Duke Reivier's Grand Game Emporium

 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 it...

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Professional dilettante. Former assembly coding enthusiast, dabbled with writing reviews and analyses, currently training to be a statistician. Notable creations: Circle of the Moon Card Mode romhack Jets of Time, the Chrono Trigger open world randomizer To the Moon minisode 1 tester: "Dev J Chand" is me. Contact: dev221117@gmail.com Discord Bluesky

                          UNIVERSE Been a while, eh? Let's dispense with pleasantries and get on to it. Ashton was as I remembered him. A very fast fighter with some interesting special moves that nevertheless never superseded his regular attack directly. I tried going to the Lacuer continent with him directly, only to find that he was horribly outmatched there. Welp, back to Krosse continent! Actually, he headed directly for Arlia after that failed incursion. Why, you may ask? Because one of the ladies there has a Rainbow Diamond! Now, at this point, his pickpocketing skill was too pathetic to aim for it, despite him getting a fair amount of SP from talent fishing, but I would be sure to return for it later. For now, he purchased a pair of Venomous Stingers, and crafted them into the Maiden's Aria. With that, some judicious retreating from tough formations, and the Linear Motion battle formation bonuses, he eventuall...

 Ashton had reached Energy Nede, and the enemies continued to give him little trouble. On a whim, I checked out his two new moves. Hurricane Slash seemed fairly straightforward, hurling out a wide tornado after two slashes. For the most part it was a direct upgrade to Northern Cross, as it executed much faster and launched a faster projectile too. Deadly Triangle was interesting, it played out a rather long animation, but kept him invincible throughout, and often locked them in place before bombarding them with multiple hits. It was certainly good damage, just extremely unwieldy. Once again, these moves added utility instead of competing with his normal attack, which I greatly appreciated. The Psynard fight was trivial. The Arachnovias were easy, if not particularly elegant - slice them down with regular attacks, poison them a bit, win. Out of curiosity, I experimented a little with Deadly Triangle and it did freeze them. I didn't expect it to work on bosses, this was a pretty inte...

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Ashton is our next character, and he is rather interesting. He's a warrior like Claude, but unlike Claude he uses two swords, and generally favors offense over defense. He is mainly known for his distinctive sword techniques, especially his "ultimate" technique which looks and acts a lot like a big spell(without the downsides of one, thankfully). Ashton isn't found easily, you first need to overhear a conversation in Harley about a dragon in the Salva Mines, then return back there. Once you do, you can enter a portion of the mines that was formerly off limits, and find him there. The entire process is time sensitive, so you need to pay attention to the map and event triggers. This portion of the map has considerably stronger monsters, featuring lesser versions of the monsters inhabiting the Ell continent and the Sacred Grounds of Linga. Most dangerous of these are the jellies, being quite strong with their shots and having a chance to detonate when struck. They often ...