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Youpi
Joined: 01 Mar 2011
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 Posted: Sun Apr 15, 2012 12:30 pm Post subject: [SQEX-W5] Let's ▶▶ Star Ocean: The Second Story |
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To celebrate the FINAL SQUAREENIX WEEK 5, I have decided to fast forward through one of my favorite Playstation games, Star Ocean 2.
But this time, I will play it the way it was meant to be played: on a quad-core computer, with eight Gamefaqs tabs on the second monitor, abusing savestates, using the turbo button the whole way through, then, of course, challenging the optional bonus dungeon that I never visited.
If you have followed one of my two previous LP projects, you'll know I like my gimmicks. The gimmick here is that most of the screens are screens of menus.
It means this LP will be as spoiler-free as a LP showing the whole game can get, because I will disregard almost all the story and mention none of its twisty twists. But if you really need to know, the story is anime.
Thread index
- Part 1: Recruiting Characters on Planet Disc One
- Part 2: True Star Ocean Starts Here
- Part 3: Lvlng u rly fst
- Bonus 1: VRAM Dumps
Before embarking on this journey, I started by doing something crucial: I wrote a Autohotkey script to fix pSX Emulator 1.13.
Its turbo key needs to be held constantly, and that's annoying. To do this project, I needed it to be a toggle. So:
| Code: |
SendMode Event
z::
Loop {
Send, {v down}
if GetKeyState("x", "P") {
Send, {v up}
break
}
} |
(v is the key bound to the Turbo key in the emulator, z enables turbo, x disables it).
Part 1 - Recruiting Characters on Planet Disc One
It always seemed weird that they used blue underlined words, looking like default hypertext links, for the main menu.
Before we start, we must setup a few things. Yes, you can get surround audio on a PS1, and it's the default option. Don't ask me how the hell that was even possible.
Are you a boy, or a girl?
Your choice will matter: the game almost never leaves the perspective of your character to show you what is happening elsewhere, so when you are separated, you will not see what happens to the other character. I picked the boy because I am a boy.
We are treated to an unsubtitled intro. Even in the French version I played in 99, it was not subtitled, so if you don't know the language or are deaf, lol fuck you.
State of the art CGI recap the events of episode 1. You are the son of one the characters of that game and stuff.
So, I start the game,
open the menu,
and reset the game.
Then, I reset it again.
That's because I wanted to start the game with the Dexterity talent.
While the intro is more than five minutes long, the turbo mode can achieve speed ups of 600 to 900%, so I don't care.
Storytelling happens, then I am whisked away to a different planet, and the other main character is about to be mauled by a monster.
I have to rescue her because I am a man and she is a girl. I can only use my laser gun.
Unfortunately, we are in a prime directive kind of setting so I fucked up big time. Incidentally, the noble savages on this planet have a legend about the warrior with a sword of light, and that would be me. Despite being primitive beings, notice they have tap water in small villages, so it's kind of weird they don't know about firearms.
Next, the girl I rescued is captured again by this guy so they can get married without her consent. He shows me his true form, which I stab. I rescue her again because she is a girl.
Nevermind that she would have been perfectly able to fight three guys as strong as this first boss alone. She's the only character who can heal you for the whole of the first CD, so she is way more important to have than Claude in battle, who is not a mandatory member during battles.
We are tasked with adventure. But before that, more storytelling happens. Notice how the camera angle changes. It's a trick they pull rather often in cutscenes, much more than JRPG on pre-rendered BGs of the same era.
So off I go to adventure with not my girlfriend.
The world map is rather terrible looking. It's the sort of game where you must keep the run button pressed at all times - including on the world map. That's pretty dumb since you don't even have to worry about waking up Aeris in this game.
One of the most well-known aspect of this game is the Private Action System. System is always a proper noun when discussing JRPG Systems. This is a LP about Systems.
When you are close to a city, you can press the square button to split your party.
Everyone will go mind their own business, then you can talk to your party members and have storytelling happen.
For example, if I talk to Rena here, my main character, Claude, will have a flashback about his daddy issues. If I were playing as Rena, I would have the same discussion, but would not see the flashback.
The fights happen in 3D environments, in realtime. It's rather action-y. Would be better to show than describe them, so I will make videos of a few fights for disc 2, but disc 1 has almost no interesting fights.
It's mostly mashing X until they die.
We need money and levels early - mostly money. So we assassinate a lot of things at the speed of 700%.
Right from the moment the two main characters leave the first village, we can access every single town and most dungeons on the whole continent, so we go fight the strongest monsters we can handle ASAP. There is no point waiting for our third character, because the experience won is split between the characters, so fewer members mean more experience.
But after a while it easier to make progress with this here sexy witch.
I will attempt to hook up with her because it's that sort of game.
All your characters can be friends and lovers with every other character.
If they have enough friendship points they become BFF.
If they have enough love points and are of the opposite genders they end up in love and stuff.
If they have enough love points and are of the same gender they end up heterosexual.
After fast-forwarding through hundreds of assaults on the local wildlife, I enough points to learn a few skills,
and enough money to buy these gloves. The graphical glitch on these two screens does not happen on real hardware.
Likewise, the hand icon has a normal color palette outside of the emulator.
I start a private action in this city.
With these gloves, I can pickpocket every single NPC I can talk to in the whole game. That's why I wanted the dexterity talent right from the start of the game. Not having it would have made things much more difficult.
All of them have a specific item. Some are harder to steal from than others.
You only have one attempt ever. So you're expected to reload your save.
That's why the game is meant to be played emulated. Save states allow me to retry much faster. However, the random number generator is reseeded only when switching screens, or after a roll, so I can't just quickload and retry. I have to steal from a different person first, or leave the screen.
