Video Game / LunarLux

Bella Grey (left) and Tetra (right), the protagonist and her sidekick in LunarLux.

LunarLux is an indie sci-fi action-adventure RPG made by CosmicNobab Games. The game is inspired by other RPG games like Mega Man Battle Network 4: Red Sun and Blue Moon and Undertale, primarily in its gameplay mechanics. The game was funded via a Kickstarter campaign that raised $52,669. Trailers: YouTube and Twitter.

The game takes place on Luna, the moon of an Earth-like planet named Terra. Terra was rendered uninhabitable due to a cataclysmic comet collision one thousand years ago. However, this comet has reappeared somehow, and now threatens Luna. You play as Bella Grey, a Lunar Warrior who battles across Luna to try and destroy the comet before it wipes out humanity. Bella is joined by Tetra, her robot sidekick, as they explore the moon, battle a mysterious monstrous threat known as the Murks, and uncover the secrets of a hidden conspiracy.

LunarLux released on September 25, 2023 on PC. A Nintendo Switch release is also planned. You can find its Steam page with a demo here and the official Twitter page here.

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This game provides examples of:

• Absurdly High Level Cap: Doing only mandatory battles would leave the party at around Character Level 55, but levels mainly give more Hit Points, so it's Equipment-Based Progression, and the level cap is 100:
  theLuigiguy: IIRC they just affect health, what active skills you can equip, and Lux Combo damage (and the damage of like 1 active skill)
  Active Skills are level gated so for example you need to be level 15 to buy some skills
  It usually isn't an issue, if you grind a bit then you'll never run into that
• Action Commands: Some skills, such as Gun Saber, have button prompts that allow for follow-up attacks and bonus damage if timed correctly.
• Action Mom: Bella's mother, Thea, was the previous Lunex General and was so skilled at combat that Saros, the current general, couldn't defeat her in a fair fight and had to trap her in the Phantom Realm.
• Actually Four Mooks: Rifts can hold more than 1 Murk.
• Always Accurate Attack: Some enemy attacks have no room for dodging, either by giving Bella only one panel to stand on or by targeting all available panels. The only way to avoid damage is to hold up the shield in time.
• Aliens Among Us: Inverted because the humans in this game were originally from Terra. In the Lux Ruins, the party realizes that the founders of each colony were actually survivors of the Ancients of Luna, who blended in with the refugees from Terra.
• Alliterative Family: Thea and Thomas, Bella's parents.
• Alliterative Name: When talking about the Terrible Taste Tester Tetra Tongue Twister when talking about coffee after learning about Celestia.
• Always Check Behind the Chair: There are many hidden pickup events for bytes and astrotech hiding in seemingly mundane objects. However, consumables and more limited items like skill boosters, health boosters, and shield boosters are represented with their own unique sprites or red antimatter clusters.
• And the Adventure Continues: In the ending, Saros is defeated and Bella takes his place as Lunex General. However, Lunex Force still needs to worry about Comet Coda, the Nemesis civilization, and creating an Anti Serum to restore anticores back into humans.
• Anti-Wastage Features: Trying to use Healing Potions at full HP requires going through a confirmation dialogue, and even then it will stop you:
  Tetra: HP is already full!
• Attack Reflector:
  • Some attacks, like Spectre's Reflect Orb, can be reflected with a shield, and this generates Lux meter for both the successful block and for damage to the enemy. Although, Reflected Reflect Orbs can't kill Specters, just send them to 1 HP at most.
  • The Shield chip causes a blocked hit to deal minor damage to the attacking enemy, even if they didn't use a reflectable attack.
• Beach Episode: The completed $20K stretch goal on the Kickstarter page promises a beach episode. It will be added as a post-launch update. There is also official art of many of the characters in a beach scene with the proper attire.
• Being Evil Sucks: According to the Murk Slayer, the Murks are in constant pain even as they attack humans. Unfortunately, he still slays them and takes their anticores. Worse yet, it turns out Murks were once humans who were experimented on by General Saros, but becoming a Murk means losing one's sanity and heightening one's negative emotions. However, the Murk Slayer hopes to find a way to change the anticores back into humans.
• Big Bad: The main antagonist and the one behind the Murks is General Saros, who kidnaps people in order to perform Murk serum experiments on them, all to find a way to transform humanity into antimatter beings to survive Comet Coda.
