Just What is an Edge Fencer, Anyway? Let's Play Summon Night Swordcraft Story 2!

Really gettin that devilin' in.


This is a complete and total lie because I could have easily just turned around as soon as Lynn joined up and still completed the objectives of the day.


Well considering that Goura hasn't actually done anything yet, yes, Tatiana is a greater threat.


Aww, I was hoping to see a fight break out.


Haha, everyone's screwed. See, she's more of a threat than Goura!


Celebrate with her famous spicy chocolate meatloaf surprise, right?


And Blaire is obviously delirious with fever.


That's our Dinah! (And cue laugh track, fade to black, and CUT!)


Up next: Night! And night means Stalking Time!Walking Time!

Aera's always so clever. And by that I mean to make fun of her intelligence yet again.


Good idea! I'm sure you really want to take a walk, and this isn't a gameplay contrivance! Anyway, let's see what Gabe's up to.


Man, that wasn't even the biggest waste of time today. Did you forget about Aqua Element or something?


They kind of avoided the issue, but how long did Byron and Sarin know each other before we met them? She lives in that cave, and he went there to look for treasure, but it really seemed like they knew each other longer than just one day.


Home is where the heart is, and all that jazz? Reminds me of Pratty & Sugar.


Sure, not enough to get married. Well, that leaves more room for Lynn to snap up Aera, so I can't complain.


Man what is he worried about, Aera is like the easiest person to get along with in the whole game. I mean, Ryouga's plan will get her killed, and she's still all "if only we could talk it out " about it.

This really was quite a busy day, wasn't it?


Sexiness is the most important thing ever! More than skill, or pluck, or friendship! Oh wait this is a JRPG. NEVERMIND.


And they never got around to subverting that "attractive people deserve to win" bit. Except it'd be kinda hard, because everyone in the game is attractive, just like in movies.


Those clouds and rings are very flattering! But we should still try to get that body of yours back.


OBJECTION! This evidence clearly shows you being called "cute" to your face! By Lynn, no less!


Man you guys are both idiots.


Haha, you said it, Borgrim!

Wow, what is up with Dinah today? She wastes no time in finding faults.


That's easy to say when you don't have to put your money where your mouth is.


Aera's gonna have to remind somebody who's in charge here. (Except she's a doormat, so it's not her)


Thanks for the advice, Dr. Dinah.


Whew, that was close. She almost complimented Aera.


Yeah, and who was it that was dumb enough to believe the lie? Since you believed it, you wouldn't have gotten the sword without the stone. Therefore, Dinah is right. QED.


Nothing like a nice relaxing walk before bed, right Aera?

Okay, now I have to wonder. Did they seriously intend for every female in the game to be bisexual, or were the writers just excessively lazy in making two stories, so they just finished Edgar's, went "screw it", and ported it almost wholesale over to Aera's story?

I like to think it was the other way around.

Pretty sure it's the second one. They did the same thing in the first game, too. The amusing result is that none of the boys have any interest in Aera (or Pratty), but most of the girls do. Of course, I'm also playing it up any chance I get...


To be fair, you're twelve. Try hitting puberty first.


Man, Aera just keeps hurting Tatiana's feelings. She's a bad big sister.


Is she... pouting?


But you weren't doing the sexy dance that I forgot to point out back at the Aqua Element! (One hand behind your head, one on your hip, and wiggle while a heart pops out of your head).


Aera, haven't you noticed? Everyone's gay for you!


And once again Tatiana's angry at Aera. Good job! I'm still waiting for the twist where we defeat Ryouga and Tatiana takes up the mantle of villain and finishes unleashing Goura to get revenge on us.

Look forward to the spinoff series, Aera and Lynn's Sexy Beach Adventures!


Ouch. As annoying as Aqua Elemental and fetch questing for Sarin were, we definitely were better off than he was.


Well, we have enough villains running around, so that's good.


We don't need more villains, but we could use more reasonable people. Too bad.


Man, talking about Toumei is boring. Let's go back to the sexy.


Yes, just like that!


See, no interest whatever. This whole family seems to be based on the idea of making fun of younger sisters.

Wait, Aera's the older one? All this time I thought it was the other way around. I can't be the only person who thinks Tatiana looks older than Babyface Aera there.

Yeah. You can see in the pics that her sprite is about a half-head shorter than Aera, Dinah, Orin, et. al. She's a little bigger than Rocky, Kara, and the other children.

Though Aera does look younger than I she's supposed to be. I think the manual specifies that she's 15.

