Rogue Galaxy Post-Game Session 12

Started Insectron Rank C, and noticed that the curve for experience gains really starts to mount right after level 3.  I had to face several level 4 insectors, which I had some trouble hitting.  In the 5th round I also lost a Dark Emperor, but won with no other issues.

This indicates two things to me: that my "keep everyone in a line and advance it every turn" strategy for steamrolling Insectron only goes so far; and that I need to use Insectron Rank B to level up, forfeiting the 5th round so I can restart from the beginning.  It's only going to get harder from here, and I need my Dark Emperors to have relevant stats.

As it turns out, there is a "forfeit" option, but it's pretty well hidden.  You forfeit by selecting an empty space on your turn and selecting "Give Up" out of the menu.

I used Rank A for more levelling up, until I got them to ACE, then I beat it.  Between Rank A and Rank S I did a lot of stat maxing with food, probably too much to be honest.  I should have ground stats on the first four Rank S battles for a while, I'd have had less to feed them and would have ended up with max health on all of them.  Instead, I got max strength, defense, and resists on all of them, and varying degrees of high health for all.

Anyway, with my insectors no longer able to gain stat boosts, I stomped Rank S.  But I wasn't there just to beat it once.  Beating it a second time unlocks a costume for Lilika.  So I ran right back in, only to suffer a stupid loss on the fourth battle.  Basically, I got cocky and moved my king to the edge of the board, and the stupid idol girl sent her Dark Emperor in to use its attack with its inherent "flip backwards" property on poor PALPATINE, which of course 100 throw resist couldn't defend against and he got flipped out of the arena.

Second time through I didn't make that blunder.  I stomped all the way to the 5th round, against Dr. Pocacchio.  The thing that makes him difficult is that he has an insector you can't get anywhere in the game.  Just like the Dark Emperor it can use its special attack infinitely, and its special attack is much better, as it deals hefty damage to everything around it, and applies stun.  I ended up chasing it around the board with one of my two remaining Dark Emperors while my king was stunned, and eventually killed it.  Tough, but not the impossible insector most of the internet makes it out to be.

With that, I equipped the costume on Lilika and went to Galaxy Corporation to claim my reward for completing Insectron, which of course was sole remaining costume for Jupis.

Everything is now 100% complete, and I have all the costumes.  Rogue Galaxy officially done.

Nothing posted in ages...

So, I got a job.  A real one this time.  It's sucking away all my free time.  Which means less time to play games and write blog posts.

Here's a quick rundown of what's happened recently:

• Guitar Hero 5: FCed Deadbolt by Thrice
• Rogue Galaxy: All my Dark Emperors are ACE and have all their stats except for health maxed.  Currently feeding them the item that boosts their health until they reach max health or stop gaining boosts from food, before entering Insectron S Rank.
• The Simpsons: Hit and Run: Still haven't started playing it.
• Project 'Bout Fuckin' Time: Still haven't started it.
• Food: I've been making yakisobapan for my lunches for work recently.  Might eventually formulate a recipe post.  It's really not a complex thing to make.
• Winter Anime Season: Finished Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai NEXT and Minami-ke Tadaima.  Haganai NEXT had its moments but wasn't quite as good as the first season, and Minami-ke Tadaima was actually pretty decent.  Initial D 5th Stage on hold, basically watching Central-Anime's DVD version.
• Spring Anime Season: Watching Haiyore! Nyaruko-san W, and To aru Kagaku no Railgun S.  Checking out Namiuchigiwa no Muromi-san and a couple others.
• Guild Wars: Retreated from GW2, for a variety of reasons I'll probably dedicate a post to in the near future.  Playing GW1 sporadically.
• Computer stuff: Learning XSLT and Windows PowerShell.
• CAINE: CAINE is attending Sakura Matsuri this weekend.  We wrapped up our scheduled showings recently and by far the best thing we watched this semester was Steins;Gate.  It was up against Now and Then, Here and There, Kino no Tabi, and Megas XLR.  Also, for whatever reason, we had a showing that consisted of both Nanoha movies.  I'm not really into magical girl stuff.

Rogue Galaxy Post-Game Session 11

I know I said I wanted a balanced team for Insectron, but at the same time, I want to see how far I can get by just trying to overwhelm everything.  After much clearing of Ghost Ship Extreme that I didn't count as actual gameplay sessions, I assembled my team of 5 Dark Emperors and set forth.

As it turns out, Insectron is mostly similar to a turn-based strategy game.  Different insectors can move different amounts, and they have a special attack with its own, possibly different range.  Since it's turn-based and you can get stats on anything, even opponents' insectors, you can take your time if need be to plan out each insector's actions on your turn.  Also, when setting up your team before a match, you select a "king" insector, this one has limited movement, and if defeated ends the match.

Matches are basically a game of "advance towards the enemy, weaken their big damage dealers and other insectors that have special abilities you need to worry about, then kill the king".

With a team of 5 Dark Emperors, though, I pretty much steamrolled the first two levels of the tournament, being E rank and D rank.  Each tournament rank has five fights, but your insectors heal between fights, so it makes it really easy to just keep on going.  Also, if you want you can take a break between fights, and this lets you go elsewhere in the game, perhaps to catch another insector or feed your insectors to raise their stats and happiness.

After beating Insectron rank D, you unlock the Insectron mini-game on the main menu.  This is completely separate from the rest of the game and doesn't affect anything in-game, but you can load in teams from your memory card or from an excessively long 118-character case-sensitive alphanumeric password.  Also, when registering your team from your memory card, you can input a "victory code", which is basically a five-character string that anyone who inputs your team's password will see after they beat your team, as a "proof of victory" kind of thing.  In this mode, you can battle against the CPU, or against a second player, and if you're so inclined you can even load in two teams and let the CPU fight itself.  I inputted both passwords off of this page, and proceeded to stomp both teams with my Dark Emperors.  It's a shame that there doesn't appear to be a way to fight using a team you registered with a password, which means unless I catch a bunch of other insectors, I'll only ever get to use my Dark Emperors.

Anyway, at least until later ranks, it looks like Insectron will go by rather quickly.  I still plan to fully level up and stat max my Dark Emperors, but I want to get where the XP is good first.

Rogue Galaxy Post-Game Session 10

After getting to the 60th floor last night, I decided to start in on the final 40 floors.  It went fairly smoothly up to and including the 70th floor boss, who had to be hit with a charge attack before he could take damage, but then one use of Drunken Burst and a couple uses of Illusion Sword later, among some other things, he bit the dust.

Then I decided to go out and grab a frozen pizza for lunch, as well as spending leftover money after that on alcohol.  This was a solid decision.  Note that I didn't actually consume the alcohol while eating the pizza.  I'm not about to waste an entire $13 bottle of Kahlua on one meal.

The last 40 floors were pretty much as uneventful as the first 60.  The only real noteworthy thing is that Jaster reached level 99 on the 98th floor.  However, I did have to run in circles to force the random encounters to give me what I needed on the 99th floor so I could complete Hunter Record.

The last boss is named "Doppelganger" and he wasn't really all that difficult.  He has a stance where he spins his sword around and doesn't take any damage, but the AI is actually smart enough to know not to attack during this, so it just becomes "okay, heal up and wait for him to be vulnerable again".  My strategy consisted of having Jaster use Illusion Sword, Kisala use Dagger Slash, and Zegram use Twin Sword, and just keep refreshing them until he died.  I chose Illusion Sword over Flash Sword so I could keep my distance with Jaster in case anything stupid happened and everyone up close and personal died.

The reward for completing Ghost Ship Extreme is Kisala's Swimsuit (her best costume stat-wise, since they do have minor defense value differences), the Beach Sandals (basically, matching max power footwear), and the Royal Fruit, which is used to catch the best insector in the game.

Then, I had Kisala put on her swimsuit (and sandals), and jetted to Zerard where I turned in the complete Hunter Record and got another costume for Kisala, Arina's Sleeve.  It comes with matching boots that are crap stat-wise (Aura Shoes).

Next up, the important thing: getting the Beach Sandals to MASTERED so I can actually make full use of them.  Unfortunately, the game prevents us from doing it the easy way, by feeding them to Toady along with Excelion Shards to raise all their elemental stats by 5 per shard.  The only other way is to fight battles with them equipped and get one point in a random stat per battle.  Which would take several hundred battles.  Which, technically, I could do by clearing my inventory of certain items, rubber banding the analog sticks together, and letting it go on Rosa while I do something else for a few hours.  I guess I could do that.  We'll see.

