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

Hey that sounds familiar.


Oh you can just go to hell.


Well let's get this over with.


Hmm, an open invitation to come visit her anytime? Awesome!


No Aera what are you doing!?


Hold on hold on let me grab the video camera!


Hey she doesn't need to get jealous; there's no reason you can't include her!


She gets to make out with the town hottie, but she's not psyched at all! Dammit...


And that seems like a good place to stop this time. Next time, we actually get to start with the actual gameplay!

Makes you wonder if the plotwriters knew that some players might actually select a female character or not.

And I still think Blaire is awesome so bluh.

Exciting, no... but probably entertaining.

Apparently they don't have kissing in Sapureth? Also, I suspect she's less interested in showing her appreciation and more about manipulating people. Note the word 'think' in there.


Aera does not like where this is going. She's not a fan of kissing I guess.


But before we go, forging and breaking that sword triggered another sidequest!


Every day, the old lady's cat leaves home and goes to a different place. The dog here behind the lady's house gives a clue where he went.


And the first time, the cat is at the bottom of the stairs in front of the item shop.


Return the cat to the old lady to complete recurring quest number two! And get...


-_-


Anyway, I'll cover fishing in its own update sometime, for now let's get to actual gameplay!


Hey, it's a lot more colorful out here than the muted browns and pinks of a certain labyrinth. That purple thing on the right is the teleporter.


But it's not connected to anything until we activate more of them.


The hammer is a very versatile tool! It forges weapons, it forges women, it bashes rabbits, it breaks boxes! You can even cut a tin can with it (well, maybe not)!


And right there on the second screen is a chest with a Sword Shapestone in it! How convenient that this is the only way to leave town and nobody ever opened this chest before!


It's kinda funny, but I didn't run into a single enemy on this trip. So much for all that angsting about being forced to use the hammer as a weapon!


...It's not gonna break on us again, is it?

Of course, gameplay-wise the only determining factor in the strength of your weapons is the materials you use to make it...


:O


And this is the true beginning of a wonderful partnership! Until Dinah gets bored and refuses to work.


Heading back out gives us a tutorial on weapon switching in the field.


And just in time, too, because we need the sword to cut the grass leading to the third screen.


And right there is another shapestone. I'm starting to notice a pattern, are you?


And we finally get into a fight. The encounter rate is usually higher than this... (though it's definitely below the first game's)


Much of the bestiary is made up of returning foes from the first game, like this Spirit. But like in the first game, Spirits are only a threat if they bring friends. The battle ends quickly.


Hmm? What's that there?


The first Rare Medal! Only... 34 more to go.


Also on this screen are these trees. There's some tempting fruit hanging in them, but the sword's not long enough to reach it.


It's also not hefty enough to clear these stumps out of the way. If only we had a tool designed to chop wood...

But I guess an axe will have to do.


And like all axes it absolutely destroys our agility. Since our base agility at this point is four,
equipping the axe will zero it out for many many levels to come.


Equip axe, smash stump, find worm.


And in the area just past the stumps is another chest with a shapestone in it.

...Who keeps leaving this stuff around in these conveniently-placed chests?


All the returning monsters got a makeover to make them more colorful and/or boost their frame count. Many have new moves, but all these ones up to the Wind Fortress just tend to mill around passively while you slaughter them.


Speaking of the path to the Fortress, it's blocked by a wolf. Which doesn't really make any sense since wolves are pack hunters.


The wolf promptly tackles Aera to the ground and rips out her throat. Game over. Oops!


Just kidding!


I was pretty careless, though, and almost lost. The wolves' jumping attack has a much shorter charge time than in the first game and he nailed me with quite a few of them.


The wolf pushes both our heroines up to the next level, and Dinah learns a new spell!


I say "new spell" and not "first spell" because, well, all of the guardian beasts start with Healing Spell! Which I really should have equipped before the battle but I am absentminded!


Just past the wolf is the second teleporter. How convenient, we can go back to town and rest up and forge a spear.


And while we're there I'll talk about DUR.

