I've been enjoying myself playing a lot of older games as of late, particularly on stream. So when the dice called up a game that promised to relive the old days of a certain green-clothed elf on his adventures to save a princess, I figured it might just be a fun time fueled by nostalgia... both mine as a child and a new developer. However this one proved more of a warning right from the opening screen. Come on inside: this won't be pretty.
Story: I really wish I had much to talk about here, but there just isn't. You will start the game as the prince of the kingdom, looking to check up on your father, quickly realizing the treasury is raided and the king captured by some kind of evil presence. In order to save him the prince submits himself as well.
After this point you will take the control of Sarissa, a young orphan and the titular Moon Priestess the game centers around as she takes up her spear in a quest to save the prince.... and that is about all there is to it. There is a little chatter here and there if you talk to the townsfolk, but really the base story never develops in any way: it is literally just enough to give you a reason to go on this adventure and no more. Even the ending is just enough to say "you win." In fact, I'm pretty sure the original Super Mario Bros. on the NES had more of one.
5/10
Graphics: Saga of the Moon Priestess was made as a celebration of 8 and 16-bit video games of old, and the devs committed to that look. You will play from a top-down perspective done up in very low resolution world populated assembled in grid form and populated by sprite characters and monsters. Most of the characters themselves will be found in town and look descent enough if incredibly generic, and sadly that includes our young heroine: but at least she is animated well. Just about every character she meets has two frames of animation total, and nine out of ten times it's just a mirror image.
Sarissa, on the other hand, has a standard walking animation (still two frames) in each of the four basic directions as well as very smooth looking lifting and attacking animations for her interactions with the world. This may sound sparce but this fits the motif perfectly of a game of the era. Monsters in general also seem a bit more animated, as they giggle, scuttle, or slither around very fluidly... and that's before we get to the boss encounters. These tend to be bigger monsters then the world and dungeons offer, allowing for both more detail as well as the animations to give them character even beyond that of other monsters, although compared to bosses in the games that inspired this, they do seem a little generic.
And that feel also goes, unfortunately for the world. They got the feel of the era down to a T including even appropriate HUD panels that show your health and items exactly where you probably would expect them to appear in an NES/SNES dungeon crawler of this type. Hell they even have elements like movable blocks and trees that will look like they just might have come out of one of those games in particular. But that's half the game's problem. They took this tribute idea and ran it completely into the ground, leaving the game with no real identity of it's own. Everything here looks good, don't get me wrong, but outside of one specific biome, I really didn't see anything that stood out to do more then emulate what had been done before... and add to that each area tended to have a pallet that leaned towards a single color (browns in particular)and the game just refuses to stand out in any way. It looks fine, but it's not going to stick with you very long since it does so more in the "this is just like game X" way rather then "that looks so cool" way.
7/10
Sound: Once again the devs put together the audio of this game with the idea of retro consoles first and foremost in their heads, though this time it is exceptionally clear they were aiming at the 16 bit era. In fact if one were to take the soundtrack and super-impose it on an SNES game, I wonder if anyone would notice. And this does work out in the game's favor, as all the music in the title is absolutely perfect. From the home and safe feels of the town the the peppy adventurous music of much of the overworld, to even the imposing mysterious feel of the abandoned house within town, everything just fits together perfectly here.
For the most part, the sound effects also follow this same mentality with crunchy footsteps where Sarissa moves, low-grade swooshing sounds when she stabs her spear out, and even the almost cute chirp when she gets hit, almost everything sounds like a high end game as you would hear packed onto a console cart of the era... but I have to say almost. There are a few sound effects that seem more accurate then the era would expect, like birds chirping or when you hear thunder at the beginning of the game. It's brief and really only breaks the immersion if you stop to think about it though, so I would not hold it against them
And of course with this style there is no voice acting, just the monotone sound of text spilling across the text window when you talk to people... but again, this works for this game since it was made to be that ancient game type. Damn near perfectly done all around.
9/10
Gameplay: Sadly this is where the game really falls on it's face in the most tragic ways possible. The entire game can be played in under 10 hours but you will not get through it without issues... I assure you of that. As noted in the graphical section of the game, you are playing a game that strives to emulate the Zelda-like gameplay of yesteryear, and to that end you will guide Sarissa through a relatively small map which will contain 5 dungeons in total that you will have to find, conquer, and use the artifacts within to access more of the world and find the next one. For the most part this is effectively a linear affair due to just about every dungeon being hidden away in a place that is exceptionally easy to find, but only accessible with the treasure of the last dungeon, but considering the length of the game, this works in the game's favor, letting that dungeon teach you how each one works in order to reach the boss before letting you loose into the world to use it where you probably already saw it will be needed.
Unfortunately the puzzles used this way, however, are not exactly clever and really there isn't going to be much of a challenge to anyone with half a brain playing this, so if that is what you came in for, you are not going to get what you wanted. What you get instead is are generally easy puzzles, especially if you are observant, and the occasional block moving one that may take a reset or two to figure out which pieces move so you can do it properly. Not exactly the best of work here.
The bosses are also not something particularly special either. Rather they seem to be made to offer a final test to make sure you know how your new treasure works completely before you head off into the world with it. Most of them are incredibly easy and will not even need a second try to figure out the gimmick and finish them off before claiming your prize: a goddess tear which gives you another block of health... that is of course if you really want to do it.