Regardless, just for the lulz, I got the Aura Shoes that came with the Arina's Sleeve costume up to MASTERED.  Not that I'll ever use them.

One final bit of business: catching the insector that I got the bait for.  Luckily that's not too difficult, I think it's even a guaranteed catch since you have to go through such effort to get the bait.  Still, I used Insector Trap 2 because it said it had a better chance of catching ground-crawling Insectors.  Toss the Royal Fruit in there, go to Mariglenn, teleport to the Gulza Sanctuary Plaza, and plunk that sucker down.  Then you wait.  Wait until you hear a noise and the trap starts flashing.  Open it up and it should be a Dark Emperor, guaranteed.

After that, I went to Juraika and caught a couple random insectors just for the express purpose of playing around with breeding them.  Since information on Insectron is so spotty on the internet, I'm just going to have to figure out most of it myself.  I want to put together a balanced team to properly support my Dark Emperor, and for that I need healers...

Anyway, ending this post here.

Rogue Galaxy Post-Game Session 9

I'm trying to see if I can finish Ghost Ship Extreme in three sessions of roughly 30 levels each.  Since last session was a bit short because I was finding it hard to keep my eyes open, this session will hopefully make up for that and get me to the floor 60 range.

I've read from guides that there are shops every 30 floors, so at last I know I'll come upon one in six floors.

So far it doesn't seem particularly difficult, just long and drawn out.  The boss battles I've faced on every tenth floor so far have been harder than the random encounters.  According to guides I find though, I'm a bit overlevelled, which is Just The Way I Like It™.  Depending on how much levelling I have left as I get towards the end, I might stop progressing upwards and just farm XP for a while so I can max everyone out.

--- session happened here ---

Okay, well, what did I learn from this session?  First, it's completely possible to fill in the Hunter Record for Ghost Ship Extreme on your first playthrough without even specifically trying for it.  Second, heavily armored, hard-hitting, fast-attacking enemies who must be hit with a charge attack before they can be hit with anything else are annoying as fuck.  Third, the bosses in GSE can be spam-killed just like the bosses anywhere else.  The boss on floor 60 is a fuckton of bugs.  No joke.  Rather than hunt down and kill each one individually, I used Jaster, Kisala, and Zegram's Supernova three times.

And that's where I'm leaving it for this session, having saved in the first room of the 61st floor.

Rogue Galaxy Post-Game Session 8

In this session, I started Ghost Ship Extreme.  While working my way through it, I'm also filling in the remaining entries in the Hunter Record.  Ghost Ship Extreme, in case you haven't read any of my other posts about Rogue Galaxy, is a randomly generated 100 level dungeon, filled with enemies designed for the post-game.  Part of my previous post-game sessions, getting everyone's max weapons, got me as prepared as I could possibly be for it.

Session 7 led more or less directly into this one, as the final bit of it, checking Ghost Ship, didn't take very long and resulted in zero missed chests, so I just kept on playing.

Before I started on Ghost Ship Extreme proper, I swung by Zerard and grabbed my Insectron license and the second trap and rearing cage.  Just so I wouldn't have to think about it later.

Once inside Ghost Ship Extreme, the first thing I did was make a list of the cutoff points for certain enemies, based on the information in the Enemy Location FAQ on GameFAQs.  Since it's my intention to finish off Hunter Record while progressing through Ghost Ship Extreme, it helps to know "oh I shouldn't go to the next floor yet".

I noticed pretty much right away that there were fake level exits with purple lights, in addition to the correct level exit that had red lights.  So just because you see that level exit icon on the map doesn't necessarily mean that's the actual exit.

So far I've noticed that the floors of GSE are relatively small.  So the challenge isn't really in the length of each floor, but rather the number of them and the enemies you encounter on each.

Every tenth floor is a boss fight, with what seems to be a guaranteed save point before and after.  I haven't yet found any shops, but so far I've been getting enough restorative items from enemies that they haven't been necessary.

My original intention was to get to floor 34 and call it quits there, but I'm still recovering from MAGFest and really needed the sleep, so I saved and exited after having fully explored the 24th floor and having completed the hunter record for floors 1-30.

Rogue Galaxy Post-Game Session 7

This post-game session is titled "Requesting permission for a fly-by! (spilled coffee)".  Bonus points if you get the reference.

I always preface these things with an expectation of how much time it'll take and how long the post will be, but I've been wrong every single time.  So I'm not going to say that I don't think this will take very long.  Not at all.  I'm also not going to lose motivation two planets in.  No sir.

Basically, this session will be relatively low-interest to read about, much less play.  In it, I'm going around from one planet to the next making absofuckinglutely sure I've gotten all the chests.

When I started, I had a rather genius idea: one of the items you can make in the factory is the Stealth Shield.  According to its description, it "hides your presence from weak enemies".  I don't know what exactly it means by "weak", but I can infer that each enemy has a level associated with it and the shield prevents encounters with enemies that are far enough below your level to be outside a certain threshhold.  The best part: you only need one of this shield equipped for it to affect your entire party.  Using the shield sped up the entire thing by eliminating encounters almost everywhere and severely limiting them everywhere else.

My party of Jaster, Kisala, and Zegram is level 77, 75, and 73, respectively.  From using the Stealth Shield in an environment where there are encounters it can't prevent, I have deduced its function to be as such: When the game decides to generate an encounter, it chooses a specific group of enemies right away.  Then it checks to see if the shield can prevent an encounter with those enemies, and if it does, no encounter happens.  This explains perfectly the sporadic groups of encounters I got with long periods of no encounters in between them.  The alternative function would be for the game to check for the shield right away when generating an encounter, and simply exclude enemies that the shield prevents from showing up, which would result in much more frequent encounters.

While sweeping these areas, I got into a bit of a rhythm, but it still took quite a bit of time, so I ended up splitting up this session into a few mini-sessions.  I was unsure as to the limits of the "see all the chests on the map" ability you gain when you find all the save points on a planet, so there was probably a lot of unnecessary exploration time done.  I'm a fairly thorough explorer in games like these, so I know with high certainty that I got the vast majority of the chests in my actual playthrough.

Session 7a (December 8th): Swept Rosa and Juraika.  Missed chests found: Zero.  Realized how much of a bitch Zerard will be with Rosencaster Prison, the Starship Factory, and both Gladius Towers; kind of lost motivation.
Session 7b (December 30th): Swept Zerard, Vedan, and Alistia.  Missed chests found: Three on Vedan, zero elsewhere.
Session 7c (January 1st): Swept Mariglenn.  Missed chests found: One.
Session 7d (January 9th): Swept Ghost Ship.  Missed chests found: Zero.

I did the sweeping by planet so that if I missed zero chests on a planet, I could reset and not add any game time to my save.  In addition, I kept track of where I found each chest and then after finishing the sweep, I reloaded and grabbed the chests.  This session therefore added very little time to my save file.  Having only missed four chests in a game that's as expansive as Rogue Galaxy is just goes to show how thorough of an explorer I am.

Rogue Galaxy Post-Game Session 6

This session's name is "The Most Planned-Out 30 Battles Ever".

Why?

Because I did a lot of looking back and forth between my item storage, the Frog Log, and the Shop List FAQ on GameFAQs before I even started actually playing the game.  From the previous session, I ended up at 39 of Toady's suggestions synthesized, which left 11 remaining.  After consulting the Frog Log and the Shop List FAQ extensively, I found eleven weapons in my possession that fit the bill and the corresponding eleven weapons I needed to buy from shops.  I then went around to all those shops and bought all eleven weapons.  The best part: the set I found let me keep my party the same for all of it.  So rather than having to swap party members around, I could just keep my usual party of Jaster, Kisala, and Zegram.

What I ended up with was two main weapons and two sub weapons for everyone, except for Zegram who only needed one sub weapon.  Taking advantage of both the main weapon and sub weapon slots cut this down tremendously from what I was originally planning, which was just doing a bunch of swords for Jaster.  Essentially I had a set of six weapons and a set of five, which meant it would take 30 battles to get all of them maxed.

In order to plan all this out, I took notes.  Remember that computer I got from a neighbor and installed Ubuntu 12.04 on?  Yeah, I've been using it these past few sessions, connected to the same TV as my PS2, using its picture-in-picture options to display the computer's video next to the PS2's video, and it came in extra handy for this one.