• Bishōnen Line: The better a certain stat of Murks is, the more humanoid they should look, as said in the Secret Lab, with Replia-s.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: General Saros presents himself as a benevolent hero dedicated to protecting the people of Luna. He's also surprisingly lenient towards Bella despite her sympathy towards the Murks. It turns out he's the one turning people into Murks for the sake of his antimatter experiments. He only tolerated Bella's dissent as a gambit to have her gain the trust of the Murk Slayer, giving Saros an opportunity to follow the two of them to the Murk Slayer's anticore collection.
• Black Market: In Silica Colony, there's a black market hidden in the mines, where the player can buy Upgrade Chips and rare ship parts. The merchants there are understandably suspicious that a Space Cop like Bella is willing to trade with them.
• Blade Lock: In the boss fight against the Murk Slayer, one of his attack patterns will have him and Bella clash blades. The player has to pass a button mashing sequence in order to push the Murk Slayer back and deal damage, otherwise Bella will take damage.
• Blocking Stops All Damage: Party members can hold up a shield in order to block damage, but each shield is a resource that must be replenished and there's a slight downtime between each use, meaning the player can't just spam it. The Holo/Energy Shield active skill restores one shield plus its level while the Protection support skill restores shields equal to the skill's level.
• Boring, but Practical: Gun Saber is the weakest of Bella's active skills, but it's also the cheapest and it fills the Lux meter faster than most of her other skills.
• Broken Pedestal: The Murk Slayer used to admire the Lunex Force, but currently distrusts them for being pawns of Saros, the true instigator of the Murk outbreaks and the Mad Scientist who experimented on him. The only Lunex officer he respects is the previous general, Thea Grey, since she protected him from Saros. He later opens up to Bella and joins her as the second party member. Towards the end of the game, he becomes more willing to work with other Lunex Warriors and ends up joining as the new commander to replace Vivia, making this a Rebuilt Pedestal.
• Bullet Hell: Enemies have Soul Attack patterns that place their target's soul in a black rectangle to dodge projectiles and other hazards. Unlike some other attack patterns, these use more analog movement rather than tile-based movement. However, the player can activate a shield if they can't dodge a projectile in time.
• Came Back Strong: Phantoms are formed from excess antimatter from slain Boss Murks and take the same form. They also accumulate enough antimatter from their surroundings to become even stronger than the original boss. These are analogous to the ghost bosses from Mega Man Battle Network and Megaman Starforce.
• Came Back Wrong: Subverted with Phantom Chronos. While the original Chronos wanted to negotiate with Bella, the Phantom formed from its remains is completely feral. However, the Phantom version seems to be a completely separate being that lacks the original's soul. In the endgame, Chronos's anticore speaks to Guardia and temporarily gains a body in order to help Bella defeat Saros/Chaos.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: General Saros doesn't make any kind of effort to kill Bella despite labeling her a wanted criminal and he later states that he expects his soldiers to fail to capture her. This is because he wants her to befriend the Murk Slayer and visit the latter's base, not knowing that Saros's drone is following her. Once Saros steals the Murk Slayer's anticores, he stops showing mercy to the party.
• Cap: Skills have limits to their levels,
  • Support Skills not allowing adding more Points once they hit Max Level, while Active skills say that they're at MAX level.
  • Photon Cannon only has 3 levels.
  • Astro Boost only having 5.
• Classified Information: Near the end of the game, some classified information about Archeo-Site-9 is given to the party.
• Comet of Doom: Comet Coda is a comet made of antimatter, and it pass through Terra a thousand years ago, rendering it uninhabitable. Now it's on a collision course with Luna to finish off whatever remains of humanity. In the finale, Saros reveals that the comet was caused by an evil civilization, Nemesis.
• Contractual Boss Immunity: Averted. Bosses can be inflicted with burn, drench, or stun. They can also be affected by skills with a small chance for instant death.
• Damage Reduction: The Armor Upgrade "reduces all battle damage taken by 25."
• Dark Is Evil: The Murks are typically dark-colored with bright, cybernetic-styled outlines. They are also feral antimatter beings who attack humans on instinct. Later, it's revealed that they were once humans, but their current forms amplify their negative emotions, and most of them are filled with rage towards Saros and Lunex Force for betraying their trust.
• Dark Is Not Evil:
  • The first Murk boss, Chronos, sacrifices its life to protect Bella from other Murks. This is because she's actually Thea Grey, who maintained some of her consciousness. When she's temporarily revived by Guardia, she's in full control of her Murk form and helps Bella defeat Saros's Murk form.