"Help me, Obi-wan Lynobi, your sexiness is my only hope!"


She certainly is greatly amused! I'm suddenly reminded of Persona 4's Yukiko.


Well, maybe a little. Considering how hard the Aqua Element fell for her, it probably would have easier on us if she'd dialed it back a bit.


Now there's no way that line's the same in an Edgar playthrough. ...Right?


Let's dress her up in Dinah's getup!


Unfortunately, Lynn has a tendency to not follow through on her promises . At least we've got the whole rest of the game to go before our dreams are shattered.

I like to imagine that once Aera began to get genuinely angry with Dinah, Devil Dinah freaked out and hid behind the angel persona, leaving Angel Dinah to deal with it and calm Aera down. Then, once it seemed safe, Dinah-D shoved Dinah-A to the side and gleefully re-emerged.

Also, if Dinah had tried to be sexy, we would've been able to see the sexy attempts from both! I imagine Dinah-D's would've had an amateur-dominatrix flavor, and Dinah-A's would've been... a mildly unsettling moe pleading.

Ah, the morning sun! Well, afternoon sun. Aera slept in until noon because she's lazy.


Let the betting begin! Which elemental dungeon will we be exploring today?


The joke's on her, because today we fight the giantest monster of all: man.


What? Dinah, you make her say it every morning! How could you not be expecting it?


In order to reproduce the proper experience, please view this image while shaking your monitor as though it were an etch-a-sketch.


Well that's just great. You guys took too long, and now he's gotten free and everyone's gonna die. I blame Aqua Element and Sarin for wasting so much of our time yesterday.


Well, if we're all gonna die, we may as well do the whole "hero" thing and go out swinging.


Except that “the whole hero thing" in this game means a lot of reading text boxes. Have I complained about how chatty this game is recently? I'll just summarize this conversation: Orin went to Goura's Gate, Blaire went back to bed, Tatiana went to the center of the room to stand there and wait for Aera to come upstairs so she could tell her all that.


We may as well let her. Goura's probably still sealed, or there'd be more screaming. Possibly also wailing. Maybe even a side of teeth-gnashing.


I'll tell you what's going on: daily sidequests!


OH HELL YES!

Eh, I don't feel like it. I'll make Dinah do it.


Aqua Tornado's not quite enough these days, which is annoying because Splash takes longer to cast and is harder to aim.


By the way, Rampage Rabbit learned to eat a carrot to heal itself. This is annoying!


Thanks to that I actually run out of spells and have to finish him off with my own two hands, like some sort of plebian.


But hey, an actually decent reward today!


And since we're nearby anyway, we go ahead and check out the Gate.


Wow, that was colossally ill-advised.


I bet he's just saying that so we don't kick his ass.


Time for the masonry minigame!

Goura's a wasp?


It was clearly the mating call of the red-eyed tufted warbler.


Guys, I'm telling you. Totally the red-eyed tufter warbler.


No! Warbler!


Well fine, but when he turns out to be completely fine I'm gonna want some help searching the trees for warblers.


Fine, fine. We're going! (After we do more sidequests)


Man how could this even be her fault? You were with her all morning and she didn't even leave the forge!


Oh for heaven's sake. Another interruption?


Yeah, sure, whatever. And while we're at it we'll comb every inch of the forest to make sure that every summon creature within a 10-mile radius has some tea and biscuits to enjoy.

Looks like Aera finally found the cohones to try and rein Dinah in a bit.


This is actually part of the daily sidequestin', as we'll see in a bit.


Capitalism, ho!


Epileptic trees!


Yes, that's a Ferris Bueller reference.


One more medal and we win a prize!


I'm pretty sure that's the secret move on the Alucard Sword in SotN. Well, whatever, another Diffusion Device for us!

Surprise! This is how we start the trading sidequest for today!


It goes to the girl next to Kid Who Loses His Thing, in exchange for another useless Diary.


And slipped secretly into the fishing prize list is a new material that you can only get from fishing: Anti-Demon Ore!


On the way to Borgrim's room Dinah hits a new and learns Hail Shower, which hits all enemies on the battlefield! We retire Aqua Tornado and slot it up instead.


JESUS CHRIST Eva 01 has gone berserk!


How the heck are we going to stop a ten-story-tall, 100-ton behemoth?


Well this is his fault in the first place, the lesat he can do is help clean up his own mess. Also, the more people we can put between Possessed Borgrim and ourselves, the better.

