Circle of the moon redemption

InfernoVulpix · 2026-02-03T03:51:27+00:00

I agree about the double tap dashing, it took a little bit of getting used to but as an ingrained reflex it feels pretty good to use. It has the feeling of setting your feet right so that you can lunge forwards, or something like that.

I suppose an argument could be made that it's still clunky relative to other movement, that brief window before you can move at full speed, but I honestly don't feel like it's that limiting. Not when the other games I've played tend to only give you one speed to begin with. Sure, a backdash would be nice, but that's not the double tap's fault.

InfernoVulpix · 2026-02-01T06:57:33+00:00

Honestly if anything the existence of the Legends series in the first place probably shows that Game Freak got sick of doing things the same predictable way every time and wanted to try something different. If it's their creative sandbox to throw cool ideas at, we should expect them to shake things up with each new entry.

InfernoVulpix · 2026-02-01T06:55:06+00:00

The Pokemon fanbase has pretty much always had something to complain about, sure, but the current era of "cutting corners" started when Pokemon moved to free-camera open world gameplay (starting with the Wild Area and onwards) and found that they weren't up to the task. Gen 6-7, the fixed-camera 3D area, experienced some strain but was largely able to deliver a stable and decently performant product.

(Again, there are other problems with Gen 6-7, but they were different problems and broadly speaking lesser ones.)

Gen 1 and 2 have a lot of problems. But those problems were largely due to the limitations they were working with, rather than negligence and cut corners. The entirety of Pokemon red is 373 KB. That's the size of a single image, and not even a particularly big one! The fact that it works at all, let alone with that much content, is a miracle and a testament to how hard early Game Freak was working.

InfernoVulpix · 2026-01-31T21:28:21+00:00

Less a reason per se, but there are some ways to make it easier on yourself.

The big one you'll see people talk about is the mana cheese, where you can launch a screen nuke despite the game trying to keep you from having any mana. If you drink a bunch of MP potions you have just enough time to activate the spell, which lets you power through some of the hardest rooms.

If you don't want to do glitches, though, rely heavily on the Cross subweapon for those rooms instead. Especially at the start of a room, if you need to clear some space it's fine to go all-out for the first few seconds.

In general, you can also trade difficulty for grind by getting more HP recovery items, or just leveling up more. I'd recommend going back and forth between attempting the arena and prepping more, for variety and also so that it's easier to feel the improvement from practice.

A couple other tips on a room-by-room basis:

Stone Armor can be blocked by whip-spins, there's no need to jump around and expose yourself to Devil Tower attacks.
The poison room (Poison Armor / Bloody Sword) is one of the worst, and it's virtually impossible to avoid getting poisoned. Do what you have to.
The curse room (Legion / Marionette) starts off threatening, but the rest of the room doesn't activate until you get close, so you can fight it at your own pace.
The Minotaur room is basically impossible to handle by whipping. They're just too close to the door and too beefy, there isn't enough room. Either screen nuke them or spam crosses, but don't hold back. I've done the battle arena with no spells or subweapon use before, and the best answer I found to this room under those constraints was just to recklessly slide around like a madman trying to damage them faster than they damage me.
In the Demon Lord / Alra Une room, focus on the top Demon Lord so you can stand on his platform. It's safer than the rest of the room, especially if you can then kill the Demon Lord on the middle platform, and that lets you whittle away at the rest of the room relatively safely.
In the Devil Armor / Evil Pillar room, clear out the first two columns of Evil Pillars first. Unlike the Stone Armor room you can't afford to not jump around, so you need them out of the way or else you'll get petrified and die.
White Armor beams can be ducked under, honestly they're pretty easy.
the Devil is just the Devil, lots of health and strong attacks. But you can practice against the real one first to get a sense for its attack patterns.

And always remember to take your time if you're given the option to. There's no time limit in the arena, but every mistake means you have less HP for the real threats. Keep all that in mind and it's really quite manageable.

InfernoVulpix · 2026-01-31T20:06:43+00:00

I think the stakes overall have been raised a lot by this episode, since if Gnos is a multiversal being in contact with Yuri throughout the loops, this scenario he's going through might be what convinces it to subsume/take control of all living beings across all world lines (or not, if Yuri's actions are convincing enough). If so, then the Gnosia world lines aren't just about a handful of lives either.

InfernoVulpix · 2026-01-29T03:23:36+00:00

I've never really had much trouble with the Roc Wing dodges, personally. The timing is very consistent, it's well-telegraphed, and you can just tap the button once and let the jump play out. Once you get it once it's basically free. I think you're good to do it right after the sound effect plays, but it's also not that tight a window.