  • The secondary protagonist is Nickle the Murk Slayer, who is a human whose body emits antimatter, allowing him to use antimatter-based attacks and transform into a Murk-like humanoid. Although he starts as an antagonist, it turns out he's trying to save the people of Luna from Saros's Murk experiments.
• Death or Glory Attack: Overphase quadruples Nickle the Murk Slayer's damage for 3 turns, but cuts his current HP by 50% each turn. Failure to win within that duration will result in being heavily wounded unless sufficient healing is applied near the end, so it doesn't get cut down too much.
• Developer's Foresight: The capsule after the Regolithia Cafe can have its combination guessed open, and there's a message noting it. Also getting that message leads to another message right after, that says how many more tries it would've taken before it permanently locked.
• Discount Card: Bella can interact with citizens and perform sidequests to raise the affinity of an colony, which grants discounts at the colony's shops.
• Dumpster Dive: Bella can interact with trash cans in Regolithia over and over. Eventually, she can dig up a secret number to use at the Number Trader. However, trash cans in other colonies have their own separate events and dialogue and may or may not have treasure.
• Earth That Was: Comet Coda, an antimatter comet, rendered Terra desolate and uninhabitable. The same comet is back again one thousand years later to threaten humanity again by aiming for Terra's moon, Luna. However, Earth itself is a completely different planet from Terra in a faraway solar system, and the scientists in Lunex Space Station managed to find proof of Earth's existence, as Klaus in Mission Control says:
  Fascinating...! A couple of months ago, we came across an unknown interstellar spacecraft that contained a Golden Record.
  It took us a while to decode the entire thing, but we discovered that the Golden Record originated from a galaxy that is 2.5 million light years away from us.
  The Record contained images, music, sounds and greetings from a planet called 'Earth'.
  It took millions of years for this Record to reach us...
  We do not know if their civilization is still around, but there's always hope.
  We're making efforts to communicate with the Earthlings as we speak.
  They'll definitely be happy to know that other intelligence is out there in the Universe.
  Let's hope this goes well.
• Energy Absorption: The new Holo Shield absorbs kinetic energy, presumably instead of just dissipating it like older versions. After it's absorbed enough, the dome form implodes.
• Engineered Heroics: General Saros is considered a hero who is leading the fight against the Murks. It turns out he's the one turning people into Murks as part of his experiment to create the perfect antimatter transformation, and he has the Lunex Force hunt Murks both to reuse their anticores for additional research and to make himself look good.
• Fight Like a Card Player: Upon choosing an active skill to perform, the player must choose from a list of three support skills to activate, which randomly picks skills from a pool that the player designated. Not only are repeats allowed in the same list of three, the player must designated at least 10 skills for this pool, ensuring that they can't just skew the odds in their favor by having only a few skills in the pool. However, two upgrade chips reduce the requirement to 8 and raise the red limit to 5, respectively. This is supposed to be reminiscent of folder building in Mega Man Battle Network.
• Gameplay Grading: The player is given a battle rank after each fight based on their performance, though unlike Mega Man Battle Network, this is based solely on damage taken rather than time. Some sidequests require the player to increase their total amount of S-Ranks, but this can be done against any enemy.
• Gradual Regeneration: The X-Armor Combo gives Shield Regeneration of 1 per turn.
• Greater-Scope Villain: In the finale, Saros reveals that Comet Coda is actually caused by a mysterious civilization called Nemesis, and that Nemesis is also responsible for wiping out the Ancients. The threat of Nemesis is also partially the reason Saros wants to turn everyone into antimatter beings, since he believes they can seek refuge in the Phantom Realm instead of fighting a hopeless battle against something even the advanced Ancients couldn't stop.
• Guest-Star Party Member: In the first battle against multiple enemies, two nameless Lunex Soldiers will assist Bella. This causes the Lunex Soldier support skill to activate automatically after Bella's active skills. The demo originally had the damage set to 40, but was buffed to 100 in the full release, which is equivalent to the skill's damage when its level is maxed.
• Hacking Minigame: Tetra can hack into malfunctioning networks to assist Bella during missions. Hacking segments play out in a retro 8-bit environment where Tetra needs to solve puzzles, dodge stage hazards, and bust viruses to reach the goal.
• Healing Checkpoint: Kyrogates heal when interacted with and are the save points.
• Heart of Happiness: Colony Affinity, a.k.a how much people of a Colony like Bella, is marked by heart symbols that fill in for each level of Affinity.
• Heel–Face Turn: In the epilogue, if the player visits prison cell 18, they learn Vivia escaped, but she deactivated her servers so that Thomas can look for any data that might help in creating an Anti Serum.
