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

Special bonus update, because I need some audience input down at the bottom!


Hmm... Mana... Winter wonderland.... Are we going to have to fight Santa Claus turned into a gigas? Well, it's the right time of year for it.


I'm pretty sure humans can't smell Mana.


She's really like a little kid today isn't she?

Also, nobody even comments on Bruno's unwillingness to follow us. I guess they learned last time.


Let me summarize:
Ice. Frictionless ice. Sliding puzzles. Easy ones, anyway.


And today's common crafting material is... chunks of ice! Or some manner of blue crystal, anyway.


Ice! You can't tell very well from a still image, but I'm sliding upward here.


If you're moving diagonally when you hit a wall, you'll lose your momentum in one direction and continue to slide along the wall.


But a small distance into the dungeon we run into Child and Child. Despite having the same names, they're not related to the Child in town. Nor to the other Child. Nor to Child, Child, Child, or Child.

Sometimes I wish this game named the bit characters.


They changed the air? I do that all the time. I convert oxygen to CO2 all day long.


Oh great. It's the musical episode.

...That... is the dumbest song I've ever heard. And I've heard The Song That Never Ends.


Oh great, they're racist too. Who raised these kids? Between that sweet potato song, the prejudice against summon creatures, and abandoning them in a gorge, they must be the worst parents ever.


?

Oh, EVIL Summoner.


Yeah, the writers had to bring out Angel!Dinah for this line, because DevilUseless!Dinah would never say such a thing.


Apparently the kids don't know what an angel is.


Useless!Dinah eats children. You heard it here first!


Yet she has a last name, which only Summoners have.

Well, it'll give us a chance to kick their asses.


Oh nuh-uh, you are not getting away with sitting here. You've got spells to cast, slacker!


These wolves are right bastards. They do that annoying jump attack I've been complaining about since the first game ALL THE TIME. Often back-to-back. And it hurts! With my current DEF I take 86 damage from it.


Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
I get another Crystal from the crates there.


If you go down-right from here...


You get here, and if you go up-right next...


You score these goodies.


These trees have a few new types of ingredients, but hell if I can remember what any of them are for.


Hey! yourself, ???.


HEY TALKING TIME!

It's time for some audience participation! What kind of voice was it?
a)a man's voice or
b)a woman's voice?

As in the first game, we're about to meet some returning characters from previous Summon Night games that were never localized, thus completely spoiling the effect! And this choice determines whether we meet a male hero or female hero!

So get a-votin'!

We can't have any awkward lesbian undertones with them if it's not a woman!

Ahahaha, that's great.

I'm never going to get that flipping song out of my head.

How much more awkward can things get, anyway? ... Let's find out!

<Scruffy>Second</Scruffy>

Yeah, okay, I should know you guys well enough by now that I needn't have bothered asking.

Unfortunately lacking in the next update: awkward lesbian undertones! Instead, more evil summoners and songs about sweet potatoes.

Also, the most evil enemy ever:

This is acceptable.

goes on and on my fr- *crack*
*thud*

Songs about tubers?

That is brilliant in its bewildering-ness. I mean, what is... why... bwuh?



Well, before we find out the shocking results of the audience participation poll, here's the things you can make with the Crystals found in barrels, crates and chests in Glacier Gorge!


And hey, this gorge is overrun by demons! (And not just the little floppy-eared ones that throw children into wells) They're actually pretty much neutered this time around, because they have the same slow attacks as in the first game (a scythe-swing and their big ball o' doom-lightning) but can now be knocked out of them with simple hits. Basically, all you have to do is get in range and mash A and you win!


Oh, right, the voice.
In second place, with zero votes, is a man's voice! That means our winner is the distant hope of awkward lesbians undertones!


Considering she isn't likely to change gender depending on our answer to a question, I'm gonna go with no.


And on the next screen we find the smallest glacier ever, which Aera thinks is "huge." Glaciers are geological formations on the scale of mountains, not chunks of ice on the scale of people.


So let's jump to the concusion that they're the evil summoners that Child mentioned!


Yes, just like that!


Summoning evil, naturally!


The duty of evil summoning?

Oh yeah, she gave away their entire plan, clearly.


She's obviously too stupid to be evil.


Because they didn't play Summon Night 2. Oops, did I just give away that they're not the evil summoners?


