Stopping a Fight Between Gods with a Leaf and a Bow: A Playthrough Guide to Every Boss in Momodora: Moonlit Farewell

At the start of the game, a mysterious bell tolls across the world, and terrifying demons begin appearing around the village. The story opens with a mission to investigate this incident, and the player controls Momo, the village priestess.

Early on, while fighting the demon "Black Garizer," which was drawn in by the bell's toll, the commentator explains the basic controls. Rather than swinging a sword or similar weapon, the protagonist fights by swinging a maple leaf blessed in a traditional ritual. A fairly weak bow is also available as a ranged attack, but the leaf is basically the main weapon, and pressing the attack button three times produces a three-hit combo. According to the commentator, the basic way to fight is to stick close to enemies and hit them with the leaf.

Another important move is the roll, which grants a moment of invincibility the instant it's performed, letting you avoid attacks. Rolling right as you're about to be hit makes Momo flash yellow, and the invincibility then lasts for several seconds. If you land this "perfect dodge," you can take the next attack while still invincible. This mechanic becomes central to strategy in the boss fights that follow.

Although Momo depletes Garizer's HP, the demon is still alive, and its dying attack causes the ground to collapse. Momo is carried back by her companion Dorarina and wakes up to find herself lying in bed at home.

When Momo heads back into the forest after Dorarina, she finds Dorarina already fighting a harpy demon, and the battle begins with about 20% of the boss's HP already gone. Because it flies around the sky, it's hard to hit and annoying, but the commentator says it looks cute. The basic plan is to use Dorarina as a decoy and go after the harpy when it comes down to the ground.

It has only three attack patterns: a dive, a shockwave preceded by a red warning, and an occasional attack where it shoots feathers. Once you take off about half its HP, Dorarina shoots the harpy down. According to the commentator, bosses in this game occasionally flinch if you keep attacking them, so you use that opening to hit them hard.

The blue orbs that fall to the floor are magic-restoring items dropped when enemies flinch. Although they weren't used on this run, you can also spend magic to cast a healing spell, and the commentator praises this as making the game approachable even for beginners. They also note that while Momo is the only character you control, there are several battles like this one where you fight alongside others, which is fun because it feels like you're fighting together.

While investigating the bell, Momo meets a mysterious black cat that can talk. The black cat transforms into a human form and attacks. It's a surprisingly tough enemy that unleashes rapid combo attacks, but the commentator says that if you perfect-dodge the first hit of an attack, you can use the invincibility window to fight safely. In the early phase its attack patterns are only kicks and combos, so you can whittle it down safely by watching for the tells and dodging.

Once you bring its HP down to half, a cutscene plays and the second half of the fight begins. From here, powerful attacks from the air and shockwaves running along the ground are added.

During this fight, the commentator says they can feel a strong passion in the quality of the animation and pixel art, and mentions that the game was made not in Japan but in Brazil. According to the commentator's explanation, import taxes on games in Brazil are extremely high, and the PS5 cost 180,000 yen at launch. On the other hand, Sega had long manufactured its hardware locally, so it could sell it cheaply, and the Mega Drive monopolized the market. Sega hardware is apparently still loved in Brazil today, and the commentator speculates that this might be why it's a region with such a great passion for pixel art.

After being defeated, the black cat vanishes, still shrouded in mystery, with nothing known about it other than that it hates humans.

Continuing the exploration, Momo encounters a boar demon. The basic approach is to dodge its charges like a bullfighter while slipping in attacks. The commentator says the interesting thing about this boss is that it sometimes summons boar piglets. It's easy if they appear while the boss is standing still, but depending on the timing you may not be able to defeat them right away, and handling them well makes for a fairly hectic fight. In the video, the commentator shows a strategy of dodging the parent and piglets together and dealing with them, defeating the piglets first since there's a fair amount of leeway before they appear.

Once defeated, a fairy that had been held captive by the demon emerges. According to the fairy, the black bell that draws in the demons originally belonged to the fairies, and was recently stolen by someone. Momo heads to the fairy village to learn more.

In the fairy village, a giant serpent demon was attacking the fairies. It looks big and strong, but the commentator explains that every one of its attacks can be avoided with a perfect dodge, so all you need to do is press yourself against its tail and repeatedly dodge and attack on the spot. The perfect dodge's invincibility lasts quite a long time, so you can land a perfect dodge about once every two times and just keep attacking the rest of the time.

Here the commentator also points out a caveat. You can't dodge during an attack animation, and attack inputs are buffered, so if you simply mash the button, your dodge may not come out in time. That's why it's safer to hold back and wait a bit when an attack seems to be coming. This boss doesn't have a second form either, and the commentator looks back on it as a surprisingly simple boss.

In the fairy village, Momo is granted an audience with the fairy queen. According to the queen, there are two gods in this world, but the younger brother god grew jealous of his older sister god and started a conflict. The gods had been asleep for some time, but recently became active again. The black bell was meant to convey gratitude to the gods, but it apparently became the trigger that woke them up again.

The demons that have recently begun appearing are the army that the god Selin sent for the conflict, and the black cat Momo met earlier is the earthly manifestation of the god Lineth. The commentator sums this up as "getting dragged into a grand sibling quarrel," and Momo sets out to find the stolen black bell while also going to stop the fight between the gods.

