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

I can't for the life of me remember who Guren is. It's bothering me like hell and I can't find anything online. Can someone please inform this troubled soul?

It's a point that was mentioned approximately once, but Ryouga was found outside town one day. Lynn took him in because they were both orphans, or at least that's how the official story goes. She was probably closer to a foster mother than a sister.

Semi-related, I cut some dialogue between Orin and Ryouga about the town's ward that's supposed to keep summon creatures out:

If JRPGs knew even the basics of subtlety and implication, I'd propose that the ward is just a placebo to make the townspeople feel safer. Because here's a nice list of every stray summon that it has failed to keep out over the course of two weeks: Dinah, Ryouga, Lynn, Gabriel, and Toumei. The only one we met who didn't wander into town at some point was Passeau.

Everything here is being quoted for truth.

Guren was the big bad summoner who attacked the town ~10 years ago and tried to release Goura, resulting in the death of Aera's father Graham, etc.

??? My MS Paint-fu is weak.

Thriceborn, have I told you lately that you're awesome?

------------------------


Not pictured: Blaire lying flat on his face, having been kicked out of the bed.


But there had to be a better way to do it than hold the unconcious Ryouga's sleeve with his mouth and drag him along


Oh, right, this isn't the time for jokes. (Well maybe just a few.)


And a good thing, too, or Aera would just stand there monologuing until Ryouga wakes up.


Eh?

Wait, I can just run by this time? Usually in situations like this, as soon as we leave the area in front of the stairs, the game takes control of Aera and the cutscene begins.


Well in that case they can just wait until Aera takes a nap.


"Show me on the doll where Lynn touched you"

Anyway, they take this opportunity to recap the situation for the slow kids in the audience: Lynn was Guren's Summon Creature.
A summon creature is bound to her master's order even against her will
Guren's orders were to revive Goura
Reviving Goura means gathering the pieces of his power, and finding a vessel for him to inhabit.
The pieces of Goura's power are The Daemon Edges and a piece in the Edge Fencer.
The vessel Guren wanted to use was the Edge Fencer.
Thus, Lynn has to gather the Daemon Edges and sacrifice Aera to Goura.
(And that's terrible.)

BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE!


Lynn is planning to offer her body to Goura! That's a shame, there are better things she could do with it!


A miserable lit--

Um, I mean, we just don't know.


We just don't know.


Well, at least in this game they address the question of why the people of the past sealed the evil instead of just kill it.


And the whole time they're explaining this, Gabriel listens with a very serious look on his face. There's nothing more important to him than the things that are inside his friend's body.


The Chief's dirty little secret: he was always jealous of Orin getting all the attention of the village women.


Eh, nobody voted for either of them anyway. Let them be evil spirited to death or whatever.

See, even their father doesn't care what happens to them!


And thus everyone goes home. No, really.


This LP is almost a year old, I'd think by now she'd know what comes next.


Crafting comes next!
On the left, the Tyrant Soulstone from Passeau, and on the right, the Doji Soulstone from Ryouga. Note, that we can now weild Ryouga's hand. And it has Hundred Fists!


SOLD!


Clever girl. Can you glue his Anywhere Diaries to his hands, too, so he can only give us better stuff like this?


That's funny he sounds pretty doomed to me.


She's sorry she's likely going to have to kill the woman you love. That sucks, maybe next time you won't fall head over heels for an inhuman monster.


Hooray for wind-resistant accessory when we completed the wind dungeon like four days ago!


Hey guys let's go kill Rampage Rabbit! Oh that's nice he can survive Dinah's entire stock of Romantic Bombs and Hail Storms! Oh and I can't hurt him very well with my weapons! Oh and he has an instant-cast heal spell that he spams like crazy so even if I kept trying to kill him with weapons he heals faster than I can hurt him!


We'll just save him for later.


Wow I did not see this coming! But that's only because of this blindfold preventing me from reading the text boxes as I play this game. Any similarity to a cohesive Let's Play has been entirely accidental.


Personally, I preferred "Haha, you're stuck with me! Neener neener neener!"


