I’ve played To the Moon thrice since it was originally released on PC in 2011, and I’ve cried every time. It’s funny enough at different parts, but suffice it to say, this game should come with tissues or something because it will tear at your heartstrings.
Now that it’s on PS5, I completed a third playthrough of this new port for the first time in years. To the Moon is one of the most impactful video games I’ve ever played, but does it hold up after so many years and multiple generators of heart-wrenching titles? Let’s find out.
An All-Time Classic Makes its Way to PS5
To the Moon is a simple game that can be finished in a few hours. It’s also $10, which I think is more than fair for the emotional trauma it will be providing you. The game uses a pixel art style, but don’t let that fool you.
It stars two doctors, Eva Rosalene and Neil Watts, who work for Sigmund Corp. This company has revolutionary technology that allows them to create artificial memories. Still, since these memories can conflict with existing ones, they only work on patients on their deathbeds.
Think of it as a final wish fulfillment service, and you’ll be on the right track. The game begins as the two doctors arrive at the home of their latest client, a man named Johnny, who has little time left.
You soon discover that Johnny’s final wish is to go to the moon, but it’s unclear why initially. You’ll spend some time getting to known Johnny’s caretaker and her kids before finally donning VR helmets that allow the doctors to dive into Johnny’s memories.
This is where the vast majority of the game takes place. For story reasons, you’ll move backward from the present and experience Johnny’s memories in leaps from one time period to the next. As the story is the most significant part of the experience here, I won’t say anything more about the details, but I will explain how it made me feel.
To the Moon’s story explores themes of grief, desperation, regret, and the complexities of love. It elegantly balances the occasional joke with moments of deep character development or shocking developments. These moments help you better understand Johnny, his wife River, and the doctors.
The game could have easily become an emotional anchor, dragging you down into depression. Still, it manages to toe the line by injecting the occasional joke from Dr. Watts, who serves as the primary comedic role. By the end, you’ll feel like you’ve known Johnny and River for years. Exploring their life together, seeing their highest and lowest moments, it’s enough to really feel attached.
Johnny and River’s love story is beautiful. Still, like any real-life love story, it’s also filled with times of hardship and tragedy, and it’s laced with a complexity that showcases how deep and effective the writing is throughout the entire story.
After so many years apart from my first playthrough, the final act of To the Moon also hit me like a sucker punch to the gut. Just when you think you know the whole story, the game manages to inject even more layers into the final stretch that further cement it as one of the greatest stories ever told, in gaming or otherwise.
You will laugh, you will cry, and when the credits roll, you’ll wish you’d had more time with Johnny and River. Like any good love story, it hurts the most when it ends.
To the Moon’s gameplay is simple, but it has interactive elements to keep you engaged throughout the stretches of the narrative. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a visual novel. You’ll walk around and interact with people an objects in each scene. Specific interactions will give you a colored sphere. You’ll need to find all the spheres in any given scene to progress to the next memory.
Between each memory, you’ll also solve a simple tile-based puzzle that has you flipping squares in an image to complete a picture of the memento you’re using to dive deeper into Johnny’s memory. These sequences also track your number of “moves” and offer an ideal number to try and hit, with trophies attached to perfect completion.
Apart from a joke fight at the beginning of the game, there is no combat in To the Moon, despite it being made in RPG Maker originally. This is a game that puts its narrative front and center, and with how good the story is, I’m perfectly fine with that.
A Faithful (If Minimalistic) Port
To the Moon’s pixel art style calls back to a simpler time when it was made using RPG maker, but the game’s presentation remains evergreen after all these years. The characters are distinct, the environments are varied, but also recognizable in different time periods, and the simple animations do a great job of emphasizing certain scenes.
The background vistas are also stunning, especially the iconic lighthouse near Johnny and River’s house. It was a beautiful game then, and it’s a beautiful game now. Now, of course, no To the Moon review would be complete without mentioning the music.
The game’s powerful score leverages gorgeous piano and string instruments to inject a sense of longing and nostalgia into every track. The melody in the main theme brings tears to my eyes every time I hear it without fail. The way the soundtrack pairs with specific scenes in the game will cement these tracks in your mind for all time. It’s easily one of my favorite video game scores ever.
My only qualm with the PS5 port is that it’s very minimal. The art and menus are upsized correctly, but I would have loved to see a fresh coat of 4K paint on the graphics themselves. After all these years, I would have loved to see the other games in the series ported as well, or perhaps some behind the scenes unlockables for fans like myself. Even so, it’s faithful to the original release and plays smoothly from beginning to end.
Though it’s only a few hours long, To the Moon is priced right and it will stay with you for the rest of your gaming days, I can promise you that. If you haven’t played it, do yourself a favor and experience this absolute gaming classic. You’re going to cry, probably multiple times, but it’s worth it, I promise.
Final Score: 9.5/10
Review code provided by the publisher
Article by – Bradley Ramsey
Insert date – 10/16/2024