Crimson Moon Review

What Reviewers Agreed On

The consensus positives are consistent across coverage: combat has real weight and feels good to use, the executions on elite enemies are a highlight, and the gothic art direction and armour designs land. The soundtrack drew specific praise, with modern metal acts including Periphery and Ice Nine Kills contributing.

The consensus negatives are just as consistent. The camera was singled out repeatedly, described by one reviewer as among the worst they had encountered in an action RPG, with jerky enemy tracking and collision problems that get worse against large enemies in tight arenas.

Bugs were the other recurring theme, ranging from weapon arts failing to deal damage to characters getting stuck under terrain, plus crashes and at least two reported instances of lost run progress. Reviewers noted the team was patching actively and had already addressed some feedback before reviews went live.

The Price Is Part of the Verdict

Every review returned to the $20 price as the deciding factor. One reviewer was explicit that at $40 or $50 they could not have recommended it, but at $20 with co-op it remained worth playing.

Reported playtime for the critical path sits at roughly 12 to 15 hours, with one reviewer logging around 22 hours while experimenting with builds. Both framed that as reasonable value at the price.

It is also worth noting what is not here: no battle pass, no live-service layer and no timed events. Several reviewers treated that as a positive in itself, though the team has said future updates are planned without detailing what they contain.

How a Run Is Structured

A run is not a single level. It consists of three missions, each ending in a boss fight, and clearing all three leads to a world boss. Defeating enough world bosses earns an audience with the final boss.

Each mission offers a choice between two locations, though only the first is available during the opening hours and the second unlocks over time. Each location also has two pathways, with one randomly open on any given attempt.

Estimates on length vary with how you play. One reviewer put individual levels at 10 to 20 minutes and a full run at roughly 40 minutes to an hour; another reported full runs taking upwards of three hours. Crucially, you can end a session between levels and resume later, which reviewers repeatedly called out as respectful of your time.

Lives, True Death and Difficulty

You carry a limited number of lives per level, and the count depends on your difficulty setting. In co-op the pool is shared, so two simultaneous deaths cost two lives. Killing the level's boss restores them.

Run out and you hit what the game calls true death: the run ends wherever you are, and the gear you acquired during it is lost. Anything already purified from earlier missions stays yours.

One review reports five difficulty levels — Easy, Standard, Hard, Challenging and Hellish. That naming comes from a single reviewer rather than official documentation, so treat it as reported rather than confirmed. By their account, difficulty governs the number of elite enemies, the rarity of loot, and — on the top two settings — a reduction in available lives.

The Build System Criticism

This is the sharpest critique in the coverage, and it is worth understanding before you buy. Gear carries stat bonuses and, more importantly, boons — the perks you actually build around. But according to one detailed review, when an item is purified into your armoury it loses the boon it had in the field.

Rings and amulets are described as an exception that always retain their boons, and certain full armour sets awarded for completing a district reportedly carry permanent boons, though that reviewer noted the rules for this are never explained in-game. Upgrading gear at the blacksmith is also said to strip boons.

The practical consequence is that the armoury fills up with statistically solid but perk-less equipment, and boons become largely a per-run resource collected from Nexus Gates instead. That reviewer visited roughly three gates per district, ending runs with eight to ten boons. Whether patches have since changed this behaviour is 待确认.

Difficulty Balance Complaints

Two separate criticisms pull in opposite directions. Some reviewers found the game fairly easy overall — beating bosses on first attempts even on Hard — partly because gear upgrades outpace enemy scaling, and partly because they felt too many lives are granted on the middle settings.

At the same time, elite enemies were repeatedly described as harder than the actual bosses, with outsized damage, high durability and more complex movesets. The angelic transformation was also called overpowered enough to flatten encounters.

The result reads as uneven rather than uniformly easy or hard, and the camera problems compound it precisely where the game is most demanding.

Quality-of-Life Gripes

Several smaller complaints came up often enough to matter in aggregate. Reviewers flagged that you cannot change your build between levels within a run, only before it starts, which they found restrictive at higher difficulties.

Others criticised manual pickup of gold and consumables rather than automatic collection, loot being instanced per player in co-op, gold not being shared with a partner, and a lack of HUD customisation. One reviewer reported being unable to remap controls on either controller or keyboard and mouse.

There were also documentation gaps: no in-game explanation of what elemental effects such as Sunder or Rage actually do, and no clarity on whether boons stack.

• Reserve slots cannot be emptied mid-run — a stored item occupies its slot until you return to the hub.
• Only the player who speaks to an NPC hears their full dialogue in co-op.
• Weapon variety is limited: swords, axes and hammers with shields, plus halberds, axes and spears two-handed.
• No dual wielding, no greatswords and no ranged weapon class.
• Transmog did not make the launch build; the team has said it is being worked on.

Should You Buy It?

If you want a co-op Souls-like with satisfying combat and striking art, and you can tolerate a bad camera and launch-window bugs, the price makes it an easy recommendation — that was the position of the most positive reviewer, who called it a steal.

If you were primarily drawn in by the promise of deep build crafting across a growing armoury, temper that expectation. The most critical review concluded the game was not there yet and hoped for a substantial post-launch rework.

The middle position is probably the most useful one: this is a AA game priced accordingly, with real strengths and real rough edges, and it is likely to look different after a few months of patches.