Most of the items are worthless, so I use a FAQ that points out the best items and don't reload if I fail to get useless junk.
The dog is the only one with an item worth stealing on this screen. Yay puppies.
When you fail to steal from some specific characters, they have a line of dialog letting you know you're an horrible person.
Notice the valkyrie-like artwork here.
So, as you know, I can steal from every NPC. But don't forget, this is a private action.
That means my team members are NPC too, and I can steal from them!
And it's much better to steal during private actions, because stealing while the other members are with you will decrease their friendship towards you.
Now, let's pillage this town.
This lady is crazy what could possibly go wrong #foreshadowing
I steal a wand from my planned waifu for this playthrough.
It is twice as strong as the one she was using, so I gave her the wand I stole from her.
Then, I steal a mischief from the crazy lady who is not an important character who will become relevant later.
It seems worthless from the description, but it sure isn't. Every few
steps while wearing
it, you will be interrupted and receive
a random item, which is kind
of cool but also kind
of
annoying.
This town is next.
This item is the reason I wanted to be able to pickpocket so early in the game.
When you open it, you get 3 random items.
Such as these ones, which are worthless. Reloaded.
About 50 reloads were required, because it picks from a pool of about 300 different items.
I finally get the item I wanted.
A sword that is 8 times stronger than my current one. It's essentially good enough to be used until the final boss.
I have access to this very difficult dungeon almost right from the start. Most monsters are insta-kill. Because I won't recruit the character whose quest would happen here much later, I am not even required to visit the place.
But of course, with my new sword, everything dies too fast to damage me.
Story time. Horrible things happened to kids and we're gonna rescue them with the help of Sephiroth.
I go with Celine, because Rena went alone with Sephiroth. Depending on your main character, you end up killing a different boss.
We go by boat to the next continent. There will be a tournament in this big city and therefore I will take part in the tournament.
But before that, I purchase a harpsichord.
I do not get to use my own sword, I have to use a terrible one instead. So this guy dies in two hits instead of one.
Next is Sephiroth.
I'm scripted to do zero damage so I only have to wait until I die and be awed by his superior skills.
The blacksmith who made the sword he used during the tournament tells me Sephiroth wanted me to have it.
Next, I go recruit this girl with three eyes. She went to this planet to follow her boyfriend and that's pretty cool, because I can't imagine they'd dare have a girl who's unavailable in a JRPG anymore nowadays, Love System or not. Well, you can probably arrange for them to break up but that's pretty not cool.
Next we meet up with this girl who demands to be recruited so we don't.
Instead, we hire this pharmacist who is seen saying goodbye to his wife here.
While he prepares for adventure, I steal a Xbox.
Then, we finally get to recuit this cute little shithead, a kid genuis who knows he's smart and has cat ears nobody comments on.
He join us to inspect some ruins. But before we can go there by boat we need to hail a
bunny. This skill allows every character to say "hey come here bunny" seductively 30 to 40 times until it works.
Our chocobo can go absolutely anywhere except on water.
He can climb every mountain and not give a fuck about it.
Next, the boat. This unskippable sequence is horribly long, at least six seconds when fast-forwarded at 700%.
Here we are.
The kid went from tsun tsun to aniki in less than ten minutes.
The first CD is essentially about recruiting characters, and they all start weak, so I use one of our skills to lower the random encounter frequency. It is still ridiculously high - every 15 steps or so.
For starters, I want to get Bowman up to speed, so I keep everyone else in the reserve team. I can change my fighting team at any time out of combat.
This mine cart in the middle of the battlefield causes damage to anyone it touches! It's more of a gimmick than an actual hazard or something you can build a tactic around, though.
Bowman levels up while standing on my head.
These guys with shields are pretty much invulnerable from the front. You must attack them from behind. But you do not fight like in a beat them all. You can move freely, but once you start an attack, your character will move towards their opponent using the shortest path. So you need to have an AI help you sandwich them. And the AI fights like a complete idiot.
Spells interrupt the combat to show you some pretty boring lightshows that last forevers. Spellcasters have two different AI settings you can choose:
A. Spam your most expensive spell on the first worthless chump you meet.
B. Never cast a spell under any circumstances.
So you need to cast the spells manually. The menu shows only 4 spells at once, and the spell description is a MS Windows-like tooltip that only appers a few seconds later. Yeah, it's the worst UI ever. But wait! It gets worse! You pick your battle items with the same UI - and you will own thousands of items at the end of the game. And it will show every item, whether you can actually use them in battle or not. That's a terrible shame, because items can be very useful in battle.
Look at this motherfucker leveling up and not giving a single fuck about it.
We need to resupply in the dungeon, so we call a bird to do some shopping for us.
But unfortunately, we can only buy herbs that restore about 3% of our life, and we can own only 20 of every kind of item. Buying this stuff would only be useful if we knew compounding. We recruited Bowman, a pharmacist who canon knows everything there is to know about herbs. Unfortunately, once we recruited him, his skill with herbs went back to zero.
We found a book that was immediately equiped by Leon. The equipment wizard automatically equips the "best" item, but what is best is decided by running the numbers, which does not work in Star Ocean 2, since so many items have side-effects.
And it's hard to figure out what the side effects are from the description.
You need to figure out what is flavor text, and what is truth in advertising.
Then, you have to figure out whether the special effect is actually of any use in a real-world setting, and whether it backfires. And don't forget that many items have undocumented side-effects.
We eventually recruited the last character we wanted on Disc 1, Opera's boyfriend.
When you recruit a character, the first thing you want to do it to level them up, then teach them Perseverance. It lowers the SP cost of every other skill.
