An Ocean of Stars...or perhaps just water? Let's play Star Ocean: The Second Story.

[SpoonyBard]

Go fight dargon

 

[Second Duke Revier]

The duo follow the whims of the thread, and head back to Salva, where, indeed, many fighters have gathered to attempt slaying the dragon. Nobody has been successful so far, and most of them have decided to just sulk in the local bar instead of trying harder. However, there is talk of a young swordsman who bravely went in alone, and hasn't been seen since. They acquire entry, which is surprisingly easy, as the town lets anyone take up the challenge.

The Salvan mines are largely the same, but the encounters within have changed to considerably more difficult enemies. Most of them can multiply themselves, and the hourglass and jelly enemies in particular have nasty tricks up their sleeve. The former attack with a noxious spray from the front, effectively denying Claude attacking area, and the latter randomly choose to blow up into a big, circular spread of damaging orbs on death.

Nothing here compares to the viciousness of the spider ladies, however. They are extremely fast, and teleport to close in the distance. Combined with their amazingly powerful attacks, they are strong enough to kill the party off twice, after which I make a mental note to run away from them instead. That works out better, for the most part.

Eventually, they enter some new parts of the mine, which look...very similar to the earlier parts. Ah well, at least they catch a glimpse of the mysterious young swordsman on the way.

When they get to the dragon itself, they find the swordsman already in combat with it. For some reason, they decide to slack off here, claiming that the passage is "too narrow" to let them assist him. Instead, they get the brilliant idea of cheering him on. Far from pumping him up, this annoys him, and he turns around to ask them to quieten themselves.

This, of course, gives the dragon an opening, and it magically fuses itself with him, taking up residence on its back!

Naturally, he's none too happy about this development, and insists that they should help him out of his predicament. At this point, you get the choice to accept his plea, which gets him to join, or reject it, which makes the party ruthlessly push him off. Now, of course, it would be foolish to come all this way and not recruit him...but the game lets you do it anyway! I do take him along, if you're wondering.

In combat, he, Ashton Anchors, is currently just a copy of Claude without a shield, and with even worse special moves. This, however, changes very quickly...

As the local weapon store recognizes him as the one who "slayed" the dragon, and offers him this incredible sword as a reward, pushing his attacks far above Claude's. In fact, from this point, I take direct control of him, setting up Claude's AI to use his moves minimally, both so as to make him more effective in combat, as well as to conserve MP.

Heading outside, they discuss the whole exorcism thing, and figure that reading up from Mars' elder's library is their best bet. Also, Rena totally thinks that the dragons are adorable when downsized to fit his back, and he shouldn't think about getting rid of them. Lol.

Funnily enough, you can ditch this whole sidequest and simply head on to Lacour, and he will still stick around without a word of complaining. Buuut I feel that would be in bad faith, and besides, it lets us visit some pretty places we otherwise wouldn't go to, normally.

Anyhow, they read up at Mars, and figure that they need to do two things - obtain a silver goblet from a mountain dungeon overlooking a lake, and then use the goblet to get some tears from a huge bird of legend atop a mountain peak. They quickly figure out that the mountain dungeon is to the east of Cross, with the mountain peak lying to its northwest. Don't ask me, I'm not a geographer of fantastic worlds, lol.

Entering the mountain dungeon requires some due procedure, but thankfully, it's nothing major. The dungeon itself has a very unique look, with the sharp edges of the bricks making it feel very clean, yet very elegant at the same time.

It looks even better in combat! That being said, the encounters here are not to be underestimated - even with Ashton's power, they take a while to go down, and can inflict a lot of damage. The archers in particular are really dangerous, and take down the party twice! Luckily they're also the squishiest enemies around, and some careful maneuvering usually gets Ashton out of the way of their arrows. They do, however, take out Claude, and since I completely forgot to buy a resurrection bottle, he ends up being out for most of the dungeon. Thankfully it does eventually serve up one.

Almost right before the boss of the dungeon, a succubus that is extremely evasive, and also hurts quite a bit! Thankfully, she has no ranged moves, and it's not too hard to dodge her strikes. Pincering her also helps get some hits in, as when someone attacks from the back, they face much less evasion. As such, between their swings and Rena's casts of Ray, it doesn't take too long for her to go down, and for them to claim the silver goblet!

Some pointless musings on the perception of monsters towards them later, there are some funny moments where Rena feels bad for the dragons because of their cuteness, Ashton speaks on behalf of the dragons, interpreting their growls as them feeling bad for him, and then they get ready to scale up the mountain peak..next time! See you then!

 

[Second Duke Revier]

On the way out, Ashton finally unlocks a decent-ish special move, Piercing Blades. It's not actually particularly powerful, and is hindered by its long start up time, but it does give him some valuable range, which will come in handy in later portions of the game.

Actually, we should talk a little about the new spells and techniques the team acquired by leveling up in the dungeon. Claude was out for most of it, but Rena obtained no less than three spells. Two of them, Silence and Energy Net, attempt to debuff all enemies with Silence and Stun, respectively. Silence only prevents the affected targets from casting spells, and is thus rather situational, but Stun is far more broad and useful, taking its targets out of commission for two seconds, during which their evasion is also disabled.

The third spell is Ray, and while it was useful back in Cross' treasure cave, its damage has hardly increased since, and is outright anemic against the foes here. Still, it does retain its elemental properties, its aoe, and its capacity to interrupt enemies by making them flinch, making it a passable spell still.

Their next stop is the Lasguss Mountains, the mountain range northwest of Cross, where huge birds of legend are said to dwell. The mountains look quite pretty, with many a breathtaking vista visible from their heights.

After the battles in the mountain dungeon, the encounters here are an anticlimax. The enemies here can, in theory, inflict Paralysis and Stoning, but they die too quickly to register as threats. The witches annoy the team a fair bit with their HP draining spells, but are often defanged either by Silence, or by the two fighters getting to them before they can cast anything actually dangerous.

The danger is further blunted by Rena picking up an aoe healing spell sometime in between. It heals all party members for nearly full HP, and also invokes Christian imagery surprisingly directly. Claude gets a self healing move too, but it's not as exciting, and there is little reason for him to use it when Rena is around.

They reach the top, and suddenly run into a huge bird, which proceeds to berate the dragons for choosing such a weak host. The dragons, amazingly, take control over Ashton and reply back, stating that they are being pragmatic and doing what they need to survive. The bird berates them more, enraging them and making them challenge it to a fight!

The bird is tricky because it's hard to hit - it flies above ground, making it impossible to reach with most moves. Regular hits, meanwhile, are fairly unreliable at the job, as they have awkward hitboxes and have to contend with a delay while flying upwards. Thankfully, the bird doesn't have anything else going for it - it hits hard, and charges fast, but can be evaded easily, as it's purely a melee attacker. As such, the team dominate it without trouble.

Upon defeat, the bird remarks on being jealous of them finding friends, stating that despite its best efforts, it can never hope to form any friendships, as too many beings regard it as ferocious and terrifying. Then, it flies, leaving a single tear behind. Ashton regains control of himself, and starts having second thoughts about the exorcism. Claude, briefly annoyed, tells him to get on with it, and to head to their last destination - the mines where the dragons merged with him. Then, they leave.

But not before finally putting their skill points to use! So, as I had mentioned before, skills, as a whole, do three things - open up new forms of crafting, raise stats, and improve proficiency at crafting. Today, however, we're mainly concerning ourselves with their second function, as, even with around 200 skill points, they can't actually get any good at any sort of crafting yet. However, they can max out Perseverance, a skill that greatly lowers the price of all other skills, and is absolutely priceless.

With that done, they can turn their attention to other skills. Claude picks up this very nifty skill that raises Strength by 20 per level. When its costs scale up too much for him to keep leveling it up, he turns to the other Strength boosting skill, Scientific Ability, which gives a lesser yet still respectable bonus of 10 Strength per level. Ashton sadly doesn't have access to the latter yet, but can and does make good use of the former.

Rena, meanwhile, invests into Herbal Medicine, maxing it out for a 30% boost to the healing she gets from the berry consumables. This is extremely useful as it makes them scale up well, and lets her extend her MP for dungeons. She also picks up some levels in Biology for a hefty boost to her HP(Boost = Sum of (levels squared x 10)) and in Patience for a small boost to her natural defense(2 CON per level, 1 CON = 1 point of defense).

This unlocks one of the crafting skills, Survival. You can see that she already knows a crafting skill innately, Cooking. Cooking lets the character prepare food, which can be used to restore HP or MP outside of battle. In theory, this extends the party's resources in dungeons, letting them complete them more comfortably without running into a crunch. In practice, it often outputs useless HP restoration items, which don't help as much as you'd think because Rena is much more efficient at healing HP with her spells, and it's MP which is often the limiting factor in fights.