Yes, of course. You're just graciously allowing Aera to fulfill her obligation. It's not like you want to be by her side or anything, so she better not get the wrong idea! </KugiyamaRie>


And then Angel!Dinah has to show up and translate Tsundere into English.


It's what she's best at!

Yeah! No losing! Or Dinah will be very upset! (And dead!)


Great! Just don't let Nina do the navigating.


Hey guys! it's time for another boss fight!

Video: Haha, just kidding!


Bah, we got caught.

Like there was any chance we wouldn't, when Aera is approximately as predictable as a two-body gravitational system. Yes, I am a physics nerd, how did you guess?


The world may not revolve around her, but it sure as hell seems like this conflict does. Anything that doesn't involve her because she's the Edge Fencer involves her because she's Aera.


Clearly, Blaire is feverish. He's managed to completely forget that we've kicked the crap out of everyone who's decide to fight us so far (also we chased Ryouga around until he got tired).

Video: Vs. Blaire
LET'S GO! Notably less annoying than Ryouga, because Blaire actually stays put. The downside of that is that is that while he stands there, he's busy AXING Aera some questions har har.


Aera is one stone-cold lady. When she beats the man who raised her and trained her, she takes a trophy. From his face.


Oh, sure, now she's all sorry. Now that he's already down an eye.


Aera gets a class change! She starts over at level 1, but exchanges her dark sword for a holy one and learns some basic white mag-- oh wait, wrong game.

Bonus Alternate Caption:
Geez, it took her nearly the whole game to get enough JP to master Craftknight. Now we can finally change her to Mime.


And that neatly ties up all the loose ends!


...Dammit, Aera!


What's going on with that radio?


And you thought we were done with "Aera's bad with machines" jokes!


All right! Next time on JWIAEFA?: The Final Dungeon, finally!

I laughed so hard at this.

So I guess Lyn still betrays you even if you pick her? Then the two face off in a fight. Lyn thinks Area won't kill her because they love each other but Area does because Lyn was really mean to her. She tells Lyn she thought Nina was cute when she got her body back and then kisses her in fornt of Lyn. Lyn dies with a NOOOO and gets sent to a world with only boys. And the two lovers have a daughter who thinks one of them is a man. Like Pratty and Sugar with Aera. Pratty being Aera's father.

Doesn't make one ounce of sense but I spent more time on this than I should have. I'll keep it.

From her expression, it seems she did NOT know that. She probably just said all that crap about promises because she didn't want to admit that she was too stupid to realize she could have left at any time.

There's probably loads of text contradicting this theory but I like it anyway.

It happens three times during that conversation, but I think it's the only conversation in the entire game where the character not speaking gets to change their expression. Through the rest of the game, the only time someone gets a change in their portrait is when they're speaking. It's kinda weird! And funny.

Anyway, did I say the final dungeon? Because what I meant was, "some more errands, and then the final dungeon.
So anyway, let's turn that eye into weapons!

METAL GEAR!?

Oh, no not quite. (Also, that is not a drill, it's clearly a saw.)


I'll pass, thanks.


Instead I add Piercing to a Master Saber.


No, no, no. Master SABER.


Ugh, nevermind.

Anyway, Piercing allows you to hit multiple foes with a single swing. It's really handy when you're getting swarmed.


I also slap Speed Up on Ryouga's Hand for MAXIMUM ATATATATATATATA.


Now it's time for Final Dungeonery! Complete with some sort of ominous logo on the ground. And The ruins are part manmade and part natural!


Also present: switches that require you to push boulders around!


Strange cyclopean floating statues that are pure decoration!


Chests containing our 14th Med Kit and 398,456th Anywhere Diary.


Red Ice! Or at least something that's red and frictionless.


Levels up!


Pitfalls! (That look disconcertingly like they possess teeth)


Stones for fixing the damage Ryouga's Hand will take as I go all ATATATATATATATA with it!


Rare Medals!

Coming up from the other direction to solve the boulder-pushing puzzle!


Health Panels!


