What Players Are Saying — Steam Review Themes (Launch Week)

What Players Are Saying

Crimson Moon launched on September 1, 2026 and picked up reviews fast. This page is not a review score summary — it is a theme breakdown: we pulled the most recent English reviews, tagged each one by topic, and counted how often each theme appears on the positive versus negative side.

Method: 499 English reviews fetched from the Steam review API on September 4, 2026, covering reviews posted September 2-3. 483 of those contained enough text to tag. Each review can match more than one theme, so the numbers below overlap. Overall store rating at time of writing: 2,180 reviews, 1,317 positive (60.4%) — "Mixed" on Steam's scale.

Median playtime at time of review: about 4 hours. The top 10% of reviewers had played over 10 hours. This is not a wave of refund-window drive-bys; most people writing about the game have finished several runs.

The short version

Players broadly agree on what the game does well and what it does badly. The split is not "good game vs bad game" — it is strong core, rough presentation layer. Positive and negative reviews frequently praise the same things (art, combat weight, $19.99 price) and complain about the same things (camera, missing PC options, inventory management).

Theme frequency

Two things stand out. Controller play has the lowest negative share of any theme at 15% — the game feels good on a pad. And ultrawide has the highest at 63%, though on a small sample.

What players praise

The art direction

The most consistent compliment across both positive and negative reviews. The comparison players reach for is Darksiders — dark fantasy that commits rather than hedges.

"The aesthetic is one of its strongest parts. It immediately reminded me of Darksiders—not because it copies Darksiders, but because it has that same unapologetic dark-fantasy attitude. Some armour makes you look like a full Paladin. Other sets turn you into a scorched, spiked Dark Knight that crawled straight out of Hell."

That quote is from a negative review with 298 helpful votes — the single most-upvoted review of launch week. The praise is real even from people who do not recommend the game.

"The visuals are awesome, kind of riding that Darksiders style of blood soaked yet stylized and sort of chunky. Music accompanies the experience perfectly with some really great artists like Ice Nine Kills and Health providing their talents to the project."

Committed, weighty combat

Players who like the combat like it specifically because it does not let you take moves back.

"Combat is at its best when it demands commitment. The animations are locked, and I like that. If I throw out a heavy attack at a stupid time, I should eat the enemy's weapon. I shouldn't be able to panic-cancel every bad decision. Having both light and heavy jumping attacks is also great."

The price

$19.99 comes up in 103 reviews and it is doing a lot of work in the game's defence.

"Darksiders-esque soulslike. Really fun with controller. Not really sure what the review bombs are about, but it's a great Soulslite."

"At $19.99, I wasn't expecting some enormous AAA production with 100 hours of handcrafted content. What is here is already worth the asking price for me."

Co-op

2-player co-op generates a disproportionate share of the positive reviews, and matchmaking speed gets specific praise.

"For $20 it's a nice game for co-op shenanigans. Visuals? Stunning."

"Co-op with a friend is a good time, and random matchmaking is quick."

What players complain about

The camera

The most-cited gameplay complaint that is not a settings issue. It comes up in positive and negative reviews alike, especially against large enemies.

"Camera is diabolical against larger enemies, spinning around like a centrifuge trying to split my brain in half. I found myself remaining unlocked on bosses unless using a weapon art to mitigate the problem."

"The camera is frequently the hardest fight."

ProbablyMonsters has publicly named camera improvements as a priority in the Patch 1.0.0.1 notes.

Keybinding — largely fixed on September 3

At launch, PC players got 5-6 preset keyboard layouts with no individual remapping and no mouse sensitivity slider. This was the dominant launch complaint and drove a visible chunk of the early negative reviews.

Patch 1.0.0.1 (September 3, build 162350) shipped an Alpha keybinding system: you can now rebind all available actions, revert to defaults, and adjust mouse sensitivity, under Settings → Keyboard → custom keyboard profile. Still missing in this first pass: multiple bindings per action, double-tap inputs, and hold inputs.

Reviews written before September 3 that cite this complaint are describing a build that no longer exists. Some reviewers said as much in advance:

"I'm going to go against the grain with this one and put forth a more honest, reasonable take on the game than all the entitled ones thumbs-downing over some key bindings the devs already said will be fixed."

The parry window

A more subtle complaint, and a good one: the issue is not difficulty, it is that the animation and the active window do not appear to line up.

