When I heard they were re-releasing the game, I jumped at the chance for this Moss: The Forgotten Relic review. This is a franchise with one of the most endearing characters in all of modern gaming, and even as a VR enthusiast, I have to admit that sometimes removing the unnecessary baggage that the tech brings can unshackle a great game and bring it to a wider audience. Of course, without the gimmick, some games end up being a waste of time, so let's see which one this is. 

Introducing Quill, one of the best rendered and realized characters going.

The original Moss was a VR 3D-platformer, and this re-release doesn’t make the sort of dramatic, sweeping alterations to change that. The biggest difference between this re-release and the original version is the utter lack of any VR support. Oddly, however, it’s not a particularly noticeable exclusion. While the VR release of these two games may have been marginally more immersive, the gameplay and storytelling basically never relied on VR in the first place. The question now becomes whether or not the game was strong enough to stand on its own as a decent game, devoid of the ‘gimmick’ of VR.

To be clear, Moss: The Forgotten Relic is a re-release of the two games currently available in the Moss franchise. It stars Quill, a small mouse with a big sense of adventure, and ‘The Reader’, a personification of the player character who has to explore the world with Quill, and steer her around the environment. Along the way you’ll have platforming challenges, combat to enjoy, and even collectibles hidden around every corner. Now it’s time to see if these mouse-sized adventures translate into an epic fantasy saga.

Starting Off Small The intro to Quill is still great, though without the VR aspect, it's less immersive. 

I should probably start off by admitting that I do own and did play the first Moss game on VR, though I never finished it. So I am not going into this one completely in the dark. I have something to compare it to. Honestly, the biggest shock for me was how little I noticed the lack of VR. If anything, the lack of immersion was swiftly made up for by not having to strap a TV to my face with a bunch of random wires sticking out of it. The environments are still beautiful, the gameplay is still as close to classic 3D platformer gameplay as it is possible to get without being one of the classic 3D platformers.

The first portion of the game encompasses both the original Moss game, as well as the free Twilight Garden update, which adds a few extra levels and makes some gameplay additions. All in all, the first part of the game feels great to play, but lacks a little in the epic narrative department. Not only is the first section incredibly short, but it’s also incredibly simplistic in terms of gameplay. The only real mechanics that are introduced outside of the starting ones are thanks to the free DLC update, so they don’t have much bearing on the main gameplay.

Onwards an upwards The storybook framing device has certainly been done before, but Moss: The Forgotten Relic takes it in an interesting direction.

The second half of The Forgotten Relic is where things start to pick up. While the first section had serviceable gameplay to go with its interesting world and characters, the second manages to expand the scope considerably, bringing in new puzzles, new mechanics, and a bunch of new places for you to explore. The only minor issue is that the continuity from the DLC update is basically non-existent. You revisit certain characters and locations that you saw previously in that free content update, but none of the characters reference these previous encounters, which feels like a massive misstep for a game that is supposed to be turning this into a singular, cohesive, and epic narrative.

That aside, pretty much everything else in the second part of the game is an improvement over the first. There are some new cutscenes that help the game to feel more like an epic fantasy tale, and that also means that we get to see more characterization of Quill, the main character. By the end of our time in the story, she’s a fully fleshed-out character with a distinct personality and her own goals, rather than being the small, blank, and furry avatar that she remained in Moss.

Grandious Gameplay You can interact with Quill as you play the game, and these interactions usually have a meaning to convey if you use them at the right times. 

Some of the biggest improvements in the second act of Moss: The Forgotten Relic are related to the combat. While things are still relatively simple, you gain new weapons and abilities as the game progresses, and since they weren’t added in DLC updates, there are actual encounters and puzzles built around these abilities. In particular, the best addition is probably the chakram, a throw-able bladed disc that can be stuck into surfaces and then recalled. While this ability is of limited but hilarious utility during a fight, it opens up the game to much more dynamic puzzles that actually make you think creatively about what you’re trying to accomplish.

That’s not to say that the combat itself isn’t also expanded. Obviously you can still use your influence as the reader to keep one enemy under wraps or even use its attacks against its friends, but you also have access to a new dash move with your sword that makes you feel pretty powerful for such a small mouse. On top of that, the two new weapons and several suits of armor offer both cosmetic and practical variation that had me feeling like I could have kept fighting monsters for a lot longer, rather than wondering how they were possibly going to stretch the gameplay any further.

A Visual Venture (But Not Like That AI YouTuber) Some of the encounters are cool as hell, even if they don't keep good continuity. 

Visually, there have been some improvements to the way Moss: The Forgotten Relic looks, though unless you’re a die-hard graphics enthusiast, you may not notice the big difference. Obviously, compared with the original PSVR title, textures are a lot smoother, and the edges are less rough as well, mostly due to not having to project the game in VR on top of the regular graphics rendering you’re doing. Audio-wise, I’m assured there are some changes, but personally I thought the game sounded brilliant already and didn’t really need much work outside of exporting at a higher sample rate.

Either way you look at it, the game looks fantastic. The environments are well designed, and there’s a fair bit of visual variation going on once you get past that opening chapter. You’ll explore factories, lush gardens and icy mountains, and at no point did it feel like there was anything incongruous going on. Of course, the character design is always brilliant, and as an owl fan, I was almost emotionally crushed by the final boss fight.

The Shakedown It's quite a grand adventure, if you can get over the weird pacing. 

Moss: The Forgotten Relic is a very worthwhile gaming experience only slightly let down by a first half that feels like a lesser experience. Overall, the game very much comes out in credit, but it certainly seems like more could, and probably should, have been done to make that first section of the game feel like it actually fitted into the rest of the game. Beautiful visuals and magical music work together with a decent fantasy narrative to create a game that is worth the time of any 3D platformer fan, and honestly, I’d challenge anyone to spend a few hours with the game without becoming incredibly attached to Quill, who is easily the biggest draw of the entire game.

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Moss: The Forgotten Relic was review on PC via Steam with a code provided by the developer over roughly 10 hours of gameplay. All screenshots were taken during the course of the review.