While C Satsuki is generally considered the strongest Satsuki of the trio with her phenomenal normals, strong defensive options, and some of the grimiest setplay in the game, her extended pressure and frametrap game is somewhat middle of the pack compared to the rest of the cast.
Half moon makes up for this, trading Crescent's defensive options and meterless setplay for scarier pressure from unique moves like 5A6AA, a chargeable 5C that makes her okizeme heat safe, and her 22X series to pressure from a distance.
Out of the three moons FSatsuki is sort of a hybrid, Goldilocks character that bridges both of these polarizing moons, playing like a C Satsuki that decided to stop moping about her school crush and hit the gym.
Full Moon Satsuki combines Crescent's high damage looping setplay win condition, Half Moon's oppressive pressure game, and Full Moon’s plus frames and defensive mechanics to make a quirky jack-of-all trades version that can do all of the Satsuki Things well at the cost of some of the other moon’s strengths.
Full Moon takes C’s brutal okizeme game and brings it to another level. Unlike Crescent, F Moon's 623A anti-air hitgrab is untechable. In addition to this this change making 623A a strong head-invuln anti air option this gives F the potential to land a stray hit in neutral, half-health the enemy, and chuck them midscreen to put them into an unfair 4 way guessing game, without using any meter.
Because she can save meter and still get her looping setplay, F has the freedom to utilize EX moves more liberally outside of combos, like buffering 623C to snag opponents in neutral or using 22C in blockstrings for a safe braindead pressure reset. Opting for meterless routes and balancing your bar with 22C (and maybe a couple [5E]’s..) makes meter management on FSats a breeze.
Fsats rewards players with good meter management! When FSats reaches their ideal meter range she now gets to play a version of Satsuki that can opt to fish for 623C callouts, Initiative Heat and regain her missing health, or combo into Blood Heat and close out a round with her nearly guaranteed 6K dmg unblockable AAD setups. Some players have had success with this character off of this meter hoarding playstyle alone.
Her neutral is largely the same as Crescent's as well, however F-exclusive moves like 2B, 5B, 5C (and its BE version) and specials like her 236B hop and 22X series are disjointed and plus on block, granting her upgraded stagger/redash pressure with ambiguous resets. This puts her pressure is somewhat in the middle of the Satsuki lineup, just shy under H due to the moon's lack of rebeats.
There is a silver lining in her pressure however. Because Full can not rebeat, FSats can not accrue a rebeat penalty. This means that getting caught pressing during one of the 4+ frametraps in an FSats blockstring will always give a full unadulterated CH confirm. (Take for example her 5B > stagger 2B > 5B > 5[C] blockstring. Thats two back to back frametraps from 3 of her strongest CH starters with 5(C) leading to a potential 6K+ damage) She may be just a mid dispenser but FSats pressure can still be scary to contest.
Like C moon, F still has to make calculated, deliberate approaches in neutral to get in; the difference between the two is that when FSats gets in she can actually stay in.
Her plus on block, standing low 5A is solid but a strict downgrade compared CSats’ broke-tier anti air abare 5A. Crescent could pay this cost and still have be fine on defense because she has godlike 22X anti airs, and privileged mechanics like EX shield and C Moon heat to fall back on.
Without these, Full has to rely on her slower 5B and 5C normals and committal (albeit solid) options like 623X, j7.B, and rising j.A to protect her airspace. Her grounded 2/5D has worse special cancel options than a non-EX shield from CSats and her shield counter combos have about half as much damage as H.
Sure, unlike the other moons, F gets great damage and oki from her basic meterless routes. But even that still doesn't mean much when C’s ludicrously high meter gain! C builds so much meter that she can practically heat whenever she wants and at the low cost of a slap on the wrist can choose to end every combo with her 623C > wack ass mixup ender.
To rub it in further, at 100+ meter Crescent gets metered okizeme setups identical to Full but with MUCH higher overall damage from most starters!! And the combos are easier! This isnt even taking into account F's ludicrous execution!
F Satsuki’s combo structure is almost exactly the same as C’s except every one of her combos is literally twice as hard for seemingly no reason. FSats’ 623[A] > j.[C] link used at the start of almost EVERY route is a 1F window which you CAN and ABSOLUTELY WILL drop at the absolute worst possible moment. This can be plinked j.[C]~5E to increase the window to the CSats-Standard of two frames but this still adds a pretty substantial execution requirement to the character.
When you add in her trickier extensions like 2[C] > 5B > 5[C] > dl.623[B] and the cross-continental online netplay packet loss rodeo of MBAACC there's almost an element of RNG with FSats. Inconsistency is to be expected and prepared for. Every time you confirm into your BNB you run the chance of dropping j.[C] and going from 5k and oki to 2k and an air tech situation.