Full ReleaseXbox · PC · PlayStation

Crimson Moon

ProbablyMonsters · ARPG, Action, Souls-like

Overview

You are Nephilim: a human-angel hybrid forged to defend humanity with supernatural powers. Fight solo or with a friend to annihilate demons and challenge brutal bosses in relentless melée combat. Rise, violent one. The prophecy is yours to fulfill.

The city of Gildenarch has fallen. Once a holy jewel, it is overrun by demons, undead, vampires, and Hellgrowth abominations. Humanity's last hope is the Order of the Crimson Moon, and its most feared weapon is you.

Whether you crusade alone or slay together in co-op, the prophecy is yours to fulfill.

Embody a Nephilim, a human-angel hybrid forged to defend the world from Hell. Master supernatural powers, weapons, melée combat, and angelic transformations to fight through brutal missions and survive boss encounters with the Dead Gods.

Blood-soaked Melée Combat - Fight hordes of abominations with relentless, visceral combat

Single Player or Co-Op - Crusade solo or slay together

High Risk, High Reward Missions - Every successful run presents new missions, modifiers, and skill achievements

Upgrade to Superhuman - Evolving Nephilim powers bestow temporary abilities for devastating attacks

Seek Sanctuary Between Runs - The Church is your home base for upgrades, NPC interactions, and War Table planning

Set Your Difficulty - Dynamic difficulty scaling allows every mission to match your skill - but with higher difficulties come greater rewards

From the game's Steam store page.

THE GAMEQ VERDICT2,184 reviews analyzed

What players are actually saying

1. Summary

Crimson Moon is a $20 (deluxe $30) Unreal Engine 5 action game that mixes Souls-style combat (stamina, dodge, block, parry, executions) with roguelite runs: you pick a loadout in a gothic cathedral hub, fight through multi-mission "excursions" in the demon-infested city of Gildenarch, pick up boons and gear, and "purify" what you carry out for future runs. It plays solo or in two-player online co-op, and your half-angel Nephilim can transform into an angel form for burst damage. The praise goes to the price, the lavish gothic art direction and armor designs, and the "one more run" loop with a friend. Some version of "worth $20" appears in 176 reviews, mostly from players who recommend it.

The complaints describe a launch that some felt should have been labelled Early Access. The lock-on camera comes up in about a third of all reviews. Next come the missing key rebinding and mouse sensitivity on PC at launch (patched within about two days), combat that many found sluggish, with delayed dodges and unreliable parries, and a long tail of co-op and save bugs: disconnects with no way to rejoin, guests losing their gear and quest progress, and characters reset to level 1. Players who stayed 10 to 25 hours added a second layer of criticism: thin weapon variety, a short campaign, and a gear system that strips the perks off loot you worked to extract.

2. What keeps coming up

What players praise

Exceptional value at $20High

Around a quarter of all reviews bring up the price, often to excuse the jank; one says people "are judging this like its a $70 AAA release". A few said they got their money's worth in one or two sessions. Skeptics pushed back that "good for $20" is not an argument for a broken launch, and a minority felt the content (roughly 6 to 12 hours to see the credits) was thin even at that price. A few deluxe buyers felt the $30 edition added little.

Gorgeous gothic art direction, armor and atmosphereHigh

Nearly one in five reviews talk about the look, mostly approvingly, and negative reviews often list it among the good parts: the cathedral hub, the gore-soaked city districts, and especially armor where every piece shows on your character ("the drip"). Players compared it to Darksiders, Diablo 3, Kingdoms of Amalur and Warhammer. The metal-and-choir soundtrack and the voice acting got compliments too. The dissent is small but consistent: the saturated reds and heavy particle effects made enemies hard to read, and a few found the style "plasticky" or too bright for dark fantasy.

Playing with a friend is where it clicksMedium

Co-op is the reason many bought it. Players called it the co-op Soulslike they had wanted: no invasions, easy matchmaking, crossplay with console friends, and shared deaths and revives that made failure funny. Several said the game was clearly better duo than solo. The same reviews often mention the co-op bugs described below, and some positive ones make their recommendation conditional on co-op being fixed.

A satisfying run loop, builds and executionsMedium

When the combat clicks, players describe an addictive loop: go out, loot, upgrade at the blacksmith, go again. Elemental builds (frost, fire, bleed, poison, rage), weapon arts, the angel transformation and the execution animations on elites were singled out as highlights. Some compared it favorably to Elden Ring Nightreign for letting you breathe between fights. Veterans later turned critical of the build depth (see the loot and variety sections).

