Roguelikes and lites are hit and miss for me; some of the highest review scores I've given have gone to games in these genres, like Gone Under and Hades 2. Others, like the first Moonlighter, just didn't capture my attention. Specifically, I found the dungeon segments punishing and the shopkeeping required too much guesswork. That said, I recognize how beloved it is, and with that in mind I wanted to give the sequel a try to see if its changes could draw me in. To say that Moonlighter 2 merely drew me in would be a massive understatement. Instead, I found the gameplay loop incredibly rewarding and the experience nearly impossible to put down.

Moonlighter 2 takes place after the events of the first game, and sees the people of Rynoka, including protagonist Will, banished to an interdimensional town named Tresna, where Will has to set out on a familiar path as merchant and adventurer both. Villagers offer sidequests and services to help Will figure out where he is and how to power up so that he can progress and further explore his new surroundings. It isn’t long before you enter the familiar loop of beginning a dungeon run, acquiring relics and materials, and then returning home to sell your wares and purchase upgrades for yourself.

Where you’ll spend most of your time is in the dungeons, so it makes sense to focus on those first. Dungeon maps play out as a series of nodes on branching paths that you select from; each node is referred to as an encounter. Every encounter contains some kind of reward and typically some kind of skirmish with a handful of enemies. Elemental buff encounters yield a choice of three perks that alter your main attack, special attack, or your gun. Prior to entering the dungeon, you equip a main melee weapon–short sword, large sword, spear, or gauntlets–in addition to a gun and eventually a piece of armor. The second most common encounter rewards a chest of relics, usually uncommon or rare, that can be carried in your backpack and brought back to town for profit. Other encounters pose challenges that temporarily weaken you in exchange for a buff down the road, or allow you to upgrade one of your weapons for the rest of the dungeon.

Combat generally feels really good, with basic attacks comboing into finishing moves that deal extra damage and a handy dodge roll to escape danger. Regular and special attacks also restore your gun’s ammo reserves, leading to a fun interplay of up-close and at-range exchanges. Halfway through each dungeon you encounter a mini-boss that tests your skills and patience in preparation for the much more challenging final boss. Even on the normal difficulty, it’s incredibly tough to take out these stout foes until you’ve added more potions to Will’s stock or upgraded your weapons at the blacksmith’s shop in town. Of course, Moonlighter 2 wants you to make multiple jaunts to the dungeons to get you the stuff you’ll need back in town, which is where that roguelite element starts to shine through. Completing a dungeon typically allows you to resolve a quest and thus open up a new mission or an entirely new dungeon.

The shopkeeping gameplay has its own story mission involving a giant cube in the center of Tresna called the Endless Vault, which tasks Will with acquiring an ever-increasing amount of gold. Upon reaching each threshold, a new artifact is bestowed that can lead to new dungeon areas opening up or new ways of earning more gold or lasting longer on your runs. There’s also the individual responsible for giving you a store in Tresna in the first place, Ms. Scratch, who also lets you trade in materials for decorations and eventually lets you pay to make your shop even bigger.

There are some neat mechanics involved with the way you acquire relics on your dungeon runs. Each major dungeon area has its own types of relics that interact with one another when placed in certain configurations within your backpack. In Kalina, the first available area, relics can either burn or become armored, and their rarity score can be raised through using those two alterations at the right time and in the right backpack slot. For instance, a rare blue relic might double in rarity from 8 to 16 if placed adjacent to a relic that gets burned. By the end of a run, you can rack up some really high scores on your relics, which means greater profits when it comes time to sell, if you are able to store your goods strategically and with a little luck, of course.

Progress can feel slowgoing at the outset as you learn about the costs involved with upping your arsenal and getting Will better kitted out. There are many different crafting materials to acquire and special ones that you only earn after beating a dungeon’s final boss. Upgrading your melee weapons, your armor, and your gun all come at a hefty gold price as well, so you’ll want to be choosy about where to spend your hard earned money. It’s also annoying that when you fall in the dungeon, you’re offered the option to restart without any kind of incentive or carry-forward. In some of the more hectic encounters, the Switch 2 framerate can take a bit of a hit, although nothing you can’t push through. On a handful of occasions I did encounter game crashes, but the dev team is aware of these performance shortcomings and is working to get them smoothed out. A final detraction from Moonlighter 2 is the lack of a compelling musical score, with sound effects being more pronounced over the forgettable soundtrack.

Moonlighter 2 isn’t the first time a sequel has grabbed me much more than its predecessor, but it might be the first in this genre to do so. This feeling boils down to me connecting much more with the combat and the merchant segments than I did with the original. Once I hit my stride in terms of making money, completing quests, and bolstering my gear, I had a very tough time putting my controller down. There’s always something to do and some goal to work towards, which helps even a failed run feel like it was worth the effort. The pixelated look of Moonlighter has been replaced with an art style more befitting the sequel’s shift to 3D, which well suits its variety of environments and its blend of fantasy, real life, and sci-fi themes. Enjoyers of the first Moonlighter may bristle against the changes implemented for Moonlighter 2, but what’s new here has made a fan out of me. Simply put, I’m over the moon.