Sorry for the lack of posts but I've been SUCKED into Nine Sols for the last few days. I beat Eigong and got the Shooting Star ending ten minutes ago(technically five but I spent the next five crying oh my god it was so good).
I could rave about the game forever but I wanted to focus on what finally let me win the game, and that's the phrase that stuck with me ever since it was said near the start:
"Overcome motion with stillness."
I ended up just putting on the hedgehog jade and focusing on mastering her parries. No sword, no arrows, minimum dodging, just parrying and talismans to activate the damage. I only actual hit her maybe four or five times each round.
It's a strategy that requires loads of patience, of stopping and watching so you know exactly when to react. And during those hours of trying and learning and retrying, I realized how much it applies to the game and its story.
The Solarians were always moving, reaching, growing. Striving for more more more. And in the end it destroyed them and almost destroyed humanity. Even the bad ending has Yi perpetuate this, endlessly searching for a non-existent solution for an already dead species.
But in the best path, the humans were saved by Yi, who was forced by his defeat to stop and watch and listen to the world he lived in and what he had done to it. And, in order to unlock the good ending at all, choose to continue doing so when he no longer has to.
When he confronted Eigong at the very beginning, he rushed in out of blind rage. No plan or idea. And he was cut down with absolute ease. So really, it makes sense that he beat her by turning the tables.
Now she's the one dashing all over the battlefield. The one who attacks without rest. The one so desperate to win that she's willing to put the entire universe at risk if it means the Solarians continue existing.
Yi won because he found something that mattered more than his own existance;