![]() Where I really appreciate Vengeful Guardian: Moonrider’s deviations, and where it seems to more or less come into its own, are its stages and their direction. Platforming seems like a bit of an afterthought at times, with few segments that stand out, but at least what’s there is functional and never holds the player back. Combat lands satisfyingly and enemies either blow up or get sliced to chunks pretty sleekly. Very little of what you’ll find here is unexpected, but I think Moonrider deserves a shout for handling its influences deftly enough to skirt being overwhelmingly plain and predictable. Bosses that you slay will drop new abilities that drain an MP bar right next to your health, though they disappointingly don’t change your color pattern. Due to the relative ease of the game though, I think I only swapped abilities once in order to reduce incoming damage, which felt outsized throughout my time with Moonrider. Those upgrades can be equipped two at a time, which I found can lead to an interesting bit of push as players consider what might best work for an upcoming level. You’ll bounce grenades back at turrets, leap over shielded enemies to get ‘em from behind and scour levels in search of upgrades in very familiar looking tanks. Despite looking like Alphonse from Fullmetal Alchemist, Moonrider has moves! You are after all a cybernetic ninja of sorts, meaning you can jump (eventually even double jump!) and divekick enemies from the air, and you can dash jump to great lengths. In action, Vengeful Guardian: Moonrider is admittedly more exciting. It’s inoffensive, but because it’s so familiar, it just became noise that I tuned out. Obviously some details are its own, but Vengeful Guardian: Moonrider sticks pretty close to tried-and-true formulas in its worldbuilding. In order to do so, you must deftly platform and hack n’ slash your way through them and their robot armies. Moonrider is a rogue unit who defects from the cause they were engineered to fight for and begins laying waste to the robot mast- erm, I mean other Guardians, who uphold a vague sort of totalitarian regime. The story of Vengeful Guardian: Moonrider plays out in exceptionally retro violence over the course of eight stages. The thing is that Vengeful Guardian: Moonrider aims for so little above being these games that it rarely feels like it accomplishes much more than honoring the past. Luckily for anyone not familiar with just how difficult those games used to be, Vengeful Guardian: Moonrider is decidedly more approachable than either, or other modern homages like 2020’s Cyber Shadow. The former lends it an aesthetic and tone, while the latter gives the game its structure and mechanics. In particular, it seems to genuflect before the greatness of classic Ninja Gaiden and Mega Man. Vengeful Guardian: Moonrider is an inspired tribute to sidescrollers of old. That end though is just something altogether familiar and pedestrian, though that doesn’t mean there aren’t flashes of brilliance scattered throughout. Moonrider is, to be entirely clear, a great little game with a clear sense of style and a vision it follows to the very end. The unfortunate thing about the impeccably named Vengeful Guardian: Moonrider is that it never quite reaches the dizzying heights of its audacious name.
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