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Welcome back to NOCLIP pocket! Today, we’re going to be talking about Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight, which is the fourth game in the Momodora series, but the first one to really take off. This is a Metroidvania game, but one that is surprisingly compact. It’s fairly rare in the genre to have a game this short, and it brings with it some disadvantages but also some surprising advantages. The smaller map makes backtracking and exploration a lot more clear, and encourages the player to explore more thoroughly, and makes your destination more clear due to it being more fresh in your memory without the need of more obvious signposting. The game falls within the Souls-like subgenre, a boon to its coming to prominence at the time of its release, but even so, feels very at home as a Metroidvania and less like copy-paste of Souls mechanics common in the era. The combat system, while simple, feels very satisfying when you’re engaging with it at face value, though there are ways to exploit it. It’s a mixed bag, but one that feels worth your time, as long as you don’t mind a pretty silly looking boob boss. We’re going to be talking about using new abilities to reach areas in a map small enough for you to remember where you should be using them, the balancing of the combat system and difficulty, and a lot more than could have ever been thought necessary about the Swamp Witch.
Thank you for joining us this week! We knew little about this game prior to playing it, but it seemed like a decent go-along with Metroid: Dread, and I’m personally pretty satisfied with the experience. As a short indie Metroidvania, it can sometimes highlight the things that really are cool about the genre even though it doesn’t really strike out in too many new directions itself. What did you think about it? Did it hit the right notes of the Soulslike formula for you, or would you have preferred something longer or more complex? Let us know over in the Discord or in the comments! And while you’re there, in the Discord, doing whatever, keep an eye out on the announcements channel, because we’re going to be announcing all the games we chose for Fanbruary, our audience choice theme month, very soon. So check us out then!