Where did I do the 30 battles?  Where else, but the easiest place in the game: Rosa.  Specifically, at the Residential Area Plaza.  The battles there are so easy that usually Kisala and Zegram can finish them in a matter of seconds while Jaster runs in circles thanks to my controller's analog sticks being rubber banded together.  Ah, the advantage of having a level 70+ party in the first area of the game.

Anyway, for all my trouble I got a costume for Zegram.  I then proceeded to pull all the random extra weapons I had out of item storage and sell them off.  Not that I particularly needed the money or storage space, but just so I never had to look at or care about them ever again.  So aside from all the special swords for Jaster, all that's really in there is costumes and random shields I've picked up around the game.  Fun fact: I've barely used the shield equipment slot.  I seriously contemplated getting confuse shields for everyone when I was going through Mother's Lair and someone was getting confused and killing a fellow party member nearly every battle, but it was just one of those "you know, I should really do this" things that I never actually get around to doing.

The research and preparation for this session took quite a bit longer than the session itself took.  This is the last of the short sessions, though.  Up next is a quick flyby of everywhere in the game to check for missed chests, then depending on how long that takes, the beginning of Ghost Ship Extreme, making sure to fill in the Hunter Record as I go so that I complete Hunter Record before I get to the end of Ghost Ship Extreme.

Rogue Galaxy Post-Game Session 5

This session was all about getting things done.  In it, I finished Revelation Flow, caught Hunter Record up to game progress, and finished analyzing and combining weapons I already had for the Frog Log.

Finishing Revelation Flow was mostly annoying because the items I needed dropped very rarely.  At least I was comboing it together with Hunter Record and Frog Log.  I eventually got the two remaining Crystal Staffs and the three remaining Galactic Compasses I needed.  Then I hopped over to Zerard and bought the random item Jupis needed to finish his very last ability, and as promised, I added it to his Revelation Flow while standing in front of the stupid idol girl that hands out the completion rewards.  The reward for completing Revelation Flow was a costume for Deego.

After that, I jetted to Ghost Ship to wrap up the remaining enemies I needed for the Hunter Record.  It was relatively straightforward, and while it seemed as though the spawn rates would occasionally change just to spite me when I had one of a given enemy left, I did eventually get it done.  The only entries missing from Hunter Record now are the ones for enemies in Ghost Ship Extreme, which I haven't started.

As for combining weapons I already had for the Frog Log, that's done, and I'm sitting at around 10 of Toady's suggestions remaining.  I can quite probably do the rest with random swords for Jaster.  Then I'll finally be able to sell off all the extra weapons I have lying around.

Between finishing Frog Log and doing Ghost Ship Extreme and its Hunter Record entries, I plan on doing a giant sweep of every area to look for chests I may have missed.  I know for a fact I haven't revisited everywhere since getting the psychic ability to tell where chests are on the map, so I've probably missed a few here and there.

Rogue Galaxy Post-Game Session 4

I started in on Frog Log right away during this session.  I'd already made nine of Toady's suggestions playing through the game and/or getting ultimate weapons.  My first task was simply to pull all the random trash weapons I have out of item storage, max any that need it, and make any combinations possible.  I figured I'd maybe get three or four combinations out of this and I'd have to run around buying things rather quickly.

It turned out otherwise.  By the end of the session I was up to nearly 30 of Toady's suggestions made, out of the 50 I need to complete Frog Log.  I actually didn't complete maxing and combining my already existing weapons, I still have Lilika, Jupis, and Zegram left.  But the fact that I've gotten as much of it done as I have without ever setting foot into a weapon shop is pleasing.  I don't know how many more I'll be able to make, but surely it'll put me in the mid-upper 30s, if not in the low 40s.  Then I can just buy some random crap swords for Jaster to combine and be done with it.

Another thing I worked on this session was farming the rare items I needed for Revelation Flow.  I have it down to just Jupis needing anything at all, and he simply needs three Galactic Compasses and two Crystal Staffs.  He also needs some random other item that I'll grab once it's the only thing left, and add it to his Revelation Flow while I'm standing in front of the stupid idol girl who gives out the completion rewards.

The last thing I worked on during this session is the thing I've been working on all this time: Hunting Record.  I now have Chapters 1 through 13 and Alistia complete.  Ghost Ship has some stuff done but still needs a fair amount.  I actually stopped doing Hunter Record in an attempt to farm up the last few Revelation Flow items I need, but they're proving to be quite rare and they exist as random drops in Ghost Ship anyway, so I think next session I might just move on to completing the Ghost Ship entries for the Hunting Record.

Given that I've been rather paranoid lately about my save getting corrupted due to my UPS' dead battery (UPS sees power fluctuation that it deems unsafe, tries to go to backup power, backup power is dead, everything connected to the UPS turns off), I've moved operations into another room where there's a fully functional UPS and our 50" plasma TV to play on.  I'm also taking advantage of the TV's picture-in-picture feature to have a newly acquired spare computer running Ubuntu 12.04 at the ready to scroll through guides and stuff.  I'm actually typing this blog post on it, and it's proved quite handy.

Rogue Galaxy Post-Game Session 3

I kind of feel like an idiot.  Between last session and this one, I realized a critical detail about weapon synthesis that I'd missed up until this point: it's not about the specific weapon you use as a component, but the level of the weapon itself.  Each step of the way simply requires a weapon that's at or above a specific level.  The keyword there being "above".  Basically, for the Seven-Star Swords and Jaster's other special swords, I could have been using higher level weapons that I could just buy from a merchant, rather than having to buy two lower-level weapons and combining them to make something that fits the level requirement.

The FAQ I've been using to piece together the synthesis chains does make note of this, but really doesn't stress it enough, given how much time it would save if you know "oh hey I can just buy stuff from the guy on Mariglenn to make the fully upgraded forms of the Seven-Star Swords".

That said, I'm going to continue with things the way I've been doing them, because I'm almost done.  Also, I've been recording all the information as I verify it, in a TiddlyWiki, that once I'm done I can easily upload somewhere on the internet for it to get the same zero views that this blog gets.  It's a long way out yet, because there's one thing I need to verify that I don't get until beating Ghost Ship Extreme, which I can only assume will take a while, even with all the ultimate weapons.

The TiddlyWiki guide I've been putting together uses the method I was assuming I had to do, which means it calls for extra weapons to be crafted periodically that are likely unnecessary.  If I feel dedicated enough I'll do a New Game + run through the game and reverify stuff using weapons from merchants at the end of the game.  Since the only thing that carries over in New Game + is the costumes you've unlocked, I'm not in any huge hurry to do such things.

Anyway, on to stuff that happened in this session.

Well, really, it's pretty much the same as the last session.  Doing the obligatory 15 battles per sword so I can synthesize them, and going from one location to another filling in the Hunting Record.  Also, cycling party members around getting their weapons to MASTERED status, but that's not a huge priority since I can do it faster with crystals.

First up was the weakest of the Seven-Star Swords, Kingdom Master.  Up until this point I'd been going in reverse order from most powerful to least powerful, but Dark Cloud takes a metric fuckton of synthesis steps, and I tend to put off daunting tasks until I absolutely have to do them.  This pretty much can't be reduced because of how you obtain the base sword for Dark Cloud, Duke Nightmare.  You have to synthesize it from a Demon Rouser and a Majestic Halo.  Being that I used the Demon Rouser I already had from a quarry reward for a different synthesis, I had to make it as well as Majestic Halo.

After Kingdom Master, as you might have guessed from reading the previous paragraph, it finally came time to make Dark Cloud.  I bought and maxed all the swords necessary for prerequisites, then I started combining and even though it took a lot more swords I had Dark Cloud done before I even knew it.

With Dark Cloud finally complete, the next thing to do was complete Ghost Ship so I could get Dorgenedge and make Jaster's ultimate weapon, Dorgencalibur.  I progressed through Ghost Ship, encountering a rival a few times and eventually convincing him to not be so antagonistic towards me.  This happened once he realized we were both in the same boat, as we'd both been told the ship's treasure was ours to have if we could make it there.  The final boss ended up being the corrupted version of the ship's (and therefore the treasure's) owner.  The rival ended up being none other than Dorgengoa, from the past, who promptly faded out of existence after I defeated the final boss.