Giant Enemy Robot Centaurs! I'm decked out with a really impressive set of weapons, though, so most of the fights are pretty easy once I get used to their attacks.


These Strikers are good for showing off Piercing! I can hit both of them at the same time, as opposed to the usual scenario where I hit one and the other one counterattacks while I remain unable to hit him.


Yet another Med Kit! The game really wants to give you a lot of these!


Some sort of passcode-protected door! We don't know the code, so we have to go back and take a different route to find the code.


Baby Dragons and their mommy! OH GOD THE FIRE IT BURNS!


But it's no match for ATATATATATATATA!


Actually, they're a really good showcase for having Speed Up on knuckles; it makes them fast enough such that I can finish a whole combo and recover faster than the dragon can launch an attack. In other words, MASH A TO WIN!


Giant Plug Robots gave me some trouble for a while until I tried out the Agi-Up Naginata; I found that I could jump over him, turn around and stab him twice before he could get an attack off, then jump again to avoid the counterattack.


These Gremlin fellas, on the other hand, continue to be a thorn in my side as I play through the dungeon. They have attacks for every range, and all of them come out quickly. It's nearly impossible to get close enough to hit them without taking damage. The problem only gets worse when they appear in groups, because they like to hand out far enough apart that even with Piercing I can only hit one at a time.


Fortunately, the enemies down here drop healing items and rubstones pretty generously.


Other things that drop a lot in this dungeon: Aera!


Hey look guys this enemy is not a palette swap, nor a refugee from the first game! Tsuchigumo here like to punch. And summon giant knives from the ceiling. And have a lot of HP and generally be a nuisance. So I switch to Ryouga's Hand and ATATATATATATA him to death.


And Aera levels up again! I've got AGI pretty well covered with the Nagiata and Ryouga's Hand, so I'm putting my points into ATK and DEF these days.

Aera needs to get her piece of Goura's Spirit looked at. Goura's behind the code-protected door, so we've been getting further away for the last fifteen minutes or so.


Speaking of the passcode, this room looks relevent! Note for once that the game acts completely unlike a JRPG at this point. If this were say, Golden Sun, or Star Ocean, Dinah would come out and she and Aera would have a novel's worth of dialogue about the strange symbols on the wall and how they are for sure totally important and don't forget them because it will surely come in handy because they're important and don't forget them sprinkled liberally with tons of emoticons.

Also note that it's entirely possible to get here without having seen the other room, and thus having no idea you need this info, or to run along the bottom of the hall and have the lights off the top of the screen. I've had to brute force the solution before on account of one or the other of these reasons.


Anyway, after getting the code, there's some further pits to fall down and chests to get, but nothing especially noteworthy, so it's a good place to Escape and recover. I take a nap and repair my weapons.


And also get revenge.


Even with Hundred Fists I can still barely hurt him, but down in the dengeon Dinah got a second cast of Romantic Bomb.


Which is enough to finally defeat him! Our reward is another shitty Anywhere Diary.


We're also still one Rare Medal short of getting the next reward. All of the rest of them are in the postgame.


Heading back into the dungeon, we put in the passcode and head onward!


And Aera's Goura sensor starts going wild as soon as they near the door.


Incidentally, that door leads into a special section of the labyrinth called Sokoban, where you have to push boulders around to advance.


Without pushing that boulder on the ice, you'll slide right past the exit.


Well that's just a lovely door, isnt't it? Not creepy at all.


Great, we came all this way and ended up in front of the wrong legendary evil. I told you we shouldn't have followed the signs pointing to "Guora!"


It's no use buttering her up! She's not one to get all distracted by compliments from women! Err... Dammit! How dare you exploit her weakness like that!


Poor Lynn. She isn't evil, she's just drawn ordered to be that way.

ACTIVATE!

Oh wait, that was back at the entrance.


Welocme to Goura's Lair! Please keep your arms and head inside the vehicle at all times. Do not pick up hitchhikers. Do not taunt the sealed demon. LP Industries Inc is not liable for possession by evil spirits or ectoplasm damage to personal belongings.


