By Aegis Malkav 
Have you ever wondered how it would be to play the Diablo series from a 3rd person perspective? Well Crimson Moon is the answer to that particular question.
Before i start with the review let me make one thing clear: I’m perfectly aware of the game’s flaws and the critics that it has been receiving but this review is neither gonna have any bias nor free hate in it, im planning to give it a fair judgement and its flaws are gonna be discussed nearing the end of this review.
Developed by probablyMONSTERS includes Chris Wilson and Steve Pardo as both lead composer and music manager who helped created the industrial rock theme of the game in collaboration with groups like; HEALTH, Ice Nine Kills guitarist/vocalist Ricky Armellino, youtuber/musician Jared Dines and guitarist Misha Mansoor.
Like explained at the very beginning Crimson Moon is an ARPG with roguelite progression but instead of being similar to the Dark Souls series like most people compare, I strongly believe that the game takes heavy inspiration in games like Diablo which is blatantly clear once you start playing it.
The story takes us to Gildenarch, a city stuck in the middle of an apocalyptic war between Heaven and Hell, seeing that the victory of Hell is guaranteed, the forces of Heaven decide to cheat by finding a “loophole” inside the rules of this biblical war. What is the loophole you ask? The answer to their dilemma was: Let’s breed with humans so hybrids known as Nephilims who in return will work as proxys for the ange~ look im not gonna sugarcoat it, this is basically heaven surrogating their job to the humans because Hell is giving them “these hands” simple as that, problem is that the Nephilims are not being seeing neither as angels nor humans therefore they became just tools of war used by the Lunitarian Church.
Now that we’re done with the lore lets talk about the gameplay.
Each run (or hunt) is composed of 3 districts that are also divided between 3 parts with a boss fight waiting at the end of each district, once the districts are completed you’ll be facing a world’s boss, beat it and you’ll receive an Abraxas Stone. In order to have the chance of beating the final boss youre gonna need 3 Abraxas Stones meaning the total amount of runsFox you need in order to unlock the ending is 4.
The game has co-op and can be played with a friend or random which enhances the experience ten fold plus it has crossplay feature in it which makes it easier to pair with other players.
Now to one of the similarities this game has with Diablo, the equipment comes in form of loot that its quality is based on the rarity of the items and their substats meaning that even if two items share the same name chances are their stats or quality will vary, you can only pick a loadout once before each run but that doesn’t mean you can’t switch your build mid run with the items that you find during it but there’s a catch, if you die those items are lost unless you manage to clear a district and go back to the church that serves as a nexus point between missions but if you do then the items you collected become purified and permanently added in your storage, one last thing you have to keep in mind is that there’s only a limited amount of items you can carry with you each time you’re in a district so try to be picky and only grab items you know you’re gonna end up using eventually.
Another roguelite gimmick are Boons that the game offers you at the end of each district part, they serve as a complement to your build that enhances the element of your choosing or your stats giving the player an opportunity to create personal builds that there’s never two of the same.
In the church you have several options to make your runs easier like a blacksmith to upgrade your armor and weapons, a merchant that allows you to buy items, a scribe that collects the pieces of lore you find during your runs and the captain who manages the bounties which is something ill explain later, obviously theres moreurch features that you can unlock later on but since this is meant to be a review and not a full on walkthrough i’ll simply let the readers discover the rest by themselves when they play the game.
There’s two types of currencies in this game which are souls and coins.
Gold is used to upgrade gear and weapons while Souls are meant to buy gear and items and boons that the merchant, the scribe and the blacksmith offer, be sure to keep a look at special offers on the blacksmith since he offers some good weapons that are already ready to use so let’s discuss what each npc offers.
Lotte Ananta is the merchant and you can buy consumables and accessories that will boost your stats on the run but there’s something the game doesn’t tell you right away and that is that those accessories are temporary, It means that no matter if you die or complete a district the “borrowed” items will disappear from your inventory so be aware of it when you some.
Mereda is the scribe of the church, if you bring her pieces of lore scrolls she unlocks boons that are gonna give you an edge before even starting the run, what are boons you say? Will talk about it a bit later in the combat section so be patient.
Gajov Resnyk is the blacksmith and he’s in charge of upgrading your equipment and offers you new ones that change every time you come to the church again including the special offers that I’ve mentioned before.
Gallant Alexander is the knight commander that offers you bounties that you can complete on your runs for extra currency so make sure to always exhaust as many bounties as you can before heading back to the field.
Ok, it’s time to delve into the game’s combat system.