That's giving away more of their plans than the first girl did!


Hunting squirrels!


Like we even have the faintest idea where we are. Is there even a village around here?


Aera is secretly a superhero, don't you know? Flying, X-ray vision, the works!


Well, he's got a point there.

Geez, Aera, stop leaking Edge Fencer power all over the place, it's unsanitary.


Wait, what, Aera actually going on the offensive?

Video: Vs. Toris???
Toris??? Is a big pain, like all the other human foes. At least this time we've got a couple of casts of Hail Storm to take off a big chunk of her HP. Also, she uses a small dagger so you'll have a range advantage. Also, Astral Guard helps a ton, allowing you to at least trade hits.

Since in the fight I recorded, Toris never used any of her spells, I went back and got some screenshots of them:

She can summon Nesty, who in turn summons this buzzsaw dude to hit you -- note that you can't move during this, so you're guarenteed to take that damage.


Or (the worse of the two) she can summon Amer to heal 900 of her HP. I caught that last picture while the bar was only starting to fill up, so what you don't see is that this is nearly all of her HP. You basically have to start the fight over, only without having those Hail Storms you blew at the start of the fight.

Sure, blame her job choice. The job system is available to everyone, it's not our fault she can't use it very well!


Whoaly crap! That summoning ball-thing is way more detailed than the ones everyone else in the game uses!


Something terrible... like a verbally abusive demon girl! Oh wait.


I don't know what a Mediary or a Cresturo is, but I bet I'd know if I'd played Summon Night 2!


Well I guess we know who really wears the pants around here.


So there you have it. The girl and devil who teleported here looking for a weapon are totally not suspicious at all!


Well, we established that Aera and Dinah were not the evil summoners, and I don't see anyone else around, so these guys must be them, right?

If you somehow missed the other dozen times I mentioned it, these guys are the heroes of Summon Night 2.


Don't forget cleavage! (The male hero says "I need to get an eyepatch. And grow a moustache!" instead)


Sounds like fun, but you know the Childs will take that moment to show up.


Sounds like a great place to hide a Daemon Edge. Way to go, Graham.


How do you lose a person here? Just look for the only thing that's not covered in snow.


In other words, none of our damn business.

Great, now we're all friends. Even though we'll never see these guys again after we leave.


Well at least this time the cameo didn't get all bogged down in what it means to be a hero.


God I have been waiting that entire cutscene to step on this thing. It was over there in the corner... taunting me! THE WHOLE TIME! Whispering... "Step on me! Step on meeeeee!"


Moving right along, a helldemon bumps Aera up to level 33! I dump the bonus points in defense because I already had to heal twice this dungeon and we're only like four screens in.


Here we find out that Aera has infinite mass. See, using Newton's laws, we know that when she hits the boxes with the spear, they exert an equal and opposite force on her; and a force produces an acceleration inversely proportional to her mass (a = F/m). But she does not gain any horizontal velocity, so a = 0. The only solution where a = 0 and F > 0 is for m to be infinite. Therefore, Aera has infinite mass.

Sorry, I was a physics major. And they provided a frictionless situation! You don't know what that's like for us!


Anyway, you need to get on this little island here so you can reach the exit tunnel to the right.


Rockhides! They are pretty much what you'd expect: big, slow, take forever to kill. Also, they hit hard. After running into a few I start running away from them because it's just not worth the effort it takes to kill them.


Dinah levels up again, learning nothing.


Wheee! This one requires a properly-placed diagonal run onto the ice.


It's us! Oh, no! Bunny does sound kinda delicious...


See, Dinah's got the right idea! Who's ready for dinner?

From evil summoners and devil summoners?


Well, you can trust Aera. Dinah? Maybe not so much...


Hahaha! Reaping what you sow, Dinah!


That pride's gonna get you in trouble (again).


Despite what she claims. Does being a liar make her evil? But then her claims of being evil wouldn't be lies, thus making her not evil, making them lies again...*head explodes*


So unsurprisingly, Hasaha is Toris' summon creature. There are actually two possible characters you'll meet here: either Hasaha, or Resi (who's a lot like Arno), depending (I believe) on your choice of hero and/or guardian beast.

And of course Aera has to go out of her way to make more work for herself.


Oh no? What is it now?


Oh hey, wolves.