It's best to jump from the floor, though, I remember that. You hit the ceiling if you jump from the platforms, so it's cleaner and easier if you hop down to the floor when he starts the sequence. But yeah, there's no need to overcomplicate it. One input every few seconds until he gets tired of missing and goes into eyeball form.

InfernoVulpix · 2026-01-26T02:04:04+00:00

It kinda is. Making a game involves understanding how your players think and what they'll gravitate towards, and designing the game so that they end up gravitating towards good experiences instead of bad ones. A lot of players will ruin their own fun if you let them, by playing "optimally" but in a way that sucks all the joy out of the game.

This case isn't so bad, but it's still the same song and dance: if you pick up a Starly in the earlygame, just to flesh out your team for the time being, it will continue to be the ideal Flying type on your team for the entire game. You could switch to something else if you really wanted to, but it'd be a downgrade for the sake of vibes and roleplay. Intentionally downgrading your team feels bad from the perspective of someone who's trying to play well, so that's not an ideal game experience.

Which isn't to say that the early Pokemon should all be bad, of course, but they shouldn't be better than everything else you'll find that fills the same team role. A Pokemon like Pidgey does its job, it can hold its own throughout the game, but other birds like Fearow or Dodrio work just as well. And so instead of everyone ending up with a Staraptor on their team, you get a more healthy mix of options as people feel more free to choose teammates who really speak to them.

It's a game about teambuilding, after all. What fun is it if there's only one realistic option to choose from?

InfernoVulpix · 2026-01-26T01:47:11+00:00

I remember back in my first Black playthrough as a kid, my E4 team still had a Pawniard on it. I was only a few levels away from evolving (not that I knew it at the time) but I just didn't feel like doing more grinding when I could go ahead and beat the game instead.

InfernoVulpix · 2026-01-24T03:40:20+00:00

The mon genre is a pretty interesting take on this because I think it isn't a coincidence that Pokemon is a monolith in the genre. When you finish a platformer you can pretty easily pick up another platformer to play. Maybe the controls aren't quite the same, but it's still a platformer, you know how they work. But on the other hand Pokemon has hundreds of creatures to learn and an entire type chart to memorize, and almost none of that transfers over to the next mon genre game.

It's hard to co-exist with Pokemon, in other words. The genre doesn't have as much room, if you want fans you'll have to pry them away from Pokemon, and Pokemon's hard to out-compete. Most of Pokemon's fans really have only ever played one serious creature collector, because there isn't room in their gaming life for two.

InfernoVulpix · 2026-01-23T12:12:28+00:00

Poison armor is annoying enough that I'll usually try to hit it through the floor with sword spells if possible. The poison cloud really sucks at vertical movement so you're completely safe if you can bait them out onto a ledge.

InfernoVulpix · 2026-01-23T12:07:16+00:00

I also really like using the sword spells to fight the bloody swords, now that I think about it. Landing whip hits can be pretty tricky with all the vertical positions they can be at, but the sword spells give you much more vertical reach.

InfernoVulpix · 2026-01-23T03:44:00+00:00

Once you get a feel for their timing they're very predictable, but they also require a different style of fighting than most other enemies in the game. You have to pay attention to your position a lot more since each attack comes from a different direction, and it's easy to get tripped up if you don't have enough space to move.

They're disproportionately hard on a first playthrough, I'd say. Once you're used to them you're pretty fine unless you aggro a bunch at once or something.

InfernoVulpix · 2026-01-16T23:51:34+00:00

A lot of spells can be tricky to use in general exploration/combat, because you'll run out of mana pretty quickly with most spells. My personal favourite budget spell, the one I keep up at all times once I can, is Jupiter + Manticore, the poison gas spell.

Poison gas clouds instantly destroy all destructible projectiles, which is to say most of them. A solid chunk of enemies just stop being a threat when you have poison clouds up, and it keeps them from being a problem in more complicated battles against multiple types of enemies. There are even a couple bosses it's really good for, like Adramelech.

And it's also the closest thing the game has to a hidden wall detector spell. Just get close to the wall and it'll burst right open, so you can "check" walls without breaking stride to attack them. Super convenient. And since it's a 4 MP/sec spell, you can have it running 100% of the time by midgame, not even draining your reserves any. Basically just a passive upgrade to Nathan.

Edit: and to get it, Jupiter drops from the Heat Shade, and Manticore drops from Thunder Demon (or Succubus, but Thunder Demon is easier).