Ah, crap. It's Gedharm again. I was kinda hoping the writers had just forgotten about him.


It's not apparent at all what he does to Borgrim here. Maybe he made a rude gesture? Insulted Borgrim's mother?


But Borgrim, somehow without moving an inch, causes the screen to shake and rocks to fall, almost killing Aera.


He graduated from the Lubert School of Being Totally Evil with a master's in puppy-kicking. That's just the sort of villian he is.


She's talking about rocks fall everyone dies.


Yes. Just like that.


Action! Suspense! Anticlimax!


Maybe we can get Lynn to ask him sexily?


Can you guys guess where this is going?

Honestly, I'm kinda surprised he didn't spend all of yesterday in the Ruined Factory tinkering with it.


Since we're talking about machines, of course we need to bust out the running joke again. Note that I've already edited out two instances already, and we're still just starting.


And poor Nina is left to watch the fort. Well, considering she's the only one immune to falling rock damage, it's probably for the best.

By the way, wasn't Aera eager to have everyone escape from the angry giant and his falling rocks like ten minutes ago?


There we go. Escape, go!


And then rocks fell everyone died! (Disclaimer: may not have actually happened)


Sure, he can't leave the ruins until the repairs are finished, or Goura will get loose. What a convenient excuse!


Fun fact: you can actually see Orin's ears perk up when she says that. (Ok no you can't, there's no special sprite for it. But there should be!)

And then his head explodes.


Great, more babysitting.



To be fair, most twelve year old girls aren't very good at heavy manual labor.


And there they go again. That's like six times now.


Geez, are we calling roll here? Do we really need to account for every character in the game?


And those two spend an awful lot of time alone in the house... You don't think Lynn is cheating on Aera...?


Hey, leave Aera out of this! This is between you two!


Well, it’s better than nothing you say meaning anything.


And everyone splits up to take care of their assigned business. Leaving no one to actually fix the ruins except a decrepit old man.

That seems like a good place to stop this update. Next time: GUNVALD, which is totally not a GUNDAM at all why would ever think the two have anything in common.

I would not be able to just stand there having a conversation with that giant demonic robot head grinning and staring at me. Also, Toumei feels like a Rumiko Takahashi character. Also, good job going for a Dinah-only win against the rabbit. I remember trying to do similar things myself. XD

Wow, you mean I'm not getting stopped by the cutscene brigade for once?


Two things:
1. Of course Orin's registered, he came to the Ruined Factory after Aera fell in the hole, remember?
2. While Xeride was in there hacking back then, why wouldn't he have added Gabe to the list too?


Good idea!


Looks like they're doing just fine.

Wait, what do you mean these aren't the people we're supposed to be checking on?


While I'm here in the Subterrean Bay, I farm up a few Vortex Crab Claws for kicks, and because we're going to need to raise our Craftknight Rank again soon.


And this is Hail Shower. It currently does 1560 damage to all enemies. In comparison, Splash does about 100/hit and hits 5 times.

Anyway, we should get on with the actual plot.


Of course, how stupid would she have to be to fall in the same ho--


God dammit Aera.


Sorry to drop in on you suddenly.


YOU WERE ALREADY REGISTERED. Now I like to think that Bruno's database has Orin and Tatiana listed twice. Also while I'm liking to think things, I bet Xeride couldn't resist trolling Bruno a bit and put in some joke entries like Genghis Khan and Dracula.


Gee, thanks. We'll just take our Edge Fencerness and sit in the corner then.


Yeesh. Where'd Tatiana learn to talk like that?


Uh... that wasn't.... eh, nevermind.


It's like Dinah is having a different conversation than everyone else.


I didn't even know his GB could talk.

And there's "Aera is incompetent at machinery" joke #26.


Not Gundam. GUNVALD!


Man, if Xeride can make the robots here do what he wants, he should just raise an army.


...Ask like a sexy woman, that is.


Oh. I get it. It's the midboss for today.


Well maybe if you'd deign to help out in other ways, like helping out with Aqua Element, you'd have some variety in your life.

So now we can go through the door that was locked before!


Many of the foes from elsewhere in the factory return, but they're accompanied by a few new friends. Although here we see why Gedharm could summon multiple little tanks in a row; they come in sets of four!


And here's this day's common material. Note also that Elebolts appear down here too, if we want more Fulgur Horns.


This is literally the same text we saw just before reaching the Daemon Edge.


And wanton destruction is the answer as usual.