• He Knows Too Much: Anyone who tries to work with Saros to be spared from his Murk experiments gets betrayed anyways, since he doesn't want to risk any loose ends. The only reason he doesn't immediately kill Nickle the Murk Slayer is because he wants to find the latter's anticore stash first. Once Bella and Nickle reveal the truth of the Murks to the Lunex Space Station, Saros hacks into the space station and tries to crash it into Luna's astro barrier.
• Ineffectual Loner: Although the Murk Slayer is justified in opposing Saros, he refuses to explain his motives to anyone else or accept Bella's attempts at negotiation at first. This is because anyone he teamed up with in the past was captured by Saros and transformed into Murks, making him scared to put any more potential allies at risk. He also has a deep distrust towards Lunex Force since he doesn't know which officers are directly working for Saros. He later admits that he can't beat Saros by himself and teams up with Bella and the Lunex Space Station crew.
• Interface Spoiler: There are several hints in the UI indicating that there's a second party member, who turns out to be Nickle, the Murk Slayer.
  • In the save/load screen, each file has two bullet points, with the first one having Bella's name.
  • The status bar on the bottom of the screen looks like it's divided symmetrically, yet Bella's status only takes up half of it.
  • The Elixir item description states it heals 35 SP to all party members.
  • The Sour Candy item and the Meter Boost support skill both refer to the Anti Meter, but Bella only has a Lux Meter. This is because Nickle uses the Anti Meter to activate his Phase Form.
  • There are also Revive items, which wouldn't make sense for a party of one either.
• I Work Alone: The Murk Slayer insists on working alone to collect anticores, even after Bella offers to help him, though he eventually relents. This is because he once had friends to help him oppose General Saros, but Saros captured them all and transformed them into Murks. As a result, the Murk Slayer fears that recruiting more people will lead to him losing even more friends to Saros's experiments.
• Jet Pack: Jet Suits allow their users to fly by examining Jet Pads. However, the user needs authorization from the law and a functioning Jet Chip.
• Kick the Dog: In the finale, Saros offers to return Thomas in exchange for Nickle's anticores. When Nickle agrees, Saros reveals that he already stole the anticores and that he never had any intention of doing a hostage trade. He just wanted to savor the party's anguish. Later, he gloats about trapping Thea Grey in the Phantom Realm and leaving her for dead in front of her family.
• Kill Enemies to Open: The virus areas of the Sewer Network need the viruses defeated before Tetra can leave.
• Klingon Promotion: The position of Lunex General was previously held by Thea Grey, but Saros took the position after trapping her in the Phantom Realm. In the finale, Bella kills Saros's Murk form and takes over as the new Lunex General.
• Knight Templar: General Saros believes that humanity's only chance at survival is to become antimatter beings and live in the Phantom Realm, where they'll be safe from Comet Coda and Nemesis. Unfortunately, this means testing the Murk Serum on people and transforming them into feral and anguished Murks due to the serum being incomplete, but he writes all of these sacrifices off as necessary.
• Life Drain: The Drain Claw Active Skill:
  Drain enemy HP and heal!
• Light Is Good:
  • While all Lunex Warriors can use Lux Combos, Bella has a particularly strong affinity with Lux due to being a descendant of the Ancients. This allows her to use Lux to read the emotions of Murks and wield the Relic Sword.
  • Although Chronos is an example of Dark Is Not Evil due to being a Murk, it turns out she can still use her Lux abilities that she had in her human life as Thea Grey. She uses this to temporarily transform into a blue glowing form resembling her human self.
• Limit Break: Bella can attack with a Lux Combo after filling up her Lux Meter in battle. This allows her to stack three active skills together to unleash a powerful attack, similarly to Program Advances in the Mega Man Battle Network series. Unlike regular skills, Lux Combos partially scale off her level.
• Manipulative Bastard: Despite their opposing views, General Saros doesn't force Bella to hunt for anticores and seemingly respects her resolve. However, he's only encouraging her to do what she thinks is right because he knows she'll inevitably team up with Nickle the Murk Slayer, giving him an opportunity to follow the two to Nickle's anticore collection.
• Mercy Kill: The Murks are in a constantly pained state, which is why the Murk Slayer wants to slay them all. He later explains that the Murks were once humans and that the ones that don't drop anticores had their souls shattered during their transformation, meaning killing them is the only way to save them from their suffering. The ones that drop anticores have their souls intact, and the Murk Slayer keeps the cores in his hideout in the hopes that he can find a way to restore their humanity.