Survival, meanwhile, has an interesting...concept behind it. It basically gives you crafting items in exchange for some small expenditure of MP, the idea being that you'll use this to resupply in dungeons by feeding your crafting skills material for cheap. The problem is, it tends to fail a lot, often doesn't get any worthwhile material, and is dependant on other crafting skills to be worthwhile anyway. Further, it's not hard to find crafting material from regular shops anyway, and as such, most of your crafting tends to be done in towns, not dungeons. You can hopefully see the deficiencies in the crafting, and why it's ultimately not as interesting as it may sound. But not to worry, eventually it will become useful enough to make some nifty and even potentially game breaking stuff for us, though I will try and hold off on the latter.

Anyhow, you can see the effects of investing into the aforementioned skills - Rena, the squishy cleric, now has almost as much HP as Ashton, our strongest fighter. Meanwhile, Claude, still stuck with his cruddy sword, is outputting as much damage as Ashton used to, while Ashton's damage has climbed to the 600s! Needless to say, the climb down is not very difficult at all.

The whole exorcism plot arc ends rather abruptly, as Ashton, at the very last step, proclaims that he actually never wanted to get rid of his dragons, he was just worried that people would be prejudiced towards him because of his altered appearance. But, now that he has found good companions in the party who accept him for what he is, he wishes to keep them at his side. The party is briefly struck by surprise, but agrees with him, and heartily welcomes him and the dragons to the party. Yayyyyyyyy.

And with that, this rather long session ends. See you next time, as we finally continue the main story and cross over to Lacour. Until then!

 

[Second Duke Revier]

Off to Lacour we go!

Hilton, the port of Lacour, is not as impressively large as its Cross brethren, but it's still a fairly active port, with many shops in and around town. The Lacour Kingdom's militaristic focus is also rather prominent here, with a heavily guarded military fort occupying most of the townscape. There's also an anachronistic crane, but, uh, don't worry about it. Suffice to say, Lacour is significantly more technologically advanced than Cross.

The talk of the town is the Lacour Tournament of Arms, a gladiatorial like competition where participants square off against each other using their sponsors' gear. Everyone is looking forward to it, either with excitement or suspense. Some fighters, however, are worried about Dias participating, as he's just Too Good.

The other thing this town is notable for is featuring a musical shop, as well as a food item that restores a decent amount of MP and so is actually useful! Music composition and performance is yet another crafting skill. In theory, music helps out in random encounters or dungeons by raising stats or slowly restoring HP or MP. However, those effects are not all that important, and it's kind of hard to keep using them for a prolonged period of time thanks to being restricted to 20 musical performances max. What music is notable for, though, is greatly boosting the odds of crafting things by itself. Unfortunately, we can't get that song just yet, we don't have access to the appropriate instrument, and likely won't be seeing it for a long time.

Anyway, the private action of this town is Claude running into Cross' prince, who looks almost exactly like him!

After a few awkward moments, they hit it off by sharing a drink at the bar, and the prince leaves this royal ring in Claude's possession! It's not exactly a top tier accessory, but hey, it's better than nothing, and will certainly help him survive a little bit longer.

But now for the star of this continent.

The royal capital of the Lacour kingdom, named after the kingdom itself, is a huge place that puts even Cross' capital to shame. It has many armament shops, a publishing house, and a bunch more skills. Unfortunately, the armament shops are currently closed, as, during tournament season, they can only offer gear to sponsored fighters. The talk of the town is, again, the tournament itself, though there are people worried about news from El, and afraid that Lacour could become the next target of a monster invasion.

Before heading to the castle, I engage in a private action, as visiting it sets off some story events that lock the party out of engaging in private actions in Lacour for a long time, and there's a very useful item I want to acquire. The Rainbow Diamond, seen here, is a reward for helping out an old lady, who shows up only in private actions, and needs an errand done. It will prove to be really useful for crafting later, when the party will have the means to make it reasonably useful.

Alright, time to finally progress the main story. The king of Lacour can't attend to them, as the tournament keeps him busy. However, they encourage Claude to enter the tournament, as, if he delivered an impressive enough performance, he could get a special meeting with the king, and even earn some fabulous prizes. Claude is only too eager to prove his mettle, and to square off with his "rival", Dias, so he readily signs up, much to Rena's consternation.

Absent its ruler, the castle has little of interest, save perhaps for its hired help grumbling about the crowds of visitors within its halls. Once the party heads outside, Claude has to make a tough decision - which shop should sponsor him? The way it works, participants can only bring equipment and items supplied by the shop, as the tournament is intended to test the participant's skill and the equipment of the shop. His options are:

1. Counterpunch:

The store whose equipment is reflected above. It focuses heavily on defense, at the expense of offense - that saber there is the same as the cruddy weapon Claude has been carrying since Herlie! It offers two sweet syrups, a mixed syrup and a blackberry as consumables. The sweet syrups are mediocre HP heals, but the mixed syrup restores a decent amount of both HP and MP, and the blackberry is an MP heal we can scale up through Herbal Medicine.

2. Knockout:

Proud sponsors of last year's winner, Knockout is focused entirely on the opposite side of the coin - it offers a really powerful double hitting sword, but the armor is really sad, dated stuff. High offense can win with careful play, and Claude does have ranged moves to take out a lot of the risk, but he's still noticeably fragile in this shop's armament. They offer the exact same consumables as Counterpunch, which I already covered above.

3. Straight:

This shop is the "balanced" option, having its offense lower than Knockout and its defense lower than Counterpunch. A somewhat boring, yet workable option. They also offer the same consumables as the past two stores.

4. Slayer:

This is the oddball option. Statistically, its equipment is roughly comparable to the fare offered on Straight. The twist is, the shopkeeper is also a bit of a weirdo, and offers a fruit syrup, a fresh syrup, an attack vial and a violence pill. The fruit syrup is essentially an upgraded version of the mixed syrup, which I had already covered earlier; the fresh syrup is a full heal, no questions asked. The attack vial boosts strength by 50%, at the cost of locking out its user's spells and special moves. Lastly, the violence pill is a complete crapshoot, either healing its user to full, or killing them. Yep. You heard that right. She slipped Claude a drug that can literally kill him during the match. Talk about crazy!

Sooooo....which of these should he pick?

Vote away!

 

[Torzelbaum]

I voted.

Slayer sounded the most interesting to me.

I feel like you can work around the downsides of the attack vial and you can use the violence pill if you're in a situation where you'd probably die anyway if you don't get a full heal.

 

[Falselogic]

I went with Knockout. All offense all the time.

 

[Second Duke Revier]

Soo my friends decided to vote on Discord:

That currently gives a tie between Knockout and Slayer, with 3 votes for each. You have until a day to break the tie, after that I shall flip a coin and choose one of them by myself.

 

[Second Duke Revier]

I flip a coin, and it turns up Slayer. Claude gets his tournament pass officially, and the party retires to Lacour's most prominent hotel, being granted a free room on behalf of him, as he's a competitor now.

However, Rena seems incredibly worried about Dias, and tensely paces up and down the room. Eventually, she leaves, saying that she'll take a walk around the city to ease herself. Claude gets more than a little suspicious, and Ashton teases him for his weird behavior.

Rena does return later, but still seems worried. This continues until the day of the tournament itself....

Where it turns out she's been helping Dias get his weapon, which has still not arrived due to weird circumstances. Claude gets livid about this, and accuses her of supporting Dias more than him. She gets upset and runs away, and Ashton reprimands Claude for being too harsh on her. Ah, good ol' teenage drama.

Anyway, the tournament! It's pretty simple honestly, Claude squares off against opponents who mainly engage in melee strikes, and are thus easily avoided. Further, he's actually quite strong by himself, both in and out of melee. So, despite facing them alone, and having limited items, he actually doesn't have much problem fighting them. The only opponent that gives him some trouble is the semi final opponent, mostly because I foolishly make him drink the Attack Vial, not realizing that this enemy's melee strikes come out fast and hit hard. Even then, it isn't hard to overwhelm him in a slug out.

During the tournament, Rena returns, congratulates Claude, and clears up the whole Dias thing - some ruffians had stolen his weapon to prevent him from participating, so as a close friend, she tried and helped him get it back. See Claude, wasn't it so simple? Don't bring heated emotion into this and make everything awkward!