Compare her costs, at Perseverance lv.10, with those on the previous screen, at lv.0.
That's all for part 1! A pretty arbitrary place to stop at, but I don't have the time to finish it for now. Part 2 is coming pretty soon. While we are close to the end of CD1, I have barely started breaking this game yet.
So this project won't be finished by the end of the Squeenix week. Squeek.
As stupid as this game can be, I really like it.
It's a real shame Star Ocean 3 was a decent game for the first 75%, then pulled a Mass Effect that retroactively made everything that happened previously completely meaningless and everything that happened after that point fucking stupid with bonus anime philosophy.
And as for Star Ocean 4, all I can say is this and weep.
But Tri-ace made a pretty good game in resonance of the end of eternity of fate if you have a high tolerance for the sort of thing it does, because it does it very well, so while the Star Ocean series is clearly as dead as it gets, I still have high hopes for a Valkyrie Moe 3 game.
_________________
Twitter: @youpi
Last edited by Youpi on Tue Apr 17, 2012 3:13 pm; edited 5 times in total |
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diplo
Joined: 18 Dec 2006
Location: Brandy Brendo's bungalow
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| Posted: Sun Apr 15, 2012 4:04 pm |
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★★★★★
Some of the things documented here are pretty neat if only because the liberties they allow go against most other JRPGs' designs but also terrible because they are dependent on luck. Actually that's sort of neat, too, but in a way that would be a hundred times neater if I were still in freshman in high school. So, yes, this does seem to be a game that's best played on an emulator.
Has the first SO, not counting remakes, ever been translated? I'm guessing no since it's never mentioned. |
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Youpi
Joined: 01 Mar 2011
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| Posted: Sun Apr 15, 2012 4:12 pm |
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Yes, the game is so wonderfully broken. It's everything I wanted Skyrim to be.
I hope people were not discouraged by the boring first post. It's just an overture I wanted to be done with as fast as possible before we move on to way more ridiculous territory. The game only starts on CD2. Actually, the real game will probably only start at the save point before the last boss, when I will get access to the optional dungeon.
| diplo wrote: |
| Has the first SO, not counting remakes, ever been translated? I'm guessing no since it's never mentioned. |
The first was 90% translated for ten years so it's almost done!
The patch is at http://www.zsnes.com/~dejap/so.php - didn't play it yet though.
I remember dejap being a big name back then but I don't remember if that was for the right or the wrong reasons.
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Twitter: @youpi |
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haze
la belle poney sans merci
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Sun Apr 15, 2012 8:31 pm |
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I like how you're breaking apart the game much like if it were Nethack. very entertaining!
I played this game back in the day but I got bored on Disc 2 and never finished it. playing it for the story was a mistake.
SO1 is completely translated except the voice clips. and the only voice clip that plays during a cutscene instead of battles was in english anyway.
it's a strange, flawed, beautiful, half-finished game. it didn't have the cool features like the treasure box or the pickpocketing, which may be a pro or con since those depended so much on luck/savestates. it did have a lot of the other crazy item-manipulation skills that Tri-Ace was experimenting with, though since the game is so short there's not quite as much potential for abusing them like in SO2. the game being cut in half means the ending is so rushed but the story itself benefits from being fast-paced and concise, like an OAV instead of a 4-season anime.
for many years SO1 was my favorite RPG ever. |
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Swimmy
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Sun Apr 15, 2012 9:05 pm |
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I played this game way back in high school. Haven't looked at it again since, I had no idea it was so broken. You're tempting me to download it.
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BotageL
pretty anime princess
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
Location: *fidget*
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| Posted: Sun Apr 15, 2012 9:30 pm |
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I think you picked every character I didn't last time I played this game years and years ago.
I never really managed to break it open as hard as it could be broken but I've got a ton of affection for this game anyway.
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Gironika
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Dragon Range
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| Posted: Sun Apr 15, 2012 9:43 pm |
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Thanks!
Reading that post makes the week already worth it. Seriously, this is an excellent contribution, if not the best I've seen the last few years. Right up there with a Bouncer- and a FFMQ-playthrough that got pruned when another BBS of a friend of mine crashed.
Incidentally, I've played SO2 with said friend and got up to right before the end/the last boss, when we had to realize that we were fucked/unable to defeat him.
Something that seems kind of laughable today, especially considering the way how I finished SO4.
And what do you know, the few lines that did sum up this playthrough, hosted by said friend, are also not available anymore (that is the third time already...), so I can't even link to that. Again.
So before I forget what I wanted to say about SO2:
Yeah, back then, I kind of came straight from a streak of finished FFes and did expect to play this the same way. And man was I in for a surprise … we obviously ended up going where we weren't supposed to be and got fucked pretty fast, in best tri-Ace style, yupp. We somehow managed to pull through until the endboss obliterated us in many a attempt. I guess that another game was released back then that was more interesting, and we stopped playing it. Said friend did gamefaq some details about this game and got some equipment that was necessary to finish this game, but I can't remember if we actually did so then …
The thing I can remember are the samples of the cast, amusing stuff like
| Quote: |
| Things will work out …… I Think |
and, my favourite one, from Sephiroth:
Like any good tri-Ace game, you'll hear these a lot, and you either start to hate the game, mute the VO or love it. The latter one in my case, I have to admit.
Nevertheless, I went on to finish SO3, SO4, VP (several times), VP2, IU and RoF. And I still have hopes for VP3, like others seem to as well (good to know!).
Anyway, re SO4-playthrough:
My X360 box started freezing during my SO4 playthrough, and I found some "magic" explanations online (forbid character X to cast spell Y) and that actually did help, or so I believed.
Well, I wanted to finish the game, no matter what, since the Forza Motorsport 3 demo was about to be released.
