Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault 1.0 Review – Refined Roguelite Shopkeeping

When the original Moonlighter came out, I was intrigued by its premise of a shopkeeper who battles through dungeons at night to stock and run his store during the day. The implementation of each facet didn’t feel fully fleshed out to me, but it did well enough to warrant a sequel. I had a chance to check out Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault during its Early Access run and now back again for its official 1.0 release.

Returning to Moonlighter 2 after putting many, many hours into Early Access wasn’t a mind-blowing revelation, it is instead a subtle series of welcome enhancements. You get more to see, more to do, and a much cleaner coat of polish, but it isn’t a radical departure from what made the early build special. However, what developer Digital Sun and publisher 11 bit studios have assembled here still stands toe-to-toe with giants like Hades II.

Set after the events of the original game, the residents, and our shopkeeper Will, are banished from their homeworld and land in the village of Tresna. Lost and alone, they integrate with the locals, and Will is quickly tasked to put his skills to the test exploring the nearby realms and collecting relics to sell in his shop.

A local leader starts Will and his friends on their journey by providing a shop, a robot companion to help customize and grow the business, and a path to new realms filled with loot. In this iteration of Moonlighter, Will is not doing this to just grow his business, he is doing it to help Tresna, get resources, and ultimately resolve the mystery of the Endless Vault to find a way back home.

Shortly after the adventure starts, Will and his friends are summoned to a strange entity calling itself the Endless Vault. If Will gathers enough money, a vault will open granting priceless treasures. Turns out these treasures end up being artifacts that enable new crafting, stores, upgrades, locations and perks for Will, for the right price.

This loop is all anyone could need to queue up an addicting and fun adventure like the one Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault offers. Will selects a weapon (there are four core types, plus new endgame Endless Weapon Aspects like the Endless Short Sword and Gauntlets), enters a realm, and then battles through a branching path to a unique boss.

The lineup of distinct biomes has expanded for 1.0, including the sky-realm of Aeolia alongside the new wave-based Greed Colosseum challenge mode. Each biome features radically different enemies, landscapes, traps, and visuals, plus the relics you find react differently as well. In the initial area, you can burn or armor relics; in another, you shock and absorb them. It makes sorting, choosing, and positioning relics very crucial as you explore.

To get these relics, you need to choose a room that has a chest icon. Once all the bad guys are eliminated with your weapon of choice and trusty gun, the chest appears, and relics can be manipulated and chosen. Other rooms have power-ups, perks like upgrades, or challenges to give benefits to the run.

Thankfully, the combat is as tight as ever, the strategic progression in each run is still crucial, and the game looks brilliant especially as each biome is tonally different. The ability to roll, shoot, attack with combos, and trigger special attacks makes battles fun and frantic. All the weapons handle differently, with nuances to master across each one. My favorite remains the short sword for its quick combos and spinning special attack.

Once power-ups and perks get added to the weapons and abilities, combat gets even more addicting. New perk paths added for 1.0, like HEX (which spreads status curses across clusters of enemies) and the explosive Bomb Path add great variety to build strategy alongside fan favorites like Thunder. While I always wanted a full backpack each session, I prioritized power-ups early to be able to last as long as possible on each run.

If you make it to the end and defeat the boss, you get a special material, and all your found relics get sent home with you intact. This is also where you get the choice to enter the Greed Colosseum once unlocked. If you die, the relics return with you, but their bonus levels (think value multipliers) get cut in half. It’s not a bad penalty and makes playing even partway through a run feel worthwhile.

This leads to the second main component of the game: running the store. In this version, it is a dream and actually fun to experience each and every time.

Relics found are placed on pedestals (as the game progresses, the store expands), and prices are set. Customers filter in during the day and denote visually whether they think a price is cheap, perfect, high, or outrageous.

There are some really cool new features added for the full release, such as “Bloblets”, cute shop helpers you can unlock to automate tasks and enhance store efficiency as well as numerous ecosystem upgrades and extra shop unlocks. Adding furniture and decorations you collect and buy further enhances prices, adds bonuses, or increases perks.

I actually found the shopkeeper part of the game as fun as the main combat and exploration, thanks to the pacing, planning, and clean product tracking. A comprehensive in-game Codex now tracks item lore, villager quests, and buyer preferences seamlessly.

However, there is a catch to all these shiny new upgrades. The only way to get these shop enhancements, new recipes, Bloblet coins, and the staggering amount of cash required to progress the story vaults is to grind the biomes over and over again. While running dungeons nets you fresh loot to sell and crucial progression coins, it does take a considerable number of runs to unlock the next few story progression vaults.

Because of that loop, I struggled a bit to generate the exact same level of raw excitement I had when playing Moonlighter 2 for the first time in Early Access. But I genuinely appreciated all the extra content, levels, dialogue, and items waiting to be discovered. If you played this to death in Early Access, you will appreciate it just as I did: as a polished, highly refined return to a game we already loved.

On the other hand, if you have never tried Moonlighter 2, now is absolutely the time. In its 1.0 state, the game is frankly excellent and a tremendous amount of fun. I almost wish I were discovering it today for the very first time so I wasn’t quite so jaded by my earlier playthrough!

Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault is out now in Version 1.0 on PC via Steam and GoG and PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch 2.