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

That's true on normal difficulty. I usually play through on Galactic, though I should really try to go through on Universal once.

The Pet skill makes up for most possible item needs. It's embarrassing how much I had to use the carrier pigeons to save my ass.

Yeah, Normal difficulty is mostly a cakewalk even if you don't abuse the skills and Item Creation. Galactic not so much, and Universe is basically Nightmare mode from Doom, sans the random spawning of monsters.

No, this game definitely has this. Like most older RPGs, it's just too obvious to be notable

Yeah, I suppose in a sense. I tend to associate games of Doom on Nightmare with me running out of ammo and being chased by hordes of Hell Knights that keep spawning as I run through levels.

I'm pretty sure they explained away the monsters on Expel as the Energy Stone and Sorcery Globe/[Quadratic Sphere] causing genetic mutations. The actual Expellian demons are from the demon world (name escapes me ATM), [and the Energy Nede monsters are a combo of horrifically powerful animals and creatures modified by the Ten Wise Men.]

Reasons I'm playing on regular difficulty

1. I don't hate myself

2. I'm already planning to fight the optional bosses (e.g. Iselia Queen etc.) and the unlimited form of the final boss, what more do you people want from me.

3. My save game with other difficulties unlocked was destroyed with my old computer (take from that what you will, bear in mind that I own a legal copy of the game though).

Oh, I'm not giving you crap. I'm just explaining why I usually take Noel along, which is to conserve Rena's TP and my recovery items when playing on Galactic or higher.

Chapter 2: Do Renadroids Dream of Electric Bishonen?


When we left off we were just about to leave Arlia village. Thus marking where the game starts being worthwhile. Rena continues to show remarkable optimism when it comes to Claude's capacity to fight, saying that she'll "Be OK, Mr. Claude here will be with me". (No, I'm not likely to present screencaps for individual dialogue, it's a pain in the ass to root through a couple hundred screenshots to find the one I'm looking for). After some more vaguely coherent dialoge to Rena's mother about how she has to say Goodbye before she can say "I'm back".

The Mayor explains that a letter of introduction from him will get us an audience with the King without any trouble. For some reason that never gets elaborated upon, Rena already knows the King leading me to believe that this king really doesn't do anything related to governing. Oh well, I'm sure meeting random subjects seemed important at some point.







A quick run through Salva shows little of interest, it does need to be mentioned though, I guess. People are all gossiping about Alen's case of the crazies and Rena's mysterious rescuer.







As we approach Cross it slowly turns to night, this is perhaps the only time in the game where this happens and it's really just a contrived excuse to get the player to use the inn. I've never been the sort to question a game's time changes but this is several different kinds of ridiculous given how many times I'll be travelling the continent in the space of a day.

Rena points out the exceedingly obvious fact that it's night, Claude attempts to beat her in this competition of who can unnecessarily verbalize the most thoughts with "No one's here...". Luckily, Rena happens to know an inn in this town that they can stay at until they "try the castle again tomorrow". Spare no mind to the fact that this would seem to imply that we had already tried going to the castle.









(those shots are just to give an idea of the lay of the land)

Showing that Rena knows way more people then she reasonably ought to, the woman working the inn recognizes Rena on sight. Immediately slipping into the terms "little Rena" and "Auntie Rachel" (as a side note, Westa and Rachel don't look a thing alike but it would seem that they may actually be sisters given later dialogue referring to Rena being her niece). Rachel asks if Claude is Rena's boyfriend which is met with unreasonable and unnecessary amounts of blushing, this blushing serves to make Rena look like she has some sort of horrific unnamed disease. Claude seems mildly offended at how emphatically she denies this assertion which makes Rena stop blushing for no real reason as (according to the dialogue) she evidently didn't here what he said.

Disturbing levels of convenience rear their ugly heads as it turns out that one of their best rooms is available and will be given to Claude and Rena, free of charge, Rachel claiming that she would do "anything for [her] favorite niece and her beau..." which leads to Rena screaming that Claude is "ABSOLUTELY NOT my boyfriend!!". This level of unwarranted anger towards such an innocuous comment would, considering that this game's story loves the JRPG cliches, lead one to one of two conclusions. A. Rena is covering up a not-so-hidden attraction to Claude or B. Claude killed her dog off-screen. Given that I'm basing these assumptions off of JRPG tropes, the only real option is A. but B. makes a lot more sense to me.