"If I press parry when the enemy's weapon visually reaches me, I am already late. My character still has to begin raising the shield before the parry appears to become active. Successful parries feel as though they require me to predict the impact and press noticeably before it happens. This makes the system feel predictive rather than reactive."

Block is on LB and parry on LT by default, which several reviewers found awkward compared to the Sekiro / God of War Ragnarök approach of one button that becomes a parry on correct timing.

Meta-progression expectations

The single most consequential misunderstanding-or-disappointment cluster, and it is worth reading alongside the developer's own explanation.

"All that gear we 'purify' and get to keep? Only VERY FEW actually have built in powers, otherwise they are just flat stat sticks. They claimed their meta progression would be about synergies and the gear we got in runs we would keep so long as cleared the runs, but as it turns out the gear we get in runs? we just get their basic, no bonuses version."

The developer's position, from the September 2 Helpful Resources post: "Purifying an item permanently unlocks that item at Common quality, regardless of the quality you found it at." You then raise its floor through Gajov. See How Runs & Loadouts Work for the full mechanic.

Whether that is a communication failure or a design disagreement depends on the player — but the mechanic is documented, not a bug.

Progression loss in co-op

The most serious bug reported during launch week. Multiple reviews describe losing save progress after a co-op connection issue.

"After a connection issue, I originally thought I simply couldn't rejoin my friend. I could rejoin. My entire level progression and savegame were gone instead."

"Multiple crashes in the middle of runs, causing forced close and progress lost."

Progression loss is on the developer's stated next-patch list alongside camera, UI scaling, crashes, and controller layouts.

Inventory and filtering

Boons drive builds, but there is no way to filter gear by Boon.

"Boons are central to making builds, yet there is no useful way to filter equipment by Boon. After upgrading and testing several pieces, I can spend ten minutes scanning everything while trying to remember which effect is sitting on which helmet, weapon or chest piece."

No dye system

A smaller but repeated ask, and a direct consequence of the art being good.

"Then you find a fantastic armour design covered in bright purple or royal blue cloth—and there is no dye system. You have already made killer armour; let us wear it without looking like five unrelated loot drops were stapled together."

Performance without upscaling

Performance has the second-highest negative share (49%). The specific complaint is that base performance leans on upscaling and frame generation.

"On my setup, without upscaling and frame generation, the game is cooked. Upscaling and frame generation are useful tools, but they should improve an already functional game—not act as life support."

That matters more than usual in a game built around defensive timing — frame generation smooths appearance without fixing input responsiveness.

Ultrawide

Small sample, highest negative share. The complaint is consistent and specific: 21:9 and 32:9 crop vertically rather than widening the field of view.

"'Ultrawide support' is a lie. On 21:9/32:9 the game zooms IN on your character instead of widening the view, so you actually see LESS than someone on a 16:9 monitor — the opposite of what ultrawide is for."

What the developer has said and done

Launch week was unusually responsive, and 131 reviews mention patches or dev communication — with a 66% positive share, one of the better ratios on this page.

• September 1 — An Update on PC Keybinding: acknowledged the missing remapping.
• September 2 — Helpful Resources: Runs, Loadouts & Gear: explained the Loadout Station and Purification systems that were being reported as bugs.
• September 3 — Patch 1.0.0.1: shipped Alpha keybinding and mouse sensitivity.

Named as actively in progress for the next patch: camera improvements, progression loss, UI scaling, crashes, additional controller layouts.

"This game is not perfect but its already a solid 7/10 and the immediate response to feedback makes me feel like it is only up from here."

If you are deciding whether to buy

Reading across 483 tagged reviews, the pattern is fairly clean:

• You will probably like it if you play on a controller, are buying it as a $20 co-op game, and value art direction and combat weight over polish. Controller reviews are 85% positive.
• You should probably wait if you play on ultrawide, need a specific keyboard layout beyond what the Alpha remapping covers, want ~60fps at native resolution without upscaling, or expect deep meta-progression synergies out of purified gear.
• The open risk is progression loss in co-op. Until that is patched, it is the one issue in this dataset that can cost you real time.

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Themes counted from 499 English Steam reviews fetched September 4, 2026 (reviews posted September 2-3). Review text quoted verbatim; profanity as censored by Steam. Store totals: 2,180 reviews / 60.4% positive, all languages. This is a fan wiki — sentiment analysis is our reading of public reviews, not an official statement from ProbablyMonsters.