Lynn finally found someone willing to marry two women. Well, a woman and a summon creature. He's not your traditional priest, but beggars can't be choosers!


"Don't be sad. You just come from an entire race of people who are huge pricks."


Hmmm. Well, I'm against genocide. But I'm for revenge.
I don't know which way to vote!


Hostage rescue, Go!


Grr, Aera hate breaking seal on ancient evil! But Aera love Tatiana! Aera sad.


Looks like Dinah figured out what Aera's trying to signal her.


You can continue to signal Dinah after you get the exclamation mark, but that just tips your hand to Lynn and she destroys the radio.


Welp, here goes the last sword. Goodbye, world!


Hooray, the cavalry arrived! Just in time, too!


Video: Vs. Lynn

Ah, the classic tale of star-crossed loversEdge Fencers and Summoned Creatures, forced to engage one another in mortal combat! It truly is the same story at the center of every tale. Althought most summon creatures don't have totally badass mummy-hand wings like Lynn does. So cool! Anyway, the fight should look pretty familiar to anyone who's watched any of the last dozen videos, except that Lynn can really put the hurt on with some of her attacks.
Incidentally, the first access you have to the Eye Of Truth is the boss fight just before this. Most weapons made with the Eye have Arm Breaker built right in. However, this fight with Lynn is the last one in the entire game where you can get a DUR-kill. The postgame is full of summon creature bosses, no humans. And if you didn't DUR-kill Blaire, you can only get Eyes of Truth after this fight.


And thus does Lynn die with a smile on her face.


Or, uh, not.


Aw, dammit. Bad Lynn! When you get beat up, you should give up on your immediate plans and retreat, vowing nonspecific revenge on the hero that defeated you! Not just do what you were gonna do, anyway. Why even be a hero if you beat the villain and lose anyway? Think about Aera's feelings, here!

Well, poopy.


Double poopy.


Huh. Hidey-ho, neighborino. How long have you been there?


Oh, so that's who this blue-green fella is. Anyway, this is a Bad Thing and it's pretty safe to say that if Guren gets his way right now, we're totally fucked.


You're feeling an argument inside your head between two people who aren't you! Wasn't that simple?

And I think Goura'sSpirit (note: no room for a space!) means to say possessed rather than haunted.


Hey, Aera's back in reality now! Good job, Dinah!


How about no?

Video: Vs. Guren Goura
Alright, it's the final boss! let's do this!

Er, ok, magic only does 1 damage.

Ok, so physical attacks only do 1 damage too.

And he has 12800 HP.

Hold on, let me grab a calculator.

...Well, ast least YouTube dropped the video length restriction.


Really? I hadn't noticed!


Oh cool, Dinah learned to... uh... cast the Blue Magic, Flash? Throw flashbangs? Go thermonuclear? Hell if I know.


Hmm. Let's hesitate long enough for the giant goat(?) demon to recover, instead!


Yeah, like that!


And thus Dinah and Xeride force Aera to leave Lynn behind with the powerful malicious creature that was only using her for his own ends.


"And your little dog, too!"

"Actually, no, wait, I don't want your dog. He's always chewing up your furniture and crapping in your shoes."


Next time on JWIAEFA?: Sorry Boss, I dropped your weapon!

When we last left off, Aera defeated Lynn and then the second-to-worst case scenario happened anyway. So now there's an invincible god-beast possessed by Evil McDouchebag rampaging around a mere 200 feet below Aera's town and everyone she loves.


I'll just summarize this conversation real quick: Aera's fine, Tatiana's fine, Orin's fine, everybody's fine! Except Lynn, because she's stuck down there all alone with the possessed god-beast and the jackass possessing it. Also: Oh no, we need to save Lynn but can't even hurt the stupid god-beast!


Hey, sounds like a better plan than asking nicely.


Well Holy Crap, if we were carrying around something called The Gem of Light this whole time, why the heck didn't we make a sword out of it already?


So while we get busy making a Sword of Light, Gabe and Nina will stay here with Toumei and stare intently at the ground, or something. Orin runs off to update the Chief, and Tatiana runs home to daddy.