In the first game, every weapon's durability was restored to full between fights. Not so in the sequel! You can see here that my sword's down to 52 of its 85 maximum DUR.


The cheap and easy way to restore DUR is to head back to the forge and repair. This restores all your weapons' DUR to full for free. You can also buy items that restore small amounts of DUR at the item shop.


Oh and I also forge that spear.


Bwuh? What's this?


Aera's Craftknight Rank increased! Now we can disassemble weapons, getting the shapestone back. This is pretty important because shapestones are only found in chests or bought at the fishing minigame for quite a lot of points.

Not that there's any point in disassembling anything right now. I only have Iron Ore anyway.


Did I mention you find it in barrels and boxes? Pretty weird huh?


Spears are somewhat less powerful than they were in Swordcraft Story 1. Their ATK values are fairly low, they're slow, and enemies tend to be much quicker to close in. So you usually can't sit and poke, poke, poke endlessly like you could before.


Spears are long enough to knock down those berries in the trees we saw earlier. Although I'm not sure how you get sap from berries. And if you wanted sap, couldn't we have used a sword or axe for that?

The sap is an ingredient. The item store has a option to create items from these ingredients that you find in barrels, grass, trees, stumps, corpses, etc.


Just south of the place we fought the wolf is the second Rare Medal!


So we can find Iron Ore in crates, but the second material is only found as a drop from Spirits. So naturally I go out of my way to farm one up to show off to you folks. Be grateful!


After I disassemble the Novice Knife, the shapestone is a little different! It's picked up 5 max DUR and 11 TEC from its time as weapon! When you disassemble a weapon, half the TEC on that weapon remains on the shapestone and so the next weapon you forge from it starts with bonus stats. With higher TEC we'd start getting bonuses to ATK DEF and AGL too.


You can see the 5 bonus DUR listed here too.


And despite what you'd expect, the Charged Ore does not create a lightning-elemental weapon. There's a method in place for imbuing elemental properties into weapons, but we need to increase our Craftknight rank even higher before we can make use of it.

And here's that Wind Fortress we were looking for!


Despite being told we need to search the area, you can just run straight through the first room without stopping. Oh well.


Dinah proves once again that she can't be counted on.


...Except when the angel takes over.


But maybe she's not as reliable in tough situations?


She turned back into devil form at some point. But what's wrong with the kid? You'd think he's never seen an angel yell at herself and turn into a devil before.


...Right...

Let me count the ways...


That's one!


Uh? So they were there at the Bonding Pledge ceremony? I guess that explains why the kid's scared of Dinah.


I suppose that's one way of putting it. But why are these kids out here in the middle of a fort guarded by wolves?


And so you can see why I said earlier that it is a damn lie that no-one knows where the wind fortress is!


Yeah, nice job breaking things, hero.

Nice job breaking things, kid.


Reason two!


Ouch, ice burn. And those were her fault in the first place. Let's say reason three.


Isn't that the saying that got us into this trouble in the first place?


There's a door on the north end of the room leading outside, but naturally we can't advance until we fix this sword.

One teleportation later...


Dammit, we're busy!


Man, wouldn't it be funny if this sword turned out to be the Daemon Edge? Then we'd have to spend the rest of the game looking for stuff to fix it with!

Well isn't that a coincidence!


We're on an island? (Seriously I think this might be the only mention of it in the game)


A fever means infection. I learned that by watching House!

Anyway, Aera decides to help search for herbs after fixing the sword.


Bing!

But while we're in town...

What, that's it? What happened to makeouts? You promised makeouts! Tch, stingy.


He's... pretty excitable isn't he?



And Aera suddenly learns the true meaning of Christmas! Or she may as well, because I have no idea what she's going on about here.


Seriously, it does not help to tell me that a plant we've never seen before grows near another plant we've never seen before!

Kara tells us what Borzak is, but nobody bothers to mention what the herb we're actually looking for looks like.


...Sure. Note that Dinah doesn't know any offensive spells, and thus far has done more harm to us than to anyone else.


