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Dias Solo Run Part 1

 Here's the last swordfighter of Star Ocean 2's cast. Thematically, Dias is essentially a foil to Claude, relying on his own strength and staying aloof. Well, that's sort of the idea of these challenge runs, so that's promising! While I don't know how he plays mechanically, I expect him to have some swordfighting based moves. I also know that he wasn't able to use the Meteor Ring or Ring of Lightspeed in the original, hopefully that's not the case here!


Dias can only be recruited in Rena's scenario. He can be controlled during the Forest of Symbols arc, but he only stays in the party for a brief period of time, is a guest there, and is clearly overtuned for the area. The only thing that can actually kill him here are the witches, and even then only very slowly. That said, this was a good opportunity to look at his attacks and special moves. His regular attack was easily the slowest out of all the characters so far, though it at least chained well with itself.

His Air Slash, however, was easily far stronger - it travelled fast, had long range, and hit multiple times for pretty good damage. Chaos Sword was a weird move that hit for very middling damage. Supposedly it could add the damage Dias had sustained onto his attacks, but it was very finicky to use - it only applied its bonus for one attack, and well, intentionally taking damage isn't a good thing. Crescent Cross was flashy, but worthless compared to Air Slash or even regular attacks. Pale Moonlight was his other usable special move - it was a quick, simple upward slash that dealt good damage to enemy shields.

From this alone, I could tell that Dias would rely on his special moves more than his regular attacks, same as Claude. I would keep that in mind when I could control him for real. Oh, but when does that happen?


ALLllllllllll the way into Lacuer's Front Line Base. So he misses basically every part of Expel besides the Ell continent. And he starts at a fairly low level for this challenge. On the upside, he can benefit from the spoils the party brought before him, although I hope not to rely on "illegal" items, as in, ones created by Super Specialities, too much.

GALAXY

So here's Dias. He can equip fighter armor and shields, which is good. I decided to test him against the enemies surrounding the base to get a better grip on him. To my delight, Meteor Rings did work on his attacks. But Air Slashes did more damage and were safer.


One interesting thing about Dias' equipment was that he could equip Claude's swords! This was certainly handy, as he would start with one of Claude's ultimate weapons. I would still try and get his weapons customized, of course.

As for his first "real" fight, he wouldn't get into one until the continent of Ell. I was initially a bit worried about the Gargoyles fight mid journey, but his Air Slashes handled them brilliantly. It helped that they were weak to light element, the exact same element as Claude's Silvance.

The continent of Ell was a complete breeze. Air Slash continued to dominate against everything. I think I was giving the Ellian monsters too much credit, they're too lackadaisical to really be a challenge. Cynne fell like everyone else, only having a bloated HP bar and a mildly threatening vampiric attack over them.


He unlocked two new special moves in the process. Gale Thrust was a worthlessly slow close range attack, and Moonlight Arc was basically Air Slash with less damage and hits, but more shield damage. Well, alright then.


His ultimate weapon(as could be crafted via Customization) was capable but boring. It was a mildly strong sword that doubled its damage on any hits scored, whether via regular attack or special moves. Problem is, that didn't apply to any other damage modifiers, like the Strength Bottles or battle formation bonuses. So he would get middling boosts from any sort of buff, though the Ring of Might would offset this decently enough.

I've already talked about how the game's threats can be largely mitigated with good ranged attacks, and Dias' Air Slash clearly counted as one. So you can imagine that he faced little in the way of challenge, especially once he could combine a Ring of Might with a Berserker Ring! During the journey, he unlocked a few more special moves, but suffice to say that none of them were as good as Air Slash. It's more than a little bizarre to control a character who peaks so early.

Unfortunately, it also meant his journey had little to speak off for most of its duration, there was too little challenge involved in his fights. He just slung his deadly, long ranged shockwaves too fast!

The Lavarre fight was the first to present any sort of challenge, and mostly because of the Sunbreakers hitting his light weakness bestowed by the Ring of Might. Once they were down, the fight was as trivial as ever.


Zaphkiel, Jophiel and Metatron were, if anything, even more pathetic this time around. Only Jophiel could touch him with Energy Rain, and even that was extremely easy to dodge! 

The beam trio were a bit tough because of their teleportation moving them out of Air Slash's range at random, however he comfortably outranged them and so could take them on with little difficulty. It was the same story with Michael and Haniel. After them he found this, which more or less completed his domination:


Yes, that is indeed a shield with resistances to all elements. As a bonus, it also blocked instant death too, making Lucifer a complete cakewalk. Now, I had missed getting this, or wearing the Mithril Mesh as Claude - complete mistakes on my part, I must admit. :scream: There's a reason I consider going back and redoing his run, I feel like I've improved a lot since.

Coming back to his run, Lucifer was a complete travesty. Only his multiple lightning strikes were of any threat, and they could be dodged easily after applying an Ointment of Veda.

Gabriel is honestly easier than Lucifer, barring lightning nullification or absorption. While Lucifer has all sorts of fancy tricks and maneuvers, Gabriel is just an overglorified spellcaster with some limited(yet sometimes very cheesy!) moves besides. As such, it took little effort for Dias to put him down.


Dias was a ridiculously powerful character. He was rarely, if ever, in danger, and his one starting move aged remarkably well throughout the game. He could simply snipe his enemies with little trouble, and once he got enough speed, he was practically untouchable. You would think he would have lower defenses to compensate, but on the contrary he gets access to all of the fighter armor! That said, he did seem a bit too easy to play. I really hope Universe difficulty will challenge him a bit more. But we'll find out all about that next time! See you until then.



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