Remember: it was all Dinah.


Funny you should ask, because we have! Let's get right on that.


Hey, that's not the right weapon set! This is the stuff made from Lynn's Witchstone.


There we go. Let's just be careful here, we only have the one Gem of Light, so let's make sure not to lose it!


Huh. Go figure, the Transhift Monument actually transhifts people and/or things. Turns out it was used in the original construction of Goura's Gate, to bring materials up. Then Graham used him to hide the Daemon Edges and sent him into hiding. As for why he suddenly came back:


That's a hell of a Plan B!


Aera's still firmly committed to Plan A, though. And the next step in plan A is...


HEY WAIT WHAT ARE YOU DOING


Aera has only one thing to say for herself:


"Sorry Boss, I dropped your stuff!"


This is the only way you can get more Gems of Light: lose your Gem of Light (break or disassemble the weapon you forged with it), and come back here to the no-longer-angry crystal. And you can only do this right now. If you go to Goura's Gate with a Gem of Light weapon, that's it. You can't get another Gem of Light ever.

If you want a complete arsenal list, you have two choices: either do this four times, or do New Game+ 4 times. One of these methods takes maybe an hour, the other takes 40+.

Yeah Dinah, stop making things up. Nobody likes a liar.


And it just so happens that forging the fifth Gem of Light changes her Craftknight Rank to the somewhat fitting rank of Hero! This allows her to forge absolutely nothing new, it's a purely cosmetic change.


Hey, we all know how Lynn likes to express her gratitude! Too bad we're committed to Nina.


Hey, the gang's all here at Goura's Gate. They're going to help Toumei with the ward, even if they get teleported into space. Which they're not, because they Believe In Aera. I'm sure that will keep her alive when she gets down there and finds out the Noble Buster still only does 1 damage to GurenGoura.


Alright, let's try this again!


Shut Up. Imperative phrase. Definition: stop talking. Synonyms: "be quiet", "stuff it", "zip it", "shut your filthy mouth and never open it again", "I don't care if you're an evil spirit possessing a god-beast, you're not important enough to listen to".


Whew, then it's a good thing Guren was around! We should be thank- HEY WAIT THAT'S NOT RIGHT!


That is what we call "proving her point for her."


Ok, time to see if this sword works!


...Right after we get reminded of all the hard work everyone above is doing, staring at the ground very intently.

Video: Vs. Guren Goura, Round 2
Really, this is just a drag of a fight. He has oodles and oodles of HP, but only three attacks. And they're the same ones he had last time we fought him! While there's no good way to deal with his quick sword-stab, his tackle is telegraphed and dodgable. The leap attack is somewhere in between, which means I still get hit by it a lot. Oh well, Dinah has like 15 casts of Healing Spell at this point. Check out that background, though. The souls of the damned wailing in torment!


See Lynn, we warned about stairs him!


Welp, there's no way Aera's letting Lynn kiss her now! I don't really want to know how they managed to fit three people in there, but I'm sure it can't be hygenic.


Wow, this guy was stuck down here for centuries with such thin floors that he could hear the neighbors at all hours... no wonder he's pissed!


And that's how we learned that Dinah's terrified of needles.

Video: The following scene, in video form!


Wait for it...

Well holy crap, it's Ryouga!


Hey, it's Villager! Everyone remember all the great times we had with Villager? ...No? Me neither.

But anyway, Ryouga informs us that all the villagers came back, despite the risk of becoming Lyndbaum's first astronauts, so they can Believe In Aera too.


Welp, there's the Heroic Resolve. Guren's screwed now.


Bam, Gold Mono Shift: Guarenteed to be 1000% more awesome than the normal Mono Shift.


Video: Final Battle
40k HP! Yeah, this fight goes on for a while. At least he has more than three attacks this time. Now if only he didn't use Storm Wind so often.