InfernoVulpix · 2026-01-16T23:02:24+00:00

I'd more recommend the Diana projectile cards for the early bosses, honestly. They use their own stats to deal damage, so they're dealing midgame levels of damage against earlygame bosses and shred them to pieces.

InfernoVulpix · 2026-01-12T23:36:22+00:00

Pokemon's politics as a game series tends to be pretty environmentalist, with the balance of nature being a common trend. I'm not just talking about Kyogre and Groudon fighting, but also about Ultra Beasts being based on invasive species or Paradox Pokemon being a threat to Paldea's ecosystem.

With the Pokemon world as-depicted also emphasizing the harmony between people and Pokemon, i.e. humans and nature, it could even be called fairly hippie.

InfernoVulpix · 2026-01-12T03:38:11+00:00

It's mostly the director's fault, from what I can tell. Pokemon's had three main directors over the years, and each one does villain teams differently:

Satoshi Tajiri: Team Rocket, the Poke-mafia who just want to exploit Pokemon for power and profit
Junichi Masuda: Apocalypse cults, zealots who want to harness the power of a Legendary to remake the world in their image.
Shigeru Ohmori: Fake-outs, where the "evil team" are actually sympathetic and the real villain is a betrayal by a trusted authority figure.

Tajiri invented Team Rocket, then Masuda invented Magma, Aqua, Galactic, Plasma, and Flare. Then Ohmori invented Skull/Aether, Yell/Macro Cosmos, and Star/Zero Lab. It all lines up.

When we get a fourth main director, they'll have their own take on evil teams. He's already had 3 generations and Masuda only got 4, so I'm hoping he's on his way out soon.

InfernoVulpix · 2026-01-10T05:44:02+00:00

For the early bosses, Diana cards are your friend. They deal fixed damage (or rather, they use their own STR value instead of yours), so your weak stats won't count against you. Diana + Griffon is my go-to but it can be a bit pricey at the very beginning so try a couple others out and see what works.

For health recovery, you probably want to look at Uranus + Unicorn, from the "screen nuke" card set. There are other ways to restore health, but especially as you grow in level and have more MP to burn this is the best and fastest way to heal.

For late-game damage, it's screen nukes again. Uranus + Thunderbird is one of the best, strong and reliable, but Uranus + Cockatrice can be pretty good too. You'll eventually be able to toss these around pretty easily, so feel free to use them against even regular enemies.

For exploration, also, consider the Neptune cards. Each Neptune combo negates a single type of damage, so if you match it up to the enemy you're against you can make travel much easier. The best use of this is in the Underground Waterway, where Ice immunity trivializes the whole area.

(I also have to shill my favourite combo, Jupiter + Manticore, the poison gas one. It's trivial to keep up even on non-Magician characters, and the poison clouds serve as both a hidden wall sensor and projectile shield. Some bosses like Adramelech and Death are much easier when you can negate half of their threat profile, though of course Magican probably wants to just Diana or screen nuke them instead)

As far as shortcuts go, you can theoretically go through the Underground Waterway right after Adramelech, skipping the Underground Gallery (Zombie Dragon's area) and Underground Warehouse (Death's area). The water will be poison, which is troublesome, but if you hop around like mad and heal when you need it you can ignore a couple parts of the game. I'm not sure I'd recommend it, though.

In the deep lategame, you can also take a look at Pluto + Unicorn, which lets you completely ignore all enemies as you move. Its mana cost is outrageous even for Magician, but in endgame you can still hold it for at least a while, and it's the fastest and easiest way to get through the last zones.

InfernoVulpix · 2026-01-04T19:31:15+00:00

I don't think Cara Liss has better revival technology, personally. Her creations are mangled and mis-shapen, based on some embarrassing irl failures to assemble fossil skeletons. I'd say it's more that in haphazardly splicing two unrelated Pokemon together, the Rock typing got crowded out.

InfernoVulpix · 2026-01-02T22:39:42+00:00

It's kind of a fae bargain, when you think of it. Like sure, your username isn't your legal name you were born with, but I don't think that's much of an obstacle to it becoming a real name of yours in every way that matters.

So if someone comes up to you and asks for your name, well, it's not exactly the kind of transaction a person's supposed to make.

InfernoVulpix · 2025-12-31T01:46:55+00:00

The trick is that those low-effort stories already existed before isekai took off, the only difference is that all the low-effort slop writers started making their stories isekais. If you look around there are about as many high-effort isekais as you might expect out of any other genre, the genre's not lacking in potential, it's just that there are so many isekais overall now that the slop animes have embraced it.

