It's been a while, hasn't it? Let's check up on our little hacking operation. Seems like Chisato has indeed delivered on the goods, but she cautions that the password is treated as a military secret, meaning whatever information is within is really sensitive, and probably couldn't be spread to the Nedian public.
The password works! Unfortunately, that's not enough to get the information, as it's encrypted and the library's computer can't decrypt it. Time to pay the professor of Giveaway a visit!
Sure enough, he figures out how to decrypt it, with a little help from Rena, who gives him the weapons lab database key. It turns out to be the decryption key for the files too! He opens them up and...oh dear. So much for being an utopian intergalactic empire.
It turns out, the ten evil men were bioweapons engineered to put down rebellions against Nede. But Lantis, the scientist who was developing them, learnt of his daughter being killed in the rebellions. This depressed him greatly, and when he developed them, he reprogrammed them to massacre all of existence. The Nedian army then had to put them down in desperate battles, and ultimately only succeeded because a portal to a void opened within Lantis' lab, sucking the evil men within. Distressingly, they found that he had programmed part of his own self, and memories of his daughter, into the final evil man, who was meant to be their leader.
This whole incident weakened the military too much to really put up resistance against the rebellions, and they were quickly gaining ground and becoming a real threat to the core Nedian populace. They decided to save themselves by mass migrating to a small world that could be covered by an energy body, and blew up their core planets to stop the rebels from finding out anything about their plans. Thus, in truth, they were not peace loving people who had separated themselves out of concerns of exerting too much power, but rather oppressors who had fled just retribution.
Sadly, finding this out doesn't enable the party to change anything, as tri-Ace didn't program an alternate ending path, and the evil men need to be stopped one way or the other, regardless. This is especially disappointing because finding this out involves a fair bit of rigmarole, including snitching on the entire operation to the university's headmaster to collect a decrypting device to access some of the extremely protected files. I feel like they got the idea of exposing the truth behind your masters to get a different ending here, but couldn't fully realize it for whatever reason. Valkyrie Profile 1, of course, elaborated considerably on this entire concept, making it outright essential for unlocking the canonical ending.
Anyway, back to the main plot. The team deliver the metal, and get the antimatter weapons developed. Which turn out to just be a sword and a glove, with a magic orb to enable the other party members to cut through the evil men's shielding. Laaaaammmme.
Also the evil men decide to invade the amusement park, and mock the party by trying to fight them singlehandedly.
It mostly doesn't go well for them. Marsilio, the buff dude with the sword, is unremarkable, being just a melee fighter with beefy stats. Shigeo, the robotic dude, mostly just chooses to fly around and slowly charge projectiles at the team. His attacks do have a very irritating chance of stoning their targets, which I counter by making the team wear stone checks. Lastly, Berle, the cyber knight, is the most dangerous of them all, because he loves randomly activating a super shield that nullifies all damage without hindering him in any capacity, and his strikes hit pretty hard! Despite this, he is resolved fairly easily, as the team can simply use resurrection bottles to keep themselves alive, and can stunlock him to keep him from acting too much.
With the evil men's assault thwarted, the party wastes no time gearing up for their battles with the rest of them. The mayor tells them to be cautious, as these were the weakest of them, and the rest of them won't go down so easily. Sure. Say, since you developed them in the first place, could you tell us more about their tactics, strengths, weaknesses? Anything at all? No?
Bah, whatever. There's a relatively short night time scene here where Claude and Rena thank each other and wish for each other's safety so they can return to their former planet together. I mostly bring it up because there are two interesting quirks to this scene:
1. Despite what it might seem like, this scene can and does actually change, based on Claude's relationship values with the ladies in the party. So he can end up sharing this heartfelt moment with Opera, Precis or even Chisato instead if the player sets it all right. His corresponding relationship value has to be pretty high to overcome his "natural attraction" to Rena, however.
2. This scene does not, by any means, set any ending in stone. The fights and bosses in the final dungeon can and do raise relationship values between their participants, and those can alter the endings the player would've achieved if the game had ended before it. Further, other means of altering relationship values, like private actions, remain available to the player. Yes, the final dungeon doesn't actually lock the party in, they're still free to wander around Nede to their heart's content, which is nice.
Before they leave, the mayor hands over a spell to alter the universe destroying spell we read about in the library, as the evil men have it prepped and likely wouldn't hesitate to cast it if they got desperate. Ah, so most of the library's topics ended up being big, smoking guns for the plot. That's kind of cool, actually.
The next three evil men welcome the party at the entrance, and waste no time getting down to business.
The trio prove to be quite the difficulty spike. Jibril, Ruprecht and Nicolus may not have the best stats, but they pack a LOT of dangerous tools in their arsenal - area wide spells of two flavors, big beams of doom, stoning attacks, damage auras, and even the ability to outright swallow party members! There really isn't a good way to handle them besides trying to stunlock them with repeated attacks, and killing Jibril, the cloaked dude, as soon as possible, as he has the worst moves of the lot. Honestly, this battle is kind of a sign of what's to come...