Anyway, right off the bat you can see why the Gold Mono Shift doesn't suck: You can still summon Dinah! And you'll have to, because it's pretty much impossible to dodge his Storm Wind. The fun part is, for the first half of the fight I'm actually losing, if you compare how fast I'm going through Dinah charges compared to how fast his HP is depleting. Then I actually start learning to dodge his attacks. The Gold Mono Shift comes with the Ultimate Attack special ability, which does about 3x normal damage for a pretty steep DUR cost. The best use for it is to get some more damage in while he's using the flaming sword spin attack and you can't get in close. Not that I learned that until I'd already spent most of my DUR. At least the Noble Buster's High DUR Regen means you can normal attack with it all day without breaking it.

The reward for winning is a second Red Daemon Gem! Please note that you can never use the Gold Mono Shift ever again, so I need that about as much as I need a kick in the nuts.


Not Pictured: A black shape flying out of Goura.


Great plan! Give up the power of the Edge Fencer in exchange for making the ancient sealed demon complete! What could possibly go wrong?


That won't happen. It's pretty hard to destroy a village when it's already been teleported into space!


Huh, it worked. Go figure.


Hey, it turns out if you have a piece of a dude inside of you since your preschool days, you start thinking you can trust them! And then they return your lesbian suitor.


Wait, this is the powerful summoned beast that the town was so scared of?


So, basically, if the summoners way back when had just given back the pieces of Goura's spirit in the Edge Fencer and Daemon Edges, we could have avoided this whole mess? Sheesh! He's just gonna hang for a while, gathering enough power to warp himself home (too bad Gabe can't do that!) and make sure stupid humans don't do anything monumentally stupid in the meantime.


And everyone lived happily ever after! Except Lynn, who got chased out of town by a mob with pitchforks and torches. Also: there lower right, you get to watch a big scene with all the dialogue missing. The characters turn and face each other, and emote, but there's no text boxes. (Thank god, there have been enough of those already)


And Aera talks to ghosts. The surprise twist: she was dead all along, ever since she got thrown into that cliff way back at the beginning. The entire game was a hallucination she saw while dying.


And roll credits!

And of course, since we accomplished something major, the day ends and it's Walking Time! Sorta.


Hey wait what happened to Nina? Also, Aera was such a crybaby! Who cries when their parent dies and leaves them an orphan? Besides, you know, anyone.


At least they go right back to being bestest friends after clearing up that whole "trying to kill each other" misunderstanding.


And so Lynn is chased out of town, and the average sexiness of the town plummets.


Hey, look, Aera's crying portrait makes its return!


And then Ryouga forgets that as a summon creature he lives a lot longer than a human like Aera, and returns 90 years later to find that she's already passed away.

And now, what you've all been waiting for...

Nina time! Video


"Hey honey, where's Nina?"
"Oh, she must have gotten lost in the woods again"
"Oh, ok. So we'll see in a couple months, then. Hope she doesn't starve before then!"


Eh, maybe it's just me, but I liked her better when she was part ghost.


But Aera, you've already accomplished more than most other Craftknights have. Nina, on the other hand... we haven't even seen her summon anything.


(The answer is down; the entrance to the cave is at the base of the cliff just a few steps south)


Oh Nina, you haven't improved your sense of direction at all!


Girls holding hands! ...Isn't this a step back from super hug-hug times?


And from that point on, Aera had a hard time being a Craftknight, because it was rather difficult to hold her hammer and weapons while holding hands with Nina all the time.



And thus ends Summon Night Swordcraft Story 2!

Next time on JWIAEFA?: Intro to the postgame, and a postmortem on the game.
I don't plan on doing the postgame dungeons unless you guys beg, but there's some stuff to show off right off the bat.

Awesome LP, I've been watching it since the beginning and it was a blast the whole way through.

Thanks Aeonus!

Geez, didn't they read Harry Potter? Morons. Aeras.

Yay~, the gaps in my memory of the game are filled.
Great LP, Aeonus! I'll be looking forward to whatever bit of the post-game you explore. :3

Is the LP really over? I don't know how to feel. On one hand, it was great. On the other hand, all the long and repetitive conversations are over. What are the postgame dungeons like?