Also, Dias participates in the tournament, and we get to spectate on his matches. Despite the UI here, the AI always controls him. It doesn't use him very well, often choosing to close in for mediocre melee strikes instead of using his amazing long range moves. Good thing, then, that it doesn't matter much - his stats are so awesome that he has no trouble clearing them up regardless.

Anyway, since Claude handily won all of his matches, he and Dias are pitted against each other in the final round. Unfortunately, Dias' stats are wayyyyy too jacked up at this point for Claude to even get a hit in. Yes, he's an unwinnable boss, basically. While I understand the narrative reasons for making him so, capping off the tournament like this still comes off as weird and lame.

The long and short of it is, despite his best efforts, Claude gets trashed, and after he recovers, Dias congratulates him mildly before arrogantly telling him in his face that he still has a long way to go, and isn't his equal. So I didn't approve of Claude being jealous, but Dias really is a dick. I know he's your childhood friend and all, but couldn't you have picked a better friend, Rena?

Anyway, Claude collects his prize for being second place - all of the store's equipment, and 6500 gold. Not bad! Unfortunately, the king is still too busy to see anyone, so they'll just have to wait around the continent until he frees up his schedule. Time to get the ancient writings deciphered, I guess.

But before that, they pay a visit to Gamgee, the armsmith who sponsored Dias for the contest. Gamgee gives Claude a gift from Dias, and shares that Dias was actually full of praise for him and was quite concerned about his development, hoping that he'd eventually build his skills enough to defeat him in battle. So they try to paint him as a "rough but good" hero, and I actually like that archetype a lot, but it's hard to write those sorts of characters well, and unsurprisingly, this game doesn't nail it, either. Despite all this talk about Dias actually being a kind soul at heart, most of his interactions still paint him as a complete and total asshole. Buut we'll talk more about that later.

Dias' gift, the Sharp Edge, doesn't look like much right now. But it can eventually develop into one of the best weapons in the game. That said, I don't want to actually break the game, and so I'm not sure if I'll do so. Perhaps I'll attempt doing it right before the final dungeon, we'll see.

The team then heads off to Linga, the university town on the continent of Lacour. The town, being famous for its scholars, attracts all kinds of studious people...some of whom are more than a little weird. Case in point, the first visit opens with this girl madly chasing around a spherical robot in the open, to the point that she trips and falls in the process. She briefly greets the party, embarrassed to be making this ruckus in front of them, and runs off.

They visit Linga's best linguist to get the writings deciphered, but his assistant shoves them out of his house, as he doesn't want to be bothered by strangers. Well then. Exploring around town reveals that he has connections with a famous pharmacist, so the party tries to get him to speak on their behalf and get an appointment arranged.

However, he's pretty sharp, and doesn't believe the party could've found something new from a cave as thoroughly explored as Crosse's. To make the party prove their worth, he sends them on an errand - visit the local herb cave, and try finding a new herb within. He cautions that, despite being used as a source of herbs, the cave is quite dangerous, with monsters teeming around every corner and even a rumored portal to hell somewhere. Of course, the party is undeterred by this, and sets out to prove their mettle.

And that draws this session to a close. However, we have an important choice to make here. We can either recruit the girl with the robot now, or the pharmacist later. The girl with the robot is, as you can expect, a machinist, and will help us by making a lot of spiffy machinery, on top of using all sorts of weird robots in combat. The pharmacist, on the other hand, will help create medicines for us, and is also a martial artist with some cool fighting moves. Or, we can choose to recruit neither, and fill our fourth active party member slot with someone else. Keep in mind that both of them are exclusive, choosing one stops you from getting the other. So, what'll it be?

Vote away!

 

[Second Duke Revier]

The vote is unanimously in favor of us picking up the machinist girl, so Claude does exactly that.

She hangs out near the pharmacist, and is quite excited to meet Claude, thinking that he's here to date her. But he's just curious about her robot, as he hasn't seen anything like it on the planet. That still earns him her favor, though, as she's quite excited to meet someone who seems to share her knowledge and fascination about machinery - none besides her father shares her interests in town.

She introduces herself as Precis Neumann, and the two head to her house, briefly engaging in flirtatious dialogue, though she seems far more keen on pushing that angle than Claude. There, they find Rena already engaged in conversation with her dad. Things get awkward as she and her dad poke fun at each other, and Claude asks him why he got into the business of inventing things. He claims it was just a random stroke of inspiration, and they quickly conclude the conversation and leave.

Outside, Precis meets up with them, and reveals that the whole bit about being inspired was a big, fat lie - her father had found some good steel from a meteorite nearby, and decided to use it to make things. Rena quickly pushes her aside, as she gets too close to Claude for her liking. She then taunts her for being jealous, and Rena makes the lamest of excuses to dissuade her from joining. Now, Claude gets the choice to turn her down or recruit her, but of course, I didn't come this far just to say no. Heck yes, we now have a ditzy mechanist on the party!

She's currently in need of some work, but I'm hopeful that, given some time, she'll turn out fine. She can use heavy armor and shields, which is promising, but her current weapon is quite weak, and her machinist skill is only level 1. That said, she is perfectly capable of using it, and once I up its level some, she will attempt crafting a few machines for the team.

Anyway, let's attend to the pharmacist's errand. The aforementioned cave has a mildly amusing gag where Claude assumes every single common herb is the rare one, while Rena points out that they're all available in common stores and so aren't what he's looking for. Aside from that, though, it's a pretty boring cave dungeon, with easy and uninteresting enemies. The only enemy that really stands out is the lady hunter, who can buff her companions' attack and cast a mildly dangerous spell that travels in a straight line.

Technically, there's a boss fight deep within the cave, but a rare herb can be found far before that point, and given how dull this dungeon is, I see no real point trying to go that far. The Clarisage is also notable, as it's next to a chest with a Rainbow Diamond, our second one so far!

Before we leave the cave, a quick status update: Precis does low damage, as expected. However, her Hop Step move seems to have a pretty good trajectory. It's basically Head Splitter, but with a lower range. That's not too bad though, as she spends less time executing it. Further, it's far more accurate than it, and bounces her back after hitting the enemy. That last attribute there is a bit of a mixed blessing, as she can land within range of an enemy attack, but it usually puts her out of danger, and so is welcome.

Her other moves are not as interesting, though still workable. Rocket Punch is a fairly standard long range projectile move, moving a bit slowly and being a bit prone to missing enemies. Mole is technically a long range version of Hop Step, only having her burrow underground to avoid enemy attacks. Problem is, it has a long startup time, meaning she can easily get knocked out of it if there are enemies that are either too close, or too fast.

Claude got an attack boosting accessory that buffed his attack by 30%, making him even more of a monster, and Rena unlocked a new attack spell, Gravity Press, that is a considerable upgrade over Ray. Her damage obviously doesn't compare favorably to the appropriately geared fighters, but, being an aoe spell, it has welcome properties that still make it decently useful.

Anyway, the party returns to the pharmacist with the herb. He recognizes it, but is still impressed by their bravery and adventuring skills. So he takes them to the linguist, causes a bit of a ruckus, and immediately hushes the assistant with his name and reputation. Heh, funny how fast the knots of bureaucracy come undone when you know the right people.

The linguist is at first mildly annoyed, but changes his attitude once the party speak of their findings and deliver him the ancient scrolls. Apparently they really are an amazing find. Buuut it'll take a while for him to translate them. Y'know, complicated script and all. The pharmacist makes them stay for the night, where, after learning of their mission, he suggests they travel back to Lacour's capital and seek an audience with the king.

Come daytime, he and his wife see them off. There's a mild bit of comedy when he asks Rena to rein Claude in, implying that he's a bit too impulsive and hot headed for his own good. He mildly regrets not being able to accompany them, but wishes them well, hoping that they return from their expedition alive.

And now they're done. But, before closing this session off, I wish to show off the art of mechanizing, as Precis finally has earned enough levels in it to be decent at making things with it.

First, we buy some base material, a few mechanical kits. They're a bit pricey, but right now I'm just demoing the skill, and we can easily afford to recoup their costs later.

Then, we make her wear both of our rainbow diamonds. This instantly jacks her Machinery level up by 2, like so:

Yep, the Rainbow Diamonds raise the character's levels in all of their crafting skills by 1, each! This makes them amazingly powerful for crafting, and I shall liberally use and abuse them whenever I craft stuff. Unfortunately, her current tinkering didn't turn up much useful; a bomb that poisons all enemies, a bomb that deals moderate fire damage to all enemies, and three duds. Ah well, not to worry, she'll turn up more useful stuff later, when her skill will be even higher.

And with that, this session concludes. Until next time!