Alas, I rushed the last part of the game, clamping down on spells cast by the party, avoiding random encounters as much as possible until I could get close to a savepoint to grind in close proximity of that. The game (in best tri-Ace fashion) kicked up difficulty a notch towards the end, and I barely made it out alive of some boss battles, until I could take a last screenshot in the final section/"chamber" of the game (and that screenshot is, again, gone).
Well, and then the final boss battle happened.
Got obliterated, 360 locked up sometimes as well, had to abandon some attempts because I ran out of healing items too early, and I ended up actually finishing the game by running away from the boss, staying away as far as possible from the action. That somehow worked better for the 360, and it didn't lock up anymore … marking the most cowardly game-clearing boss battle I've ever managed.
Yes, even FFMQ was better, since you could attack with your healing spell.
In any case, it felt awesome to finish this game against all odds. I haven't touched the Newgame+ content, since disc-swapping every time you want to visit another planet ………… yeah. Wanted to buy the PS3-version since then, but then I do not own a PS3 (still/yet). And buying it for a game I already own …… uh. Yeah. Anyway, was sending the 360 on its way afterwards. Got it back a week later and just in time before the FM3 demo was out.
~FIN~
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Ymer
Joined: 05 Oct 2009
Location: PAL region
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| Posted: Sun Apr 15, 2012 10:05 pm |
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| Gironika wrote: |
Anyway, re SO4-playthrough:
My X360 box started freezing during my SO4 playthrough, and I found some "magic" explanations online (forbid character X to cast spell Y) and that actually did help, or so I believed.
Well, I wanted to finish the game, no matter what, since the Forza Motorsport 3 demo was about to be released.
Alas, I rushed the last part of the game, clamping down on spells cast by the party, avoiding random encounters as much as possible until I could get close to a savepoint to grind in close proximity of that. The game (in best tri-Ace fashion) kicked up difficulty a notch towards the end, and I barely made it out alive of some boss battles, until I could take a last screenshot in the final section/"chamber" of the game (and that screenshot is, again, gone).
Well, and then the final boss battle happened.
Got obliterated, 360 locked up sometimes as well, had to abandon some attempts because I ran out of healing items too early, and I ended up actually finishing the game by running away from the boss, staying away as far as possible from the action. That somehow worked better for the 360, and it didn't lock up anymore … marking the most cowardly game-clearing boss battle I've ever managed.
Yes, even FFMQ was better, since you could attack with your healing spell.
In any case, it felt awesome to finish this game against all odds. I haven't touched the Newgame+ content, since disc-swapping every time you want to visit another planet ………… yeah. Wanted to buy the PS3-version since then, but then I do not own a PS3 (still/yet). And buying it for a game I already own …… uh. Yeah. Anyway, was sending the 360 on its way afterwards. Got it back a week later and just in time before the FM3 demo was out.
~FIN~ |
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Deets
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Sun Apr 15, 2012 10:14 pm |
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| POISON PILL |
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Youpi
Joined: 01 Mar 2011
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| Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2012 1:05 am |
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| Youpi wrote: |
| I remember dejap being a big name back then but I don't remember if that was for the right or the wrong reasons. |
Oh, I remember now, they were the "I bet she fucks like a tiger" guys.
| Gironika wrote: |
| THE ENEMY! |
| Gironika wrote: |
| I HAVE NO CHOICE! |
Once I finish the game I will make a demo reel with the voice test :D
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Twitter: @youpi |
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Dark Age Iron Savior
king of finders
Joined: 06 Dec 2006
Location: Spacecraft, Juanelia Country
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| Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2012 2:02 am |
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I wish this game had been directed by Kawazu so that there was barely any plot. It really couldn't decided what it wanted to be so it just ended up being a mess.
The town NPCs in this game are amazing little wonders but nobody else cares about that but me. |
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CubaLibre
the road lawyer
Joined: 02 Mar 2007
Location: Balmer
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| Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2012 3:17 am |
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Skyrim is so depressingly easy to break compared to this monstrosity. This is my new favorite thread.
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Let's Play, starring me. |
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ionustron
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2012 4:07 am |
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I'M DELIGHTED!
(This game does the most amazing thing with NPCs but I don't want to ruin it.) |
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Youpi
Joined: 01 Mar 2011
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| Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2012 11:27 am |
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Part 2 - True Star Ocean Starts Here
I've got some things to check out.
During the private action, I am harangued by a street vendor who is willing to part with an amazing item for a very low price. Genre conventions dictate it's actually an amazing item, so I don't buy it, because I have mad yomi levels.
Next, Rena forces some romance points on me. It's okay, I'll get rid of them later.
This is what I came here to do: steal a Battle Suit from Ernest. And this is the only reason I recruited Ernest: to steal the battle suit. And this is the only reason I recruited Opera: to recruit Ernest.
It's the 2nd best armor in the whole damn game and the fool was not wearing it for reasons.
Next, I go back to places I am not supposed to go back to.
And I steal a second battle suit from Ernest. (Your characters have a new specific item in every town)
Just for reference, this is the going price for battle suits (Brotip: don't sell it you stupid dumbass)
Two battle suits isn't enough to protect four characters, so I want to buy more stuff, since many characters never had their equips upgraded yet.
You'll notice most NPC have rather decent writing for a 20st century game. There are many very transparent translations from Japanese, but it's kind of hard to consistently put out a solid translation when all anime dialog is made of a combination of 50 stock phrases and 30 honorifics anyway. I remember that the French version was full of transparent translations too - but from English. That version was very often a nonsensical mess. The best thing that happened with the 360 and PS3 era is that all the Japanese devs stopped demanding the English version be removed from every copy of their games sold in our country.