Rachel mentions that Dias was here a few weeks ago as she walks Claude and Rena to their room. This prompts little comment other then the fact that it isn't clear where he was going.



Nudge, Nudge, Say no more.



Claude asks who this "man named Flac" is. Rena says he used to live in Arlia but left because "something sad happened". I'm sure that we can all see the "TRAGIC BACKSTORY" just waiting in the wings. There will be death.

Claude ends this line of questioning and awkwardly tells Rena he's "enjoying traveling with her". Why he thinks she would mind hearing this is a mystery to me but he says it with much trepidation. I'm not even going to bother chronicling the stilted dialogue that follows, suffice it to say it's some of the most awkward stuff I've ever seen. It is worth noting that when they say good night Claude moves as thought to walk out of the room, which begs the question of where he's going. A mystery that will, sadly, remain unsolved. Rena's last thought as she goes to sleep is "Dias..." (So, clearly, the answer to the title question is, yes).

I can't help but think that Rachel expected something to happen, her first words to Rena upon her and Claude's return to the frond desk is asking how their "special night" at the hotel was. I'm not sure whether to be amused, or mildly creeped out. Rachel confirms my suspicions when she responds to Rena saying that she slept well with a pause, followed by "Ah... that's not what I was asking about..."



At the castle, Claude and Rena are penciled in for an audience without incident, leaving me to explore, this was awkward and dull. Nothing happened of true interest. Items were stolen, armory treasure chests were raided.



As we head into the audience chamber, we are greeted by another Man and Woman duo, I wish I could say these people showed up later as evil doppelgangers, but sadly, this is not the case, leaving this game disturbingly doppelganger free.

Claude manages to make an astounding breach of etiquette for which he has no excuse, failing to immediately bow for the king. The King is somehow immediately able to recognize Rena, there could be many explanations for this, but I'm going for the fact that everyone else is one of a handful of sprites that get repeated ad nauseum.

There is much exchanging of pleasentries in this scene, so I'll cut it down to the bare essentials.
Basically, Rena and Claude ask about the information King Cross has on the Sorcery Globe.



The king proves quick to volunteer information as Celine barges onto the screen. Sadly, the information he volunteers is basically "We don't know more then the basics". There's so little actually being conveyed by this scene other then the fact that the Kingdom of El is at war with an army of demons that this scene seems wholly unnecessary.

The king offers only two things of actual use, a passport and 600 fol. This is still better then nothing and will prove useful later. We are told to leave for El via a ship in the City of Clik.



As we head to leave town, we run into a fight between Heraldic Wizard and ????. This is a dispute over a... brown thing on the ground, specifically, over who's keeping it. Heraldic Wizard acuses ???? of trickery. Heraldic Wizard gets pissed and resorts to death threats... in a crowded public area... with lots of people watching them specifically... Heraldic Wizard would appear to be in over his head


Rena rushes in asking "Is that any way to behave?" seemingly ignoring the fact that a lesson on manners is unlikely to help Heraldic Wizard at this juncture. Seriously, she just said "where are your manners?". Heraldic Wizard's comeback seems like it might have lost something in translation as he shouts back "Get out of my way, you rodent!". He then threatens Rena, this causes ???? to respond by using magic to light him on fire. One can only question if being a wizard means never having to say you're sorry. Overall though, Heraldic Wizard just gets angry about his previous immolation and storms off.

As Rena and ???? talk, Claude gets annoyed at his lack of attention and fires off the non-sequitor "No place for me in this scenario". He's out of the spotlight for a few seconds and already he complains, he's almost as bad as Sally.

???? cops to her previous spying which weirdly leads to no questions about how lax castle security is. ???? Says she has some interesting information regarding their mission. Seemingly unable to differentiate the mission of "Sorcery Globe investigation" and "Treasure hunting that has nothing to do with anything". ???? proceeds to latch on to the tangential possibility of them finding something that maybe possibly has something to do with the Sorcery Globe. Claude objects, Rena agrees to it anyway. ???? finally gives her name as Celine Jules, but, since that name isn't as funny, she'll be renamed ???? as soon as possible.



TREASURE MAP AQUIRED! and with that, we put a close on this chapter.

NEXT TIME:



"Wait a minute, Three Eyes?"

And: Claude, Rena, and ???? explore Cross Cave.

So, a few notes, I went for a more establishing shot, followed by narration style. It's easier to manage for me. I apologize if this bugs anyone. My spelling and grammar probably haven't improved. I must emphasize that these are being made in my free time but usually that free time is cutting into what would normally be sleep time.

