It's not JUST the axe that's the issue (which, btw, a battle-axe is NOT a logical item to use for chopping down a tree. In fact it's very BAD for that purpose). There's also the fact that it's never implied the tree can even be affected in any way AT ALL, nor that there's even an area beyond the current screen which you need to access to reach the Gulon.
There's no "You think you can make out solid ground on the other side of the water," or "This tree is old/partially cut and it wouldn't take much more to make it fall," or anything else (hell, you can CLIMB the thing just like almost every other freestanding tree in the game so it's certainly quite solid). The only descriptive text you get about the area is that you feel like there's something in the swamp, and dialog with a character elsewhere that says it's where you can find the Gulon.
Edited by 68.191.199.194
I appreciate there's a trope here, albeit a different one. "A battle axe is not a tree chopping axe" falls under Artistic License Weaponry. "One tree can be chopped down but others cannot" sounds like a common video game trope, but I don't think we have a page for that (something like Selective Ability or Selective Tool perhaps, this could be taken to YKTTW). "A puzzle with no hint" is probably something like Surprise Difficulty, or That One Puzzle. There's lots of subtly different tropes here, after all :) Moon Logic is for needlessly-complicated solutions like "put a banana on a metronome to hypnotize a piano-playing monkey, then pick it up, then use its arms to wrench open a pump station".
Rhetorical, eh? ... Eight!
An editor has gotten the idea that chopping down a tree with an axe is an example of Moon Logic Puzzle, because there are other trees in the game that cannot be chopped down. While an interesting idea, this clearly fits neither the description nor the other examples of Moon Logic Puzzle; said trope is not for "a puzzle that someone had trouble with", but rather for puzzles that have obscure, needlessly convoluted, or pun-based solutions. Clearly, using an axe on a tree is none of that, and the fact that an eight-line justification is needed to argue why it might fit this trope should be a good indication that it doesn't. There's possibly some other trope for this, but it clearly isn't moon logic.
Rhetorical, eh? ... Eight! Hide / Show Replies