Anyway, great LP!

How long was she waiting to use that line?

Thanks for reading, everyone!

It's pretty much over; I've got one more update in the works, and that'll be it unless there's a lot of demand to have me do the postgame dungeons. Speaking of which, they consist just of additional floors to Goura's Gate and the four elemental dungeons, capped off by a palette swap of the boss (or a palette swap of Death, for Goura's Gate).

The next morning:

Huh, Go figure. Must not have been a very talkative piece of Goura, then.


Goura likes to watch.


And Dinah thought with Guren defeated and peace restored, that she could retire to a life of luxury! Haha, as if!


Hooray! Did the glue plan work, then?


Great idea! That way you don't have to worry about the glue peeling off!


Wait, I thought she took everything you own? Anyway, what's this thing? It's got all sorts of wires and antennas sticking off of it.


Aww, it's so cute! She hacked her cat's foot off and gave it to us!

Oh wait, it's just a figurine.


Psh, like your little bunny could every match up against The Great Aera!


Oh god I can barely hurt him.

Yeah, I finished the game at a somewhat low level, and he's designed to not be beaten until you've dig into the postgame a little. So right now he can beat me easily. Fortunately, Aera has a time machine, so this embarrassing little incident never happened!


Sold!


Sweet!

So there are 6 materials that are restricted solely to the postgame; one from each of the postgame dungeon bosses, and another that's just a drop from a regular enemy (or from a chest). We have four of them already, from the 1st-3rd and 5th bosses.

The material from the 4th boss (Angel Ice Statue) is also a reward for completing the Rare Medal collection. The great big logic gap here is that the last Medal is behind the final postgame boss. Way to make a compelling reward, guys! Especially since the bosses respawn if you leave their dungeon, so you can already get as many of them as you want before you can get the one from the medals!


And while we're here, I'll talk about these chests for a bit. You see, these are special temporally unrestricted chests. They're empty to start with, but you can put any of your weapons inside them! And then you can take them out later!

Uh... yeah.

The only thing that's actually useful here is, if you start a New Game+, you lose everything in your inventory, including all your weapons. However, these five chests will still have the weapons you put into them! So as soon as you reach the Fire Fortress in your New Game+ you can pull out your 255 TEC Hundred Fists/Large DUR Regen Noble Claws or whatever, and curbstomp the main game.


But we've got other fish to fry. Specifically, fish named Black Dragon, who aren't fish at all, but fictional reptiles that live in the postgame section of Goura's Gate and drop another new material.


How nice of them to put a teleporter here so nobody has to go back through the boring pre-postgame dungeon part more than once!


Now, the FAQ I was looking at said the dragons can appear on any floor of Post-Goura's Gate, but I don't see any on the first couple floors. Instead I solve MiniSokoban2 here and keep going down.

There we go! He doesn't drop a fang.


But then I fight another one right away who does drop one! That's sure convenient!


Making weapons makes Blaire smug. Look how smug he is! Have you ever seen someone so smug? Let's forge more weapons than he, so that we may out-smug him!


Dragons! Boil 'em, mash 'em, stick 'em in a stew!


Embossed? What do you mean em-- OH GOD THEY'RE STARING AT ME! WHY DO THEY HAVE EYES


The Mechanical Box is useless. It has doodads and whatchamacallits, but where are the widgets? The doohickeys?


KITTY~ <3 (That's how it went, right?)


And here's the ultimate set of weapons. The penultimate set is missing because of <insert that rant up above about the Angel Ice Statue>.


Well, now that we're done with weapons, let's see what all the NPCs are planning to do with all this peace. Orin has decided to take up a career in physically violating robots.


Sarin and Byron are caught in an endless loop of love declaration.


And there's some incestual love triangle developing over in Ninjaville.


Yay new song!

Try my sweet potatoes
Don't be shy. Hey now!
How's that? They are great
My sweet potatoes and my sweet-
heart. Which is sweeter?
If you can have both
Why not have both?
Don't be shy, they won't
bite you...
Just have a bite
(extended guitar solo)

Uh... that's... something, alright.


