Moonstone attempts to be a hybrid of turn based RPG and real time Fighting. Set in some medieval land, England probably, you play one of four Knights assigned to reclaim the Moonstone from 'The guardian of the Valley' and return it to Stone Henge or something. There’s a vast land filled with swamps, deserts, forests, plains, lairs, cities and towers. You have to explore pretty much all of it to find the four "Keys to the valley" required to fight the guardian, while fending off attacks from the hordes of monsters, the other three Knights and the insidious Dragon. This task is made somewhat complicated by the lack of a save function and the limited lives available.

 

Moonstone features surprisingly good combat scenes. Even though there us only one action button (can anyone else remember the days that Joysticks only had one button?) your Knight can block, dodge, lunge, swing, chop, stab, strike backwards and throw knives. You fight boars, ratmen, swamp things, ratmen, trolls, dragons, more ratmen and the other Knights. You can even battle a mate for bragging rights. However it gets really frustrating fighting a Monster that can kill you in one hit, and also its a pain in the ass when you have to fight three ratmen at the same time. There’s a crap load of gore in the combat scenes however this is far more humorous then horrifying.

Burninating the Countryside, Burninating the Peasants!

 

The heart and soul of Moonstone is its multiplayer action. The game supports four players (either human or AI) and each player takes turns moving their Knight across the land, attacking enemy lairs and eventually, each other. The RPG side of things is really simplistic as there is only a small amount of weapons, spells and armour, but this is more of a plus as it makes the game less confusing and easier to learn how to play.