Along the way, Momo encounters a colossal spider that looks to be about ten times her size. Its body is enormous, but its attacks are simple: after attacking with its left and right legs, it just jumps up and drops rocks. The commentator explains that every other time, its right-leg attack is accompanied by a shockwave, so as long as you watch out for that and stay in the middle, you'll be fine.

During this fight, the commentator says there's time and starts talking about the game's systems, but most of that explanation is missing from the subtitles, with only the fact that it's one of the elements you can find while exploring remaining. Since the following fight refers to "the sigil system I explained earlier," it can be assumed that they were talking here about sigils (a mechanism that changes your abilities depending on what you equip).

Advancing to the demons' lair, Momo finally finds the stolen black bell. A demon then appears, attacking by scattering hearts with blown kisses and stomping down from above in the meantime. The commentator explains that for this fight they equipped a sigil that increases attack power the lower your HP is.

While you're attacking the younger sister, the older brother appears, and you end up facing both of them at once. The siblings apparently share HP, so attacking them while they're lined up together deals double damage. The commentator also uses a sigil that produces swords of light when attacking, and making use of these, defeats the siblings and recovers the black bell. Momo entrusts the bell to Dorarina, who has caught up, and Cereza, a traveling companion, to carry it back.

Momo continues exploring the demons' lair and is attacked by the Cursed Monarch. The commentator speculates that it may be the remnant of a country that existed long ago.

Here the commentator explains the series. This game is the latest entry in the Momodora series, which has a history of more than ten years, but the entries are only loosely connected, about as much as the Dragon Quest series, so it's designed to be fully enjoyable even for newcomers. If you've played the related games, you may enjoy it more through theorizing. On the other hand, as the developers themselves have said, the story itself is made quite thin, and care has been taken so that players aren't left behind, so the commentator says people starting now can rest assured.

In this fight, the commentator takes it on with HP adjusted to 1 and a sigil equipped that increases damage the lower your HP is. A single hit means it's over. The Monarch has many tentacles, but the commentator says it only uses one at a time.

Making her way through the land of ash, Momo is ordered to slay the Defiled Serpent. If she defeats it, the great White Serpent will grant her a new power. The commentator says it's a cursed land, and the boss has an eerie atmosphere too, which is nice.

Partway through, four suspicious projectiles appeared, so the commentator destroyed all of them just in case, but says it remains unknown what would have happened if they had been left alone. The serpent flies freely around the center, spitting an extremely thick beam from its mouth and then diving back into the swamp. In the end, at a moment when it seemed likely to stay above the surface for a while, the commentator ignored the suspicious-looking heads and took off the rest of its HP in one go.

When Momo returns to the White Serpent, Dorarina objects to the suspicious serpent, but Momo receives the power of the moon as promised. With this, she is ready to go stop the gods' fight, despite being only human.

As Momo approaches the village altar, she finds Dorarina fighting the goddess Lineth. Momo joins in. The commentator says Lineth moves almost exactly the same as when fought as the black cat, so in the first half you can fight the same way as before. When she plunges her sword into the ground, you need to quickly escape into the air, and this blow is what takes Dorarina down.

The second half is almost the same as the earlier second form, so you aim for perfect dodges and attack during the invincibility window. However, her attacks now have a wider range than before, so if you attack without invincibility, you're likely to get hit by the enemy's combos. According to the commentator, this is caused by the character moving forward during melee attacks. For that reason, they attack with the bow when it isn't safe.

Here the bow's mechanics are explained. This game has stamina, and the first bow shot at full stamina is powerful, so the bow is also a surprisingly good source of damage. The commentator praises this as a good balance: by making only the first shot powerful, the game doesn't devolve into fighting with the bow alone, while still keeping an advantage to using it. There are also sigils that fire three arrows and sigils that consume MP to make arrows explode, and another good point is that you can fight in a way that suits your preferred style. The commentator personally likes combining melee and the bow, switching between them depending on the situation.

After successfully calming Lineth, Momo has proven her strength and is now listened to. Lineth's goal is to defeat her younger brother Selin, who has been driven mad by jealousy, and to keep the world from being destroyed by the siblings' quarrel, Momo and her companions also help to defeat Selin.

Lineth sends Momo to Selin, and the final battle begins. In the first form, swords of light rain down from the ceiling. The commentator had been fond of using this attack through a sigil, and realizes that it was originally Selin's own move. Attacks can reach him from the ground, but attacking on the ground makes you move forward, so the commentator uses the power granted by the White Serpent to leap upward while landing attack after attack, defeating the first form.

In the second form, everything is plunged into darkness, and Lineth protects Momo with a barrier. The boss floats high up, so the White Serpent's power comes in very handy. This power consumes stamina to temporarily boost jumping ability, and can't be used continuously. The commentator cautions that you need to save enough to use it at the moment when moonlight falls across the whole screen and the floor catches fire. They also say it's tense and fun because their HP is lowered to 1.

In the third form, Momo is defeated once, but rises again for the sake of everyone in the village. Dorarina then destroys Selin's eyes. With his eyes destroyed, Selin seems unable to see where Momo is, and launches desperate attacks. The commentator dodges these skillfully and keeps attacking so as not to waste Dorarina's blow.

After the final fourth form, Selin is defeated in the Moonlit Palace, and peace returns to the world. Afterward, a grand festival is held in their home village, and the story ends with Momo and Dorarina enjoying their first day off in a long while.

The commentator closes the video by calling the game an orthodox Metroidvania of a kind that has become rare in recent years.