To The Moon is a very, very beautiful game. Not graphics-wise, but story-wise. That being said, the 16-bit graphics style does the game a fair amount of justice. This is a story-driven game. Two scientists have a special power - the power to grant people one final wish before they die. They travel through their patient's minds and alter their memories so it's as if the person had accomplished their wish in their lifetime.

Late one night, they travel to a patient's home on a cliff, overlooking a lighthouse below. He goes by the name Johnny. Previously, he had requested for them to come when he should be on his death bed, awaiting the heavens. The doctors arrived. He had only one wish - to go to the moon.

You take the role of the doctors. Using a special machine, you travel through Johnny's mind. You slowly traverse back through time, uncovering more of Johnny's past. Each time you travel backwards, you are tasked with finding five things (objects, events, places) important to the patient, and then finding one object that links to an event further back in time. You must go all the way back to his birth, so that you may shape his future to fulfil his wish.

The story is very beautiful and will bring a tear to your eye. There are small puzzles to solve along the way, so you aren't bored. It is very interesting learning about Johnny's past backwards. You'd witness an event in Johnny's past, and be left with a question, which would be answered when you travelled further into his past.

Throughout this four-hour adventure, you are kept rooted, and the game gives you a strong desire to find out what happens next. A truly magical game, and one I'd recommend to just about anyone.

AFTER 2.0 UPDATE: At the end of my previous review (posted below), I wrote that even if they fixed the bugs, they couldn't fix the heart of this game without a radical overhaul. They did a radical overhaul. Update 2.0 completely changed how the game feels, and with all the additions, fixes, and new content since, this game is a far better experience than when it launched. Finally, after 3 years, I can wholeheartedly recommend this game. It's an excellent RPG and now well worth playing.


OLD REVIEW BELOW -------------------------------------------------------------------

(Written 1 month after launch)

Disclaimer: My current play time includes about 30 hrs of idling, I've played about 40 hrs at the time of this review.

In it's current state, the game is unfinished and with many technical and performance issues. I cannot recommend it in good conscious for that reason alone.

Which is unfortunate, because this game has hints of brilliance. The character questlines are all so well written, and for how much I've played, the main story has held my interest. Unfortunately, outside of these quests, which make up about 20-30 hrs of content, there's barely anything worth mentioning.

The world feels lifeless and fails to suspend my disbelief, despite fantastic visuals (if your PC can handle it), and much of that comes down to incredibly subpar worldbuilding. This feels like a game with a Cyberpunk aesthetic vs. a Cyberpunk game. Outside of some lore entries ("shards") you can read, this game fails to show you the culture, customs, attitudes, beliefs, activities, interests, likes/dislikes, and ways of life of its inhabitants the way the best in the genre do. The otherwise well-written character questlines focus more on each character vs. the world around them, and do little to remedy this. I left this game with the impression that all anyone does in Night City is go to nightclubs, bang hookers, and die in gang shootouts.

So what about gameplay? I need to say this from the start: this game is hardly an RPG. It has a progression system like an RPG, but lacks any player agency over the personality of the main character, or player choice and consequence that are hallmarks of its genre in the west. I feel deceived from the trailers and pre-release gameplay, which until the bitter end emphasized a world of choice and consequence. Your "lifepath" hardly matters, and nearly every dialogue choice only affects the next few lines. If there is any "consequence," it simply follows from the last option you chose, including the resolution of the main story. In fact, the most complex mission in the game is the prologue mission shown in the E3 2018 gameplay footage... which I have a striking suspicion was simply a vertical slice authored from a hopelessly over-scoped project to wrangle some semblance of a direction for the dev team, rather than an authentic representation of their gameplay to date. The end result is a game that's a far cry from the best RPGs (Witcher 3, Fallout: NV, Dragon Age: Origins, etc.), that somewhat succeeds as an action-adventure game, but does not reach the heights of the best of the action-adventure genre either (The Last of Us, God of War, Final Fantasy VII Remake, etc.).

And that's the unfortunate part. They can fix the bugs, but they can't fix the heart of this game without a radical overhaul. Even after the technical issues are resolved, I can only recommend this as a fun romp to get at a good discount if you have nothing better to play. It's a far cry from The Witcher 3, and a regression for what seems like a very talented but poorly managed studio.