• Meta Power Up: Lucky Events multiply the next item pickup by 2.
• Missing Mom: The introductory cutscene has Bella speaking to her late mother while standing in front of a tall tombstone. It turns out her mother discovered Saros's Murk experiments and tried to shut them down, but Saros trapped her in the Phantom Realm. In order to survive, she had to take the Murk Serum and transform into the boss Murk, Chronos. She's reduced to her anticore form after protecting Bella from a bunch of Moleculoids, but temporarily regains her Murk form to save Bella again in the ending.
• Mix-and-Match Weapon: Bella wields a Gun Saber, which allows her to slash the enemy or shoot them with a Photon Cannon.
• My Name Is ???: Digit is first called ??? and his name is only given because Tetra can translate from binary.
• Mysterious Stranger: The Murk Slayer is a masked vigilante who opposes the Lunex Force and refuses to explain why.
• Not Always Evil: The Boss Murk, Chronos, tries to negotiate with Bella, showing that not all Murks are feral. Unfortunately, negotiations break down and the boss battle happens anyways. After the fight, Chronos says the word "protect" in human language and dies protecting Bella from a large group of Murks.
• Notice This: Ouro's missing notes are marked by a sparkle on the ground that grows then shrinks.
• Our Souls Are Different: When reading "The Power of Lux" in the science room of Lunex:
  Science has confirmed the existence of the soul, now known as "Lux".
  In simple terms, Lux is soul energy.
  Despite Lux being a relatively new field of research, we've made a few discoveries.
  Lux is tied strongly to feelings, emotions, willpower, and instinct.
  Some individuals can have stronger Lux than others.
  My team has theorized that in rare cases, Lux can possibly be harnessed and manipulated.
• Permanently Missable Content: When opening combination lock chests, failing too many times will cause the chest to be permanently locked. This is to discourage brute force guessing and encourage looking for clues.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Tetra, a small robot, has a red support skill does 50 damage to the enemy team, but a quest can be completed to upgrade her damage to 200, which is more than most single-target skills and renders many other support skills redundant. In Chapter 4, it's shown that she's strong enough to carry Nickle the Murk Slayer while flying at the same speed as a Jet Suit.
• Playing with Fire: A description of Moleculoids calls their ability Fire Manipulation.
• Plot Tunnel: After setting off the alarms in the Military Base, Bella is ushered into new Sectors while unable to revisit older ones, until a new ship is acquired.
• Precursors: The original inhabitants of Luna are known as the Ancients, but their civilization was destroyed by the Nemesis civilization. Some of their members survived and founded the colonies alongside the Terra refugees. Additionally, Thea and Bella Grey are descendants of the Ancients, giving them the ability to use their Lux to sense the emotions of other people's souls.
• Pre-existing Encounters: Enemy encounters appear as portals that Bella can run into, which don't chase the player like most other examples. Grey portals always spawn EX versions of previous foes.
• Rare Candy: SoulSavers increase the eater's level by 1.
• Reduced Mana Cost: Consecutive uses of Vortex reduce its SP cost by 10 down to a minimum of 20.
• Redemption Promotion: The Murk Slayer as a boss has four attack patterns, but as a playable character, he has those four attacks along with many other skills. He also benefits from all the Upgrade Chips the player has equipped and can use any support skill that isn't specifically tied to Bella's weapon or Lunex Force. Finally, he becomes more willing to use his Phase Form to give him three turns of double damage.
• Relationship Values: Talking to individuals in a region and performing sidequests raises your affinity level with said region, which then grants discounts at the local shops.
• Respawning Enemies: Rifts respawn when the area is reentered or a save in the area is reloaded.
• Robot Buddy: Tetra (a floating, red robot) is Bella's trusty robot sidekick.
• Shout-Out:
  • Several posters throughout Lunar reference anime and videogames, such as Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, Mega Man Battle Network, Megaman Starforce, and others, with a lot being in Patch's room.
  • Undertale:
    • The calendar poster in Regolithia Resident Unit - 001:
      The calendar art features a pure black background with a pixel heart.
      It's captioned: 'Determination'.
    • The Bullet Hell sections are modeled pretty closely after the game, right down the heart-shaped player icon.
  • The shop owners are named after characters from Totally Spies! and even resemble their appearances. Their fourth teammate Britney is the Astro Zone shopkeeper. And as seen and heard in Copernicus, Mandy is Sam's daughter.
  • The Lunex BBS has Pokémon references, with the Moomoo Milk topic started by Whitney and responded to by Morty.