Here are the prices. Let's bring them down a little.
Drinking one of those will bring the prices down in any shop.
But that's not all!
Let's use a Super Speciality - an action unlocked when enough of your characters know specific skills.
Identify All! allows you to decide if you want to buy for less, sell for more, buy for more, sell for less, or drop MSRP. Its effects stack with the Cinderella Glass!
And every time you consume a Cinderella Glass, every single NPC who sells stuff (there are tons of them) will use a different line of dialog.
Before - After
So now we're ready for the boss of the first CD
Actually we're not.
It's just another stupid battle we're scripted to lose.
We regroup. Before the plot can progress again we can talk to the only black man on the whole planet. Unfortunately he is injured and will die in pain. Sorry dude.
With the exception of Sephiroth, we're all pretty scared about all those green pixels.
But then we have the bright idea to use our cannon.
It sure killed the monsters dead.
But the boss is not happy. He's so pissed he turned 3D.
Then he went 2D to fight us again.
And we are supposed to die again.
Heavy drama happened and we are now stranded on the last dungeon of the first CD.
While this is the last dungeon of the CD, it's much samller than the previous ones.
Which means that it is still ridiculously fucking huge. Here is an ascii art map of the dungeon that is copyright (c) 2002 Vanrei don't steal
| Code: |
____
__________________| |
| ____ C _______ TWM |
| |___ \ / _____ |____|
| | | | | |
| C C | | | | C C |
|_ _| | | |_ _|
| | | | | |
|D| | | |D|
| |___| |___| |
|_____ _____|
| |
|T8 |
|___|
___
| |
|T8 |
| |
|B|
| |
|D|
_____| |_____
| S |
|_____ _____|
| |
|T7 |
|___|
______
______| |
| ____ Calnus|
| | |______| _____ _____
| | _________ | | | |
| | | | ___ | C C | | C |
| |__| |__| | |_ _| |_ _|
|____RD RD__ T7 | | | _____ | |
| | |___| ____| |__| P |__| |____
|___ ___| |_ _________________ _|
| | | | | |
|T6 | |T5 | |T4 |
|___| |___| |___|
_____
___ | |
___ ___ | | | G |
| | _____ _____ | | |T4 | |_ _|
|T6 | | | | | |T5 | | |____| |
| | | G | | G | | | | ____ |
| | |_ _| |_ _| | | _| |_ | |
| |____| |_____| |____| | | C C | |T2 |
|__________ __________| | G | |___|
| | |_____|
|T3 |
|___|
___
| |
|T3 | ___
| |__| C |
| __ C |
| | |___| ___
_| |_ | |
| _ | |T2 |
|G|_| | | |
|_ _| | |
| |_________| |
|_____ ____G|
| |
|T1 |
|___|
___________
| |
| T1 |
| S |
|____ ____|
| |
|D|
____ _________| |_________
| | | |
| C |___| G C C C G |
| C _D_ _________________ | Legend:
| C | | | ___________ | | B - Boss Battle
|____| | | | C C | | | C - Treasure Chest
| |__|_ G _|__| | D - Door / Next Screen
|_St_ | C C | _St_| G - Password-giving Statues
| | C | | RD - Red Door
| | | | S - Save Point
| | St - Stairs
| | T# - Transporter
|____ ____| TWM - Ten Wise Men
| |
| |
Entrance (C) Vanrei 2002 |
It says that "For personal use, you are given permission to print the walkthrough for easier reading. Although the contents should not be cut, edited and/or changed in any way. And the printed copy should not be distributed in any way with or without charge. The printed copy of the walkthrough is only for personal use." I am sorry I infringed your copyrights Vanrei 2002 :(
In a room with some C C C, we find the Trickster.
It works just like the Mischief, giving you a random item every few steps. Yes, it was in an easily-found chest in a mandatory part of the first CD. The team just didn't give a fuck.
And despite having the second best armor and weapon in the whole game, I'm getting massacred by these witches.
They can cast dangerous spells hitting every party member, are are always at the back of the battlefield. While you can interrupt spells during the cast, you still need to be fast enough to hit them. So starting from now it's no longer possible to fast-forward through every fight.
I even have to tweak my formation to increase my chances.
My first character fell. Looks like I will have to use my
life insurance.
All right. I claimed my two insurance policies. Notice how the second payout was actually less than the first!
Time to switch for fresh characters and press on.
Welp.
Resurrection Bottles are rather expensive, so I don't want to buy 20 of them. Instead, I buy a lot of food,
and cook it.
While Rena started without all the talents required for cooking, it is really easy to unlock on any character by attempting to cook repeatedly.
I went through all my ingredients. Every time you try to create an item, you see its 3d model morphing and rotating in the middle of the screen for a dozen of unskippable seconds. More than half of the time the item creation fails, but very soon you identify the morphing pattenrns and know right from the very first second of the item creation whether you've suceeded or not. So yeah that's pretty stupid without turbo.
Some of the food Rena cooked was not identified! So I had to call in my expert to observe it.
After a thorough examination, the dish was successfully pronounced a hamburger.
All this food should give me at least 4 complete HP heals, bypassing the limit of 20 items of a kind. But more importantly, it should also afford me about 3 MP refills, so I can rely on Rena to do the healing.
We go pummel our way through the dungeon again.
We have to enter the five letters of the password, which is APOCA
Which is meant to stand for the full word. When I first played I thought it was fucking stupid but then I learned that apocalypse is a five syllable word in Japanese from my favorite cartoon so I have now downgraded the stupidity of the puzzle from "fucking" to "rather".
We now face the unwinnable boss from earlier
And he's now unlosable.
