It’s been more than eight years since the original Moonlighter first opened its little shop, and its sequel has taken quite a journey of its own before finally getting here. Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault first entered Early Access in November 2025, giving Digital Sun several months to listen to players, rebalance parts of the game, and add or change quite a bit before reaching version 1.0. I always find that interesting with games like this, because you aren’t simply getting the same game that appeared in Early Access with a finished label slapped on top of it. Feedback resulted in changes to the shop, relic balancing, more combat rooms, additional quests and plenty of other adjustments along the way, and now Will is finally ready to start selling his questionable dungeon treasures again.
He has a pretty good excuse for starting over too. Will and several familiar faces from Rynoka have been thrown into another dimension, leaving them stranded and broke in the village of Tresna. For Will, there is really only one logical solution to that problem: find a shop and start risking his life in dangerous dungeons again. Tresna becomes your new home as you slowly build everything back up, meet its inhabitants and invest the money you earn into the village, which in turn gives you access to better equipment and upgrades. It works as a reset for returning players because Will has lost the comfortable life he built during the first game, while newcomers don’t need an extensive history lesson before they can understand why this man keeps entering dangerous places just to find something he can put on a shelf.
Will also has a bigger goal than simply keeping the lights on in his new shop. Tresna is home to the Endless Vault, an ancient artifact that promises enormous treasures to merchants willing to prove themselves, and perhaps even a way for Will and his friends to return home. That gives the familiar dungeon-and-shop routine a little more purpose this time around, because earning money and improving Tresna gradually pushes Will further into the mystery surrounding the Vault.
The biggest change is obvious from the moment you start playing, because Moonlighter has left its old pixel-art presentation behind. The sequel uses a fully 3D isometric perspective, giving it a much more modern roguelike look with colorful environments, detailed characters and more elaborate animations. I wasn’t sure how I would feel about losing the pixel art because it was such a recognizable part of the original, but the new style works surprisingly well and gives the sequel a very different look without making Will and his world unrecognizable. I played the game on Nintendo Switch 2 and generally liked what I saw, especially during dungeon runs where the extra detail and effects make combat much nicer to watch, although some of the loading times are surprisingly long and can become annoying when you’re moving back and forth regularly.
Back to work
The basic idea behind Moonlighter hasn’t changed much. Will still has two jobs that somehow make perfect sense together: during a run you enter dangerous environments, fight whatever lives there and fill your backpack with relics, after which you return to Tresna, open the shop and try to convince somebody that the strange object you found next to a monster is absolutely worth the price you’ve just attached to it. The money then goes back into Will, his shop and the rest of the village before you eventually head out again and repeat the whole thing.
I still like that combination because the two sides constantly feed into each other, and Moonlighter 2 has changed enough details to make both parts more interesting than simply repeating what worked in 2018. The backpack is a good example, because relics aren’t just objects you throw into empty spaces until you run out of room. Their placement and properties can interact, so organising what you’re carrying becomes another little puzzle during a run, especially when you’re trying to bring home as much valuable loot as possible. You can expand the backpack as you progress too, which was usually one of the upgrades I was happiest to spend my money on because having to leave something valuable behind never feels particularly good.
Death has changed as well. On the standard difficulties, getting killed no longer means watching the entire contents of your backpack disappear, but the quality of the relics you’re carrying is cut in half and that obviously hurts when you eventually put them up for sale. I have mixed feelings about that change. It makes a failed run less painful because you still return with something for your trouble, but I also missed some of the tension that came from knowing I could lose everything if I got too greedy. Moonlighter has always played with that question of whether you should keep going for another room or get out while your backpack is full, and softening the punishment changes that decision a little.
Combat itself is easy to get into, with different weapons and upgrades giving Will several ways to deal with the creatures guarding all that valuable junk. I enjoyed going through the different environments and seeing what I could bring home, but after enough runs I did start wishing the game would shake things up a little more often. The individual systems work and there is plenty to upgrade, yet the familiar cycle of entering a dungeon, clearing rooms, filling the backpack and returning home can start repeating itself before long. That’s not necessarily surprising for a roguelike built around repeated runs, but Moonlighter 2 didn’t always give me enough variation to really keep me motivated.
Everything has a price
Luckily, running the shop remains just as important as swinging a weapon, and this is probably where I enjoyed some of the sequel’s additions the most. You still need to figure out what your relics are actually worth by setting prices and watching how customers react, but there is more happening around those sales now. Different customers can behave differently, returning visitors become something to consider and the way you arrange and improve the shop gives you more to think about than simply dumping everything you found onto a table and opening the doors.
I like that because selling the loot should be just as interesting as finding it. There is something satisfying about coming back from a dungeon with a backpack full of objects, putting them on display and gradually working out how much people are willing to pay before reinvesting that money into another upgrade. You can also put money into other establishments around Tresna, opening the way to better weapons, armor and other improvements, so there is almost always something waiting to eat the gold you just earned. That constant need for money gives me a reason to care about what I’m carrying during a dungeon run, because a relic isn’t simply another collectible when I already know what I want to buy when I get home.
The Endless Vault gives all that selling another goal as well, asking you to prove yourself as a merchant by reaching increasingly demanding sales targets. I liked having those objectives in the background because they gave me another reason to care about how much money I was making instead of simply selling everything and immediately spending the profits on my next upgrade. You can keep raising the stakes as you progress, with better rewards waiting if you’re willing to take that risk, and after finishing the main story there’s even an Infinite Endless Vault with increasingly difficult challenges. I wouldn’t say it completely changes the loop, because you’re still fighting, collecting, selling and upgrading for most of the game, but it gives all that money you’re making another purpose.
The balance doesn’t always work, though. There were moments where certain parts of the loop felt more rewarding than others, and after enough hours I started seeing the same pattern behind many of my sessions. Going out, fighting, organising the backpack, coming home, selling and upgrading is still what you’ll be doing again and again. Moonlighter 2 has expanded almost every step of that process, but after a while I would have liked a little more variation to pull me away from that routine every now and then.
Conclusion
I had a good time returning to Moonlighter and watching Will build himself another little business from almost nothing. Organising my backpack became part of every dungeon run, I spent far too much time trying to squeeze a little extra money out of my customers and the Endless Vault gave me another excuse to keep earning gold when I probably already had enough.
I do wish the runs offered a little more variation after playing for a while, and I’m still not entirely sold on making death less painful when greed used to be such an important part of deciding whether to continue or head home. The longer loading times on Switch 2 could also become annoying, especially when I just wanted to get back to the shop and see what my latest haul was worth. I enjoyed Will’s second adventure, but I occasionally found myself wishing the new presentation came with a couple of bigger changes to the routine as well.