With Dorgenedge in hand, it finally became time to make Dorgencalibur.  This one was very straightforward as I already had suitable weapons maxed and ready to go.  First things first though, I worked my way back out of Ghost Ship like a true adventurer would, by walking out rather than teleporting.  Once I got back out I took a few attempts at Seventh Mystery.  Seventh Mystery is a seven question quiz about various random things in the game.  Eventually I got all seven questions right (they're different every time) and got the Key to the Underworld, which is used to open Ghost Ship Extreme.

Once Dorgencalibur was done and maxed, I used Excelion Shards, Hyper Crystals, and Omega Crystals to get it to MASTERED status relatively quickly.  This ended up being the last ultimate weapon I got to MASTERED status, meaning I got everyone else's done while doing all the Seven-Star Swords and special swords for Jaster.

I suppose up next will be Frog Log and more Hunting Record.  Frog Log is basically more running around buying weapons, maxing them, and synthesizing them (this time paying attention to Toady's suggestions), and Hunting Record simply requires a lot of grind and thus works well with weapon synthesis which also requires grind of the same type.  I'm nearing completion on the Hunting Record, too.  I have Chapters 1 through 10 and Alistia done.  I plan on finishing Chapters 11 through 13 and Ghost Ship before taking on Ghost Ship Extreme.

Rogue Galaxy Post-Game Session 2

Rather than doing any of Ghost Ship during this session, I spent this session simultaneously working on three things that work together very well:

• Filling in the Hunter Record
• Synthesizing special swords and Seven-Star Swords for Jaster (also synthesizing Deego's ultimate weapons)
• Mastering people's ultimate weapons

All of these work well together because they all involve fighting large numbers of battles.  Because of the hunter record working the way it does, the best way to fill it in is to find a place where the stuff you still need to kill spawns and run in circles, killing everything.  Some enemies are far rarer than others, just to prolong things.

So, the first thing that happened is that I got Deego's ultimate weapons.  His ultimate axe looks awesome, and well worthy of being an ultimate weapon.

After that came synthesizing sword after sword for Jaster.  First up, I finished his penultimate sword, Diabolos.  I can't get his ultimate sword, Dorgencalibur, until after beating Ghost Ship.  Then, I made the ultimate form of the Libra King's Sword, which is called Ruler's Horn.  Switching over to Seven-Star Swords, I followed that up with making Ixion in the factory and then progressing it to its ultimate form, Guard Axis.  I continued on down the line, ending up with Earthshaker.

The other four Seven-Star Swords I haven't yet made, but I've pieced together how to do each one from the FAQ I'm pulling information from.

Mastering people's ultimate weapons takes forever, because each stat has a maximum of like 90 something, they typically start low after the last synthesis (the starting point depends on the stat's value on the combined weapons), and you get one point in a random stat per battle.  That said, I got through Deego and Zegram.  Kisala's mastered her boots, and Lilika's working on her stuff.  Since Jaster can't be removed from the party, his ultimate sub-weapon has been mastered for quite some time now.

My compulsion for completeness won't let me put the game to rest without the game completion, weapon synthesis, and ultimate weapon mastering being done.  I've got quite a long way to go yet before even really completing all aspects of the game, though.

Edit: ...aaaaaaaaaaand after I posted this I kept playing, and finished the factory.

A Few Days Later Edit: I guess I should mention what my project with Jaster is.  Basically, all four of the special swords he has can be upgraded via fairly straightforward synthesis chains.  There are also the seven Seven-Star Swords, which can also be upgraded.  I'm upgrading ALL of them.  I've got three of his four special swords fully upgraded (Ruler's Horn, Zeo Sychros X, and Diabolos), and similarly three of the seven Seven-Star Swords upgraded (Earthshaker, Guard Axis, and Gryphon Lord).  I've worked out what the synthesis chains are for the remaining swords, it's just a matter of getting all the component swords and then fighting 15 battles per sword.  Dorgencalibur will be the last one, so I can conclude the whole thing with his ultimate weapon.

Rogue Galaxy Post-Game Session 1

Yeah, I beat the game, but there's still plenty of stuff to do.  Some of it I'm strategically putting off, and the rest of it I'm doing now.  I've officially started using guides.

After beating the game, I set out to synthesize everyone's ultimate weapon.  Which entails figuring out which swords to combine together in what order.  There are a total of four guides on GameFAQs that pertain to weapon synthesis, and none of them lay the information out the way I need it.  I had to piece it together myself by working backwards from what I wanted to weapons that could be purchased from stores, obtained from chests, or made in the factory.  So my notes document is currently full of "get these weapons, combine them in this order, this is what you get" for every character and both weapon types.

Jaster is a fun one.  He effectively has four tiers of ultimate weapons.

• The first (lowest) tier is on par with everyone else's ultimate weapons.  It has the same base power of 314 that everyone else's ultimate weapon has.  His sub-weapon thankfully maxes out at this point as well.
• The second tier is the Seven Star Swords.  The strongest of these can be obtained before beating the game, which renders the first tier mostly irrelevant.  Furthermore, they can be upgraded via the weapon synthesis system to make them better.  The base power of the strongest fully-upgraded Seven Star Sword, Gryphon Lord, is 377.
• The third tier is only available after beating the game, and consists of one sword: Diabolos.  In order to start its synthesis chain you have to get a sword from Ghost Ship, which doesn't appear until you beat the game.  Its base power is 400.
• The fourth (highest) tier is only available after beating Ghost Ship, and once again consists of one sword: Dorgencalibur, with a base power of 500.  You receive the sword necessary to start the synthesis chain upon beating Ghost Ship, and I imagine this sword helps out a lot in Ghost Ship Extreme.  Because Level-5 likes their 100 level post-game dungeons.

Also, it's worth mentioning that the weapon analysis system effectively will not lead you to pretty much anyone's ultimate weapon and stops giving advice when weapons get above a certain level, meaning you either have to experiment to figure out what's going to work, or look it up.  For me, there are way too many possibilities to make experimentation feasible, so I just looked it up.

So, weapons I have now that I've done a ton of weapon synthesis: (they're all ultimate weapons unless otherwise specified)

• Jaster:
• Absolution Halo(EX): This is Jaster's mostly pointless power 314 weapon.  I made it just for completion's sake, after I made Gryphon Lord.  Because I have more money in-game than I know what to do with.
• Gryphon Lord: As mentioned above, it's the highest power Seven Star Sword.
• Zeo Sychros X: The fully upgraded version of Zeo Sychros, the sword given to you by the story in Chapter 13.  It's not necessary to upgrade this sword to complete the game, but you also can't remove it from your inventory, so I upgraded it.  It has a base power of 355.
• One synthesis away from Diabolos.
• I have the swords necessary to synthesize the Seven Star Sword that has to be synthesized to even get its lowest power version (Duke Nightmare).
• I will eventually obtain and fully upgrade all seven of the Seven Star Swords.  Just to say that I did.
• Arc Scorpion(EX): Fortunately, Jaster only has one ultimate sub-weapon to worry about.
• Kisala:
• Snow Queens(EX): Main weapon.
• Matriarch's Roses(EX): Sub-weapon.
• Zegram:
• Hades Child(EX): Main weapon.
• Soaring Tengu(EX): Sub-weapon.
• Steve:
• Final Big Bang(EX): herp
• The Fearless(EX): derp
• Simon:
• Ganymedeon(EX)
• Paradise Lost(EX)
• Lilika:
• Sunslayer Bow(EX)
• Divine Beast Hatchet(EX)
• Jupis:
• Genius Fusion(EX)
• UFO Squadron P(EX)
• Deego:
• One synthesis away from Rasphara Grandius(EX)
• One synthesis away from Lost Galaxy(EX)

As implied by my progress towards getting Diabolos, I started up Ghost Ship.  I literally turned around and teleported out once I got the sword I needed.

While I was doing the weapon synthesis, I worked on my hunter record a bit.  There are 212 different non-boss enemy types in the game, and the game gives you a goal number of each to kill and a certain amount of hunter points as a reward if you make or break that mark.  If you play through the game at the natural pace it has you play at, you'll get a good portion of these, but you'll miss a lot.  The two tasks (weapon synthesis and hunter record completion) go together fairly well because it takes 15 battles to get a new weapon to the MAX state where you can then synthesize it with another already MAX weapon.

