Kirby Super Star: Milky Way Wishes (Co-op) #08 -- Moon Half Full

Some might call it more of a moon half empty:
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Eternal Planet Halfmoon:

Well, this planet's neither half nor moon, and... the moon we see here is more of a crescent shape anyway, so... ... ... and what makes it so eternal?! (Probably something about it always staying dark, given the location, although the star of this system is apparently a bit of a brat and a wanderer... so does that mean Halfmoon's moon is someone other than THAT moon?

... ... ...I don't think we're expected to contemplate the particulars of the planetary systems around here quite so deeply.

The stage is pretty reasonable, all things considered... but it's also... ... ... fairly... chaotic? The first screen is your standard planetary entry room, albeit with no apparent floor.

Next up is a room with perpetual wind nudging you torward progress, not exactly an impediment, but a bit unsettling to not be in total control of your movements the whole way. Nothing to actually worry about missing, though.

There's a Warp Star segment that'll handle half of it, which curiously per the way fast transit seems to work in Kirby stages as advanced as in this specific sub-game, there doesn't seem to be any actual downside to using it. (This time, anyway.)

Next room is a gnarly intertwined network of minecarts... on... starways? I mean, as interconnected as they CAN get given the basic physics and game mechanics available, anyway. The real danger here is overlooking where you can divert from the scripted path and find a couple goodies.

We've also got an inviting Warp Star away from some impending dangerous-looking obstacles. As predicted, however... this time, there's a pretty compelling reason to travel it under your own power. I mean, if one extra drop in the bucket of your 1ups counts as such, I mean.

A fun double midboss encounter gives way to our final obstacle: a trippy windy ascent full of enemies! And sometimes there's also water! No, it doesn't need to make any rational sense! ...let's be real, this isn't even remotely the most bizarre setup for a Kirby stage environment, and they've been doing these for years even before this point.

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BOSS: Computer Virus

I don't think this one's necessarily meant to make any sense. It's just "Hey, we have bosses! Which one do we asset flip into being this stage's final challenge?" Which, given the expansive nature of the game's scope and economy of resources to gameplay ratio... is actually pretty strong. This game is a bit of a technical and player-generous marvel, after all.

And besides, this boss fight never made any traditional sense. It's all about the genre-bending intrusion of core conventions of a completely different kind of game. Neat! I definitely had no idea what any of this was at the time. Super Mario RPG was... that super weird game that I had no idea why it was even remotely compelling, much less that it was a gateway drug into a bigger, scarier, and vastly more numbers-heavy world.

Anyway, you'll hopefully notice that this is a harder variant of the encounter in that the FIRST enemy, the Witch, is the final enemy from the variant of the fight we'd seen already in Great Cave Offensive... whereas this time, we have two more new foes to add on, the Evil Knight and Red Dragon. Like the Witch and unlike the previous encounter's enemies, these two have increasingly dangerous, guard-penetrating, and non-turn-wasting potential actions. Oh, and a boatload of HP.

I'd say efficiency and economy of attacks is important... but mostly it's about patience and trying what works until the numbers go away.