. This is made especially clear during the rather nice death animation. Granted the death animation does get slightly annoying due to its length, annoying sound effect, and frequency at which it is experienced. The backgrounds for the game are also quite nice looking and are varied enough to make them notable. Unfortunately, the art is lacking when it comes to the enemies. All of the enemies are uninspired and are quickly forgotten after turning the game off.

The Ranking

Overall Momodora 4 is a pretty average metroidvania. Not doing much to set itself apart but without any serious problems. Being that there are a lot of quality games on the horror list so far Momodora 4 will find itself pretty close to the bottom. In fact it will find itself at the very bottom. Momodora 4 is ranked at our current 12th spot below “Sea Salt.”

Console: Xbox One; Time to Beat: 3 hours 43 minutes 38 seconds.

Where to Play?

For now Momodora 4 is available via GamePass however it is being removed from the service at the end of the month. Alternatively, you may purchase the game from the Xbox store.