Towards the end of that process I started stringing out the battles a bit more.  Instead of just running around in circles in one area, I decided to hunt down the seven rare items I missed on my guide-free playthrough of the game.  I did find two of them, and they're arguably the two easiest to find when you don't know what you're looking for.  I ended up finding the remaining seven, and claimed my reward from the stupid idol girl in Galaxy Corporation: a costume for Simon.  Also, a neat thing is you can go into Dorgengoa's cabin on the Dorgenark and see all the rare items you've found lying about the room.

The one thing I'll be putting off is Insector.  After reading around through the archives of the GameFAQs forums for Rogue Galaxy, I found that there's a special "ultimate" insector you can only get after completing Ghost Ship Extreme, and in the interest of making Insector easier I want anything to skew the odds in my favor that I can get.

I had Jaster's Revelation Flow complete before beating the game, and Kisala's complete shortly after beating the game.  The rest of them need a bit of work, but the stupid idol girl says I'm at 89% completion on it, so I'm not far off.  There are a couple decently rare items I need to farm up for it, and then the rest is seeing what I need as I fill in the spaces and get to what I couldn't see before.

Anyway, I'll end this post before it turns into me rambling about things I either have or haven't done in-game.  It's a good game, and if you like console RPGs you should play it.  Bottom line.

Rogue Galaxy Session 12

Okay, so I realized a few things since my last post:

1. Kisala's portion of the battle is even easier if you stay back all the way.  You can guard the only attack that ever gets sent your way a lot more easily when you have more time to react.
2. You can target Valkog's eyes in the final part with Jaster, and aerial attacks are a lot faster than ground ones.  You can land three hits and then jump and repeat.  Switch your target according to wherever his hands are guarding and stay all the way to the left to avoid the giant beam.  The purple orbs of instadeath are less of an issue if you jump a lot, as they'll typically spawn in the air and you'll be on the ground laughing.
3. Also, Simon's, Steve's, and Jupis' parts of the final battle can be completed without taking damage, which helps you save health potions for the other parts that need them more (Deego, Lillika, Zegram, Jaster)

So, after we destroyed the corrupted battleship, shit happens and we end up getting rescued directly by the Dorgenark and Captain Dorgengoa.  Rune splashes onto the ship in the process, and it looked like we would be dragged down, but then the Rune gave the ship wings and few us to safety.  The blue sky returns to Mariglenn, and the Rune fades from existence.  Kisala says bye to her mom, everything's serious for a while, then Jaster cracks a joke and everyone has a laugh.

After they go through the portal, Mariglenn reappears within the galaxy proper.  For us, it was a matter of moments, but for them, it had been 10000 years since we departed.  Kisala is presented with her mother's tiara and decides to go ahead and take on her role as Queen of Mariglenn.  Some old guy with a stick up his ass calls us lowly individuals and says we'll never be allowed to approach her.  We decided everyone's got a place they have to be and this is Kisala's, and leave the planet.

The closing credits reveal everyone's voice actors, and there are some recognizable names in there.

In a post-credits cutscene, Dorgengoa, Zegram, and Jaster decide to go back to Mariglenn and "get back their 'ultimate treasure'", which can only be Kisala, though the cutscene ends before it happens and you just hear Jaster saying that it was their last heist as pirates.

Thoughts on the game now that I've finished it

You know, since Kisala's the queen and all, surely she could use that position to get the old guy with the stick up his ass to give us special exception to see her, since we, you know, saved the galaxy together and all.  Just because she's queen doesn't mean we should stop being her friends...  Just a thought.

The game has a lot going for it in the graphics and sound department.  The music is excellent and really sets the tone for the area you're going through.

The gameplay is solid, with the suggestion system it makes controlling three characters in an action RPG pretty simple.  One thing I really wish would happen is that characters should automatically suggest healing potions when their health either gets to a certain level or if it drops quickly.  I've had way too many times where a character (usually Zegram) is just running around with about 20 HP and not going "oh hey, can I use a heal potion".  I know I can set the party to "go all-out" and they'll use potions as they need them, but I'd like to stay reasonably in control of my limited supply of them.

I really like the costumes you can find for each character.  They do have an ever so slight difference in stats, but it's not enough to force you to use a specific costume for its stats when you like the look of a different one.

The factory introduces a neat mechanic in that you can make items that will appear at vendors around the game.  The factory is also a nice puzzle game and a pretty good distraction from what's going on, but since it has rewards that can affect your gameplay, you'll want to do it.  Unlike Insector, which the game really tries its hardest to get you into but it has no impact on gameplay whatsoever, other than taking your supplies.

If you want full completion there are a ton of things you'll have to do.  You'll have to scavenger hunt for the rare items, pretty much all of which involve finding NPCs and talking to them in a fairly specific order so that you can go somewhere else to find the item, all the while only giving you vague clues.  You'll have to do all the quarries, which involves finding a bunch of items from around the game to fight optional boss battles, but with a reward in that it gives you items and progress on the Hunter rankings.  Getting to the top of the Hunter rankings is full of rewards since you get items for passing certain rank milestones, and the top one gives you a very good sword for Jaster.

Handing out abilities and stat boosts via Revelation Flow is a neat thing.  It's kind of like the Sphere Grid in Final Fantasy X, but not nearly as large.  Essentially, with the limit of requiring you to have a certain set of items, it lets you go "oh, I want that ability" and then unlock it.  Some items are rarer than others, and some are frustratingly rare.  With some of the items it's like I reach a stopping point where I require 20 or so of it to continue but can't find any, then the game flicks a switch and the floodgate opens.  I don't know if I was getting things too fast or not, but I noticed it on multiple occasions.

The save points essentially having six purposes is pretty cool too.  First and foremost, you can save your game at them.  When you step on one, it will activate if it wasn't already, and then it refills your party's HP/AP.  You can teleport to any of the other save points you've activated, which functions as your fast travel and works well with the world map travel since you can teleport straight into the Dorgengoa and then select a different planet.  As you kill things and take on the quarries, you can "turn in" your results and get your due credit at any save point.  It offers expanded item storage so you can keep your inventory reasonably free from old weapons and other things you're not using.  Last but not least, you're encouraged to find all of them on a planet because doing so will reveal the full map and show you where chests (and mimics) are.

The game gives you a reason to keep old weapons around, as well as a reason to buy weapons that aren't as good as what you currently have.  That reason is weapon synthesis.  After fighting a few battles with a weapon, the bar next to Skills will fill and say MAX.  Once you've done that, you can analyze it to figure out what it might combine well with and then do that combination if you have the items.  You can get some pretty nice stuff from it.  For example, the shoes that Kisala is using I crafted around the midpoint of the game.  They're just that good.  In addition to the combinations you can find through analysis there are other combinations that work as well, so you get to experiment with it and see what you can find.  Just like with most RPGs, after a certain point in the game money basically becomes no object, so there's very little barrier to playing around with it.  At the same time, it also gives you very little reason to sell items.

After you beat the game, there becomes more to it as the post-game area called Ghost Ship is unlocked.  I believe there's also some form of a New Game + available, or at the very least you can start a new game and have all the costumes from a previous save, which means you could play through the entire game with Jaster dressed like Desert Claw.

Overall I'd have to say it's a very good game.  It's long and there's a lot to do, but at the same time it's fairly straightforward and a lot of the stuff it gives you to do is of the "optional, but helps" variety.  For instance, you could easily beat the game without touching weapon synthesis, but the only way to get the most powerful weapons is via weapon synthesis.  Basically, play it how you want to play it.  That's always a good thing.

Rogue Galaxy Session 11

I really need to do these sessions more often, I'm not going to beat the game if I don't play it.

Since I handled equipment upgrades and whatnot at the end of last session, I headed across the bridge that's way too fucking long and into the forest where Mother no doubt awaits our arrival.

In the forest, there was a trial for Kisala, which so happened to be fighting the beast-transformed form of her father.

Partway through the forest I started getting drops of Cyclonic Pumps.  Looking at the description I realized it's the item I need to trigger the fight with the quarry back in the Starship Factory on Zerard.  I was a bit low level for the area anyway, considering the rate at which I was going through healing items, so a detour was welcome, and since the other hunters in the hunter rankings are always getting more points, it's necessary to keep up with them.

While I was on Zerard I picked up the remaining three quarries available for purchase, completing the set.  I did the rounds to figure out what items they needed and fight any of them that I could.  I ended up having all the items necessary and fought all three, which got me to first place in the hunter rankings.