What did I just say about making more work for herself?


Anyway. a single Hail Storm takes care of these chumps. You just need to get a long enough window to cast it without getting lunged at.


Heh.


Right, but there's a catch...


Not. Helping.


Oh thank god she showed up, I was worried we'd be stuck here forever.


There's only one way... the power of song!

What, did you think I was kidding? (Also, yes Kara actually said that, but I cut it)


Yep, that's right. The world's dumbest song returns!


Good, now let's get this over with so we can find the Daemon Edge.


Oh for-


And speak of the devil...


Aww, Useless!Dinah's back.


Alright, that's enough of this.


Dinah shouting at her is enough to scare her off. Finally, we can get on with it.

You know, next time. If I can tear myself away from Rune Factory 3 to actually write anymore updates. >.>

And you just gave right in, didn't you? You have no willpower! Blaire would have resisted it.

I have a nerdy fondness for new protagonist versus old protagonist battles. Though I guess this is more like... gaiden protagonist versus main protagonist... Whatever. It kinda' bothers me that Angel!Dinah never got to stay out for a prolonged period of time... But I guess that might have required new battles sprites? Well, mildly edited ones. And... I officially remember only slight details from this point forward. Excitement!

Last time on Just What is an Edge Fencer, Anyway?: Dinah shouted a lot, and scared off the bunnygirl. Also, something about wolves and songs about vegetables.


This time on JWiaEFA?: Dinah shouts a lot, evil summoners, and songs about vegetables.


Considering it's the only real notable feature we've come across in this snowy wasteland, we may as well.


And as should be expected, in this dungeon we run across Elewinds who drop Wyvern Claws, for symmetry with the other dungeons.


Alright, well let's just leave the kid here and finish the dungeon. Oh and take his parka, Dinah must be freezing in that getup.


Tch. There goes that plan.


I approve of the removal of noncombatants from the battlefield.


Well that's a fine thank-you. We should steal his coat too.


Now we get to hike back forward (?) through the dungeon to where we had to turn around and come back here.


Of course, the benefit of experiencing the game via screenshot LP is that you don't actually to have to see the in-between parts. Did it take ten minutes to re-backtrack all that ground? Thirty seconds? You'll never know! Because I forgot!


An endless sheet of frictionless ice! There are five paths here, two of which just connect to each other, two which have loot, and the path forward.

More sliding! More barrels! More complete lack of notable loot!


Wait, scratch that last one.


Nevermind, put it back on the list. These chests are in the fourth path from the left on the giant skating rink.


A war decoration that ones does not find frequently! This is what's down path #2.


Aera! Midair is no place to take a nap! Wake up and get fighting!


I smashed eight crates and all I got was this lousy toilet paper. This is the leftmost path, the one that leads to the boss.


See?


Great! We can just follow the resonance to the last two Edges! Except it's functionally no different from just exploring a dungeon. Which is how we found the first two. D'oh!


And then on like the very next screen you may notice that the snow isn't nearly as snowy white, and the trees and dirt are a bit more purple. That's your cue to do any last minute healing-up.


Yeah, holy crap, you stood around the Macguffin waiting for the heroes to show up, and they did!


Right, just demand she get out of your way, because that really works.

Aww, the boss is a throwaway summon and not one of these two? I thought this plot was going places.


Yeah, funny that she can do that when she's possessed the body of a summoner. Novice Summoning Student, whatever.


Man, we get told to shut up a lot.


Video: Vs. Ice Golem
Pretty much exactly what you'd expect from an ice golem: big, slow, attacks with ice. Fortunately for us, not especially resistant to water. Or punches to the butt. It's kind of boring, but now we have all the tools to construct a dominant strategy against bosses: Hail Storm until we run out of charges, Astral Guard + Attack or Splash until dead.


Whoa hey what happened to the background? It's considerably more red than before! And as we all know, red is the offical color of "oh, shit."


As usual, the villian swears nonspecific revenge at some point in the future...


I don't know, why don't you tell us?


Okay, that's the last time I leave it to the NPCs to explain what's going on.


Uh, yeah. You guys are summoners, and you're evil. Ergo, evil summoners. Try to keep up.


Gedharm has difficulties telling girls from boys.


Man, this guy could have gotten the right impression if he'd just shown up thirty seconds sooner and saw us fighting the Ice Golem.


