The Second Evolution - First Run

I just finished my first play through of Star Ocean: Second Evolution, and felt that I should talk a bit about what I did, and talk spoilers, I guess. Spoilers will have warnings and are hidden under a toggle button, so this should be fairly spoiler free if you don't click any of the Spoiler buttons. With that said, here are the details.
My final party consisted of...

Claude - Level 101
Precis - Level 86
Celine - Level 81
Rena - Level 87

Welch - Level 76
Leon - Level 83
Noel - Level 84
Empty 8th char slot. D=

673 Battles fought.

Totally missed out on so many opportunities for recruiting some characters that I had originally planned to, like Ashton or Opera (+ Ernest instead of Noel), and Chisato. Heck, I even made sure to see Opera in the Private Action at Cross as well, in case I miss Ashton, which I totally did. Next play I do, I'll be looking at a guide for recruitment purposes to make sure that I get the party that I want. In fact, I'll go ahead and list them, I guess.

My next game will be as Rena, and the final party will hopefully be Rena, Claude, Celine, Dias, Opera, Ernest, Bowman, Chisato.

Below is the ending that I got out of the supposedly possible 119 endings.

Spoiler:

My ending had Noel's solo, making friends with animals of Expel, Precis and Welch working together to try to pick up guys to hook up with (friendship), Leon and Celine doing research on symbol science (friendship?), and Claude knocking up Rena, to my surprise. I'd like to know who was taking care of that baby during the course of Star Ocean: Blue Sphere which takes place 2 years in the future of Second Story/Evolution.

Now I don't know whether if I want to bother with the Cave of Trials in this save, since I absolutely neglected a lot of Item Creations and Talents, like Pickpocketing, Customization, and other good end-game stuff. On top of that, being that my final party was not what I had expected it to be, I'm considering attempting it on my second run while using a guide for the important stuff with Pickpocketing and such.

As for the difficulty, I would have liked to go for Universe difficulty, but I need to fight 2000 battles to unlock it. Here I am, willing to start a new game at 673 battles.. ._.' So my second run will also be on Galaxy difficulty. Edit: Or not. The game let me select Universe difficulty for some reason; possibly because I got an ending.

Not sure what other details I should put here, so I'll just leave it at that for now. Leave a comment on what details you want here, and I'll edit this post to include what's requested.