 

[Paul le Fou]

I'm only catching up now but I'm glad that the votes made the correct choices of picking up Ashton and Precis. Wise decisions.

 

[Falselogic]

It really doesn't do justice to it but the fights in this game are so busy. Especially once you start using skills and such. Just effects everywhere.

 

[Second Duke Revier]

They sure are chaotic. No update today, but I figured I'd make an itty bitty video giving a taste of the combat for y'all:

 

[Second Duke Revier]

When the team returns to the capital, it is in peril - monsters have overrun the kingdom of El, and are now trying to invade Lacour! The guard quickly whisks them in and tells them to hurry and take refuge in the castle, as it is the safest place to be under the circumstances.

The castle is filled with hopeless, despodent people cursing their fate and worrying about the kingdom's future. The soldiers and researchers are mildly annoyed at having to share space with refugees, and, more importantly, mention a secret weapon that's currently being worked on to subdue the monsters.

Down in the laboratory, the party spies on some discussion about the weapon, but quickly gets caught! Thankfully, the king recognizes Claude as the runner up of the tournament, and forgives his transgression. In fact, he has a mission for him - since he and his party are clearly very well versed in combat, they should accompany their prime scientist and help him retrieve a core component of the weapon from some ancient ruins. The scientist, a bratty young boy, protests, but eventually gives in, as, given the situation, the king can't spare many troops for his expedition, so this is the best security detail he can get.

So they set sail for the ruins of Hoffman, with a detachment of the Lacourian navy itself ferrying them over. I've got to say, I like how the beach area looks. There's something surreally relaxing and yet mildly unnerving about it.

The ruins themselves are a curious mixture of technologically advanced exteriors and a rather bare interior. The encounters within represent a meaningful step up, as the team is often pitted against fire lizards that often breathe highly damaging fire up front, and can also paralyze and petrify their targets. Both of those are extremely dangerous, and effectively render the character dead until they're cured. Thankfully, Rena here has a status curing spell and can easily clear both. Still, it pays to be careful here.

The ruins also have a rather pointless, if amusing gimmick - there are high explosives planted in some areas, and you can blow them up to reveal new areas and passageways, at the cost of taking moderately strong damage on the entire team. Most of them don't open up anything, and Rena can easily patch the damage with one single cast of her aoe healing spell, so...yeah. Props for trying to make a gimmick, I guess?

At least there's some decent loot here, especially from the flying teddy bears. By the end of this, the party walks out with three Reverse Dolls(auto reviving items that grant resistances to all elements), an earring that speeds up its wearer greatly(and, unfortunately, can't be worn by anyone currently in the party), some gems, a few weird trinkets, and a painting that fully heals everyone and can be used anywhere, including within combat!

The party finds the core material eventually. It looks suspiciously radioactive, and it causes Rena's pendant to glow. But before they can figure out what it means, they get jumped by a boss fight!

The bosses, two goatmen, are likely the first real roadblock of the game - both of them are spellcasters with powerful aoe spells, which they will happily spam given the chance. To prevent this, your team should always try to tie them up in melee combat. They do pack a punch there, but it's preferable to getting locked by a constant barrage of spells. I elect to use the bombs Precis had crafted here, as they're actually very vulnerable to Poison, with it doing about a thousand damage every tick! Eventually, one of them falls, and at that point, the battle gets a lot simpler, as the party can consistently lock them up with their attacks, preventing them from doing much of anything.

The battle ends, and with it, their business in the dungeon. They rush back to Lacour, eager to deliver the material to the king...

But not before engaging in a bit of crafting first! Rena, at some point, got her Compounding to a high enough level to attempt mixing some herbs. Compounding creates medicines of all sorts out of herbs. This first foray didn't turn up much exciting, but it did turn up an attack vial, a compress that greatly boosts the movement speed of all party members, and a resurrection bottle.

Precis' attempts are more fruitful, as she turns up a flask that boosts Alchemy, a software that boosts Art, and a slightly better weapon for herself. Now, I don't plan to use Art in this playthrough, because most of what it creates is niche combat items that aren't all that exciting, but the software still sells for a lot, and Alchemy will prove quite useful later. Claude and Ashton finish leveling up Kitchen Knife and Scientific Ability, the two major Strength boosting skills, and start working on gaining Functionality, an all round stat booster that boosts four of the six main stats at once by 6 per level! Not only do they pick this for the stat boosts, but also for a really useful crafting skill I shall show off later...

That being done, they present their finding to the king, who is only too glad to see them successful. The secret weapon shall be completed at last, giving them hope of defeating the monsters. But he has a new errand for them - help defend Lacour until it is ready by fighting at their border fort. Our party, being natural heroes, of course volunteers without a moment of hesitation.

And that shall be all for this session! Next time, there shall be strange philosophy, filler fights and a grand fireworks show. Tune in then!

 

[Second Duke Revier]

The people at the front line base aren't any more optimistic than the citizens of the capital. Apparently fighting has been fierce, and there have been considerable casualties. Thankfully, there is no attack right now, and their medical staff is trying to do whatever they can to treat them.

Of course, the party had to run into Dias here. He's his usual standoffish self, saying that the Lacourian military is ill prepared for their situation, and that them hiring tournament contestants and mercenaries doesn't bode well. Then he mocks Claude bizarrely for pretending to be a pacifist or something, and walks off. Rena, for some reason, decides to ask him about his words, because she thinks Claude is making him "realize something".

Long story short, Dias ultimately decides Claude should be Rena's boyfriend and guardian, because, even though he is weaker than Dias, he fights to protect everyone, unlike the latter, who only fights for himself. Okay then. Rena also sheds some light on why Dias is such an asshole - apparently, when he was a boy, brigands killed his entire family and left him alone and helpless. Since then he has been blaming himself and constantly caring about nothing besides honing his fighting skills. That's it, that's his entire justification for being an asshole. Welp.

Anyhow, the base is really pretty, for how little time you spend here, and I enjoy the views from it, especially from its exterior.

Of course, the party isn't exactly here for sightseeing. The very next day, they get called to fight off a mighty demon! The demon shrugs off all their hits and hits decently hard, but is surprisingly not all that tough, all things said. He leaves after about a minute or so of fighting, taunting the base's garrison that he'll be back in greater force.

The day after, the party checks around the base. They're still holding up, but their spirits grow shakier, as their casualties keep growing with no real end in sight.

After talking to almost everyone on the base, the party tries to take rest, only to be jolted by a surprise attack in the evening! The attacking force is a huge horde of monsters, clearly too big for the garrison to take on in their current state. Just then, Leon steps in, and proclaims that there need not be any more fighting - the secret weapon has been complete, and he shall blow the monsters out with it! He also gives Precis a significantly stronger arm, lightly bragging about how he studied her arm and casually improved on it while working on the secret weapon. Lol.

Unwarranted bragging aside, his weapon really does work wonders; the monsters are vaporised quickly, leaving naught in its wake. With such a mighty weapon on their side, and the immediate threat of the invasion neutralized, the garrison hails their victory in great joy. The party is then called for an audience with the king, who, emboldened by the performance of the weapon, decides to go on the offensive and invade El. Before blowing it up though, he wants them to ensure that any survivors are evacuated safely, and so, they shall travel on a warship to make first landfall, with the Lacourian navy supporting them as well as they can.

Dias however is suspicious of his newfound optimism, and is proven right - the demon returns, and casually blocks the weapon with an energy shield. He then sends his minions, and then charges into the fray himself. Despite the party's best efforts, they fail to scratch him even a little, and he defeats them. With their defeat, he faces no real opposition, and casually swats away the crew of the warship. His minions report back, having cleaned all the other ships of their crew. He destroys the weapon, claims the crystal within for himself, and proclaims victory!

We're then treated to a scene very reminiscent of Final Fantasy 6, where Claude and the boy scientist wash ashore onto a very desolate place. The boy, shocked at the turn of events, breaks down, but Claude urges him to hold onto his hope, and even slaps him when he keeps lamenting their current state.

It turns out, they are on El itself! It looks as bleak and foreboding as you'd expect, and had the writers pulled their cards correctly, this could've been among the most powerful segments in PS1 RPGs.

I say "had" because, of course, they screw this up by revealing in five seconds that the rest of the party in fact survived, and had made contact with the last human survivors on the continent. The survivors' chief talks about how things had gone downhill since the arrival of the meteorite, and how they're barely hanging on, with little hope. He says that the monsters seem to be emerging from the meteorite itself, which makes Claude consider barging into the meteorite and defeating whoever is spawning them there. While a reckless move, it is the only real plan they have, and if they don't do anything the monsters will likely take over the world anyway.