Stop! I must teleport to HMS Storytelling!
And I can steal stuff from everyone, including my dad.
Most of these items are not so crucial
But since I can't leave the screen to reseed the RNG, I had to quicksave scum a lot to find the right order of people to loot so I could steal
our third battle suit!
lol story
And after that long, unskippable sequence, an extremely hard fight
One we can't win, but that we must survive long enough by trying to have 3 characters take as long as possible to die then run away through the battlefield with the last one.
Part 3 pretty soon, and part 4+ much less soon! Part 3 will be short but rather interesting.
Edit: why do I always paste the wrong revision of my posts ITT then figure it out only like an hour later and scramble to correct it asap ;_;
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Gironika
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Dragon Range
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| Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2012 6:31 pm |
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fucking useless Rena and her horrible cooking skills. And I feel like the game could have been so much fun if only I knew about all that item stuff, → shiiiii……
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ionustron
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2012 11:16 pm |
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I remember making Claude's ultimate sword at the end of the first disk, but never knew a sword just as good out of the treasure box.
I wonder how much of this stuff got changed or fixed in the psp port. Either way, emulator is best simply because of how crash-prone the original is. |
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diplo
Joined: 18 Dec 2006
Location: Brandy Brendo's bungalow
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| Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2012 5:18 am |
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RIP gloved hand menu indicators. I think they all got wiped out around the mid-2000s.
Is CD1's last dungeon really that big? It doesn't look that big. Or does it feel big because of the high encounter rate?
Also I just remembered that this is the game we talked about on the boss podcast in respect to its optional dungeon. It sounded like a nightmare, so I'm looking forward to future posts even more. |
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Youpi
Joined: 01 Mar 2011
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| Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2012 6:14 am |
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I think I should probably play that last dungeon part live.
Of course it will be played to win so it might be difficult to follow my savestate juggling and annoying to see things going at 600% half of the time. Or it might be the whole point.
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Gironika
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
Location: Dragon Range
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| Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2012 8:02 am |
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| Youpi wrote: |
| it might be the whole point. |
Yes.
Also,
| diplo wrote: |
| RIP gloved hand menu indicators. I think they all got wiped out around the mid-2000s. |
I can't check this right now, but I think that tri-Ace used various menu indicators till the end of time of the PS2 era. I am not sure if I am mixing things up here, but I believe that you could even change the indicator. (Bumpy Trot also did that. I might be wrong with the late PS2-tri-Ace-titles though)
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Levi
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2012 9:52 am |
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| awesome thread |
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geinou
Joined: 07 Apr 2010
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| Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2012 10:36 am |
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| This should be frontpage too! Keep up the great work, Youpi! |
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Youpi
Joined: 01 Mar 2011
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| Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2012 12:46 pm |
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Glad this thing is enjoyed.
| diplo wrote: |
| Is CD1's last dungeon really that big? It doesn't look that big. Or does it feel big because of the high encounter rate? |
It is actually pretty small, with about a dozen of screens, and only one 3-way crossroad. Tri-Ace used to be really good at making their dungeons feel like actual dungeons rather than mazes with only one path.
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Youpi
Joined: 01 Mar 2011
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| Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2012 2:42 pm |
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Part 3 - Lvlng u rly fst
Welcome to planet CD2. We had to leave planet CD1 because bad things happened.
We are welcomed to CD2 by this guy, who makes us sit through a powerpoint.
That's the story. Heavy stuff.
This new planet is 3 billion years more advanced than planet CD1, but it looks barely different from the previous one, because daily life is powered by sufficiently advanced magic.
The reason I did not want to spend too much money on the previous dungeon was that I'm gonna buy a ton of trinkets right now.
Notice the reference to the yet unreleased Valkyrie Profile.
We also need to buy items from a shop in a different city. I purchase a bottle of a thing that is ABSOLUTELY NOT ALCOHOL. The price of ABSOLUTELY NOT ALCOHOL never stops going up during the whole game, so it's better to buy one as soon as I can afford to rather than have cash laying around.
Next, I'm teaching Claude how to customize weapons. The speciality can't go higher.
In this game, there are talents, skills, specialities, and super specialities.
You are born with a few talents, and can develop the others; they influence your success with specialities.
Skills are learned by putting points towards them, you get points when you level up.
Specialities are learned when you know the right combination of skills.
Super specialities are learned when enough members know a combination of one major and one minor speciality.
There are also combat skills, which activate when you fight, but with my equipment, I didn't need to learn any yet.
I'm gonna teach some musical skills to everyone.
Musical talent is a speciality, not a talent. However it depends on talents related to music. Yes it's a stupid, confusing name.
Because enough members know about music, we can now access the super speciality "Orchestra".
But the command is useless for now, because our repertoire is too small. And we have to write our own songs. Thankfully, I just purchased a bunch of instruments, and the music software I stole on the spaceship in CD1 will increase my chances of writing songs successfully, just by having it in my inventory.
So I pick a character with the two innate talents required to make music, and level up her music skills.
Attempting to write a song has something like a 2% success rate, and it consumes a feather pen every time. But feather pens are almost free and we are writing music while standing inside the shop, so...
...very quickly, I have her write the two songs each instrument is capable of playing. All of them have a special effect when they are active. Since you need a consumable conductor's baton to play music, there's no way to spam the ability in a dungeon, though.
But what I'm interested in is not the solo songs, but the orchestra. Now that we have written enough songs, we are capable of playing the only song the orchestra is capable of playing.
And while the song is playing (it lasts about 25 seconds), the chances of success in item creation are drastically increased.
So I have Claude use the Customize ability I taught him earlier on the sword that Sephiroth gave me by proxy on Planet CD1.