Oh, he jumped from nonspecific revenge sometime in the future to nonspecific revenge right now!

But before he can sick more tiny tanks or bird robots on us, the screen starts shaking like crazy.


Oh god we woke something up! Here comes Cthulu!


Grrr, Crystal angry! Crystal smash! Except crystals are not known exactly known for their mobility.


And so the cowardly villains bail, leaving the heros to deal with the world's most pissed-off crystalline structure.


That's easy: grab what we came for and leave it to the other heroes to fix the problem.


Oh hey, turns out taking the sword didn't help any. Go figure.


What is even going on here? The Angry Crystal is apparently killing us with nonspecific crystal energy or something.


Try insulting its mother! I don't think it'll actually help, but it's just weird enough to work, especially when you consider crystals don't have mothers!


Hey, everything's not red anymore! It's a New Year's Miracle!


How does the crystal even talk, it has no mouth nor lungs, nor vocal cords.

Turns out these guys saved everyone present from the Crystal Of Doom. Shocking, right?


Right, because and we'll totally see these guys again and knowing about their plans will make us want to stop them.


Dude, seriously, this dungeon, even moreso than the others, is a straight line. If you start at Bruno and come to the Crystal, you will run into every single person in the area (Unless they're hiding in one of the cubbyholes off the Giant Sheet of Frictionless Ice.


Should we call her Scary!Dinah now?


And the dude with a phobia of strangers gets on their case.


Can we just throw him off the cliff there? Pretty please? We wouldn't want to shatter his worldview by actually being harmless, would we?


Turns out he's the father of those children we met before. I guess it's a good thing we didn't steal their coats and leave them to freeze. (Not that anyone was planing to do anything like that >.>)


And then Man runs off (after Gedharm and Passeau?) (because he's done talking to us?) (for no reason whatsoever?)

RUN AWAY IT'S A BOMB!


A BOMB DISGUISED AS A SWEET POTATO, TRIGGERED BY THAT SONG! Ok maybe not.


The following year, Child won the Presidency on his platform of "Sweet potatoes for everyone."


Ever grateful, that Dinah.


A crystal from around here? Well, as long as it doesn't turn red and try to kill us...


Bye bye, kids! Be sure to give your dad hell!


Too bad there's no drink here, so being merry is unfortunately impossible.


Now that's what I call a simile! They must be really tasty if they got Nesty to smile.


And of course, they had to work this song in, yet again.

She then proceeds to enumerate all 17 kinds. It takes several days, during which time Ryouga releases Goura from the ruins and he destroys humanity.


Nice summary, dude! You didn't mention the part about the Ice Golem, though.


So there was a random pissy crystal spirit out here that had nothing to do with either of our quests? That goes against everything I know about RPGs. It's going to turn out to be someone's father; it has to be!


But it actually was related to their objective? Make up your mind, game!


It's a cleverly disguised nuclear warhead.


Geez, after we established before that we'd keep our noses out of each others' business. What a hypocrite.


And good riddance (to sweet potato songs)!


Is Kathura a person? A place? A thing? ...An idea?


And off they go. Goodbye, cameos!

Away we go!


Because he hated your guts from before you were even born.


What? So all this is your fault? ...We'll be having oil-fried robot for dinner tonight!


Ya think?


As usual, the Cutscene Brigade is waiting for us as soon as we warp back.


Yeah, and you let her get away, too. Good job Aera!


Well, if that's their uniform, then probably!


Kathura! Whatever on EarthLyndbaum that is.


Good plan!

There must have been a veritable mana smorgasboard up there in the snow.


Before we end the day I craft up one of these beauties.


I also make a couple of these, because why not? I'm not using that tree sap for anything else, and I'll add 30 and 90 together to get 180, sure!


I'm wondering if they expected us to not find the Daemon Edge, or to have lost count of how many we have.


Well how long is it supposed to take to seal Goura? If it's a week or less, we're over halfway done.


Wah-wah-wah-waaaaaah


And she just lay there in bed, repeating those words, over and over... "I'm fine! I'm fine! I'm fine! i'M fInE..."


But then she shakes herself out of it and takes a walk. Mumbling to herself the whole way... "I'm fiiiiiiiiiiiine"

And now it's Walking Time!