A few hours intoMoroi, you find an old man bleeding out with no limbs, sitting on a chair. He’s in a lot of pain and asks for your help, and you have to bring him some magical artifacts from well-known mages, but to do so, you’ll need to kill them. You don’t know why, and it doesn’t matter: you have been killing almost everything that moves so far, so why stop now?
After dealing with said mages and finding the items, you return to the old man. He’s no longer an amputee - in fact, he looks even healthier than you. He uses the artifacts to create a kind of sculpture and leaves you alone after saying some cryptic lines. You wonder what that was all about, as you step into the next room and continue with your unknown journey.
As I wrote in my original preview, Moroi is a strange experience. Your amnesic, nameless protagonist wanders around obscure prisons, factories, and houses, all without a clear objective in mind.
Fortunately, most of your time with Moroi will revolve around meeting peculiar people and learning about them and the world they reside within. It’s a world that gives you an insidious feeling that something is not quite right: there’s something big happening, with godly beings having a part in it, and it would seem like you’re able to’t do anything about it.
Most of the characters you meet end up attacking you, giving you riddles, killing themselves, or exploding. It’s a blessing when you meet a talking duck that is unexpectedly very generous and kind, offering its own teeth as an upgrade for your melee weapons, or when you stumble upon some charming skeleton siblings that finally offer some of the answers that you’re looking for.
These are Moroi’s strongest moments: meeting a new character can be a hilarious or unnerving experience, no matter how big or small their role is in the story. Its most interesting gameplay sections are when you interact with them, trying to help them regain something, or solving the current puzzle.
For example, in one level, you’re trying to defeat a security machine that is attacking a small village. To do so, you need to override some circuits, which requires completing a small dialogue puzzle inside different houses. One of the puzzles asks you to find a man who likes to hide in different spots, and he always appears in strange ways, waving and smiling whenever you find him.
These sections change the main gameplay loop: you need to attack everything that moves using your melee or long-distance weapon. The combat is okay and works just fine, but it gets stale after a few hours, since the new weapons you find always work in the same ways (they only change the damage they deal).
Fighting wave after wave of enemies is not interesting when there isn’t enough variety, so you want these battles to be over as soon as possible so you can find the next intriguing character.
At least the most boring combat sections are mixed with unique boss battles that keep things fresh. Floating heads come out of nowhere and attack you with lasers from their eyes, or a jester might multiply himself and alter the arena where you’re fighting.
There are some intriguing sections where you play as other characters, and the environment changes entirely: you’re no longer in a claustrophobic prison or a gloomy industrial factory, but in a beautiful garden full of vibrant colours and flowers.
Perhaps my biggest gripe with Moroi is that, as you keep making progress, you start getting the answers that you’re looking for. While not all the mysteries are solved, and the amusing and random moments will continue to happen, some of the initial charm was lost. I would have been completely fine if I didn’t know who my character was or why he appeared in a prison in the first place.
Without spoiling it too much, let’s say that Moroi becomes a story about loops and metatext, which goes in a different direction than you might expect.
It’s also worth mentioning that, while playing the game under embargo, I experienced some annoying bugs that made me restart a few sections, such as not being able to interact with an object, or the music going off and not returning until random points.
In a game that is so atmospheric and wants you to solve puzzles only with environmental clues and deductive reasoning, these issues can break your immersion, make you doubt what you’re doing, and be a little frustrating. Hopefully, they will be fixed with some updates after the game’s launch.
Despite my issues, Moroi gave me some of the strangest and interesting hours I have had with a game this year. With some choices that lead you to different endings, I’m interested in going back, even if it’s only to experience those sweet and mesmerizing moments with its wonderful cast again.