After using it twice with Mithril (which I acquired by quicksave-scumming two level ups of the Radar skill, which gives me random items on levelling it up, much like the treasure box earlier), I forged this sword.
It is arguably the most powerful sword in the whole game. I think there is a sword with more ATK, but the Eternal Sphere has the undocumented side-effect of making magic stars fly from it, and when they connect with the enemy, each hit inflicts more damage than the advertised ATK. Either way, I won't know which is the strongest until I try both.
Next, I need everyone to learn how to pickpocket.
I only plan to use Claude to steal items. The reason I want my party to learn it is for the super speciality "Reverse Side"
This super speciality allows me to forge all sorts of documents, but it has an undocumented side-effect:
it will make everyone's friendship towards every other character go down. So if I rely on it too much, everyone in the ending will be a self-loathing loner instead of hooking up and having E-rated offscreen cuddling.
There's no point raising a character to the max, it's better to rotate through everyone and level up the relevant skills once, to minimize the SP costs.
Lv.10 is the maximum. We can now start making items.
Many item creation specialities have one specific "failure" item. For example, failed food only restores 1% of your HP (or poisons you).
The failed "Reverse Side" item is the Bounced Check. For every second you keep it in your inventory, you lose 1 Star Ocean Buck.
You can only get rid of it by selling it for -325 SOBux. There is obviously no "drop" command for items.
Here are a few items I can make with Reverse Side:
This item gives me a random item, like the treasure chest.
I can sell those for money
My favorite one: I become the owner of an inn. There are many in the world, and when I use it, all the innkeepers get a new line of dialog.
But this is the only item I was after, so I used quicksaves to limit my usage of this dangerous speciality.
Forged medals allow me to level up a character almost immediately, by making them require only 1 point of experience before their next level up. It's a consumable, of course, so I need a ton of them, but I don't want the Reverse Side penalty.
So I'm just gonna copy them.
Of course, even at the highest level, it won't work every time.
I also need a special camera and 3d film, but I purchased them already, and I am standing in the shop that sells the consumable item.
The forged medal is in the middle of the list, I need to go find it every time I want to reproduce it, so if I want to do it while the orchestra is playing, browsing the menus means I can make only two reproduction attempts per play. It is to my advantage to sort my items so that the forged medal is the first item in the list, but I can't sort items manually. However, I can sort items by "most recently acquired", which is just as good in my case. I can get 4 reproductions done per song.
But first, let's try to use 20 films on the basic reproduction to see the normal success rate.
lol.
Time for Plan B: I have Celine learn about machinery because girls who know about machines are hot and I will raise her love gauge if you know what I mean. It means I will make her love me by navigating menus. Also she had a ton of unused SP laying around.
This skill mostly produces bombs,
which are actually rather useful in combat, notwhistanding the shitty item selection UI. Using them on the witches in the previous dungeon would have allowed me to interrupt their dangerous spell casts without having to take along my own spellcasters.
A bunch of bomb laters, she finally unlocks the Dexterity talent. I start scummed Claude to have dexterity because it's much harder to pick up the talent by crafting at the start of the game than it is now.
The Machinery skill can make a lot of items that, like the music software mentioned earlier, increase my chances to make items successfully, just by having them in my inventory.
But for now, this is the only item I was after: a significantly better camera than what I can find in shops.
It's time to try again. I purchased 20 films. This time, she will use the new camera, and the orchestra will be playing. I also equiped Rena with a beret, which increases your chances of successfully creating items. I'm not sure it works with reproduction, though.
By stacking the odds, I had 17 successes and 3 failures!
When I give a forged medal to Claude, his XP required goes from whatever down to 1.
Notice the counter indicating I have played for about 5 hours to reach that point.
So, now, let's see some level up action. You will see me earning 8 levels in less than 3 minutes:
After that (well, technically, I think it was before that, but sometimes I rearrange the order of the events a little to make things easier to follow) I made more items with Celine, to increase my chances in every other sort of item creation:
Part 4 not so soon, life is gonna get very busy for a while, but hopefully soon enough!
I may stream the interesting parts, too. Anyone would come on something like sundays (maybe not the next one) 11 PM CEST (2 PM PDT, 5 PM EDT)?
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Last edited by Youpi on Tue Apr 17, 2012 3:24 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Youpi
Joined: 01 Mar 2011
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| Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2012 2:43 pm |
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Bonus 1 - VRAM Dumps
PSX Emulator allows you to see the contents of the Video RAM live, while emulation continues. It's pretty fascinating to watch even without really understanding what is happening. In most games, you only see garbage data, but in Star Ocean 2, when you are on the pre-rendered backgrounds, you can clearly see the layers they are made of!
You'll also notice the palettes below the buffers, one of which I used without explanation as my current signature as an aesthetic service to the community. I have no clue how they are used but they are pretty.
Here's a good example (half its actual size to avoid stretching the thread):
Since those pictures are pretty big and don't pngout well, to avoid blowing my traffic cap, I will make them links instead of embeds: ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
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Youpi
Joined: 01 Mar 2011
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| Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2012 2:51 pm |
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| geinou wrote: |
| This should be frontpage too! Keep up the great work, Youpi! |
I didn't want to do it during part 1, because I wanted to reach a point of sufficient ridiculousness before. I think it's been reached now with that leveling up video, but now that there are replies I no longer have the power to do it myself.
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Predator Goose
Joined: 19 Dec 2006
Location: Oversensitive Pedantic Ninny
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| Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2012 3:32 pm |
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Holy shit this is great. I forgot how gloriously messy this damn game is. SO3 kind of retroactively soured me to the entire franchise.
