Double Moon Densetsu (NES) review "Self-destructive urges rising, rising, rising!"

On the surface, the Famicom’s Double Moon Densetsu is a Dragon Quest clone. Graphically, it looks quite similar and its plot is the same sort of no-frills, “just the basics” stuff one would expect from games in this era. You control a hero who sets out to find his sister, who was kidnapped by an evil wizard and his followers for purposes that revolve around resurrecting one of those world-wrecking demonic beings. Your dad disappeared while trying to rescue her, so it’s up to your weak, untrained ass to transform into a super-human power and save the world!

As you progress through the world, you’ll find a number of allies who can join your party. Your group will buy equipment and spells in towns and get into basic turn-based battles while traveling over the world and through dungeons. Members of the evil cult will regularly challenge you to provide plenty of boss fights and you’ll even wind up obtaining the favor of each of the world’s deities.

That’s great! I loved those classic Dragon Quest games, so this had to have been a dream come true to get to play what could be considered one with a different name, right? Not exactly…you see, the programmers of this game apparently decided that series was a bit on the easy side. That in itself is a pretty justifiable position to take. Now, when the solution is to throw in one annoying and frustrating “cure” to that problem after another, that justification goes out the window.

Let’s start from the beginning. After deciding if your main guy is either a pure fighter or a fighter with a touch of either cleric or mage thrown into the mix, you’ll leave your home village to embark on the time-honored tradition of walking in circles and fighting weak monsters to gain experience for additional power and money for superior equipment. One minor issue: One of those weak enemies occasionally can connect with a critical hit capable of one-shotting your guy if he hasn’t yet gained a level or was simply weakened a bit by other foes.

So, things are a bit touch-and-go at the onset. Big deal; after all, it won’t take long to gain a level or two and turn those guys into non-factors. And then you’ll visit another town and, as you enter the game’s first dungeon, get an ally who can use healing magic. While she isn’t much of an attacker, that just means she can use the “Aim” function to make things easier for the main character. With every monster, from the weakest of the weak up to the final boss, you can click on that menu option to get a list of three body parts to aim at. Success in that can have a number of effects, such as getting an automatic critical hit or lowering its defense. Things are looking up!

Until you enter that dungeon and start confronting monsters who cast spells. Now, while physical attacks don’t really connect with your guys all that often, those fire and ice spells seem to be a guaranteed hit and often are far more damaging than melee attacks, so things will get pretty tense again, as one rough encounter can easily spell doom for your party. But you’ll eventually get through that reasonably small dungeon and start obtaining more party members and getting better equipment. Why, you’ve just about made it to the point where you’ll break the game’s difficulty, right?

Don’t be naive, you’ll never feel comfortable in Double Moon Densetsu because this game hates the mere thought of you experiencing success. Any damn time you start feeling good about things, you will have your spirit crushed. I have no damn idea how anyone could have beaten this game when it was released because, in that era, emulation and freeze states were not a thing. At times…a lot of times…this game is unbearable.

Around when you get to a desert region, you’ll run into enemies that can petrify characters. Later on, instant death attacks will also get thrown around. Pretty typical, right? Well, except for how it’s an instant GAME OVER if either of those connects with your main guy. Sure, you might have spells and village churches that can cure anything, but if one particular person in your party perishes, none of that matters. Oh, you’ll also find out that most attacks that inflict those (or any, for that matter) ailments are directed at your entire party, making surviving so, so many encounters in this game luck-based. On the bright side, you do tend to have a great chance of being able to run away from fights. I mean, if you fail in that effort, there’s a good chance you’re screwed, but the odds are generally in your favor!

Around when you’ve gotten used to how certain enemies can end your game just like that, you’ll be told to go to a cave to enlist the aid of the Sphinx serving as a challenger to all true heroes. As part of this test, you have to drop off your additional party members at the local guild and go solo. Through a dungeon containing those petrify-utilizing monsters. Even better: After you beat the Sphinx, it will join you…and you’ll almost immediately run into one of that evil wizard’s followers for a boss fight that becomes absolutely brutal because it’s just you and a low-level ally that likely won’t be able to survive much damage.

And you’ll realize that the longer you play, the more all these negative elements will be present. You just never can be complacent because so many monsters in this game can either devastate your party’s health with damaging spells or simply end your quest because an instant-kill attack connected with the main character. And if the game isn’t terrifying your with the ever-present specter of battle, it’s likely annoying the hell out of you with joyful incidents such as a particular land where you have to hunt down a particular NPC, leading you to travel back and forth between four or five different towns for what felt like an eternity. Funnily enough, by the time I got to this point, I was thinking that a horribly tedious fetch quest was the only crappy thing this game was missing. Guess Double Moon Densetsu sure showed me, didn’t it?

It never ends, at least until the game itself ends. At some point, you’ll collect all the necessary artifacts to obtain the favor of the gods and be handed the game’s ultimate weapon, which is necessary to reach the final dungeon. Only to find out that you’ll have to “trade” a party member at each temple to get its god’s blessing. By the end, it will just be you and the Sphinx tackling that final dungeon, which only contains the game’s toughest enemies and three or four boss fights, depending on your actions in the first of those encounters. I mean, what the hell, guys!?!? I’d say Double Moon Densetsu is a game that only the strong can survive, but after making it through, I can’t agree with that sentiment. To get through this game, you either have to be too stupid to realize how utterly masochistic the whole ordeal is or too insane to give a damn. I only wish I knew which describes me…

Staff review by Rob Hamilton (September 05, 2024) Rob Hamilton is the official drunken master of review writing for Honestgamers.