If anyone wants to suggest new names for characters, go right ahead, if not, I'll just end up using the names of TTers or whatever strikes my fancy when I feel like it.

Opera = Triclops?

Yeah, didn't you know?

No, I meant as a name.

I feel like a fool, perhaps.

Curses, beaten by my own indecisiveness. I was intending to do something involving Star Ocean: Blue Sphere for the mid-week update today, but I spent so much time debating how to go about it that by the time I decided, there wasn't enough time to put the plan into action. I'll give an overview of what the few internet sources (a.k.a. Wikipedia) I found could tell me.

Star Ocean: Blue Sphere is a sequel taking place 2 years after Star Ocean 2. It follows the Resident Evil 1 school of "yeah, the cannon ending doesn't actually exist" wherein, what actually happened is an optimal, but unachievable in game, outcome. Essentially, I'll explain more later but basically, it relies on all 12 recruitable characters being in the same party. Everyone gets trapped on a new planet and are forced to help the locals while finding a way out. Ironically, Claude and Rena are the last 2 characters to show up. Supposedly, the battle system is closer to a Tales game then anything else, which is fitting considering where Tri-Ace split off from.

My master plan for this is to do a few mini-LP style segments where I play the first few hours. This will be a pain though because the game was only released in Japan and thus, obviously, will be in Japanese. My Japanese isn't particularly good, so this'll be an interesting experience for all involved.

As a side note, was there something wrong with the last update or did people just not find anything to comment on (or perhaps both)? I realize that this seems to be endemic with LPs so I won't leave ya twistin' in the wind by not updating, but would you kindly just tell me if there was something wrong or if I'm just being paranoid?

Don't Panic.

I find this LP interesting but I don't really have anything to say.

I hope you aren't alone in that sentiment, I was paranoid that I had done something wrong.

I am a huge fan of SO2 and am definitely reading. Also, your mid-week update about the first steps to game-breaking was enlightening.

The beginning of this game is really boring, unfortunately. I just hope VP2 is a sign that tri-Ace has turned this corner, but I guess I get to find out in a couple weeks. Anyway, once you have a couple more characters and things actually feel like they're starting to move I imagine there'll be more to talk about.

You're doing fine. Sometimes people just won't respond. Keep track of the Views counter to keep yourself from freaking out over that sort of thing.

Seriously, though, I read (literally) all of the LP threads, and the volume of responses that your Let's Play got before it really got started is not a good gauge for how many replies you can expect once things get rolling.

I realized that, I just didn't expect a near complete stop. I was tracking the views counter though, probably should have kept it to myself, whatever.

This part of the game is pretty boring and I must've played through it three or four times before stopping shortly after. I'll probably catch up on what I missed in bigger chunks instead of following each update.
I'll definitely be paying closer attention when you get a little farther, though.

This is one of those frustrating LPs because it's a game I actually know and love and care about but (and I would like to emphasize through no fault of fanboymaster's) I can't see the images at work. Which means invariably I will only get to the thread once a week or so when I remember to check Gamespite on the weekends.

But I'm watching. Invariably!

CHAPTER 3: Cross Cave and Skill Sets

So, ????, Rena, and Claude are all headed off to Cross Cave, or so the plot says. Screw that, we need some character breaking, stat. We'll be heading pretty far out of the way. Don't worry, I swear, some of you might not fall asleep before its over, those that don't shall have their brains so filled with esoteric references that they'll immediately start petitioning for my execustion on the grounds of having commited crimes against humor. I plead guilty in advance.



AHA! After running halfway across the continent in the wrong direction (it was a very dumb and dumber moment, I felt like a moron, I don't want to talk about it, GET OFF MY BACK!) I finally reached the port of Herlie, this town isn't necessarily supposed to come into play until a few plot points later but let it never be thought that that was the point at all. I got the prize! Senibility 2! Containing the skill that must be invested in before all others for optimal skill point use. Perserverence. Aside from that, the trek yielded nothing of interest except the knowledge that bandits on Expel are even more pathetic than you could ever think possible.



As a side note, I am also on the road to being able to pickpocket. This is the key to some fun that will be had later, but first, I'll need a fair amount of the green stuff. Feel free to ponder the irony of needing money to steal.