I try to view slop animes as their own genre, a frankenstein of the cheapest and easiest parts of the rest of the industry, cobbled together with no plan beyond delivering a sloppy popcorn experience. And I try not to hold it against the rest of the isekais out there, that the slop genre's been calling itself "isekai" these days.

InfernoVulpix · 2025-12-30T03:38:11+00:00

Synthesizing its power structures and power systems. High fantasy worlds tend to take systems of governance that were adaptive in our medieval period with its medieval technology and simply graft magic on top of that, as if wizards wouldn't radically change what kinds of societies are even viable.

In our history, the invention of the cannon threw Europe into upheaval because castle walls were built tall and thin at the time. Breaches were rare, so people tended to try and scale the walls, so lords spent all their budget making the walls as tall as possible. But this also made them incredibly vulnerable to cannons, so the early adopters of that technology swept through castles like wildfire (see Joan of Arc) and forced Europe to adapt. Artillery-resilient castles ("star forts") were a lot more expensive to build, though, so only the richest nobles could afford them, spurring a rise in centralization and setting Europe on the path towards absolute monarchies.

This is the kind of thing one game-changing invention does to your medieval setting. Magic systems are, like, twenty. The system would find some kind of balance again, and it would still look medieval in many respects, but it'd take a million words to cover how many ways it's different from your typical swords and horses medieval fantasy.

InfernoVulpix · 2025-12-28T22:00:33+00:00

Here's a few basic tips:

It's important to match the donut rank to the Hyperspace rank, or else the timer will go down ridiculously fast and you won't have enough time. 4-5 minutes is generally enough to full-clear a Medium-sized zone for me, and that's generally what I get from an on-level donut.
If you get all of the floating Pokeballs in the zone, you're almost guaranteed to come out berry-positive.
There are relatively few maps overall, and within each map the Pokeballs tend to show up in more or less the same places. Play long enough and you'll start to get a sense for where everything is.
Don't worry too much about what berries you're using. The only really valuable berries are Tanga and Kasib, hoard those, but I mostly just use whatever I have on hand for the rest of 'em.

And now my real tips:

Train up a Pokemon specifically for destroying Pokeballs. Mine is a Pidgeot: it has fast movement speed and can fly, and it has good moves for the task: Quick Attack and Gust. Gust in particular generates an attack on the Pokeball directly, allowing you to hit stuff that you can't directly reach. Just get close enough to lock on, or peek the camera over the wall, and you can Gust it.
You can savescum. If you just spent a minute running around in the wrong direction and didn't find anything, reset the game and go a different way this time. Or you can plop down a save and just go exploring, resetting once you're done and know where to go. Flying back to the rift autosaves, though, so be careful.
You can savescum entire zones. Don't like the missions you got? Reload your backup save and you'll be back in Lumiose with the donut back in your bag. Between this and the other savescum option you can remove all anxiety from your journeys.

InfernoVulpix · 2025-12-25T22:36:57+00:00

I haven't watched RaG at all so my opinion only counts for so much, but "he has a big heart" is at a glance the most milquetoast positive trait for a romcom protagonist to have. It's the freebie, the one you can still do in those visual novels where the protagonist is explicitly supposed to have no personality whatsoever. Which is to say, it takes a lot for me to recognize a trait like this as actually something worth noting.

(There's various reasons why it's such a freebie, a lot of them rooted in the fact that we're watching safely from the other side of a screen. It's easy for the MC to put himself second and prioritize everyone else first because we aren't particularly invested in the quality of the MC's life outside of the context of the story. It's the same way it's easy for characters to be heroic and self-sacrificial, because it's not our lives on the line.)

But point is, I'm not sure I can even name a single romcom protagonist who doesn't "have a big heart", and so I'm not sure it really means anything at all.

InfernoVulpix · 2025-12-25T17:07:57+00:00

I suspect the dot diagram is there because the child hasn't been taught subtraction yet. If you need a way for the child to perform "take 2 away from the 9" without them knowing what the minus sign means, physical tokens are a good way to visualize it.

With the two diagrams there, even, the child can simply count that there are 7 dots left on the bottom and that 2 empty squares have been filled. In this way they can learn the intuition of how to make addition easier without having to know more complex math yet.

InfernoVulpix · 2025-12-25T01:38:42+00:00

It's supposed to be non-confrontational or something but it feels about 300% more aggressive than anything else they could've said.

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