  • One Piece: "An anime called 'Three Piece' is currently playing on [Dycee's] TV."
  • The Simpsons: The Loot Area with Ancient tablets has Homer:
    Tetra: So, what's your job?
    Homer: I uh...
    I'm in charge of bringing the donuts! D'oh!
  • Bella's Astral Kick active skill works a lot like a Rider Kick.
  • The Military Base's Historical Archives has some scifi books inside, marked as Sci-Fi, not history, like Dune and The Martian.
• Super Mode: Phase Mode is a transformation used by Nickle the Murk Slayer by using up a full Anti Meter. In this form, all skill damage is doubled and attacks that deal less than 50 damage are zeroed. For him. In the finale, the Double-Edged Buff "Overphase" is acquired, which eats 50% HP per turn for ignoring SP cost, and quadrupling damage instead of just doubling it.
• Superpowerful Genetics: Bella and her mother Thea are descended from the Ancients of Luna, giving them the ability to control Lux and sense the emotions of Murks.
• Sweet Tooth: Bella's favorite food is cheesecake, and in Chapter 4, she gets Nickle the Murk Slayer hooked on them too. At the beginning of the game, she orders three cheesecake bars at a cafe with no hesitation, although, she's saving the other two for later once she eats her first, much to the awe of her robot sidekick Tetra. If the player completes the cheesecake quest, Bella will gain the Cheesecake Bomb skill.
• Timed Mission:
  • One of the titles requires the player to find the CrossCode cameo, Emilienator, before the game time reaches a certain threshold. This essentially means speedrunning the game up to a certain point in Chapter 4.
  • During the first bandit sidequest, the bandits set their ship to explode in 10 turns. In the second bandit quest, the bandits reduce the duration to 5 turns. Failure to defeat the bandit team in time results in a game over.
• Throwing Your Sword Always Works: Bella's Relic Sword active skill has her throw the sword at the enemy, much like the boss Guardia does.
• Too Dumb to Live: After the first phase of the Final Boss, Saros revealed that the Murk Serum he used on himself has 99% resonance, which he thought was enough to control his powers. He ends up getting screwed by that last 1% when he loses control of his powers and becomes a feral boss Murk, Chaos.
• Translator Collar: The Universal Translator is a device that allows the user to communicate in and understand different languages. However, it doesn't cover the language that Murks use.
• Vigilante Man: There are rumors of a powerful warrior, the Murk Slayer, who hunts Murks despite not being affiliated with or authorized by the Lunex Force. Although he doesn't appear to be causing problems for civilians, the Force still wants to arrest him because he's taking the anticores from the Murks, which scientists need to research. He doesn't trust the Lunex Force, so he refuses to give up the anticores or even explain his motives.
• Villain Respect: Downplayed with General Saros, who has both admiration for the Grey family and contempt for them. He respects Thomas and Thea for being brilliant scientists and states that Thomas inspired him to become one too. He also admits that Thea is the superior fighter between the two of them. As for Bella, he admits that she has a lot of resolve and that she can get people to open up to her. However, he also considers them all too soft to appreciate his insane plans to forcibly evolve humanity into antimatter beings and states that they're always thorns in his side.
• Was Once a Man: In Chapter 4, Nickle reveals that General Saros forcibly transforms people into Murks for the sake of his antimatter experiments.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Downplayed. The main antagonist, General Saros, wants to force all humans to transform into antimatter beings, both to survive their resource depletion and to survive against the mysterious civilization Nemesis. However, it's implied that part of his reason for doing so is because he's projecting his own fear of death onto everyone else, showing that he's Secretly Selfish. Despite that, he does use his last moments of sanity to warn the party about Nemesis and to state that it's up to Bella to save humanity, showing that at least some of his intentions are genuine.
• Wolfpack Boss: In the second story-mandated visit to Oceanus, the player has to face Raine, Melody, and Zara. Raine has the same stats as when she was a sidequest boss while the other two have similar levels of damage and HP. Fortunately, Bella has Nickle as a party member this time to even the odds.
• World's Best Warrior: General Saros is the leader and strongest member of the Lunex Force, and his first boss fight is not meant to be won, since he has endgame-tier HP and takes no damage from anything except Lux Combos. However, he actually lost a duel to the previous Lunex General, Thea Grey, who was truly the greatest warrior of her time.
• Vague Stat Values: The Experience Meter doesn't say how many Experience Points are inside, and the amount of experience given per Murk is only known by looking at the Database, so calculation is hard.

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