The chief gives the party his blessing, outfits them with new weapons and armor from their local stockpile, and even offers them their supplies and a free resting place! Also, the boy scientist formally joins the team as Leon Geeste! He's a magician with more raw power, but less elemental coverage than Celine. Technically, I could have made a poll to take him or not, but it would be quite pointless - we have enough slots to fit in all remaining recruits. Instead, I'm going to make a poll for our party composition for assaulting the meteorite, as, being a climactic event, it only deserves an appropriately flashy response. Which party members do we take for the meteorite assault? Do we give Leon some action? Should we try having a Claude less active party? Or maybe we give Precis some rest?

Vote away! Note that you have four votes with which to pick the active party, and that neither Claude nor Rena are forced into it. I eagerly look forward to your choices.

 

[Second Duke Revier]

You voted for Leon, so here's Leon in the party! The right column with Ashton in it represents reserve party members, meaning there can be a maximum of four characters on the bench, and four in the active party. Bit interesting to see a limit applied to the bench, but hey.

When the party leaves the hideout, we get a cutscene of Claude's spaceship finally picking up his distress signal. They quickly identify his identity, and rush to the planet! The party isn't aware of this, but it's only a matter of time...

So, Leon. Like I said, he's a spellcaster, and unlike Celine, he prioritizes damage over elemental coverage. His main two spells right now are an ice spell with a small aoe, and a dark spell that shoots stuff in a line. Both aren't particularly great at this point, but they're useful as tools of disruption, and the dark spell looks really cool, besides.

The party enter the meteorite through a curiously futuristic door, which opens up to an id card a shopkeeper in the hideout had randomly picked up. Inside, they find the ruins of El's royal palace, infested with lizards, witches, goatmen and other nasties. The battles are rather tough at first, especially when the witches and goatmen get their spells off, as they have access to a powerful area wide lightning spell that does about 1200 damage to everyone in the party! The lizards, meanwhile, resist the lightning on Precis' weapon, making her mediocre against them, and are capable of killing or stoning characters quickly with their breath, forcing one retreat!

The loot, however, is nothing short of amazing. We get a Meteor Ring that makes every regular attack hit twice, a pair of Crestier Guards that resist water damage and hurl a bunch of damaging fire sparks back whenever their wearer blocks stuff, a Trickster bracelet that randomly grants items for free, and makes Survival near totally obsolete, and this fine piece of armor that resists lightning and star damage. This is especially notable here, where all of the big spells are lightning themed, and thus can be mitigated greatly by it.

Oh, and we also pick up some Musical Software here, which will greatly help with our musical efforts later on.

It turns out the meteorite is no natural rock, but rather a spaceship in disguise! Its mechanical gimmick is that it has a password restricting entry into its depths, and bits and pieces of the password are spread throughout the dungeon on holographic statues. A rather strange security system, but hey. Also, the full password is "Apocalypse", but they couldn't fit more than five letters into the prompt because of some weird programming, so the party only enters "apoca" to proceed.

Inside, they run into the demon again! He gloats a bit and engages them in battle again. However, for some reason he's vulnerable to their attacks now, and, without his invincibility, isn't a very impressive enemy, despite getting the boss music and everything. He's mostly a melee opponent that relies on making hitting him awkward by flying. He also has a life and mana leeching move, but neither portion of it hit hard enough to really be concerned about.

Leon unlocks Shadow Flare, the first truly impressive spell we've seen. It hits all enemy targets for 1700 damage, making it actually better than melee attacks for damage right now, despite all the upgrades. It still has the scaling issue, of course, and odds are it will be replaced before long, but for now it's actually fairly powerful, and appreciated for its power.

Up ahead, the party is blocked by a strange force. Ah well. Guess we gotta backtrack and hunt for something else.

Sure enough, there's a transmission from Claude's spaceship audible on the other branch of the dungeon! Claude is forcefully warped back, and protests about not having completed his duties, and about wanting to continue fighting for his friends. Just then, the team aboard discover that something is accelerating the planet's revolution, and it is headed directly for collision with an enormous energy body! Claude starts pleading even more strongly, and his dad, against all odds, gives in, under the condition that he returns back in five minutes.

But Claude was never one to back down from danger, and so he tricks them, leaving his communicator behind to avoid being beamed up, and committing himself to saving this planet, even if it may be doomed. And so you can see the makings of a great character, though rather late and rather poorly integrated into the story as a whole. This is actually a very touching moment, and it's a shame most of the game's writing never even gets close to it.

Case in point: this whole meteorite assault arc ends with the true villains spelling out their entire scheme in great detail while trying to look menacing by casting themselves in shadow and trash talking the party. Then there is an unwinnable boss battle where the party has to avoid a cyber knight by running in circles until enough time has passed for the villains to call the fight off, and teleport to the destination they were ferrying the planet to.

Yes, that's the entire scheme. These villains had landed in a spaceship on some random planet, and decided to steer the planet towards their target to capture it, in the process causing untold disasters and wrecking it. Also, Rena is from wherever they are, and her pendant is actually a key of sorts to their spaceship, as well as an accelerator for the planet's altered orbit.

The first half of the game ends here, with the planet crashing into the energy body and nobody being in any position to prevent the catastrophe. What a downer. Perhaps the party will be more successful next time, assuming they're still alive? That'll be for the next post, though. See you all then!

 

[Falselogic]

They sure are chaotic. No update today, but I figured I'd make an itty bitty video giving a taste of the combat for y'all:

Oh yeah! That is the stuff!

 

[Second Duke Revier]

The second half of the game opens with the villains talking about hunting and killing the party against a black background, ultimately dismissing them as too weak to really dent their plans.

The party wakes up in a beautiful flower field, and, aside from Claude, seems strangely unaware of their previous world having exploded. A mysterious voice directs them into a teleporter, which transports them to their office. The voice turns out to be the mayor of the planet itself, Narl.

He proceeds to give them a detailed account of his planet's history. It is called Nede, and in the past its inhabitants used to rule the universe with a gentle, benevolent hand. But then ten villainous, powerful men came along, and attempted to usurp their benevolent rule to impose their will on the universe instead. These men inflicted much havoc on them, and it was only after a long, drawn out war that they were defeated, and cast into a space prison. The Nedians, however, were shocked at how powerful they had become, and so decided to cut themselves off from the universe by blowing up their original planet, relocating to a new planet, and covering it with a huge energy shield, so as to stop anyone from ever entering or leaving. Now this story should seem more than a little fishy, because it is. We will discover the truth behind it later.

Anyhow, by some means or the other, those men escaped their prison, steered the former planet the party was on to reach Nede, and teleported here. They caught them too late, and don't have enough firepower to oppose them. So they expect the party to be their heroes of the day and take them down. Of course. But before they can do any of that, they need to acquire a transport, which they shall get from another city up north.

The capital city of the planet, uncreatively named Central City, is a heavily built up settlement, with multi storey buildings present on nearly every road. The party quickly runs into an odd lady, who seems to be observing them from afar. She runs away, embarrassed to have been caught in the act. Besides that, the rest of the inhabitants have pretty mundane dialogue, though the city square does have some of the best stocked shops so far, including some considerable weapon upgrades for the party.

The private action here has Rena undergoing an existential crisis, as she now knows she's from Nede, and inadvertently caused the destruction of the planet she was reared on. Claude cheers her up by reassuring her that no matter what, she's a valuable member of the party and his friend. Isn't it nice to have such open minded people?

North City is just a short walk away from Central City. It's a lot more tranquil and serene, which also means it's a lot more boring. The lady from earlier decided to shadow the team here, and again runs away when caught. Weird. Despite its unassuming appearance, the city has some great shops, including an armorer with substantial upgrades and a general store with some fine musical instruments. Buying them costs the party a hefty sum though, especially combined with their weapon purchases in Central City, and so I pass up on a few things for now.

The city also has a digitized library with much information on multiple topics. The first two cover the legend Narl narrated to the party in greater detail, the third one talks about how magic can be channeled through tattoos depicting certain arcane symbols, and how everyone in Nede can, to some extent, use its power, but chooses not to. The fourth topic divulges some information about how the ten men's spaceship operated, and how keys could be used to give it more momentum. The fifth topic talks about a spell so powerful, it could create a black hole big enough to suck the universe in. Such a spell would of course cause total annihilation, and so the author themselves wishes that it never sees use. The sixth and seventh topics talk about some potential breakthroughs a research institute had discovered before being shut down due to an accident. It tantalizingly mentions the potential of being able to travel through time and space. Lastly, the secret information is, of course, secret, and thus inaccessible to us....for now.

