A Sea of Constellations: Let's Play Star Ocean 2

Opera! Opera! She will turn you into a beehive! Then recruit Battle Suits, err, Ernest, and skip Noel.

Also if you haven't already chosen Celine I guess I vote for THUNDER BOOOOOLT! too.

I'm gonna have to vote for Opera as well, knowing nothing about the game other than glancing at the character art...

I'm going to go ahead and declare Opera the winner, sorry Ashton fans. This is probably more interesting to read anyway because Opera holds the distinction of being what the game generally bills as a hidden character. She's the only character in the game that the instruction manual doesn't make any reference to (along with her boyfriend, for obvious reasons). However, getting her can be a pain simply because it means following a chain of obscure private actions. I honestly don't understand how you're supposed to have known how to get her without a guide because by the time I get her, we'll probably have gone through half a dozen updates without much inkling of why I'm doing some of the things I'm doing.

The obvious follow-up question is whether or not to bother with Ernest, I usually don't, he's not really worth the trouble of fighting the optional bosses, but if you guys decide we need two three-eyed aliens, I'll bend to your will.

Chisato is not optional, by the way.

Chisato was never optional, if it comes down to that, Noel is getting left behind, no ifs, ands, or buts about it.

Good. Just making it clear. Heh.

Ernest is a stand in for mother fucking Indiana Jones. He's coming with the team and he's going to be AWESOME.

Ernest isn't a poor man's Indiana Jones, he's a drunken, homeless, penniless man's half-regretted last resort stand-in for Indiana Jones. Do not confuse the two good sir.

With that out of the way, given the tide of general opinion, he'll probably be coming along.

Ernest sucks, feel free to ditch him.

While Ernest is pretty bad, the only character I will be happy to NOT see used is Noel. I hated him so much, especially his battle quotes. "Shouldn't we run away?". No Noel, we are going to slaughter the cute little animals in front of your face, and you will like it dammit.

Yeah, Noel is also incredibly lame and is not allowed in the battle party ever if he is picked up. Wish he could be traded in for one of the more limited characters.

This is just making me hope that the possibility will exist in Second Evolution to ditch both Ernest and Noel and still have an 8 person party thanks to whatever characters they added.

Since the choice is coming down to: Ernest, Noel or, Incomplete party. We're probably going to see some of Ernest before the LP is done.

Honestly, I think I'd rather have an incomplete party than take along either of those chumps.

I just wish you could get Ashton and Opera at the same time, that's really the choice I have the hardest time with, as I like both of them a lot. I think the first time I played I got Opera, and the second time I got Ashton. Ended up liking Ashton a little better because of Opera's banshee scream, which I hope isn't in the remake. Damn, I might have to pick both remakes up...

Okay people, start tallying the votes, you've got a while yet to decide but still.

Incomplete Party: 1 (my vote)
Ernest: 0
Noel (shudder): 0

Though, come to think of it, an Action Replay or something might be the answer here. Ditch Ernest and add in one of the unavailable characters later on instead.

I won't complain!

Incomplete is my vote.

Take both Ernest AND Noel, then orchestrate it so they end up together forever in the epilogue.

They deserve each other.

Incomplete Party: 2
Ernest: 0
Noel: 0

Going forward, if you guys would just copy that and make the alteration to reflect your vote, that would be much easier for me. I hate to harp on the issue, but it's just easier this way.

Weren't you the one who first told me we had to bring Chisato, at this juncture, we can't fulfill both of these. Also, I'm no good at pairing characters for ending outside of the character I'm playing. I am good at gaming the system in such a way as to make it easy to get new endings though. It's all in writing books before doing second disc private actions

Get Earnest, and take his Battle Suits. If we're going to break the game let's go all out here.

You know... just because it's possible, I suggest changing Rena's name back and forth between Rena and Lena periodically to give the feel the game is really badly translated. ^_^

The amount of misinformation, slander and outright LIES amongst you all is absolutely staggering. If you don't like Ernest you deserve Noel. I hope he treats you to a Furry Convention.

Since regular updates are only once a week (I feel at this point that I should emphasize that this is because I want them to be consistent). I'll be trying to bring you an update every Thursday that, while not a story advancing update, will at least be interesting. This week, I'll be talking about the general path that all characters must take when gamebreaking in order to make them the best they can be as fast as possible. Expect that update, later today.

I'll note right now that some of these filler updates will have absolutely nothing to do with the gameplay, some of them will be bits of history, retrospectives on other Tri-Ace games, the series as a whole and individual games within (such as the obscure direct sequel to this game exclusive to the Game Boy Color, Star Ocean: Blue Sphere). Expect a tangential tie at best for some of these. I hope you guys will like them though because they'll be receiving a fair bit of my time and effort.

Just ducking in to signal my approval as one of the resident Tri-Ace fanboys. Keep going!

Also: Screw Ernest, and Noel can be used as your out of party heal bitch.

The Tri-Ace Related Mid-Week Extravaganza Episode 1:
Breaking A Character: The Beginnings

There aren't going to be screenshots in this because all of them would be of the same screen and you'll be seeing it in proper updates anyway.

As I mentioned in my previous post, every character has a certain path they need to take before proper breaking can occur. In order to follow down this path the player must purchase a couple of skill sets from various towns, these are primarily Sensibility 1, 2, and 3. The skills of most interest in these are, Patience, Perseverance, and Effort. Perseverance lowers the number of skill points required to raise skill levels. Effort lowers the amount of eperience required to gain levels. Patience isn't particularly useful for its innate increases (it increases a specific stat by 2x the level of the skill) but it is useful when paired with Effort and Perseverance because when put together they allow the specialty skill called practice.

A brief explanation, specialty skills are abilities gained from investing skill points in two or more related skills. Most of the time they are for item crafting. Things like writing, metal crafting, composing etc.

Practice is a specialty skill where the player willfully lowers the combat abilities of thier character but also receives massive boosts to the amount of experience obtained from battle. This makes level grinding infinitely easier and less time consuming. What this all adds up to, is that characters can gain more experience per battle, need less experience per level, and need to level up less to master other skills. This is particularly important for Super Specialty skills that are, essentially, specialty skills that the entire party has invested in. These allow for even more ludicrous breaking but won't be discussed in this update.

I hope this has helped give you guys an idea of what I'll be doing, it will also explain why I go to some places out of order, as I need to purchase the sensibility skill sets.

If you need more healing out of battle than Rena can provide, well then, as a wise man once said, "You're doing it wrong."

As another wise man once said, "Stop hording items."