You see, while the game does a good enough job of looking the part and an excellent job of sounding the part, the gameplay feels like it was made by people who didn't stop to think why those games they wanted to tribute were magical and as a result, feels like a cheap imitation, and nowhere is that clearer then the fact that it makes it obvious VERY early on you can skip every single boss in the game shy of the last one if you so desire. These are all literally optional fights since there is nothing else required to find the next dungeon besides the treasure you find in the middle of it. You wont have much health but it's perfectly ok to just skip all 4 bosses up until that point by leaving out the front door and going where that object's ability unlocks another path. It's frankly quite the oversight.
And they don't stop there. Everything from how timing makes your spear a very awkward weapon with large groups to the lack of iframes should you get hit to even just how slow Sarissa moves even as it can be incredibly difficult to realize how close you are to the edge of a pit or lake before you fall in like you are slipping on ice, and the game just feels off the moment the controller is in your hand. Even pausing the game to open your inventory is just not right, though in that case, it actually gets more then off, but straight up egregious.
You can only have one inventory item equipped at once, which is ok in it's own right, and so is needing to pause to switch. After all this is how it was done back in the day. However, the pause itself is pretty inconsistent. When you pause the game doesn't so much stop as emulate a stop. How? By removing all enemies and their projectiles from the screen while you are in the menu, putting it all back after. It is an effective way to do the job, except your own items do not get treated as such. An arrow or fireball you toss will continue across the screen even though the game is paused which can ruin a perfectly good shot when your target is no longer there... but that's not the worst of it. That would be bombs.
When you use a bomb, you will pick it up and then have to throw it like you would a rock or pot you hefted over your head, all the while the clock is ticking before it blows up. This is pretty standard, true, but that timer doesn't stop for that pause screen, even if you've already thrown the bomb. And this is important as there are a few puzzles that combine throwing a bomb onto a button to hold it down and firing an arrow through a passage that button opens before it blows up. In a well designed process, the pause would be universal, so everything would stop while you select your next weapon and only continue to tick once you get back to aim and fire, but instead this becomes a race to awkwardly enter the menu, pick the right item, and then scramble to position yourself and use that items that will do nothing but piss you off as you have to repeat some of these several times just due to how tight this makes the required times... especially with the long windup for if you are firing an arrow (the most common other item). Add to this you can only carry 10 bombs and this becomes controller-breakingly infuriating. But that's not all! These puzzles do not STAY completed so if you leave and come back to take on what follows it... even in the same session, you could just have to do it all again. If this doesn't sap your willingness to keep playing, you have my utmost respect.
4/10
Bugs: While the game has some major issues with things like the controls not quite feeling right, it also is further tarnished by SEVERAL bugs I ran into before I was done.... and some pretty bad ones.
- I Spawn in the Water: This happened exactly once but when it did, it pretty much ended the run I was on. I basically fell into a lake and for reasons I am not entirely sure about, the game decided rather then have me take damage and come back somewhere else on the screen, it put me right back in the water. All I could do was sit there and watch Sarissa just repeatedly splash down until the inevitable game over screen. Admittedly if I was in a better mood, I might have laughed at how long it took, but this wasn't the game to put me in such a mood.
- Stuck in a wall: The next unfortunate position issue would happen much later in the game and straight up soft-lock it. Late in the adventure, you get a claw-device which you use to grab diamond objects that then swap places with you. Unfortunately the game did NOT line up one of these quite right and I found Sarissa stuck in a a wall with no ability to use anything ranged at all. As such I was unable to launch said claw at the diamond even next to her to get her out of it. I tried to use bombs to at least end the game, but at this point I had too much life and it was obvious it wasn't going to work after the first one. So I only had one choice: EXIT TO DESKTOP because...
- No leaving the game without shutting it down: You can't either load your game or quit to the main menu once the game begins. Literally if ANYTHING happens that you have to say "nope" to, you have to exit the game completely in order to reload and try again. I am not sure this is a bug but considering the above is possible, this is at the very least an unacceptable design flaw.... and speaking of design flaws.
- The game does NOT remember your settings: DESPITE the sheer limit of settings, the game will refuse to remember what you set... ever. Now to be fair there are ONLY 3 settings (music volume, sound volume, and fullscreen mode) and I never saw an issue leaving two audio ones as is. However, every time I started the game I had to change it back to fullscreen as it simply refused to remember this setting between sessions. This is the kind of thing I would expect in a flash game or MAYBE the first time someone made a game they gave away for free on sites like itch.io, not a finished product sold for actual money.
- The map does not work: This was true roughly half the time but the game chose to use a button on the controller for it's map Windows itself reserves for screenshotting or recording video to show you a map of the world if you were outdoors and of the dungeon you were in if you found it. As a result, it was a genuine tossup if it would work or not.
Digital Rights Management: Unfortunately the DRM status of this game is unknown to the best of my ability, at least when bought on Steam. However if you get this game on the Windows store it requires said store to launch so it's probably a safe bet Steam does the same thing and is used as DRM for this title.
Source: PC Gaming Wiki
Overall: When I started this game, I was hopeful I was going to get a nice little throwback to a series of games I honestly didn't play as much as I should have back in the day, but as I put my controller down, even I had played enough back then to know the difference between a tribute and a bland imitation. Add to this all the bugs and design omissions and it became one of those games that goes from "if you have nothing better to do" to something to just avoid. I don't care what the sale price is, avoid this one.
Score:
System Requirements:
- Intel Core 2 Duo or AMD Athlon 64 X2
- Anything that supports DirectX 9.0
- 2 GB RAM
- Windows 7,8, or 10 (64-bit only)
- 500 MB hard drive space
System Specs:
- Ryzen 5 5600G running at 3.9 Ghz
- 16 GB RAM
- Windows 11
- PDP DX Wired Controller (Crimson)
Source: Steam
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