Moonglow Bay
OpenCritic Rating
Top Critic Average
Critics Recommend
Critic Reviews for Moonglow Bay
Moonglow Bay is a genuinely moving and surprisingly feel-good tale about coming to terms with grief and embracing change.
Moonglow Bay has a lot of promise; it’s easy to spend hours with it when it’s working properly. But when it’s not, it turns into a nightmare you don’t want to revisit. The cosy vibes of the gameplay, fun characters, and enjoyable fishing and cooking mechanics don’t make up for fundamental errors with the game that really mar the rest of the experience.
We really wanted to like Moonglow Bay. It has the bones of a great fun cosy game: collectibles, a heartwarming story, fishing! Unfortunately, between the bugs, bland characters, and unnecessarily frustrating boss battles, the meat is a little thin. We enjoyed collecting the fish and restoring the town for a spell, but even the fun quests didn't have the compelling pull of many other games. If you really love fishing in your cosy adventures, this could be worth dipping your toe in. But if you're just in the market for a cosy game, there are plenty of fish in the sea.
Moonglow Bay is a good game for those who want a fishing-heavy simulation game with a cute story. That said, the game would benefit from some large updates to improve minigame controls and shopkeeping mechanics, creating a more intuitive experience for players. As it stands now, it's difficult to recommend outside of the very niche audience described, and while it has good ideas, its execution makes broader appeal an impossibility.
Even knowing that it is surely not a title for all audiences, I really think that Moonglow Bay is a totally recommended experience for anyone who enjoys these titles of more relaxing cut and without haste, which by the way, manages to do something that Lake could barely: Totally disconnect from everything, and enjoy the experience without having to go around asking "Have we already arrived in India?".
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Its voxel art visuals are beautiful and the soundtrack is suitably chill. Moonglow Bay has been developed by a truly passionate team, one with so many great ideas that, in trying to implement them all, perhaps haven’t had the time or experience to flesh them out with the depth they truly deserve. Still, if the idea of saving a town through fishing sounds like your cup of tea, Moonglow Bay is worth checking out. Just be prepared for a rather simplistic ride.
There are sparks of greatness all throughout Moonglow Bay but are almost all buried beneath a mountain of technical issues.
This kind of game is a welcome change to the farming/life RPG genre. If you are a player that enjoys fishing in games, then this is the game for you because it’s all fishing, all the time. Moonglow Bay is overall a fun, relaxing game, but it struggles with controls, game-breaking bugs, and glitches that can ruin the game.