A responsive dev teamMedium

Reviewers credited the developers for acknowledging issues on Discord within hours and shipping key rebinding and mouse sensitivity around 3 September, about two days after launch, followed by camera and quality-of-life patches around 11 September. A few reviewers say they switched to positive after those patches, one of them "true to my word" once the keybinds arrived. Others noted that the fixes came quickly precisely because the omissions should never have shipped.

Where players are split

Combat feel: weighty and deliberate, or sluggish and unresponsive?High

About 16% of reviews call the combat clunky, janky, stiff or delayed, and only 39% of those reviews recommend the game; parry and dodge come up in about as many. Critics described a noticeable delay on dodge and parry (one player measured dodge start-up at 250 to 400 ms, partly because dodge fires on button release), no way to cancel attacks into a dodge or block, enemies with hyper armor that swing through your attacks, homing projectiles, and attacks that hit from behind. To some, the parry felt like a coin flip. Defenders said it plays like Dark Souls 1, with Sekiro the wrong reference: parry the weapon mid-swing, commit to your attacks, and it becomes satisfying.

Keyboard and mouse at launch, and whether it should sink the gameHigh

More than a quarter of reviews discuss the controls. At launch there was no key rebinding (only presets), no mouse sensitivity slider, dodge and sprint shared a key, and block and parry sat on awkward keys such as Ctrl and Q. On launch day, 270 of the 668 reviews raised keyboard, mouse or rebinding, and only half of that day's reviews were positive. Controller players pushed back: the default layout mirrors Elden Ring, the game tells you a controller is recommended, and negative reviews over settings were unfair. After the rebinding patch the topic nearly vanished (55 of the 626 reviews written from 4 September on), though complaints about not being able to rebind the controller, and sprint living on B, lingered.

The loot and purification systemMedium

Some players loved the extraction twist: anything you carry out of a run becomes a permanent, upgradeable item in your armory. Others were confused or felt cheated. Purified gear often came back as a common item with its special perks stripped, upgrading mostly raised rarity without changing stats, shields seemed not to improve at all, buying from the blacksmith auto-equipped over your current gear, stored items could not be dropped when something better appeared, and the loadout stone only became usable after selecting a mission (and sometimes vanished after the first mission). The game rarely explains the system's rules, so players could not tell a bug from a design choice. Loot comes up in about one in seven reviews from players with 10 to 25 hours, more often than in any shorter playtime group.

PerformanceMedium

About 12% of reviews discuss performance, and the reports go both ways. Plenty reported a smooth 60 fps, good Steam Deck or ROG Ally results with tweaks, and praised it as a UE5 game without traversal stutter. Others hit shader compilation on every launch, frame drops in fights, a 60 fps default cap, frame generation that did nothing, and high GPU load even on low settings.

Difficulty: punishing for newcomers, too easy for veteransLow

New players described elites that two-shot you and a brutal first run. Players who invested hours said the opposite: upgraded gear outpaces the difficulty tiers, the highest difficulty ("Hellish") mostly inflates enemy health, and a frost or AoE weapon-art build plus a saved angel form trivializes bosses. The final boss was called a health sponge by some and a crash-prone slog by others.

What frustrates players

The lock-on cameraHigh

Roughly a third of all reviews bring up the camera, in every playtime group. Locked on to large or leaping enemies, the camera whipped 180 or 360 degrees, clipped into walls and floors, tilted down so players stared at a boss's legs, or blacked out entirely. The tutorial boss, the dragon on the tower, the tree final boss and the big demon brutes in tight rooms come up repeatedly, and some players reported motion sickness or headaches. Several noted that playing unlocked was no escape, because you cannot steer attacks or see enemy health bars without lock-on. The 11 September patch helped with stationary bosses, but players said fast, jumping enemies were still disorienting.

A 1.0 that felt like Early Access, with run-ending bugsHigh

Close to one in ten reviews say outright that the game felt unfinished or should have launched in Early Access, and three quarters of those are negative. The bugs behind that feeling were concrete: crashes at launch or mid-run (especially on the final boss), progress lost when a crash ended a long run, required relics stuck in the floor, elites that could not be executed on slopes, a last enemy hidden behind a wall blocking progression, falling through elevators, broken UI prompts, and boons that did not apply. A full run takes several missions and a death sends you back to the first mission, so each bug cost real time.

