The Second Evolution - Second Run

So I got my second ending for Star Ocean: The Second Evolution, this time as Rena in Universe mode, not that the difficulty affects the ending or anything. I do have to say that Universe mode certainly makes it a lot more difficult to stay alive, with the greater amount of damage that the enemies do. Even with all the Item Creations and Specialties that I used to get some really nice equipments, the difficulty ended up pushing me to leveling up my characters a lot more than I had to in Galaxy Mode. Also, before I started making better equipments via Item Creations, I was doing some pretty crappy damages too. >_> Customization helped so much once I got to Nede... Couldn't keep up with the difficulty otherwise.

Here are my characters and levels currently.

Claude - Level 112
Dias - Level 123
Opera - Level 105
Rena - Level 105

Bowman - Level 81
Ernest - Level 81
Chisato - Level 93
Celine - Level 81

1038 Battles

The only thing that I DID miss out on in this run was the Sprite Bracelet from early on in the game. It totally slipped my mind when starting this run that I needed Rena to have Nimble Fingers to be able to pickpocket properly. As for leveling goes, I ended up having to use the Contraband group specialty to create a Counterfeit Medal to Replicate for leveling up. I'm still doing that with the reserve party members, in fact, for the Maze of Tribulations.

Now, here are the details for what ending I got. 

Spoiler:

This time, the endings were... rather less interesting. Chisato had a solo ending, wondering how the others are doing as she's getting off the boat at Harley. Followed by Dias's solo ending, visiting Cecille's grave. Then there was Bowman's solo ending, albeit a lot more lengthier since Keith comes to visit him at his store to talk about the ancient text that he translated. Turns out it was about Nede, but the book was missing too many pages with details though. Next was finally a pair ending between Opera and Ernest, where they land on yet another underdeveloped planet. Opera is disappointed that Ernest chose to land on that planet because of an ancient ruin there, rather than for the beautiful scenery nor Opera. >_> He seems awfully single-minded... After that was Celine's special ending as the Queen of Krosse, after marrying Clyde, or the Prince of Krosse, who's now king. And finally, the ending between Claude and Rena, this time I got the one where they were exploring space in a space ship. Perhaps this is the ending that Star Ocean: Blue Sphere continues off of, although their ship in that game seemed like a small ship that was just big enough for the two of them, while the ship's bridge they were flying in in the ending looked similar to the Calnus's. No baby to worry about here, I guess.

In the end, I was kind of disappointed that I barely got any paired endings. I even went around doing a lot of the Private Actions this time around, unlike my first run. Maybe I needed to use certain characters more in the major battles.. I certainly ended up using Claude and Rena a lot in those. And I highly doubt that 8 attempts at Contraband to get a Counterfeit Medal would affect the affection levels THAT much...

So yeah, now I'll be working on the Maze of Tribulations, and other end-game content. I wonder if Gabrie Celeste is as strong, if not stronger in SO2 Universe Mode as it was in SO: Blue Sphere. Because I was never able to defeat Gabrie Celeste in Blue Sphere, despite my many attempts. @_@ Speaking of difficulties though, I wonder if that means Star Ocean: First Departure got difficulty levels as well.. ? I don't remember the SNES version having difficulty levels...

Well, after this is done, my priority for portable games will have to move back to the DS, which means I'll want to get my DS fixed soon. =/ I may just have to buy myself a new bottle of super glue since I can't seem to find the old one now...