But enough dawdling, let's go get a transport...or not. See, the Nedians use sentient cyborg dragons as transports, for some reason, and they need to have the data of their owners input into them to accept them. When they entered Claude's data into one of them, it rejected it and turned feral, forcing the party to kill it in a very lame battle. Obviously the breeding center doesn't want to risk any further dragons, so they get sent to the dragon reserve itself to obtain one illegally! Also there's a brief scene of the odd lady trailing them into the center itself, and clumsily tossing herself overboard! Boy is she a persistent one.

But, before doing that, they engage in a little crafting. So, remember when I mentioned a certain instrument being capable of raising crafting chances greatly? Yep, it's right here. First Leon attempts to compose for it...

Then he attempts playing this song until he gets it right. Which doesn't take very long at all, as each baton costs a mere pittance, and there are no complicated animations involved. Further, once he does get it right, he always gets it right from that point on, as he unlocks the one music talent he was missing, letting him play every instrument near perfectly from now on.

The party then crafts a bunch of stuff, as the song greatly inspires them and raises their odds of success considerably. However, it turns out the party is so powerful right now it doesn't really need them, so I'll hold off on describing what was made until it becomes relevant. Note, however, that the party has four rainbow diamonds now, and so can simultaneously jack Leon's music level and the skill level of a crafter up.

The Trickster, among its generous bundle of gifts, offers up these powerful rings. They absorb ALL physical damage directed at their wearer, and heal them for the same amount. The catch is, they have a random chance per hit absorbed to break, and are thus not that good on fighters, who are exposed to all manners of physical hits. They go perfect on wizards though, who often stay out of melee, don't have a ton of armor, and are the most susceptible to being physically murked. So I outfit them with it.

Back to the story. Apparently the animals of the reserve have gone hostile, putting the dragons within in serious danger! And...errr, that's about it. The encounters here are more annoying than deadly, with many of them featuring strange balls that only suck MP. There are stingrays that can paralyze, and cockatrices that can petrify, but with the party's high offense, and Rena's support, they don't stand much of a chance.

Also the weird lady stalked the party into the reserve, but fumbled and fell once, before running off in embarrassment again. At least the party collected her id card, and got to know of her name - Chisato Madison.

The party arrives just in time to stop some spider ladies from killing and eating a dragon. They're still quite ferocious, but now the party has grown a lot stronger, and with the aid of some spells, they beat them without much of a sweat.

Claude lacks the will to forcibly tame the dragon, as it is quite wounded and just gave birth to some babies. Thankfully, Rena and the reserve's caretaker understand it, and talk it into helping the party. So now they have flight, hooray! The caretaker, Noel, also joins the party, as, with the reserve having gone feral, he can't do much, and he suspects that the ten evil men are behind it.

And with that, this session comes to a close. But before I end, I want to bring up yet another choice: which party should we assemble to continue our quest? We have already recruited Noel, and will soon recruit Chisato, so there's a fair bit of variety available now. This should be interesting.

Vote away!

 

[Second Duke Revier]

Showing off the new team!

 

[Second Duke Revier]

'
Our new team is Precis, Noel, Chisato and Claude. Of these, only Chisato is missing, so let's go fix that! Claude and Rena return her ID card to her, and pointedly ask her about her persistent stalking. She plays coy for a bit before admitting that she's been writing stories about them, as people on Nede are quite interested in their exploits. They begrudgingly accept this explanation, and then invite her into the party, as, if she's going to continue writing about them, it would be best for her to be directly a part of the team. She agrees, and the news agency gives her permission, so long as she keeps writing the stories. Yayyyy!

Chisato's attack power is relatively low, and none of her weapons are particularly strong, but she makes up for it by having her special moves hit multiple times. Further, she has a very flexible selection of equipment, being able to wear both fighter and mage armor, and even being capable of equipping some fancy accessories, like the Gale Earring here, which greatly speeds her up and also makes her regular attacks hit twice, on top of making her resist Wind damage!

And that's not all! She comes with the ability to reproduce items. Now, granted, you do need to buy or make a camera for her, and it does take up some film, and it has a higher chance to fail than other crafting options, but it's still far more convenient and far more controllable than most of them, and with Leon's music, it's honestly not that unreliable.

But enough gushing about the newest recruit, let's continue the story! Narl now wants us to collect four mystical orbs that hold the power of Nede, as he believes they will grant us the ability to face the ten evil men. Ah, we're being offered Final Fantasy 1 tier quests now. Yeah, the story kinda just falls off pretty hard once we get to Nede. There are still a few good moments, but they are so scarce they may as well just be blips in the ocean.

Anyway, they have to tackle four dungeons to retrieve these orbs. Narl directs them to try the Field of Intelligence first, claiming it's the easiest one, but in all honesty this is pretty bad advice. That dungeon may have the statistically weakest enemies, but it also serves up wizards who randomly turn invincible to physical attacks and bombard the party with spells and nasty attacks. Instead, it's better to tackle the Field of Courage or the Field of Power first, as both have physically oriented enemies that mostly rely on melee attacks to fight their opponents. Of these, I pick the Field of Power, as the Field of Courage has some fire breathing lizards and generally worse loot.

The gimmick of this field is several fights involving apes and levers. The party has to stop the apes from reaching the lever, else the path ahead will be caved in and remain inaccessible until they leave and reenter the dungeon. I flub this a few times, as the party, with two new members, is slightly underpowered for this dungeon, but eventually I bring these fights under control by having Precis act as a firm lever guard.

Let's also talk about Noel, our second new face. He's unique in that he combines three whole types of characters - he casts offensive spells to fight, casts a variety of healing and recovery magic to make the party recover from their wounds, and wears the armor of fighters. Thus, he's really flexible and very durable for a mage. The downside? He excels at none of these roles, being considerably worse at offensive magic than a dedicated spellcaster, being worse at healing than Rena, and generally having lower durability than most dedicated fighters. In this regard he's like a Red Mage from a Final Fantasy, sacrificing power for flexibility.

He was a glaring weakpoint at first, because he hadn't unlocked any area wide damage spells, relying instead on Energy Arrow. Yes, the very same spell Celine unlocked back in Mars! Its damage had barely scaled up much since, dealing 500 to a single enemy, when they have thousands of HP! Thankfully, he still had healing spells, and those did help keep the party alive, although I did have to stock up more Resurrection Bottles than usual.

Eventually, however, he unlocks Foehn, a spell invoking hot wind across the entire field to damage all enemies, making him rise sharply in usefulness again. His spells are largely all "naturally" themed, invoking either wind or earth. He also has a few oddball spells in there, such as an MP and HP steal, but, like most spellcasters, his main role is disrupting the enemy, and for that his area wide spells are the most useful.

The Field of Power has some pretty amazing loot. The Atlas Ring in particular is notable because it greatly beefs the attack of anyone wearing it, solving Chisato's one drawback. It does make its wearer weak to all elements as a tradeoff, but this is easily mitigated with the right gear, and Chisato gets access to said gear fairly easily.

This far into the game, levels start giving lots of skillpoints, and experienced characters start running out of worthwhile stuff to buy. At this stage, Effort becomes a good pick up, as the only real limiter of power is levels and the stat gains from them. Plus, it even unlocks Practice, a setting that somewhat nerfs character stats for more XP, and, with enough characters leveling it up, Comprehension, a setting that slows the party to grant more skill points on level ups. Both can be combined for some serious gains on levels and skills, but I don't bother. The game isn't so hard that I need to deliberately break its level curve.

Anyhow, the party reaches the summit of the field, where they are challenged by this huge robot to prove their mettle. It ends up being a very tough opponent, mostly because it has moves that the AI controlled characters don't play well with. Specifically, in its third form, it ends up hurling a damaging aura that hits everything near it for gobs of damage. But the AI controlled characters continue to stay nearby to attack it, leaving them exceptionally vulnerable.

I ended up using Precis' beam and Noel's spells to take it down. It actually made me retreat from the dungeon once, as it turned out I hadn't brought enough MP restoratives, but once that was done, it didn't take too much effort to bring it down. Just a lot of time, as it had great defense, with which it blunted the beam. Yes, almost all special moves on fighters count as physical damage and so get blunted by regular defense, even when their visual appearance suggests otherwise. Bit annoying, but not much of a setback.

Once defeated, the robot makes way, and the party proceed to the shrine ahead to retrieve their first orb. But, before handing itself over, the orb makes Claude and Rena see visions from their past. In Claude's case, it exposes how powerless he was, as his superiors constantly cuddled him for fear of angering his dad, while constantly speaking ill of Claude behind his back. Well ain't that a pleasant experience. I'm...really not sure that helped, orb.