Co-op that punishes the guestMedium

For a game sold on co-op, the list of co-op problems is long: frequent disconnects with no way to rejoin mid-run; the guest losing boons, gear and souls after a disconnect or a save-and-quit; quest and story progress, lore scrolls and some collectibles only counting for the host, forcing duos to replay missions in each other's worlds; guests sometimes dealing near-zero damage; rubber-banding at higher latency; and AFK hosts in quick match. Loot and gold are not instanced, so partners race each other to pickups, which some found fun and others called a baffling choice for co-op. The two-player cap also disappointed groups hoping for three or four.

Thin content and weapon varietyMedium

Players who reached the credits (often in 6 to 12 hours, even on the highest difficulty) described a small game: essentially two weapon categories (one-handed weapon with shield, or a polearm) with shared movesets per category, no greatswords, two-handed maces, daggers, bows or dual wielding, a small enemy roster reused across districts, bosses that repeat, an unskippable final cutscene, and no loot from bosses. One review ends simply "Where is my greatsword?" Some who recommend the game still ask for more weapons, areas and modes.

Lost saves and level resetsLow

Fewer reviews report this, but the losses are large: characters reset to level 1 after a crash or disconnect, and Steam Cloud overwriting saves when switching between a desktop and a handheld (Steam Deck, ROG Ally, Legion Go), wiping 5 to 20 hours of progress. Most of these reviews are negative, and several players said they stopped playing for fear of losing progress again.

Unexplained systems and an oversized HUDLow

Status effects such as rage, sunder, marked and bleed were never explained, boon descriptions were vague about stacking, and the armory, inventory and purification screens contradicted each other. The HUD drew its own complaints: a quest log that fills a large share of the screen, large text, and no option to scale or hide it.

Ultrawide and FOVLow

Players on 21:9 and 32:9 monitors reported that "ultrawide support" zoomed in instead of widening the view, cropping the character at the knees, with no FOV slider. Several ultrawide users called it unplayable or refunded over it, while a few said it worked fine.

Data collection termsLow

A small number of reviews, one of them very highly upvoted, objected to the game's EULA and privacy terms, which players read as broad data collection and transfer outside the EU, required before you can play. Several refunded over it and asked for the terms to be shown on the store page.

No pause in solo playLow

A few solo players were annoyed that the game cannot be paused, a Souls convention they felt made no sense in an offline run.

3. The player conversation

The conversation was loud, fast and polarized. Launch day alone produced nearly a third of all reviews, with a median of about 1.5 hours played, and it was the most negative stretch: only half positive, led by first impressions of the missing keybinds, the tutorial boss camera and sluggish inputs. That provoked a counter-wave of defenders, many of whom said they were writing specifically to offset the "review bombing" and urged others to pick up a controller; reviews that mention review bombing or "haters" are almost all positive.

On the second and third days positivity rose to about 69%, and the rebinding patch arrived around 3 September. After that, keybinds faded from the discussion while the camera, co-op persistence, save wipes, crashes and the loot system stayed, raised by people with 6 to 20 hours in. Later weeks brought far fewer reviews, at 59% positive in the second week and 66% in the third. The phrase "good bones" shows up on both sides of the vote, in seven negative reviews and two positive ones.

4. What the developers could do

Rebuild the lock-on camera for large, fast and leaping enemies. It comes up in about a third of reviews across every playtime group, it made some players physically sick, and a few refunded over it.
Make co-op safe for the guest: add mid-run rejoin, persist the guest's boons, gear and souls, and share quest and collectible progress. Duos who bought the game for co-op described losing whole runs to disconnects and having to replay missions in each other's worlds.
Fix save wipes and Steam Cloud conflicts between devices. Level resets and overwritten saves cost some players 5 to 20 hours and made others afraid to keep investing hours.
Tighten combat responsiveness: cut dodge and parry input delay, allow cancelling attacks into dodge or block, and clarify parry timing. Clunky, delayed combat comes up in about one in five reviews from players with under two hours and remains a point of contention for players who stayed.
Squash run-ending bugs and crashes, starting with the final boss and mission transitions. Players lost long runs to crashes, stuck relics and unkillable or hidden last enemies, and asked for a marker for remaining enemies.
Make the gear system transparent and more flexible: explain which perks survive purification, let players change loadouts in the hub between missions, and allow dropping stored items. Invested players felt the extraction loop stripped rewards and hid its rules.
Expand weapon types, movesets and enemy variety. Veterans who finished the game in 6 to 12 hours asked for greatswords, two-handed blunt weapons and distinct movesets to give runs replay value.
Round out PC and display options: FOV slider and true ultrawide, HUD scaling and a hideable quest log, controller rebinding, higher frame-rate caps, and pause in solo play. These are the remaining items on the launch-day settings list, and the quick keybinding patch won back at least a few reviewers.