Star Ocean: The Second Story Part #32

Part 32: Ice Cold Killaz

^ This is pretty true, but that's a lot of long-ass cutscenes you have to try really hard to ignore.

Chapter 30: Ice Cold Killaz

Our next plot destination is this building at the top of this mountain. Unfortunately, we can't just fly there; we have to walk there.

I'm really not looking forward to it, so we'll stop here first instead.

I didn't think you would need someone to tell you that you shouldn't eat rotten raw fish.

Vados is wondering about his horoscope.

YOU ARE NO LONGER FIT TO BE CONSIDERED HUMAN

if you cut open the dragon you can tell how old it is by the number of rings in its neck

Anyway, in this same room, we see this guy.

He's carrying this very special cooking item. You can reproduce it, but you can't reproduce the things you can cook with it. It's great for making money since you can cook things that sell for over a million Fols (and Seltzers), but if you're smart enough to reproduce it before you cook with it, you're probably smart enough to not need it.

Nemo also happens to live in this city.

Oh, so now Star Ocean is trying to copy #(@$*&@#^%&in' Cid VII.

Except that it fails at it miserably.

This Private Action actually lowers your friendship and romance scores with Nemo so long as you see it.

This, on the other hand, is not actually a Private Action and I wish ZeeToo would actually listen to it.

Finally, we check out the university building. It will be important later, but right now, all there is to see is a Private Action in the library with OPTIMUS.

Nope, that tends to be how history gets written down.

IT WAS NARL AND HE IS THE VILLAIN

It is not required to see this Private Action in order to do the sidequest that reveals Nede's true history, but it does show that OPTIMUS is the only character in this game who isn't completely retarded.

well it serves you right

Anyway, this Reyfus character appears when you aren't in a Private Action. To trigger his event, you have to go to North City and read through every file in its library computer. All like 50 of them (seriously). They are full of anime technobabble and

So now we can go to the dungeon.

OH MY GOD IT'S A MOUNTAIN OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK

west of house
you see a ladder
>

you see a giant fucking gorilla
>

So these guys are entirely optional. Fighting them has a weird gimmick, though. There's a switch on the wall behind your characters, and if any of their sprites get too close, they press the switch and block you out of a part of the dungeon. "Getting too close" includes accidentally hitting them toward it with an attack. They also have a lot of HP, so don't expect this to go smoothly.

On the other hand, they do give you some decent prizes (even if you can cook Rainbow Diamonds in your Alchemy Meth Lab anyway).

If you use Metalworking with Ashton at a high skill level, you can make these into Atlas Rings, which are pretty much gamebreaking accessories in that they double your strength IN NUMBERS, and if you equip two, they stack so it quadruples your attack. The only drawback is that they make you fatally weak to all elements, but when you can kill everything in one hit, who cares?

So this dungeon has a notoriously high encounter rate. Fortunately, when you're doing unique movement animations, like climbing ladders

or pressing up against a wall, you can't encounter enemies. Still, it's a long-ass dungeon with annoying music. Not as grating as that other track, but ugh.

There's a save point at the very end of this dungeon, and it's already been mentioned in this thread how frustrating it is to get all the way here only to encounter an enemy before you can save and have your game freeze.

Anyway,

boss time.

The Guardians were the first truly intimidating enemies for me the first time I played this game. With 250,000 HP, they can take a LONG time to kill, especially if your party was Claude, Rena, Leon, and Noel because you liked characters who could cast magic.