Moss: The Forgotten Relic review for PC, PS5, Xbox Series X, Nintendo

As someone who doesn’t have VR, Moss has always intrigued me. Both Moss: Book I and Moss: Book II are universally beloved – Benny raved about the second game for us a few years ago – and as a fan of 3D platformers, I was certainly curious to see what all the fuss was about. Not enough to go out and actually get a VR headset mind you (since there weren’t really any other games that interested me), but every so often I’d see the games pop up Steam sales and wonder if I was missing anything.

Apparently I wasn’t the only person, because now both Moss games are available in one handy, non-VR package – which, obviously, meant I had no excuse not to play them. And now that they’re here, all I can say is: maybe they’re a little more interesting when you play them in VR?

Okay, that’s definitely too harsh of me. While I don’t think the games are incredible, I can at the very least see why they’d be so beloved. You’ve got an adorable main character in Quill the mouse. You’ve got a world that’s extremely nice to look at. And there’s a heartfelt story that feels like it comes straight out of a storybook.

The problem is that I can’t help but feel like the game probably lost something in the transition away from VR. A lot of the things that probably made the game feel like such a natural fit on VR – shorter levels and areas, puzzles that require moving things around, non-punishing combat – aren’t as interesting in a non-VR environment.

Take the levels, for instance. Everything feels extremely linear, and the game is constantly pushing you in one direction. I can see why that would probably be welcome if you’re experiencing the game through a headset. But given how richly imagined the world is, when you’re playing in a more traditional way – that is, on a screen – you can’t help but want to explore a little…and, obviously, that’s not an option. Pretty much everywhere you go, you enter a place, see where you have to go, and then you basically walk over to it.

There are, of course, puzzles to solve and enemies to fight so that it’s not just walking from point A to point B for a few hours. But they’re not really challenging: the puzzles consist largely of moving glowing objects around a screen. I can see why that would feel so immersive playing on a VR headset, but here it contributes to the linear feeling. Likewise, there isn’t a lot of variety in the enemies, and they’re not all that hard to beat.

To be fair, that’s kind of the point of Moss: The Forgotten Relic. These are pleasant games with a delightful story and narrator, and you wouldn’t want to harsh that vibe too much with insane puzzles or unbeatable enemies. But at the same time, the world of 3D platformers is much more competitive in the world outside of VR, and against that harsher competition, Moss: The Forgotten Relic doesn’t feel like it stands up quite as well.

Polyarc provided us with a Moss: The Forgotten Relic PC code for review purposes.