Back where I was supposed to be, I got to the place where we had to "overcome ourselves".  I thought it was going to be a doppleganger fight much like in other role-playing games with this concept (Secret of Mana and Guild Wars, to name two), but it's more of a "realizing mental weakness" kind of thing.  There's one for each character other than Kisala and we get these orbs called Drigellum that we can get forged together into some sort of weird sword.  It seems like they're using this to reveal back story on the characters.

After finally getting the item for another quarry I had and making a quick departure to claim it, I tossed some stuff in Jaster's Revelation Flow and got him to needing one more item to have it 100% complete.  Some of these items are ultra-fucking-rare, jeez...  At this point, I had one quarry left to complete and I had no clue what item I needed to trigger the fight.

The acquisition of the Drigellum goes fairly smoothly, you just kill your way down a winding path and walk into the colored light at the end.  Watch the cutscene, get the Drigellum.

I gave up on the last quarry and looked it up, it turned out that I had the right item but needed to be controlling Jupis to trigger the fight as well.  Also, once I got in the fight, I was able to swap him back out and have my usual party for the fight.  Since that was the last quarry, I headed on over to Galaxy Corporation on Zerard because I'd remembered that the stupid idol girl has this "completion check" thing.  Apparently you get costumes for completing various parts of the game, and I got two of them, one for getting hunter rank 1 and the other for completing the quarries.  I'm not exactly close to complete on anything else, to be honest, and I've ignored Insectron entirely so I have a big fat zero for completion there.

After getting all of the Drigellums, I forged "the ultimate sword".  Which had less attack power than the sword I got for getting to hunter rank 1.  Okay, whatever.  Figuring I needed to actually use this sword, I went ahead and equipped it.

I pressed on through Mother's Lair, most of the time taking what I thought was the wrong route to look for chests when in fact I'd taken the correct route.  The enemies here range from hard to annoying.  The game has never let up on the stupid jump-to-hit enemies, and it's even worse when it spawns five of them in a challenge battle and says "defeat all enemies in 30 seconds!" because that's flat out impossible to do.  Abilities don't work on enemies that you have to jump to hit, so your major damage source is unusable.

Anyway, I found my way down through the winding cavern to the core where I'd fight Mother, then I promptly teleported out using the save point so I could stock up on healing items before the big fight.

Once I started the big fight, it took a bit to figure out what I needed to do.  It turns out that Jaster's Illusion Sword is key to the first form of Mother and works decently well on the second form.  On the second form, the rest of the party can do more than just attack when the head is in range, for instance, I can spam Starshine Lv3 with Kisala and end the second form rather quickly.

The third phase is an entirely new boss, because Valkog and his crew (including cone-tit lady) get dragged in by the Rune and consumed by it, battleship and all.  Jaster uses the Star King's powers to send everyone to different weapons on board the ship to take them out, and then you take control of each party member in turn to take out that part of the ship.

The very last part of this third phase comes back to Jaster, who has a huge fucking sword made from the hopes and prayers of everyone on Mariglenn (not even joking) that can hit from a mile away.  You can't change weapons or use his abilities, so you basically just have to dodge incoming attacks and spam the ultra-slow not-very-damaging attack as much as you can, and then find a safe point to heal up.  I've died many times in this part of the fight, and it's really annoying that there's no opportunity to save between the second form of Mother and the third phase.

So, since I've had to fight the third phase so many times, I might as well mention how it works in a bit more detail.  I've omitted the obligatory "heal as necessary" from each strategy.  Each part has a different strategy depending on who you have and what you're fighting:

• Deego - Fighting Valkog's hand - Use Top Dog, hit the ring to make the hand open up, jump and do your 3 hit combo on the hand, then dodge to the side and repeat.
• Simon - Fighting a Bomb Walker - Avoid getting hit by missiles as much as possible, run around, and spam Missile Squall.
• Steve - Fighting a Bomb Walker - Avoid getting hit by missiles as much as possible, run around, and spam Icy Eye Beam.
• Lillika - Fighting a Bomb Walker and a Core - Ignore the Bomb Walker as much as you can.  Use Blast Arrow, target the Core, and keep hitting it with charged arrows.
• Jupis - Fighting Valkog's other hand - Use Aromatic Boost, hit the ring, then do the same jump-three hits-dodge thing as with Deego.  Aromatic Boost runs out quickly and might not be worth it in the long run.
• Zegram - Fighting Izel - Stay back as most of its attacks hit in a fairly close area around it.  Hit the core with a ranged attack (attack from your left side for a better chance of hitting).  Once it says it's confused (it'll start punching the ground in front of it), use Drunken Burst and target the head.  Spam your ranged attack on the head until either it has to reload or your action bar runs out.  Repeat.
• Kisala - Fighting Norma - Run all the way forward, take the occasional hit, clear the occasional Shocked status from yourself.  Spam Starshine.
• Jaster - Fighting Valkog - Position yourself on the left side of the platform and take careful swings since you swing so slowly.  When in doubt, heal, as it can dish out almost 999 damage rather quickly.  Try to stay mobile and get hits in whenever you can.  Be moving when his eyes glow to avoid the glowing orbs of death that killed me four times in a row, but be ready to block should they appear right around you.

Fuck it, I'm tired of dying on Jaster's part, which I can get to quickly and reliably.  I think I'll apply my patented "put it down for a while and then pick it back up" method.  The session 12 post will be understandably short since it really just involves beating the boss and summarizing how the story wraps up after that.  To pad it out a bit I'll include some thoughts about the game now that I've played through it.  In addition, the session 12 post won't be posted until I successfully defeat the boss, regardless of how many distinct attempts I make between now and then.

I do plan on playing the postgame content, Ghost Ship and Ghost Ship Extreme, but they probably won't get session posts and I'm going to have guides all up in this shit for them.  I'll probably also do Insector at some point and try to grind out 100% completion and all the best weapons.  I dunno, we'll see.

Rogue Galaxy session 10

Ever since becoming employed I've had difficulty setting aside time for Rogue Galaxy with my old method, where I'd just randomly start playing.  It wasn't until I really sat down and scheduled things out that I found time to do it, and I have all day today, so let's go.

On Juraika, I worked my way through the ruins of the Leo King's castle to find the last key piece.  The guy we'd fought at each of the other key pieces was there again, this time referred to as "the masked man" even though previous cutscenes have called him "Seed".  After a terribly simple but annoying battle where I kept having to heal every two seconds, I defeated the Mad Witch and got the key piece from the Leo King... who so happened to be an infant.  Ooooookay.

Anyway, with my newfound psychic ability to determine where unopened chests reside, I worked my way back through the jungle getting what I'd missed.

Once that was done, I teleported back to the Dorgenark and saved.  Which ended up being a good thing.  Foreshadowing through cutscenes basically told me that Zegram was going to betray us, and he did.  Jaster pursues and fights him on the ship's deck, but after a short battle Zegram hops on a smaller ship and gets away.

Next, there was a cutscene with Zegram about to hand over the key pieces to Daytron.  He has a condition though, Daytron is currently "revivifying" his girlfriend, Jane.  This and that get discussed, he basically says that the experiments in Zerard prison are for turning humans into monsters, and then Seed shows up.

Next fight is Zegram vs. Seed.  Seed is annoying enough when I have a full party, but one on one?  I got a game over.  Keep in mind there was no save point between the two battles, so now I had to fight Zegram with Jaster all over again.

So I did precisely that.  Beat Zegram faster this time around, then beat Seed.  Seed wounded Zegram in a cutscene (and we all know that in RPGs the only wounds that matter are ones that happen in cutscenes), and the Dorgengoa arrived.  Zegram switched sides again and it was up to him, Jaster, and Kisala to fight Seed.  Partway through the fight the tablet started reacting to the key pieces.  At this point, Seed stopped taking damage and the only thing I could do was place the key pieces.  What followed would be a lengthy cutscene explaining Seed's past and showing him utterly failing at solving the puzzle put forth by the tablet.

After having been told all his life that he was better than everyone else, Seed was unable to cope with both his failure and his creator's disgust for his failure.  Apparently some cells from those experiments in Zerard prison were implanted in him, and he turned into a beast.  Partway through the battle with Beast Seed, Jaster gets pwnt in the face and becomes surrounded with this red glow.  The battle continues with just Jaster available... and Beast Seed pwnt him.  Sigh, reload (STILL no opportunity to save, so I had to do the whole sequence of fights all over again).