Aera decides she needs a nap. Conveniently there's a bed right there in the fort! ...Go figure.

Join us next time as we find Borzak, and discover just why it's dangerous! And we also find some Honoras, I guess, but nobody cares about that.

The spell styles for the different Guardian Beasts are different, aren't they? EXeLD started off picking up all kinds of offense magic (er I mean long range support weaponry).

I checked a FAQ, and it doesn't look like it. Each of them gets a support spell at 3, then starts picking up the attack spells at 5. That would have been pretty cool, though.

Alright! The evil monster Goura is in danger of escaping his prison and bringing doom to the world, and literally no one but us can do anything to stop it, so we're off to... play "fort" with some stupid kids! Yeah!

Wait till you see how much time I spend fishing!

Well that's not so bad, now - everyone knows that the rare metals you'll need to craft the most powerful weapons can only be found at the bottom of a small pond at the edge of town.

Oh, I forgot to ask - are you saving the third daily sidequest for a later update? It would be a shame if you missed it on the first day.

Man, this game has a lot of dialogue

Nap over! Let's head deeper into the forest.


And just past the fortress are a couple of salesmen.


He gives us some advice. It's the kind of thing you'd do anyway, since you only find a few of each kind of shapestone.


And Aera runs into some more familiar faces: a gremlin and the Maw of Cthulu a pumpkeeno with a new attack.


And beating them bumps Aera up to level 4!


...And we come across this unfortunate situation. That chest is stuck behind those stumps, and there's no way to get over to the other side and nab it.


But don't forget, we have a stick with a pointy end! I guess I can see knocking the lid open, but then how do you get the item out?


I don't know, but apparently Aera figured it out! One more shapestone GET!


And while we're at it, let's grab another Rare Medal.


More familar faces bump Dinah up to level 4; one more level and she'll learn her first attack spell!


Just a bit west of the chest is a recovery panel, and some chests up on a cliff.

...I think we're going to need a longer spear.


Or we can go around. There's a somewhat obscured path that leads to those chests back on the previous screen. The top chest held another Anywhere Diary, if you were wondering. But now we've got one of each shapestone.

So let's head back to town!

Hey good point, let's not miss anything.


This lady won't bring up the watch until you fix Rocky's sword, so this sidequest is very easy to miss.


I love her dialogue, too.
Lady: "You want it?"
Aera: "Hell no what would I do with a busted watch?"
Lady: "Too bad! Take it anyway!"


And it belongs to this dude in the other house.


And the reward for finding his priceless family heirloom? A single band-aid from his first aid kit. Gee, that was worth it.


Anyway, we got some new shapestones so let's get forgin'.


Knuckles!


Drill!
(What's the deal with using different stat screens, you ask? If you can't make any more weapons (out of shapestones or out of materials), a box pops up over that first screen and makes it impossible to see all the info.)


Oh, by the way, there's another daily task.


Every day you can fight the Rampage Rabbit. He gets stronger every time.


And when I say stronger, I mean he's at least on par with the bosses. Even my Metal Sword can only deal 5 damage per hit.

And in one critical hit he took off a third of my life! Fortunately, in this fight he only has a relatively easy to dodge bite attack.


But after a nice long fight he goes down. At least our reward is a step up from the other sidequest rewards.


Note that if you lose to him, it's not a game over, but you can't try again that day.


There's not much left to do today, so I'll just show off the other weapons that can be made with Charged ore. Using the magic of save states, I can do it after farming up only a single ore!


(Note that these all got a 5 DUR bonus from having been disassembled once)


Did I ever actually show off the Create function at the store? Even though the shop only sells diaries and bandages, we can make the lowest-level accessories if we provide the materials. Other things we can make: Kicker Potions, Rubstones. We can also get a discount on diaries in exchange for the materials to make more. (And the localizers had a bit of fun with some of the item descriptions)


Oh, fine, we'll get that herb for Blaire.


But on our way a random fight bumps Aera up to level 5! At this point we've hit the softcap for the Entry Woods; all our fights from the enemies here will only give 1 xp/enemy from now on. So much for getting Dinah an attack spell!