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Swimmy
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2012 6:36 pm |
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THIS GUY IS TOUGH
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Iggy Poop
fancy nancy
Joined: 29 Apr 2007
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| Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2012 1:06 am |
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| Predator Goose wrote: |
| Holy shit this is great. |
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Dark Age Iron Savior
king of finders
Joined: 06 Dec 2006
Location: Spacecraft, Juanelia Country
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| Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2012 1:57 am |
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this is best and craziest.
SO3 and 4 dumped most/all of the ridiculous item/skill stuff and focused more on the combat, right? |
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Swimmy
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2012 2:00 am |
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Youpi, I like that your thread focuses on the important things. Definitely not the story or battle system or characters. Nope, it's the brokenness.
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diplo
Joined: 18 Dec 2006
Location: Brandy Brendo's bungalow
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| Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2012 3:25 am |
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Youpi, how much of this stuff did you learn on your own?
| Youpi wrote: |
| et's ply ta Ocan: e Seon Sor - Crftin Iems wth elin |
Also it's great how the sound design is exactly the same as Tales of Phantasia's.
Last edited by diplo on Fri Apr 20, 2012 4:08 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Pijaibros
Joined: 04 Dec 2006
Location: Casino Night Zone
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| Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2012 3:42 am |
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there was a re-release of SO2 on the PSP. has anyone here played it? is it as broken as the original PSOne release?
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VgameT
Joined: 26 Feb 2007
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| Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2012 4:51 am |
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You can actually get two levels off of each forged medals if you have a dream bracelet handy. The dream bracelet raises your level by 1 when you equip it, so you do that, use a forged medal, and then remove the bracelet. I think the game just sets your character's EXP total to whatever they need to hit the next level minus 1, so when you take off the dream bracelet they'll still have all that extra EXP and they gain two levels the next time you fight something. This works up to level 100, at which point forged medals stop doing anything (the max level is 255.)
All of this stuff still works in the PSP version. As far as I can remember, the only thing they changed gameplay-wise was to condense the elements down to 6 types (from 10.) I think some of the combat skills were changed up, too? I'd doublecheck but my PSP's UMD drive is busted and I don't feel like pirating the game just to find out. GameFAQs doesn't seem to have a list of changes anywhere although I did just learn that they added a new playable character who I somehow never learned about when I played through. Ain't that some shit.
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ionustron
Joined: 05 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2012 5:11 am |
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| Dark Age Iron Savior wrote: |
this is best and craziest.
SO3 and 4 dumped most/all of the ridiculous item/skill stuff and focused more on the combat, right? |
Yeah SO3 just went into this weird business management & patent investing sim thing for all item creation that was as boring as you'd expect. SO4 just went weird into this Tales of Eroge thing with the game's producer.
--
Oh GOD the elements! I didn't even know half of what the fuck they were! Gray-Cube-elemental? Sad-face? Moon??
The hands-down greatest thing you can do in this game however is piss off wandering NPCs by repeatedly getting in front of them and making them change paths. You can even do this with your partners in private actions! I had a pretty girl at one point just go here have this, it's really good for you! <POISONOUS> |
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Youpi
Joined: 01 Mar 2011
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| Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2012 5:19 am |
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| VgameT wrote: |
| You can actually get two levels off of each forged medals if you have a dream bracelet handy. |
Don't spoil the next episode! :D
Yes, you can do that, and the plan is to turn the supposedly worthless Chisato into a murder machine that way.
| Dark Age Iron Savior wrote: |
| SO3 and 4 dumped most/all of the ridiculous item/skill stuff and focused more on the combat, right? |
Yeah. SO3 had OK combats, but they introduced this weird MP Kill mechanic, I remember it was quite a mess. But the story was impossible to ignore and it was 75% irrelevant, welcome 2 the matrix neo, whoa, also why are we still alive if that was a videogame all along (RADICAL! POSTMODERN! GAMS R ART!) and the last boss shut down the servers, welp cogito ero lol. Item creation was much more rigid and yielded fewer interesting items. More importantly, it was all business. None of the hundreds of obviously useless items of SO2.
SO4 had this mechanic where you could keep a specific bonus going so long as the character you control don't receive a critical. So the best strategy in every fight was to get the XP multiplier, control one character, and run around the battlefield not fighting anything. I don't remember ever creating items. But then I'd rather not remember anything.
| diplo wrote: |
| Youpi, how much of this stuff did you learn on your own? |
Very little of it. My understanding of the most obvious ones (like reproducing forged medals) comes from experience, but stuff like the marvel sword or minmaxing the levelling and creation order comes from various FAQs, mostly the most recent one by A I e x on Gamefaqs.
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remote
Joined: 11 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2012 5:42 am |
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I just wanted to assume you had obsessed over it this much on your own. My illusions. :(
Still, this is really interesting. Also because I played a bit of the game back when it was new and enjoyed it, but I don't think I ever made it to Planet CD2.
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Youpi
Joined: 01 Mar 2011
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Youpi
Joined: 01 Mar 2011
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Iggy Poop
fancy nancy
Joined: 29 Apr 2007
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| Posted: Mon Apr 23, 2012 2:25 pm |
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| see you next time!! |
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Youpi
Joined: 01 Mar 2011
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| Posted: Sun May 20, 2012 8:36 pm |
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In about 30 minutes, I will start streaming the 2nd episode! We'll pick up where we left, then I'll make a post recapitulating what happened during those 2 sessions.
The url is still http://www.twitch.tv/monsieur_youpi but this time we'll use the built-in twitch.tv chat, since it works and all the sbroadcast peeps have accounts.
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diplo
Joined: 18 Dec 2006
Location: Brandy Brendo's bungalow
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| Posted: Mon May 21, 2012 12:10 am |
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| No why do I always miss this hurk |
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