The combat aspect of the game is in nature very similar to a soulslike, you have light and heavy attacks, block, parry and dodge roll, an “estus flask” for both the health and mana bar plus throwable items that can give you a range advantage against your enemies, deal critical blows after a perfect parry or backstab them souls style for massive amounts of damage.
Now here comes again the Diablo face of the game where you have access to spells in the form of Weapon Arts that vary depending on the weapon’s passive buff, it can be a buff to yourself or elemental attacks that cause damage while also giving different negative stats to the enemy.
Also there’s a character level system implemented that increases for each kill and missions completed. Leveling up offers higher rarity items, more item storage slots, increased potency and quantity of the game’s “estus flasks”, health and mana bars increase etc…
Angel Sense is an ability that allows you to scan the environment to an extent for enemies nearby of objects of interest so make sure to use it every time you enter a new zone.
Angel Ascension is your ultimate and allows you to temporarily become an Angel and wreak havoc among your enemies increasing your attack and defense exponentially, you can fill up to 3 separate rage bars with perfect parries, executions or with equipment that have passive buffs regarding rage bars. I recommend using it against boss fights or if you’re in a pickle against multiple foes at once.
Lastly we’re gonna talk about enemies and bosses: You have the regular fodder that comes in a variety of flavors like skeletons, knights, vampires, demons etc which are doable as long as you’re careful and also don’t suck really bad.
Elites are a different subject tho cause not only they’re damage sponges unless you have specific builds but also can deal an absurd amount of damage if you’re not careful, deal them enough damage and they’re gonna start glowing meaning that you can perform a gory execution Darksiders style on them that would fill your rage bar.
Bosses as expected are very challenging and some of them with their own gimmick so i wouldn’t be surprised if you’re new to the game and got blasted by the first one because your stats aren’t good enough, that becomes even more obvious when you fight the big bad bosses called World Bosses, those bastards are on a league of their own and the only thing between you and the ending of the game.
Ok now that i mostly explained everything relevant to the game’s mechanics and story lets end this review with the many flaws i’ve encountered during my playtime.
The camera is bad, like motion sickness type of bad. The turns are extremely quick and rough especially when you’re locking on big enemies or bosses making it sometimes hardly a playable experience, hell sometimes the screen even goes dark if there’s too many motions going on at once. It’s also unfortunate that you can’t see the enemies health bar unless you lock on them making it a tedious experience when you’re facing multiple enemies.
The parry and dodging windows are extremely thin to the point that it’s almost unfair due to how quick some of the enemies can attack, the enemies recover from the stagger phase so fast that you’ll be lucky if you end up landing a hit on it before getting hit yourself.
Platforming and jumping is janky and honestly it’s something that doesn’t work well within the game’s bone structure.
As for the build system I think it’s a mistake that locks your ability to customize most of it between runs and that becomes more evident when you find really good equipment or boons that could completely change the entirety of your build but you can’t commit to it because the game doesn’t allow you.
Another thing to point out is that if you’re gonna divide a district between 3 parts is that if you die at the end of it or against a boss you have to start from the very beginning, i understand the roguelike element of it but if youre gonna make 3 parts plus a boss for every district at least give the player the chance to have a checkpoint either in the middle or after completing a part.
To be fair the devs took a look and acknowledged most of the player’s feedback and assured that they’re gonna work on fixing these gameplay issues, starting this October’s 4th with a patch that solves an issue regarding not being able to change your keybinds so i want to trust that they’re going to at least their best to bring the game to an optimal state soon enough but only time will tell.
Overall Crimson Moon is not a bad game to play specially considering that it only costs 20 bucks, it has flaws true but the game doesn’t try to be pretentious and compare itself against other heavy hitters in the genre, it’s a really good concept that unfortunately wasn’t able to achieve its ideal form, the silver line that we can take from this is that the devs are actively trying to listen to their playerbase instead of ignoring while trying their best to fix the issues that the game came with at launch, for that reason and for its low price ill willing to up the score a little bit more than the one i was originally planning to give.
- High replayability with PVE elements
- Solid music choice and interesting boss fights
- Great launch price.
- Features that are rough around the edges in need of some work
- Lack of weapon and scenarios variety
- Unnecesary janky platforming.
Crimson Moon is already avaliable for Xbox Series for 19.99 on the standard edition and 29.99 for the Deluxe edition with a total of 30 achievements worth 1000 gamerscore.
Thank you so much for reading so far, my name’s Aegis and I’ll see you all in the next wall of text.
lucasmorgan
Fletcher Wilkinson