Gildenarch was a holy city once. Now the streets run with demons, the undead, vampires, and whatever else has come crawling up since the fall, and nobody left topside is in much of a hurry to fix it.
That’s where Crimson Moon picks up, and today it’s finally playable. ProbablyMonsters has launched the gothic action RPG on PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S.
PlayStation players get a little extra. Every PS5 owner picks up the Sonai Magistrate Armor Set free at launch regardless of edition, and anyone running a PS5 Pro gets native PSSR support, sharpening the view of Gildenarch’s blood-soaked streets, whether or not they paid for the privilege. It’s a small gesture, but a welcome one in a launch window where exclusive cosmetics usually come locked behind a pricier tier.
A Reclamation Job Nobody Else Wanted
Players take on the role of a Nephilim, a human-angel hybrid drafted into the Order of the Crimson Moon and handed the unglamorous task of taking the city back one district at a time. There are three of those districts standing between the Order and whatever’s actually running Gildenarch these days, and each one builds toward its own world boss before funneling into a final confrontation considerably nastier than anything that came before it.
It’s a familiar shape for the genre, angels-versus-hell-on-earth isn’t exactly new territory, but Crimson Moon leans into the theatrics of it rather than trying to reinvent them. Executions are gory on purpose. Boss arenas are built to feel like arenas, all towering silhouettes and collapsing architecture, the kind of spaces designed to make a single Nephilim feel appropriately outnumbered before the fight even starts. Nobody’s pretending this is subtle, and the game is better for not bothering to try.
Every Run Rewrites the Rules
Combat is built around what the studio calls relentless melee, and missions layer procedural modifiers on top of it so no two trips through the same district feel identical. Difficulty scales dynamically too, adjusting itself, and the rewards attached to it, based on how the run is actually going rather than a flat setting chosen up front.
Nephilim powers evolve as a run continues, unlocking temporary supernatural abilities that can shift how a fight gets handled halfway through it. Back at base, a church hub gives players somewhere to spend what they’ve earned on permanent upgrades and catch up with the NPCs holding the reclamation effort together between attempts. The whole system dynamically rebalances for solo play or two-player co-op as well, so bringing a friend along doesn’t just make things easier, it changes what the city throws at you.
A Score Built to Match the Bloodshed
Boss fights come with their own original metal compositions, put together by composer Chris Wilson alongside musicians pulled from HEALTH, Ice Nine Kills, Oni, and Periphery. Ricky Armellino, describing the sessions, said the game “brings gothic and classical elements together with heavy metal,” and that writing it was “a blast.”
Crimson Moon first surfaced back at February’s State of Play, then resurfaced for hands-on previews at Summer Game Fest Play Days, where the pitch from developers was that they wanted every player to feel like a badass. Seven months later, Gildenarch is finally open for reclamation.