This time I beat Beast Seed with just Jaster.  It was a rhythm of "hit him a bunch, get knocked down, use heal potion, repeat" for quite a while.  There were a few times he ran to the other side of the area, so I used my sub-weapon then while I waited for him to come back.  After the fight, Daytron GTFOed the area thanks to cone-tit-lady.

Jaster, in red-glow-state, is somehow able to solve the puzzle.  The rest of the crew somehow now knows of the existence of a fourth king, the Star King, from a long time ago, and infers that Jaster could be his descendant, and having inherited the Star King's powers was able to solve the puzzle.

Finally, after all that, I was able to save.  These words have never been used in a better situation: FUKKEN SAVED.

Progressing on into the ruins that the tablet revealed, shit happens with Kisala, and then we find a robot that seems to know her, but needs repairing so it can communicate with us.  The party decides to press on further and see if they can find anything to repair the robot with.  After a while, I killed a sand kraken boss and it dropped the piece of equipment the robot needed.  Headed back to the robot and...  long cutscene time.

Apparently Kisala is a princess.  Of the very planet that we're trying to get to, that we call Eden.  Its real name is fairly long but shortens to Mariglenn.  The robot we found was designed to protect Kisala.  At the end of the conversation it gave us a key that we need to open the doors to Eden.

We're just about to use the key when apparently Daytron decided to attack the main city on Rosa.  We went to see what was going on, ended up getting saved by Raul, the priest at the church where Jaster grew up, and then Daytron killed Raul.  Just before dying (you know, one of those typical "I'm dying but have all the time I need to tell you this" moments) he gave Jaster the Star Pendant, which points out a location in the desert on Rosa.  So, now we're headed there to see what's up.

After working our way into the desert and finding several people who we helped and then they promptly faded from view right in front of us, the sandstorm intensified.  Kisala then noticed something off in the distance, so we headed towards it and all of a sudden we were in a village.  With grass, trees, and windmills.  In the middle of the desert.  Yes.  It's name is Johannasburg.

After walking around a bit getting chests and noticing I didn't have the item necessary for the quarry in the middle of the city, we found the village elder, who so happened to be the very first guy I helped in the desert.  Apparently all of that was a test or something and only people who pass the test can find the village.  I dunno, I see a choice in the middle of a cutscene and I immediately think, entirely gamer sense, "this choice matters later on" and choose the things that generally will make the best impression.  Well, it seems to have paid off here.

The old man spoke of a woman who had the same birthmark as Jaster does, but said she left the village a long time ago.  He suggested we ask some of the villagers, so we did exactly that, and found that she used to live in the house up on the hill.  Went up there, and she's there (in ghost form) and challenges Jaster to a battle to fully unlock his Star King powers.  You know, where he glowed red about five miles up the page.

You know, one thing I really hate about this game is the game overs.  Any time you die, you have to see that screen that says "GAME OVER" and then you can't just immediately reload from your last save, you have to go all the way back through the logos and the main menu before you can finally get back into the game.  It doesn't add anything worthwhile to the game at all, forcing this large amount of downtime after a death.

Yeah, I died partway through the fight and had to do the whole thing over again.  Bosses don't take enough damage, and sometimes I'll hit the button for the sword and Jaster will just charge right past my target before swinging.  It makes no sense.

I did eventually win the fight.  The next bit of cutscene would see both of Jaster's parents identified.  His mother was Johanna, the woman I just fought, and the person that the village is named after.  His father, Desert Claw.  To be honest, I called Desert Claw being his father long before I reached the village, and as soon as I found out that the person with the birth mark that looked the same as Jaster's was female, I figured she was his mother.

On my way back to the tablet I picked up the quarry in the middle of the desert, which wasn't that hard.  With it in the bag I jumped up to 5th overall in the hunter rankings.  There's still a few of them that I either haven't found the place where you trigger the fight or haven't figured out which item triggers the fight yet, but you're pretty much dependent on them for point boosts when you're trying to make it through the top 10 ranks.

It was at this point that I remembered I'd gotten the Sun Key in Johannasburg, and I went around to all of the locations where I'd previously encountered Sun Key chests and grabbed my loot.

After that, I went through and cleaned out a bunch more quarries, getting myself up to Hunter rank 2 in the process.  It's worth noting for anyone who's trying to hunt these things down that they tend to be slightly mislabelled.  The one on Juraika in Path to Burkaqua stands out, go to the Creekside transporter and explore from there to find it.

With all available quarries either complete or requiring an item I don't have to trigger the fight, I decided to continue the story.  Remember when I said "long cutscene time" up there?  This next one clocked in at around half an hour.  Used the key, opened the gate to Eden.  Kisala had asked me to keep the fact that she was the princess of Mariglenn a secret, this secret predictably eroded quickly once we set foot on the planet.  Apparently, the source of all beasts in the galaxy, Rune, comes from a being called "Mother" on this planet, and only the Star King can stop Mother.  So, I ran around the area looting chests and buying stuff at merchants and generally upgrading everyone.  Next session, I tackle this area, and ultimately, Mother.

Rogue Galaxy session 9

It's been a while...  I've had less time for games and entertainment due to being employed.  It's my day off, so let's get to it.

I remember last session I was ascending the Gladius Towers, and noticed that I'd basically have to go into both of them to get all the goodies.  So I teleported back and went up the other tower.  It ended up being exactly as I suspected: there are two routes up the towers, and they are mutually exclusive.

Pretty much this entire part of this session was spent running around the towers opening chests, fighting enemies, and adding items to peoples' Revelation Flows.  In other words, nothing remarkable happened.

After I caught up going through the floors I'd missed, I pressed on up the towers, making sure to get each floor of both towers explored before continuing.  At the top, on the eighth floor, I finally reached the two throne rooms, one for each prince.  They had been quarreling because their father had failed to name one of them as the heir, and had caused a huge war in the process.  Both of them were initially stupid, believing that the other one had sent me to talk to them, so I defeated them both.  Only after giving both of them a good ass-whooping did they come to their senses.  After a speech, they gave me the Key Piece I was after.

Oh and as a bonus, both princes were already dead, and both refused to accept it when we told them that they were in fact spirits.

One annoying thing is that the game seems to stop triggering challenge battles at a certain point in each area.  Which means that once you reach that point, your only source of Hunter Coins is by finding and defeating mimics.  Which are annoying as hell to fight because they deplete your action bar at the beginning of the fight and have insanely high offense and defense.  Anyway.

After scouring for chests, finding an outfit for Simon, and killing two of the beasts I had quarries for, I left for Juraika and the last Key Piece.

On Juraika, I pressed northwards into the one area of the jungle I hadn't yet been in.  In a clearing I found a couple chests, a save point, and the trigger point for another beast I had a quarry for.  Killed it, and hopped two hunter ranks from 10 to 8.  With that came enough Hunter Coins to get me to 60, so I GTFOed to Zerard where I finally got my Platinum License.

After getting my Platinum License, I went and bought a whole bunch of stuff that required it.  Including yet another outfit for Simon, and a book called "The Annals of Hades" that ended up showing up on the inventory's SP tab under Rare Items.

Back on Juraika, I explored a bit more, killed a bunch of things, looted chests, and went up to hunter rank 7 in the process.  Nice way to end a session, I think.

Rogue Galaxy session 8

I realized between sessions that I've kind of gravitated back towards my normal style of playing RPGs, which is of course to farm stuff at every available opportunity and grind levels/skills.  It makes the gameplay a lot more repetitive and boring, and is only going to artificially lengthen this playthrough and make it take longer for me to get to Project 'Bout Fuckin' Time.  I only really needed to do it for Deego anyway since he's rather underpowered when you get him in comparison to Gale.  So from now on I'll try and keep the farming to a minimum.  The farming would be more suited to a playthrough that's supported by a guide, and this is not one such playthrough.  I'm going in totally blind and trying to have a completely organic gameplay experience, similar to how one would have played the game right when it came out.

That said, I still need Hunter Coins so I can get that Platinum license, which I really really (really) want ASAP.  Ah, conflicts of interest.

So, final list of stuff I will do (and anything not on it I won't do, except for anything unforseen):

• Follow the storyline
• Unlock abilities as I get the necessary items
• Go up hunter ranks if I have the points to do so
• Weapon synthesis as I am able to do so
• Backtracking for missed chests once I can see them on the map

Now, on to session 8.

