Star Ocean: The Second Story Part #6 - The End of the Beginning

Part 6: The End of the Beginning

Chapter 5: The End of the Beginning

So, last time, where were we...? Ah, that's right:

Huge fucking brick of gold.

... Well, sort of.

Now I'd like to apologize here for the truncating of these menus, but honestly like most things wrong with this game, Star Ocean 2 is again at fault. The menu screen is actually about 100 pixels wider than every other screen in the game, and slightly shifted to the right. This actually causes problems in the Mac emulator PCSX by looping the offending part of the screen all the way back over to the left. Yeah, batch editing is straight out the window and yes, I know, I know, quality control, but honestly I'm not sifting through about a thousand images to pick out the offending menu screenshots only to have to edit them manually in Photoshop afterwards.

sorry if i ruined the lp for you but i'll hopefully keep these screens to a minimum which probably won't happen thanks to item creation but yeah

That said, let us continue.

yay dragons!

Well, the game won't let us go that way, so no dragons for us today, unfortunately.

Actually this is probably for the best considering that the next screen past this point is full of things that will destroy you in one hit even if you're twenty levels higher than we are right now (that being level 3).

How can I tell? Because Billy learns Press at Level 3. It is a horribly useless spell and actually does less damage than her melee attack.

Anyway, continuing on...

oh look it is a strategically-placed save point whatever could this mean

it means it's time for some graphical glitching

"union."

Billy is really good at placing herself in really bad situations. I want to say that I remember this actually persisting throughout the entire game, but if I'm right, I'll just end up depressing myself.

Because it was way too hard to notice these guards on your way in.

Suddenly, in bursts Tallgeese. Actually, he looks more like he's just cruisin' along.

oh drat

Trust me, it didn't make any more sense in the actual game.

So apparently the stone turned Alen into like this huge fucking monster thing.

I just don't even know anymore, and we haven't even been playing for a couple hours yet.

So anyway, I do what any normal person would do and stop controlling Billy as soon as the battle starts and I will never, ever use her again.

Okay, I lied. The AI in this game is so ass-horrible sometimes that I had to switch Billy's control to Manual mode to make her not physically attack the boss. I'll have to address her tactics at a later date.

What confuses me about this game is that you can set all four characters to Manual control, but there's only one player. It would be incredibly clunky, but it makes me wonder if they weren't considering making a multiplayer Tales of Destiny 2-type thing. It would certainly make everything easier than relying on the AI to use their special attacks at its discretion (which is never, even when you tell it to waste MP until it's completely out).

well you know what they say about nice guys

yeah this right here is what they say about nice guys

Considering he's still dressed up like a vampire, normal is really, really subjective on this planet.

MYSTERY SOLVED, GAME OVER

You know what they discuss once they get back here? They say the exact same things that they've been saying about the stone and hugely ripped dudes and underground rape churches since the beginning of the game.

Actually, they never talk about why Alen got so huge, which strikes me as a little odd. Maybe he really is just a huge fucking gorilla-man under that cape.

Then, the game fades to black and comes back on Arlia Village.

Then, the worst fucking sequence in the entire game.

It's interesting and kind of important to note, from an psychological/aural standpoint, that the song that plays during this scene is one of the prettiest tracks in the game, and is also eight measures long, looping about every thirty seconds. I think it says a lot about a person when his best composition is thirty-two beats long.

Considering that this game came out right about the same time that Who Wants to be a Millionaire was reaching its peak in popularity, I always used to get pumped whenever Mayor Regis was on the screen. Truly a phenomenon of social psychologies.

So, this is a really long sequence and literally takes ten minutes to scroll through even if you set text display to Instant and mash the confirm button really fast. I took about a hundred screenshots, so I'll do my best to keep it short while still getting the main gist of what is being said:

I wish I was joking.

For those of you who can't read ellipses, the scene basically goes like this: "Please investigate the Sorcery Globe for us, Tallgeese. Take Billy with you or she will throw a tantrum. Now get out of my house." Except it takes about an hour if you actually read everything.

Well, Billy throws a tantrum anyway and storms outside.

I would ask how the fuck she didn't notice him there the first time, but honestly.

going for the world record of distance ejaculation i see

No, not really. If we were playing as Tallgeese, this scene would be about how he's trying to use his transceiver to contact his space brosephs to give him a ride home rather than about Billy's complete ineptitude.