One boring trip later



The entry into Cross Cave prompts little in the way of actual cut-scenes. This dungeon is something that I probably should hate, except that it finally separates us from the interminable slog of opening story sequences. For this reason, I have learned to see it as something marvelous, rather then something to pad out the length of the game and introduce ????.



Cross cave is home to many a treasure chest of modern looking construction. Either some game designer got lazy and decided he'd make his job easier by putting treasure chests in a cave instead of finding some more natural way of hiding items or we have staggering archealogical conclusions to come to grips with. I'd like to think it's the latter because then we might get Indiana Jones to somehow appear instead of Ernest, but this might also just be me sleep deprived mind making up crazy theories while my remaining brainpower is reserved for correcting the grievous typos that it's making (seriously, if this went unedited, it'd be illegible).



This is a strange image, mildly horrific in all its lo-res glory, we appear to be looking at a skeleton twice the size of every other character in the game next to a teddy bear. I'm really not sure what to make of this truly mortifying image. This entire dungeon is dotted with giant skeletons. Since they are all 2 to 3 times the size of every other character in the game, one can only assume that the skeletons represent a giant race that was either an evolutionary dead-end in a time where being tall was highly disadvantageous or, more morbidly still, the current people of Expel brutally wiped them out hundreds of years ago and nobody talks about it. As always, the implications are staggering either way.



We come to a room with a giant rock, its glowing in such a way as to indicate that anyone who touches it will become the Incredible Hulk, none of the characters take advantage of this, nor do they seem to see anything unusual about this giant glowing rock. Commenting on it as though this "boulder" deserves no special mention despite its luminescent qualities.

???? shows that she still believes the map, which states the treasure room is just beyond here. Claude questions whether it could be a fake, several anime-esque emotes are exchanged until ???? changes the subject by asking how Rena can cast healing magic. Rena says that she has no idea how or why, she just can. ???? claims that in the "heraldic" arts there is no healing magic. Claude acts as though he understands this and agrees, this confused me as much as I'm sure it does you, dear readers.

???? grows annoyed, she payed a seemingly large sum of money to get this map. Rena suggests looking for another path, Claude asks for a look at the map. he notices that there's something faint written in the corner! Perhaps a spell! Excitement!



This spell seems designed to make green rocks less remarkable. The rock loses its luster and a hole is blown in the wall. One can only question how the heraldic arts have such a specific spell but no way of healing wounds.

Noticing the path, Our heroes are now happy to continue into the unexplored depths of Cross Cave.



PLOT MCGUFFIN ACQUIRED! ???? comments that she can't read it and suggests taking it back to the village where she was born. An intriguing idea, however, in my quest to open chests, I stumble on an empty chest, immediately calling along some green gargoyle's. Luckily, these are hardly a challenge and they go down without much effort.



Upon returning to the entrance to the cave, ???? shows her amazing powers of observation, having never clued in on the fact that Claude and Rena were investigating the Sorcery Globe. Rena extends the invitation for ???? to come along with them, shocking both ???? and Claude. ???? decides to stay on because it wouldn't be a JRPG if she seemed to have any will of her own. With that, we can get off of this quest and back to the game.

NEXT CHAPTER: ONWARD, TO CLIK!

Sorry about the lackluster chapter, I've been a tad depressed lately and staying up to write this wasn't helping matters. I hope you'll forgive it's overall lack of polish. I'll try to make a second update ready for friday because this didn't really cover much.

The random and avoidable booby-trapped chest in Cross Cave is pretty much the only amusing thing about the place.

Even at that, Cross Cave is like an oasis of gameplay in the desert of crappy opening story segments.

I'm so so sorry. I really wanted to get the update done, but I've had a lot more on my plate lately. Most of my time has been taken up with thorough house cleaning and getting ready for my senior year of high school. I would have just said "screw it" and taken time out of my sleep schedule like I was before, but I have to be getting back into a school schedule and schooling doesn't go well when I'm in the habit of going to sleep at 3 a.m and waking up at 5:30.

TLR I'm really sorry, I didn't intend to miss an update, especially after last week's lackluster one. Please forgive me, I'll try to make up for it next week.

I used to own this game, but traded it in during the stupid period of my youth. Ironically enough, I never got farther than the Cross Cave section and so I'm dying to see what happens next.

I do remember the game being fun for a time, but I think I just enjoyed the fact that every inn and restaurant and shop had its own unique name.

But no worries, if housework and school is tying you down. I can wait for the update!