And that's one of the four orbs collected! But, before we go behind the rest of them, let's visit and relax in a snow covered university town. Perhaps we might even learn a thing or two there. Until next time!

 

[Torzelbaum]

Eventually, however, he unlocks Foehn, a spell invoking hot wind across the entire field to damage all enemies, making him rise sharply in usefulness again. His spells are largely all "naturally" themed, invoking either wind or earth.

A Foehn wind is a real thing (but apparently it's mostly just dry and relatively warm).

 

[Second Duke Revier]

I see, good to know! Someone at tri-Ace surely studied some science; there's some oddly really detailed scientific explanations on some of the ores and items.

 

[Second Duke Revier]

After completing the Field of Power, the party stops at the nearby snow covered town of Giveaway. It's a very pretty town, with the firm brick and mortar architecture complimenting the soft fuzzy snow nicely.

Giveaway is the primary educational town on the planet, and as such, its main attraction is its university, which is a grand building dominating the town's view. The students and teachers within act like your typical college students and teachers...

Aside from one professor, who has been researching Nede's history. Hmmmm....

The party decides to take their load off, and Claude runs into a mysterious young girl in Noel's house. It turns out she's an old student of Noel's who has a crush on him, but is too shy to express it. Instead, she voluntarily works as his servant, tending to his house and his guests. Noel appreciates the gesture, but hopes she will eventually settle down on her own. He briefly suggests that Claude marry her, which causes some awkwardness, but thankfully he doesn't press the matter, and the moment passes by quickly.

Chisato also has a talk here. She brings up the mayor's legends, and smartly notes that nearly every existing account merely repeats the story, with no hint of introspection or diversion. Certainly, given how long ago it happened, someone should've tried to study it in depth, and looked into other possibilities? There is definitely something suspicious going on here...

Anyhow, I had to fiddle around to trigger this dialogue, but the professor from earlier admits to having tried to hack into into the library's system to read the secret files, but failing to do so. It seems to be a genuinely tough job, as several computer experts have tried their hands at it to no avail. Hmm, so we clearly need some sort of expert hacker. But who could fit the role?

We'll find out later. For now, the party, having finished resting up, head to their next field, the Field of Courage. It mostly has the same enemies as the Field of Power, only it adds fire breathing, petrifying and paralyzing lizards, who can get rather rough if any character happens to be unlucky enough to be statused by them. However, given the melee centric nature of the foes, this dungeon isn't much of a challenge, either.

The loot is pretty good, of course. The Bloody Armor is notable, as it's a very common drop from the knights in this and the earlier field, and it makes its wearer completely invincible, at the cost of constantly draining their HP at a swift rate. This may sound unusable, but, with enough HP, and a healer constantly spamming aoe heals, it is in fact completely viable to suit up in them and dominate enemies with little danger. Naturally, this is completely broken, and so I will not indulge in it.

The field does have a gimmick, but it's pretty tedious and pointless - it warps the party around until they take the right exits. The boss is pretty uninteresting too - it's just the big robot, with the exact same stats as before. This time around, the party humiliates it by constantly stun locking it before it can ever get to switching phases! That being done, they collect the orb of this shrine, which, like its predecessor, shares visions to Rena and Claude. This time around, it pulls from their present, showing Ronixis lamenting the believed loss of his son, and claiming that he lacked the courage to save him. He thinks that all of his heroics were just an act, and that he was afraid of not living up to his image as a war hero. That's a profound thought at least, but I still fail to see how it relates to Claude's courage, or lack thereof. Ah well, Nede is where the story, as it is, mostly goes to hell anyway.

And that's a wrap! Two orbs down, two more to go. But before proceeding to them, the party shall visit the other settlements of the planet, both for relaxation, and, hopefully, some education too. See you all then!

 

[Second Duke Revier]

The party visits Armlock, the city of weaponsmiths. The people here smith weapons as a hobby, but don't actually use them on anything.

Naturally, the weapons of this place are pretty high end. Everyone besides Claude in the active party has a sharp upgrade here, and readily picks it up. Now, of course, they cost a pretty penny, but with all of the generous payouts from the field's fights, to say nothing of the Trickster's gifts, it's not exactly hard to arrange that.

Armlock also has this amusing private action, where Claude turns down Ashton inviting him for a drink...

...and Precis showing off by hanging out on this roof. Aside from these, and the cool red roof brown brick architecture of the city, there's not much else here though. This city will become much more important later.

Off to their next stop, Fun City! It's an amusement park the size of a city, filled with minigames of all sorts.

The first minigame is bunny racing. The bunnies complete two laps around the course, and the party places bets on who will win and place second. If they bet correctly, they win one prize from a list of prizes, shown here. The list is randomly filled with prizes, which are of highly variable quality. Further, the bunnies themselves are randomized per race, making it quite difficult to bet reliably. I win one out of the eight bets I place here, though I did come close a fair few times. The premium prize here is the Bunny Shoes, legwear that makes its wearer run incredibly fast! It's a pretty neat piece of footwear, but far from necessary - Skanda Ointments can replicate the effect pretty well, and on the entire team, to boot!

The second is a cooking competition, where the party's representative needs to cook more and better food than their opposition to win. Hosted by the god of the netherworld Yarma himself, they feature a time limit and a pressure mechanic, where the higher the pressure, the worse the party's cook will perform. I picked Chisato as she has the relevant talent for cooking, as well as the skill points to burn on raising it all the way to level 10. Despite this, she has serious difficulty in the competition, often failing to cook with any of the fancy ingredients, which docks her score severely. She fails to secure a single win, making this a huge disappointment.

Last, but certainly not least, the city features a variety of gladiatorial duels the party can engage in through their representatives. These aren't too bad; while they do pull from several late game areas and beyond, the party is geared and statted fairly well for them. However, stoning attacks get the better of them, abruptly ending their first few attempts. Eventually I wise up, and send Precis with protection against both paralysis and stoning. She readily secures a victory, and gets a hefty cash prize as well as some sp. Yayyyyyyyy.

There's more to the city than just minigames. Given its size, the party can, and do relax in it. Among the private actions here is Leon amusingly lying about drinking from the bar.

There's also Ashton obsessing about barrels...

And Rena getting her romantic fortune read. So, there's a few fortune tellers in town, and two of them can be used by the party. One of them reads various boring in game stats, and the other reads the romantic fortunes of the character approaching them. The latter can only be accessed while conducting private actions, as the main character is too embarrassed to consult them when the whole party is around. Rena consulting him here means that she and Claude are well on their way to earning a romantic ending.

So, remember when I said that this game has multiple endings? That's right, you get them by pairing different characters with the main character, and with themselves. By default, the game is predisposed to having Claude and Rena hook up, but it can be changed by manipulating events such that either of them hook up with other people. It's too much micromanagement though, and not really worthwhile. Characters also passively build relationships by fighting battles, and fighting lots of battles, especially boss battles, together tends to get them paired up quite fast.

The party's last destination is sadly also their most boring one. It's the aquarium of L'Aqua, now converted into a military base for the Nedians. Unfortunately the soldiers here don't have much interesting to say, there's not much to look at, and there aren't even any private actions! Booooring!

There's technically one more settlement on this world, but it's off limits to the party currently, as it's guarded by a thick forcefield that forbids any kind of entry. There's definitely something funky going on there.

And with that, we're done! Next time, the party shall get back to their orb collecting quest, tackling first the Field of Wisdom and then the final field in the sky, the Field of Love. See you all then!

 

[Second Duke Revier]

The Field of Intelligence is basically a teleporter maze. Thankfully, it's fairly short and not too complicated.

Unfortunately, it's also home to one of the worst enemy types in the game.

So, recall how enemy spellcasters were powerful, thanks to their spells ignoring defense and hitting a wide area for considerable damage? Now, imagine that these spellcasters could also go invisible at will, making them immune to weapons. And then also be capable of spamming fireballs that hit fairly hard and have a chance of petrifying and paralyzing their victims. And also have a ton of health. And be accompanied by sturdy guards that block all hits from the front. Yeaaaaaahhhhhhhh......

Thankfully, by now the party's stats have climbed so high that, despite all of these factors, they can withstand the wizards' assault relatively easily and defeat them with their raw damage before they get out of hand. But this shows pretty succinctly why tackling this field first is a really bad idea.

It helps that the XP and loot payout from their fights is pretty good. Our characters here are actually almost done buying up all their relevant skills, and shall be free to spend them on smaller benefits before long.

