There was a time early in the Switch’s lifespan where more quirky arcade shooters were somewhat uncommon, making any new release with a fair degree of novelty potentially of interest to people who are into them. However, since those early days the eShop has honestly been flooded with shooters of all types, scales, and influences, leaving the market somewhat over-saturated honestly and that has put the pressure on for new titles looking to establish themselves as worth a look. Moonlit Mononoke may grab the attention of some gamers out there with its more anime-style characters and looks, but in terms of gameplay itself I wouldn’t consider it one of the best options out there by any means. 

Moving between more classic arcade shooting and a bullet hell style in some situations like boss fights, for the most part this poses only a moderate overall challenge. You’ll need to weave your way through attacks while shooting a pretty interesting array of unusual enemies, and between them and your typically scantily-clad heroine of choice that’s probably the game’s most distinctive feature. Why settle for shooting down a variety of mere spaceships and aliens when you can instead take on all sorts of oddities instead?

The thing is, part of what makes the game’s art style more distinctive and fun is also one of its overall weaknesses in my mind. The scale needed to represent these characters well also happens to make your character quite chunky indeed! The good news is that the developers are on top of this, making your actual hit zone limited to a small green square located to the right and about vertically centered on your character. The bad news is that while this method does work to some degree, and is pretty common for bullet hell titles with larger sprites like this, it can also be tricky at times when you begin having very little room to maneuver in. It isn’t an insurmountable problem, but if you’re not used to playing shooters this way it does take getting used to mentally.

While for the most part this is a pretty playable title, there’s no question that within the genre space it’s also not terribly ambitious or interesting. It typically shouldn’t take very long for the game’s art to all blend more into the background as you’re concentrating on keeping yourself from getting destroyed, so what makes it stand out should usually be short-lived. If the focus is instead on how it plays, again this isn’t a bad game, it’s just hardly a great one, and the eShop actually has a significant number of titles in the same general vein that play better and provide a more satisfying challenge.