Crimson Moon [Preview]: This has a soul I like

Hands-on with an action RPG that celebrates the details

ProbablyMonsters’ Crimson Moon activated a weird part of my brain that typically prevents me from completing sprawling RPGs in a decent amount of time: the staring node. That’s the node (probably above my ear?) that causes me to get lost in the minutiae of design elements that many would leave in the background. Lighting, shadow, wood grains, nails in furniture, the number of napkins on a table. I get sucked in, for hours. The amount of detail that the developers and artists put into making this particular game’s world wholly realistic and viable kept me from getting too far into the hands-on demo without falling into the trap of checking out every visual and interactive aspect of, well, everything. EVERYTHING.

But it was worth it.

Crimson Moon is a run-based, souls “inspired” action RPG that has us playing and replaying missions to build up our characters and unlock more of the game’s lore and plot. It has co-op built in that vastly increases the scale, but even playing alone in my demo is enough to convince me that there’s a lot to go on here. We play as a Nephilim, having powers of both the angelic and the brutal physical kind. We love swords and axes but we can also mesmerize with glowing lights, baby. There are gothic aesthetic and thematic avenues that the game thrives in, including the giant castle/cathedral we kick things off in.

This cathedral serves as a nice, packed hub with a lot of areas to explore, though they’re locked out all of them for us except a giant table in the middle and a glowing archway in the back. We Select our mission from the equally giant war table in the middle (only one mission is available) and we head out through the archway.

Our mission has us exploring an infested town. We need to clear it out form the undead and demon enemies that have been pillaging it and devastating the townsfolk.

And this town is where I get into trouble.

It’a incredibly detailed, with every door leading somewhere, every building being full of rooms, and every room having tons of items placed as if people actually do live and work here, from cups to beds to sheets to floorboards to utensils. Every room feels different, and I feel like I can remember each one independently, even days later after my time with the short 20 minute demo.

That extends to taverns, storage rooms and cellars, and even the subfloor tunnels that connect some of the town’s buildings together. This town is alive, except now it’s overrun by bad dudes. Luckily we have ways of taking them on.

The town is as open as a town could be. We can explore enough but then hit a dead end, coming up to a locked gate. To open the gates we need to clear out the enemies in each sub area, and while there aren’t a ton they *are* formidable enough to FEEL like a ton. Some come right at us with swords ready, others are perched on bridges and terraces launching deadly arrows with pinpoint accuracy.

We have a variety of weapons at our disposal, and every one has own abilities. If we don’t like what’s happening with our sword we can swap it with the press of a button. This comes in handy when there are armored enemies or those that protect themselves better and we need something like a pike to get through their defenses. We can pick up more weapons based on things we find or enemies we defeat, and sometimes they’re better or sometimes they’re adjacent to what we have, easily signified by a color change in the stats or the weapon card, but it’s always worth stopping and going through the statistics of each.

The battle system itself doesn’t feel overly complex this early in the demo. We can block and parry, we have weak and strong attacks, we can hack and slash or we can plan out our attacks and deliver some simplified combos. It comes off solid and enjoyable, and not like I’m just mashing away until an enemy perishes. If things are getting a little too tough, like when I get surrounded in a square by two enemies with a third launching projectiles from above, I can tap both thumb sticks to enter Angel Mode, which puts me into a powerful charged state that amplifies everything.

Getting through the few sections in the town isn’t super difficult or long, and at some point I enter a larger open basement area to find a sub boss waiting for me. This dude is no joke; my previous attacks against grunts doesn’t quite work here. Instead I need to watch his cycle of attacks, moving in and bouncing back after a couple of hits, parrying when I get the chance, and then hopefully building up my power meter to open up Angel mode again.

My first run was rough. The boss demolishes me (I hadn’t quite understood how to leverage the charged mode yet) but the second run is where I flex my muscles. And die again, actually. It wasn’t until my third run that I had the cadence of the mission down and was almost speedrunning it. At no point did I feel like it was a wasted effort or too long because having the knowledge of the layout and enemies proves extremely helpful. I can see myself playing through this mission several times, picking up more lore items or weapons, upgrading my hero, or finding its secrets.

Crimson Moon doesn’t fully dip its foot into the souls-like genre, and that’s a benefit to it. It seems to balance the action RPG aspect with solid battling and even some familiarity to create a fun experience. It was easy to lose my time in it. I would have probably kept playing the demo even more, actually, if it wasn’t for the developers chiming in that we still had another demo to play.

Crimson Moon is set to release in September this year.