Moon: Remix RPG Adventure is truly a tough game to describe. Few times am I at a loss for words, but this is one of them. This former Japan exclusive title is frequently brought up as one of the best PS1 import titles. It was only recently officially localized for both the Nintendo Switch and Sony PlayStation 4. I have finally had a chance to play it, and to be honest it weirded me out. I mean that in the best way possible. Moon is strange, odd, and kind of off-putting at first. Once you dive however the game digs its claws into you with it’s sheer innocence and charm. The real question is whether or not Moon RPG Remix Adventure is fun to play. The answer is that yes, it is, and you’ll never find anything else quite like it. Let’s take a deeper look.
This was a title developed by a rag tag group of people responsible for titles like Chrono Trigger and Super Mario RPG. They know how to make a good role playing game, and rather than doing what was expected they went with a flamboyant parody. They could have made a competent RPG, but they clearly chose not to and instead play upon it’s tropes in a manner of hilarious ways. The story here begins with a young boy playing a traditional Japanese role playing game called Moon in his room. As the hero of the story he’s slaying enemies left and right tracking down a dragon at the end whom he must slay. In rather hilarious fashion there’s a lot of dialogue but it’s skipped over so you don’t even really have a chance to read it.
The real adventure starts when the boy’s mother tells him to shut off the game and go to bed. He does so, but the television turns itself back on and he is sucked right into the world of Moon. This land is plagued by the hero of the video game running around killing all the animals to gain experience points. Upon arrival the boy is a ghost that almost no one can see. Finally he’s able to make contact with a kind old lady referred to as Gramby. She believes he is her long lost grandson and gives him a set of clothing so that everyone else can see him too. When he sleeps at night he is visited in his dreams by the Moon Queen who urges him to collect love within the world.
And that’s precisely what your goal is here; you collect love. This is done by interacting with characters in specific ways such as bringing them items, completing mini-games, or approaching them on specific days and following their small vignette storylines from start to finish. Almost every NPC in the world has some amount of love to gain from them. Another way to earn love is by saving enemies slain by the hero. You’ll find many of the environments littered with their corpses. You save them by grabbing on to their ghost. The trick is that many of these require specific conditions to be met before they’ll appear. In some cases you have to use an item, or interact with another character in a certain way. You’re given vague clues on how to do so, and half the fun is trying to figure these puzzles out.
Moon: Remix RPG Adventure is a 2D overhead adventure title. You can move in all eight directions and the world is divided into various interconnected segments. It’s not particularly huge but that’s not what the developers were going for here. Instead it’s a cozy environment full of characters you feel as if you really get to know. The most interesting aspect of Moon is the fact that there’s a time and even day system in place here. As you play time passes and each NPC has their own schedule that they follow. You are limited in how long you can stay up before going to sleep. This is where the love system comes in to play. As you gain levels (by getting love and giving it to the Queen in your dreams) your character can stay awake longer in each day.
Should his energy run out it’s game over. This gives a sense of urgency early on in the game and requires you to plan each day out strategically in the beginning. At first you can only stay out and about for a few minutes, but later on the main character can go several days and nights without going to bed. The world may be small but it does take a while to travel across, and some characters only appear at night so in the beginning you simply won’t be able to stay out late enough to meet with them. You can increase the time limit by eating food, but honestly it’s much more efficient to focus on raising your love level.
Moon isn’t without it’s issues however. Too many of the mini-games require gameplay styles found nowhere else in this adventure. This includes those both based on timing as well as memorization. This would normally be a plus but they’re too difficult for their own good. I spent far too much time in the world of Moon trying to play music with monkeys, and also by memorizing and reciting back lyrics sung by a crazy religious fanatic. The developers should have toned down these elements. Furthermore backtracking is absolutely relentless. As I mentioned the world is small, and that’s because the developers focused on a small handful of characters. What’s more is you’re stuck constantly returning to a bed to not only save your progress, but also reset the clock and turn in love. For better or worse you’ll be returning to the same areas over and over again here.
The game does however make some strides to correct this problem. In the beginning Gramby’s house is your only sanctuary. Later on your character acquires their very own house meaning they can sleep both here and at the original squatting spot. To circumvent things further the secondary home has a plant outside that serves as a fast travel item. Once you’ve reached specific areas you can feed it pollen and then can warp to that area in a flash. It’s pretty neat, but unfortunately it’s not a two way road. You still have to walk back home to rest up. There’s an item you can purchase later on that lets you warp back to the last bed in which you slept, but it costs money and isn’t re-useable. This does make things slightly less repetitive, but sometimes you just need to waste time.
The graphics in Moon Remix RPG Adventure are just like the storyline. Weird. It uses a combination of pre-rendered environments and animations as well as claymation and pixel art. Somehow it all comes together, but not in a cohesive way. It’s meant to be off the wall and strange, and to that means it is very successful. The scenery has a fair amount of detail but can look pixelated. Character designs are off the wall strange with strange proportions. Clearly this was a style choice and I was really disappointed at first but they grew on me eventually. The soundtrack is very unusual in that you can pick the tracks that play. Throughout the adventure you get MD discs with different tracks. You can play these otherwise most of the time you have silence. Some are really catchy and amazing, while others are kinda boring.