The boss of this field is a weird robot arm that uses its CPU cores to execute various moves and keep itself topped off. The expected approach, then, is to destroy all of the cores, which causes it to go inert and become a hapless attacker. With the team's current power levels, this is fairly easy to do, and with careful positioning, none of its attacks pose any real threat to the team. Bit of a letdown, lol.

The orb makes Claude flash back to one of his childhood memories, showing him throwing a tantrum over his dad not reading him stories, because he was too dumb to understand how busy he was and how demanding his tasks were. I seriously don't get the point of these visions. Are they there just to make Claude feel bad about himself? There might've been a point to them if they showed his current failings as a character and gave him insight on how he could grow, but as is, they just feel like random jabs at him.

Anyway, it's time for the fourth and final field, the Field of Love. It's a pretty if small flying garden...

With decidedly unpretty enemies!

Thankfully, the party is now strong enough to handle them without much incident, though I have to swap Chisato's Gale Earring out for a Star Ruby for some Darkness resistance, as the Shadow Flare spells from the wizards flatten her otherwise!

At this point, the party starts picking up and maxing out their auxiliary skills. Guts is interesting, as it essentially works as a kind of "critical" stat, determining how often the character lands critical hits or defends. Critical hits greatly boost damage, as you can imagine, and critical defends cut damage taken by half, and let the character survive with 1 HP if the attack were to kill them! Not only that, but they also work against all sources of damage, not just physical attacks. Every character wants a bunch of it, especially since only a few characters get a good amount of it through leveling. 30 more Guts may not sound like much, but the calculations for Guts triggering uses the stat as a percentage out of 255(or maybe 256), and so even this amount actually adds considerably to the character's odds of critting, either on attack or defense.

The boss of this place is this weird lady, who's apparently an agent of the ten evil men and has killed this shrine's real guardian or something. She tries to pull off a hostage situation and trick the party into giving her the keys to the fields, and it doesn't amount to anything, because it just leads to a rather simple boss fight where she doesn't do much of anything. She does have two goatmen backing her up, and they flatten Chisato because I forget to cover up her Holy weakness from the Atlas Ring, but her attacks are pretty weak, and she doesn't use them very often. Laaaammme!

Our pointless orb vision of the day is it showing Claude angsting over how his dad's fame constantly towered over and shadowed him, and how he lacked love for what his father did for him. This is probably the closest the orb comes to actually making a point, and yet, once again, it fails to do anything constructive as it never shows him how he could reform his character and overcome his flaws. Ah well.

And with that, we're done with the orb quest! But, before we continue, we need to pick our party for the final time, as we shall be gearing up to face the ten evil men themselves! Which party should we use to fight the ten evil men and close out the game?

Vote away!

 

[Second Duke Revier]

A showcase of my endgame team and their upcoming boss fight!

 

[Falselogic]

Go team!

 

[Second Duke Revier]

With the orb quest being done, the party gets down into the business of prying out the truth about Nede's history. It turns out that Chisato is our star hacker of the day! Wild, huh?

However, the mayor wants them to assault the ten evil men pronto. He also "reveals" to the rest of the team that their former planet exploded, and that, once they've dealt with the evil men, they plan to channel their energy into pulling Expel back from the past, presumably before the whole meteorite landing thing. Ah, so this is where the research into time travel pays off.

Welp. We're here, at the city they captured. Gotta say, they spared no expense renovating it into an evil looking castle, lol.

Unfortunately, they're late. The evil men have already developed powerful cannons, and are on the verge of completing a cannon powerful enough to destroy a planet by itself! They demonstrate this by blowing up Claude's dad's ship with gradually stronger shots, because they're fucking dicks.

Claude is livid about this, and swears to fight them to the death to avenge his dad. However, after a few perfunctory battles with surprisingly frail robots, they are thrown into battle against one of the evil men, who again proves completely impervious to their attacks. The Nedian army takes a serious beating, losing most of their personnel here, and the party is forced to retreat, with the Nedian commander holding the evil men off.

The mayor then decides to look for some superweapons to penetrate the evil men's defenses and have a chance of fighting them. Naturally, the best place to look for these things is the city of weaponsmiths, Armlock.

But before we do that, let's take a look at our new team. Ashton has been out of practice for a long while, and it kinda shows. The lack of a healer is also concerning.

Crafting can help make up for it, though. Demonstrated here is the Master Chef skill, a crafting skill where the entire party gets involved in cooking food. This outputs considerably better food than regular cooking, at the cost of requiring a greater spread of skill points. Party wide skills like these are generally superior to their single character counterparts, and have lower odds of failing. Though, of course, some of them make stuff that's completely different from what their corresponding single character skills do, like Identify All not actually working as a mass identify, but rather as a means of manipulating shop prices to suit their needs.

Anyway, Master Chefing gets them some pretty good food, which I thought would be useful as the party doesn't have a healer anymore. It turns out that the steaks and root beer the party had bought were sufficient to meet their dungeoneering needs though. Ah well.

Let's get back to the plot. The mayor leads the party through a portal in Armlock to their research laboratory, which has been lying long abandoned due to an accident.

He digs up a video of the lab moments before it destroyed, which reveals the code to their database, as well as the bombshell that the laboratory's head of staff was none other than Rena's mother! I must say, it's rather uncanny that she could calmly spell out the laboratory's password moments before her death.

This causes Rena to have an existential crisis, where she wonders if her mom truly cared for her, given her dedication to her work. Claude reassures her that she did care, and that being a working mother in no way meant that her love was diminished - after all, he too had a working mom care for him in his growing years. Then they have an intimate moment where Claude assures Rena that she's free to voice her sorrows to him, as he'll be around for her, and she, in turn, tries to console him over his dead dad. Awww...

With that sentimental moment being over, the mayor extracts design plans for a superweapon, and takes the party back to Armlock. There, an expert arms designer analyzes them and figures out exactly what the superweapon is. It's an antimatter sword! Bit amusing that they specifically made it a sword and not, like, a cannon or something, but whatever. Anyway, to create it, she needs some special metal to stabilize the antimatter. Said metal can only be found from a cave holding very rare creatures, and in fact the metal has to be extracted from the creatures, ideally from the biggest creature within, as they have the best metal in their bodies, apparently. So that's their next stop.

But before doing that, I outfit the party with Rainbow Diamonds to get some Holy resist, as the dungeon has an untold number of goatmen. They cast a very powerful Holy spell, and are not afraid of chaining it. Each cast of it does 1200 damage to the entire party, and keep in mind, this is with them resisting it. Yikes!

The encounters here cause the team to burn through resurrection bottles, as Ashton, thanks to his low level, doesn't have enough HP to withstand their spells. To remedy this, I break out yet another crafting skill - Familiar. This one summons a bird using pet food that can buy supplies for the team and keep them well stocked. It's a pretty great skill, and it helps keep a vast variety of parties viable, though its value does get a little diminished with a healer around. Even so, it's handy for very long dungeons, such as the final dungeon and the post game dungeon.

Besides, there's something really satisfying about having your own carrier bird at your beck and call.

For a penultimate dungeon, this cave honestly isn't too bad. The goatmen are quite annoying, and are pretty capable of causing party wipes, but with good positioning, enough aggressiveness to bait them into attacking in melee, and careful application of items, they're handled fairly reasonably, and none of the other enemies, as rare as they are, are as bad as them.

Claude is done investing into stat bosting skills, so he picks up Piety, which randomly boosts a stat by 3%. Normally it would be advisable to wait on investing into this until hitting level 100 at least, but really, random stat boosts don't make much of a difference, especially if you get bad rolls on them, so it's not worth fussing over. I just see it as a nice little boost to apply atop of everything else.

Anyway, I break out the protection rings and reverse dolls for the next boss.

That's because it's uniquely powerful - it doesn't directly attack, instead it counters damage done to it with a huge aoe at periodic intervals. The protection rings are nice here because the aoe is physical, and it only hits once per appearance, making it quite useful. Reverse dolls are a fine substitute for people without protection rings, as it automatically revives them, giving them a good chance of surviving it and applying additional pressure to take it down faster.

The party successfully defeats it, and scavenges it for its metal. And with that, this session is done. Join me next time when we uncover the truth of Nede's history and start fighting the evil men for real! Until then!

 

[Falselogic]

What is the boss? A pile of rocks? Some sort of tank? It is hard to tell.

 

[Second Duke Revier]

I think it's supposed to be some sort of chunky cyber dog, but yeah, it's pretty hard to tell.

 

[Falselogic]

That's one of the problems with PS1 era 3d. It just looks like a bunch of doritos mashed together sometimes.