Since I had the Key Piece from Vedan, I set out to get the ones from Juraika and Zerard.  But as I did so, a new planet became available, named Alistia, that's apparently 90% water and travel is blocked to it most of the time.  So instead I headed there.  It seemed like a pretty big "um, hey, you might want to go there" flag to me.

After exploring a bit I overheard a conversation involving a local racial war and how they really needed to put aside their differences and fight against Daytron, who apparently polluted the ocean.  You know, the ocean that makes up 90% of the planet.  Reason for being on this planet discovered: beat the living shit out of Daytron.  The way this is going, Daytron is really shaping up to be the main enemy of the game.

Working my way towards Daytron's underwater lab I got the notice that I'd hit all the transporters on the planet and could now see chests.  Scrolling back through the area I'm in revealed two things to me:

• three chests I somehow missed entirely, in addition to the Sun Key chest I made note of
• the entire planet is one big explorable area

I guess this fairly well cements this area in place as a side quest, if it wasn't obvious from how it was just suddenly brought up.  The reward?  A new sword and costume for Jaster.  Plus all the other weapons I found in chests along the way for the rest of the crew.

I moved on to Zerard, despite really wanting to stay and get a few more challenge battles.  That pesky Platinum license was only nine Hunter Coins away, after all.  But regardless, I figured I'd probably get some challenge battles while ascending the two towers I need to ascend to get the Key Piece there.  Pretty early on I got a cutscene showing that Zegram's still being a douchebag.  Basically, the cone-tits woman that works for Daytron knows where we're going and what we're doing.

Well, they're not actually conical.  It's just that her dress has concentric circles over each breast...

Anyway.

I got up to the fourth floor of the towers before getting really tired and deciding to get some sleep.

Rogue Galaxy session 7

It's been a while...  Let's get to it.

Loaded up and remembered that the path to the ruins had enemies I needed for the hunter rankings as well as items for Revelation Flow, so I decided to get whatever sorted out that needed it.  After quite a while of farming, I had a lot more abilities, including some combination attacks that require a certain party to use.

Partway through the farming the game gave me a challenge: "Defeat all enemies in 30 seconds with Zegram alone!".  My party at the time was Jaster, Kisala, and Deego.  It was this moment where I discovered that you can swap your party around during battle.  I swapped Zegram in, switched to him, and told the rest of the team to stay back, but the enemies were so spread out that I couldn't find the last one until after the timer had run out.  Oh well.

Once I'd decided I'd farmed enough, which involved maxing a couple of axes for Deego and doing some weapon synthesis, I decided to continue on into the ruins.  It turned out I should have gone in there at the end of last session, because there's a guy who sells Ancient Scroll IIs there, which unlock people's Burning Strike Lv2, and there were some Star Earrings in a chest, which let me unlock a significant portion of Kisala's Revelation Flow because there's a whole subsection of it that starts with those.

So anyway, I worked my way further into the ruins, found a bunch of items, and unlocked more abilities, when I finally approached the place where Daytron was taking the tablet.  Through cutscenes I'd found out that we hadn't really beaten them there, but we did get there before they started with the tablet.  It apparently has three Key Pieces that it gives clues as to their whereabouts, and whoever gets all three gets the knowledge of the tablet.  We eavesdropped on the scene and figured that much out before we were noticed by this weird artifically-created guy named Seed who attacked us.  Right when I got his health down by about 25% there was a "omg we can't do this he's too strong" cutscene, and of all people to come to the rescue, Desert Claw showed up and saved our asses.  By allowing us to escape, that is.

Back on the Dorgenark, everyone gathered around and figured out where the three Key Pieces must be.  One happens to be on Vedan, which was great for me because I wanted to see if Angela had rebuilt her bar or not.  It turned out she had, and I got the Star Key that I'd missed earlier.  This is where making notes of all the keyed chests' locations came in handy, I could easily go back to all the places I listed and open the chests.

I figured since one of the Key Pieces I needed was on Vedan, I might as well go get it.  Along the way I got a bunch of good stuff including new boots for Kisala, and the very last transporter in the area was apparently the last one on the entire planet, and I unlocked the full map of the planet, which includes treasure chest locations.  Now that I know this feature exists, my notes about keyed chests are a little less important...

After getting that save point and getting the three chests it revealed that I'd missed, I skipped the planet.  Hopped on over to Zerard and hunted down the Star Key chests there (without advancing into the new area with one of the Key Pieces), and then hopped over to Rosa and grabbed the Star Key chests and the save point by the Great Tablet.  Jumped to Juraika and saved.

Then I had dinner.

Once I was back, I loaded up the game again to grab the chests on Juraika.  Then I realized I hadn't done a clean sweep of Vedan for chests, so I went back and got to experience the fun of jumping off of the top of a train not once, not twice, but three times, twice while it was moving, to get to a platform with a chest on it.  One of the chests had a new outfit for Kisala.  The outfits really don't change a heck of a lot stat-wise, they're mostly about looks from what I can tell.

Anyway, then I looked at my hunting record and noticed I still needed a few of the new enemies from Vedan, so I went into my usual dual-purpose farming run outside of Angela's Bar: getting kills for the hunter rankings, and maxing out crappy weapons so I can use them in weapon synthesis.

Partway through this I got tired of playing, saved, and shut the game off.

Edit: I'm getting pretty close to the Platinum license.  I think I have a bit over 20 Hunter Coins left.  I think getting that will be my next priority, since it means there's stuff at certain vendors I'll be able to buy, and there's a guy on Vedan I'll be able to talk to who says "you gotta have a Platinum license to see the secret menu!".

Rogue Galaxy session 6

With Gale defeated, the story can continue.  Since I didn't leave the mines after the previous session, that was the first thing to do.  Fortunately there's a save point/teleporter nearby, so I could just teleport back to Angela's Bar rather than having to run back and go up the elevator to use that teleporter.

Apparently Angela decided to leave the place, and the crew talked Deego into stopping her, which ended up being the right decision.

Gale gets "seen off" by the Morarty family.  Or so they thought.  Gale pulls a gun and kills Zax Morarty and his henchmen.  Afterwards, he sees his old henchman and tells him he's free, only to get stabbed by him, fall down the stairs, and die.

Back on the Dorgenark, we informed Dorgengoa about what happened with the tablet and then we go after Daytron.  Apparently they're taking it to Rosa.  Kisala experiences some weird thing that she ends up explaining to Lilika.  Then we got to Rosa, finally.

Only to be interrupted by the president of Daytron manipulating the old Longardian commander into buying 300 new warships.  After securing the deal he then left for Rosa.

We arrived on Rosa, came up with a plan thanks to Jaster being the only one on the Dorgenark that knows Rosa (having grown up there and all...), and...  end cutscene.  During that final bit of the cutscene, Dorgengoa gave me a coin that's supposed to symbolize my membership of his crew or something.  Whatever, it was a revelation item, and unlocked an ability for Jaster.  Anyway.

Having regained control I poked around the menus and noticed I was able to select my party at will.  First order of business: Skip the planet and go back to Zerard to see if I can get anything else out of Galaxy Corporation.

On Zerard, I got three more quarries, and noticed that I'm four hunter coins away from a better license, which will mean reduced vendor prices and ability to buy more license-restricted stuff, though I've only noticed things that require a platinum license and my next one is gold.  Oh well.

One of the quarries I got was a monster in the Rose Nebula, so of course I had to go check that out.  I ended up having the item I needed and beat it right then.  The other two quarries are in the starship factory on Zerard and somewhere in the desert on Rosa.

With not a heck of a lot of side stuff to do, I went back to Vedan where I could get some challenge battles.  40 Hunter Coins thrown at stupid idol girl, Gold License gained.  Now I get a 20% discount at shops.  Now I just need to do 60 more challenges for the Platinum License...

After looking at some item descriptions I realized I now had the item necessary to trigger the fight for the quarry in the mines on Vedan, so I did that...  and promptly used all of my Max Heals and Healing Potions, most of my Tri-Heals, and started in on my Elixirs.  I guess I wasn't ready for that battle, but regardless I beat it, and jumped up to 17th in the hunter rankings.

After a resupply trip to Zerard to stock up on Max Heals and so forth, I headed back to Rosa and went to the ruins where the tablet was taken.  There I saved and decided to call it a night.