Hidden at the bottom of a cliff south of the restore panel is our fourth rare medal, the last one we can reach today. It doesn't do us any good right now, since we only get a reward every five medals.

Here's another new face. I wonder if they're related to Dyna Blade?


Huh, maybe we should have hurried, it looks like that white-haired fellow is in trouble.


DOGGIE~! <3


And if there's fighting to be done, it naturally falls to us to do it!


It's so nice to have an enthusiatic assistant!

Video: Vs. Grass Dragon
It's our first boss! He comes assisted by a couple of beetle that he resummons if you kill them. During the summoning he's invincible. It's a prett annoying fight because you have to get right up in his face (emphasis on "in") to hurt him, and if you get hit from behind by the beetles (and you will), you get turned around and can't hurt him. And while you're not getting turned around, he's breathing poison all over you. The only strategy that you can implement at this point is to try and time your combos so you can block the poison, and kill the remaining beetle while he's resummoning the dead one so you're only dealing with one at a time.


Victory comes eventually and we get Dinah that new spell we've been waiting for.


And a new material to forge with!


And fortunately DOGGIE~ <3 has no lasting injuries.


If Borzak was rafflesia, why didn't they just say so?

So long story short, DOGGIE~ <3 is named Gabriel, and is the leader of the Wind/Breeze Brigade. Everyone introduces themselves, and Orin gets an idea.


I dunno, maybe it's just me, but that seems like this proposal is a bit too personal for someone you've just met? "Hey I know we just met but can I open you up and examine your insides?"


And all these slackers were distracted by a big insect-spawning plant reptile and didn't even find the herb we need!


Fortunately there's no more monsters here so it's just a matter of finding the sprite they used for the Honoras.


Eh, let's just say it is. This day has been long enough already.


DOGGIE~ <3 is the best!


Well what do you expect from a dogboy if not a good sense of smell? We let Gabriel and Xeride have a little of it, and take the rest for Blaire.


We have a destination in mind! That naturally means that we're going to be interrupted!

Heeeeeeeeeeeeere's Johnny!


They have the same goal, after all?


Does he have access to Varil's information network?


He actually seems worried about Aera. That seems a little odd considering his plan involves reviving a super-powerful demon with a blood vendetta against our entire lineage.


Yeah, just like that.


Huh, he has a point. That is a totally assholish thing to do.

But... what about Pratty and Sugar?


Hey Gabe are you agreeing with the bad guy!? Bad doggie! No treat!


You tell him, Dinah!


Oh, so you're just a selfish prick.


And a total sadist! We have a real winner on our hands!


So what the whole point of that? Gedham just wanted to show off how much of an asshole he is?

Aqua Tornado! It looks a bit better than it did when Sugar used it. Check out those transparency effects!


Back at the fort, Gabriel's finished treating the Wind Brigade's injuries.


Are you kidding? This day has been like 5 updates long already! I think it's high time for bed.


Oh, great. I bet there's another one behind that one. And another behind that one. And then in the very last one we finally find the Daemon Edge. Or Gedham and Ryouga do first.


How does the ground howl? That doesn't make any sense.


Oh hey, here we go again. Who interrupts us next?


It's Tatiana!


You shouldn't put any faith in old wives' tales like that, you know?


DINAH!

Reason four to be scared of Dinah?


Makes sense, at least.


Ah, of course.


One homegoing later...


Hey, looks like she couldn't wait for us to visit her.


...Oh.

Way to be the supportive sister, Aera.


Nothing like a maternal figure to break up a sibling fight.


Ok Dinah, you don't get to say anything anymore.


Hmm, when he gets better can we confiscate his belt hat?


Self confidence is a wonderful thing!


Hey I told you no more talking! Hehe, "doofus"


They were living as brother and sister... Did she know he is a summon creature?

And that's that for tonight. Next time we go for a walk, and the day finally ends!

DOGGIE~ <3



Protip: don't search for "gabriel swordcraft story" on deviantart unless you're looking to compete in the horrifying fanart thunderdome.