These Titanpers are actually pretty dangerous if you let them get their attacks off. They have a gatling gun attack that has about the range of a spear and does heavy damage.


Naturally, in the furthest part of the floor from the stairs.


Maybe it's time to invest in some DEF increases; the enemies down here are tearing through Aera's HP pretty fast.


In the meantime, more conveyer belts! Let's pick the middle one.


Well, it's certainly the longest one...


And it takes us past this strange little setup here...


Ultimately it leads us to another Rare Medal and a switch to reverse the conveyers' direction.


And thus did we return the way we came.

Hey lookie who shows up as a regular enemy now! While the midboss version gave us a Boost Motor, the random encounter version is our source of additional Diffusion Devices.


Let's try left!


Ah, it takes us to the DOOM SQUARE from the other direction, letting us explore the southern branch.


I manage to nab a DiffDev off one of the Grapplers, and before long have to heal again.


Hey this must be the guy with the GUNVALD part.


Well that was easy. I thought he was going to be a boss.


Great, Aera didn't even touch him and still managed to break him.


EX-TER-MIN-ATE!

Video: Vs. Scanner Eye
Ol' Scanny is pretty easy; he's about as fast as a sack full of turtles. Just get out of the way when he telegraphs his attacks. He's a lot easier than Aqua Element was.


Such is the nature of the fetch quest.

Incidentally, there's nothing past the robot but this suspicious-looking dead end.


And of course, before we can head back to GUNVALD, we need to finish exploring the level.


Well that was easy. Back up we go!


There's a shortcut back on B5 to make the return trip smoother, and it comes with a complimentary Axe Shapestone we'll never use!


Hey, where's the quest reward? Stupid stingy quest givers.


Stupid Orin and his stupid robot fetish.


So much running around today... Go here! Go there! Come back here! Go fetch that! Get over here! Fatality!

Anyway, we'll do that next time. Also: GUNVALD LASER!

Aera you're a young girl hard girl
Summonin' devils gonna become sexy one day
You got mud in yo' hair
You edge fencer
Swingin' your daemon edge everywhere~

Okay, I'll stop now...

The Hard Shell makes, uh, Shell weapons. It's surprisingly logical!


The Adaman Ore makes Adaman weapons, which is also pretty boring. All these designs return from the first game anyway.


But it's ok, because we also got Diffusion Devices today, which make the super awesome weapons. Like the Sniper Lance and the mother[censored] CHAINSAW SWORD!

So hells yes I make a CHAINSAW SWORD and some Gimmick Knuckles. Also a Giant Pizza Cutter. Then I’m out of Diffusion devices. And that is not acceptable, because I still don’t have a Spear with a sniper scope.

Also, fishing. Here I use a lobster to conserve some clams. Check out that “catfish” I caught. I wonder if Sarin has a pet like that.

Take this space and imagine there are a lot more images of the fishing game. Frogs! Carp! Bass! Eels! Catfish! But no marlins, swordfish, or salmon.


After all that fishing I spend all the points I earned on… something to fish with! I’ve never actually bought this before, because I never really got very deep into the minigame. But this time, I have a responsibility to you readers to dig into everything I can find so as not to miss anything that might slightly amuse a single one of you!


Like the appearance of the Boss Fish! How did he get a crown? How did he grow a beard? How does that crown stay on his head? It is a mystery!


And since that makes it easy to get Fishing Points twice as fast as I was before, that Fine Fishing Rod should pay itself off in a hurry.


Also I buy one of these. For reasons. Secret reasons.


Then it’s back to the Ruined Factory so I can get more Diffusion Devices for my Sniper Rifle Spear.


By the way, you may have noticed that all the DiffDev weapons have their own special attacks. The hell yes CHAINSAW SWORD has Quick Hit, a simple swing that takes only a single frame to execute. This is rather less helpful than you might expect, because every time you want to use it you have to hit R to change your B button from Guard to the weapon’s Special Attack.


Next up is the Gimmick Knuckles’ Hundred Fists, which makes Aera go all ORAORAORAORA and unleash a flurry of punches. The big downside there is the DUR cost of 20, which is a lot for knuckles.


And the Pizza Cutter has some attack that ignores guarding, but it looks exactly like a normal attack so it’s boring. (Also most enemies aren’t even able to block)


Anyway, Aera and Dinah each level up again while we’re down here, hitting level 30.


There we go.


And while I’m making that Sniper Lance, I also upgrade my Sword and Knuckles with raw elemental power.