Moss and Moss: Book II Bundle (PlayStation 5) Review

Quill, our cute mouse adventurer, finds a mysterious artefact in the woods. When she delivers this to her uncle, he warns her not to follow him and he heads out. Quill, being an inquisitive type, follows anyway, and thus her adventure begins.

In Book I, her goal is to save her uncle. In Book II, she must stop the Arcane from destroying the world with the Great Unmaking. It's a simple setup that gets greatly expanded as each adventure proceeds. The narrative itself is presented in a storybook style, with a single reader voicing dialogue throughout, as well as offering insights. How much players enjoy the story may depend on how they find the narration.

The cast of characters across both titles is very well put together and each shows their personality with great animation work. Quill herself, however, is the champion of these incidental animations, with even things like the player leaning in causing her to react.

During the story, she often conveys things using sign language, and after arduous fights she often offers the player a high five - sometimes multiple in a row with a little celebration dance.

Quill is possibly the highlight of the game's overall design. In the first title, she has a limited number of visual changes based on if players complete the side realm quests. However, she has equip-able weapons and armour that offer a variety of effects and looks in the sequel. This follow-up expands the character roster a lot as well, with many new and returning faces.

Gameplay puts players in direct control of Quill and offers many environmental items to manipulate with the Sense controllers. Quill's controls are the usual action adventure moveset, with attacking, jumping, blocking and dodging - and this is all mapped to the controller's face buttons and sticks, so it feels intuitive.

Players can look around the little 3D environments and soak in the details, as well as reach in and manipulate anything that glows blue. Reaching out to move platforms, healing Quill, and assisting in combat by stopping enemies, feels amazing, and unlike the PS VR original release, this time there are multiple grab points in some rooms, as players have two hands to work with rather than a DualShock 4 controller. It's hard to explain, but the games are suitably immersive.

Fighting is quite simple. One button attacks and another dodges, but there is some depth added using the VR controllers, and players can grab and manipulate enemies.

There are a limited number of collectables, the main one being Dust. This is found by cutting grass, smashing objects and fighting enemies. It's a limited resource, and collecting it all nets players an achievement. This happens in both games.

In the first Moss entry, completing Twilight Garden missions by finding the hidden gates will arm Quill with better armour and a stronger sword. In the Moss: Book II, players can find armour pieces using their Dust to open secret doors, and these sets can then be equipped or unequipped based on the player's preferences. It's more than enough to warrant several playthroughs. The first game will take about three hours to complete, while the second is much longer.

The visual design is also great, and the environments call to mind dioramas and make amazing use of the stereoscopic 3D effect of the headset. In Moss, the environments shift in theme over the course of the adventure, but all have a traditional adventure book setup with castles, towns and forests. Where this is shaken up is the Twilight Garden area, complete with its own trophy set. This hidden fairy realm has a more vibrant and unusual colour scheme with lots of purples and turquoises.

Moss: Book II expands on the original game's visual theming, but has much more expansive vistas, offering a bit more grounding to the setting. One understated thing is that everything is properly sized for its mouse residents, as well - the background features deer looking through the bushes, buildings built into trees, and a sense of scale that is mind-blowing in certain scenes. Needless to say, Quill's animations are excellent, and, in general, character animations are great when present.

Audio makes good use of locational sound effects, grounding the player in the world. The voiceovers are decent in English, but some moments can be a little grating. Music plays in some scenarios, and when it's there it reinforces the atmosphere and helps big up the fights. Sound effects are also excellent, with everything having appropriate "oomph", emphasising fights and exuding character in interactions.

There are very few downsides to these new versions of Moss. They are far more involved than their PS VR1 versions and offer some stellar design choices. The choice to have a no-deaths trophy is a little bit of a completionist nightmare, but outside of that, there is little in the way of bad tracking or issues with display.