Gabe's busy with a recruitment drive.


The answer if obvious. Move in with Aera! (Also, she still is planning on going home? Can't she make up her mind?)


One last thing to do in-game here. The old lumberjack gives us this Mecha Medal for smashing all the barrels and crates in the forests way back when. But it's not a material. It's not a consumable. It goes into your key items and has no use.

See, back on the title screen there's this new option. Pick it, and choose the data you'd like to load, and...


It gives you a selection of minigame fights. Rival Rush is unlocked merely by beating the game, and is a marathon battle against each of the human enemies in the game.

Gabriel Mode unlocks if you managed to keep the Radio intact. You get to fight a series of battles as the Black Swordsman. He also is limited to the basic Wind-elemental spells, meaning no healing, making it something of a survival mode.

GUNVALD vs. Borgrim is exactly what it says, a repeat of the Borgrim fight. Except you can also choose to play as Borgrim! This is what the Mecha Medal unlocks.

There are a few more that require you to postgame some more:

Defeating Rampage Rabbit again gets you the Carrot Badge and unlocks a mode where you can play as him for another set of fights.

Completing the Bestiary and talking to a dude unlocks the Boss Rush, which is like the Rival Rush, only against all the NON-human bosses.

And the last one requires you to reach the highest Craftknight Rank, Legend, and unlocks Cameo Battle, which lets you choose from the two Summon Night 2 heroes and fight as them.


And the secret best part is, it keeps track of fastest times! Because that's what you really wanted to know.

------------

And so now let's step back out of the game and talk about the game itself.

See, I have a lot of fondness for Summon Night Swordcraft Story. It was an unassuming, cute little RPG with a retro sort of charm. It had plenty of flaws, but they were easy to overlook because the game was still breezy and fun.

So now Summon Night Swordcraft Story 2 came along, and it features all sorts of improvements: a wider color palette, more balanced weapon types, better quality sound, etc. etc. But unfortunately, this mostly just seems to dispose of that retro charm the first one had. And then there's the story. Some All of you noticed that SS2 has approximately 3.14 MILLION times as much dialogue and text as SS1. SS2 is talky. The result is that it's a much more pretentious game. So there goes that unassuming charm (and also a lot of patience as you hammer A to get through text box after text box).

I did gain a new appreciation for SS2 in the process of this LP, because I'd not explored the depths of the upgrading system before. But that's balanced out by the new contempt I gained for the talktalktalktalk.

So while the sequel is mechanically and visually superior to the original, the first game holds a special place in my heart, and the second is just a game I liked. And the third is a game I've never played because it's only in Japanese. And so that's all I have to sayrant about the series.


So that's that. Thanks for reading, everyone!

Woo, that was a blast. Thanks for playing through the Swordcraft series! It was great seeing these games in action, and I'm glad I was able to find out about them like this.

Screw the extra dungeon, I want you to play it all again as the Rampage Rabbit.

No, seriously, awesome LP. This and your LP of the first one have been entertaining me since before I signed up, and I'm a bit sad that it's all over now.

I'm assuming this is Aeonus' next LP.

If there were a way to play the main game as Rampage Rabbit, I would not have bothered with lame human PCs. Rabbit Rampage mode is just another boss rush, going from Grass Dragon to Death.

To satiate my curiosity I went back with a 999 ATK cheat so I could get the Carrot Badge, and Rabbit Rampage... sucks. His moveset is severely limited: he can't jump, he can't run, he can't block. It's really dull to have the only option available to you to waddle up to the boss and bite at their kneecaps until one of you dies.

But speaking of the bunny, there's another fight with him after you get the Carrot Badge. He goes Super Saiyan.


No, really.

So thus falls the rising star of young Craftknight Aera. She thwarted evil summoners, evil ghost summoners, evil ghost summoners possessing god-beasts, and evil ghost summoners possessing god-beasts that absorbed her lesbian suitor to save her town from being teleported into space. And then she got bitten by a bunny and died.

That's not going super saiyan. That's just rabies.