After that, the dungeon itself is kind of a really drab affair - the interiors aren't very visually interesting, and the enemies are mostly either fragile robots, or reskins of monsters we've already fought a fair few times, in arenas that are a bit too small for my liking. Not to say that the battles aren't challenging, but the lack of originality or vibrancy kind of pulls this dungeon down a fair bit, and the surprising lack of loot doesn't help matters, either.
The party is finally running out of stat boosting skills for real, so I make them invest in some combat skills. Essentially, they bestow some sort of buff for taking specific actions in combat, at random. This here makes attacks ignores enemy defenses at random, which greatly boosts their damage when it triggers. They can be useful, but even when fully leveled up, they're too random to be very reliable, so I tend to leave them for last.
Anyway, they reach the next two evil men and...oh boy. This is going to be a doozy.
Vesper and Decus are absolute beasts, sporting bloated stats and many dangerous multitarget moves, with spells, beams and a special move that deals heavy physical fire damage to everyone! They basically demand having good attritional capabilities, be it through aoe healing spells or cutting down their damage as much as possible. Fire resistance is a must, and so is some sort of protection for petrification. The problem is, Ashton's HP drops down too much, as he has to give up both his accessory slots to acquire those. No way around it but to grind him up till he gets the HP!
Thankfully, their next and penultimate evil man, Cyril, is a bit of a breather, as he's just a wizard who can be stunlocked easily and relies on his spells to attack. To be fair, they are pretty powerful spells, but it's not very hard to arrange lightning and wind protection for everyone, and it's not even necessary to do that, he's simply not aggressive enough to require being on point with healing items.
Alright, time for the final evil man himself, Indalecio. He's already completed drawing the universe destroying spell, and will cast it after defeating them. He also talks about Filia, who is of course the daughter of the scientist who programmed them in the first place. Yep, he really is Lantis' hatred and despair manifest in bio-robot form. Talk about creepy...
Indalecio is a wizard, like Cyril. Unlike Cyril, he has abilities that shore up his innate weaknesses and make him a very formidable foe. To start with, he casts a huge variety of spells, not just those of one or two elements. He also has a nasty, nasty damage aura he has no compulsions about spamming. To top it all off, he has a second phase where he flies around swiftly while casting spells. And, of course, all of this is backed up by insanely high stats.
The only reasonable way to beat him is by stocking as much elemental protection as possible, catching up to his speed, usually with Skanda Ointments, and finding some way to dodge his damage aura. Claude can do it easily with Head Splitter, Precis can use Hop Step in a similar though slightly more awkward fashion, and Ashton and Chisato are kind of out of luck.
They struggle a fair bit, however things eventually turn in their favor, and he's reduced to smithereens.
However, he activates the spell of universal annihilation on his death. The mayor and the weaponsmith quickly rush in, and help Rena tamper his spell with their own spell. Unfortunately, this causes its energy to be redirected straight into Nede, completely obliterating it.
Thankfully, space magic brings back their old planet, shields them from the destruction, and even lets them fly back there! Thanks mayor! Maybe you made up for your sins after all!
Annnd finally, all of the endings. So here's how everyone turned out:
Noel took charge of some animals in the forests around Mars...
Leon became less of a smartass, and opened up to children of his age.
Ashton returned to the mountains where he'd fought and collected the great bird's tear, reminiscing about his former teammates.
Precis and Chisato became thorough explorers, combing the planet for any interesting artifacts they could find.
Lastly, Claude and Rena hooked up, and Claude became captain of a ship, with Rena assisting him closely. This is, in fact, the canonical ending to this game, and honestly the ending I like the most for these two.
And with that, we're done.
Star Ocean: The Second Story is doubtless a flawed game. The combat is a touch too simplistic for my liking, putting a bit too much of an emphasis on the raw numbers, and moves making good use of said numbers. The character building looks intriguing, yet is hampered by lots of balancing issues. The writing is pretty bad, and wastes a lot of perfectly good concepts for the sake of pointless and shallow melodrama.
Still, it's a charming game in its own right. The idea of building characters who specialize in things besides murder is very appealing, it's satisfying to get powerful things from indulging in a bit of crafting, and despite the writing, the story has a fair few decent moments in its own right, with the entire Lacuer front line to Eluria Tower's top segment being a major highlight. It's not hard to see how it built an audience back in the day, and how it sowed the seeds for their later, better work. Valkyrie Profile 1, to be precise.
Anyway, that covers my feelings on the game. I hope you enjoyed this LP, and will perhaps be able to appreciate this game yourself. Feel free to share your thoughts, I am only too eager to hear them.
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