Speed Demos Archive - Star Ocean: The Second Story

In May of 1999, Star Ocean: The Second Story became the first tri-Ace game to be released outside Japan. The realtime battles, item creation, private actions, multiple endings, and postgame content combined to give the game unprecedented depth for a console RPG. A meteorite has crashed on Expel, causing endless disasters. A local girl named Rena meets an otherworldly boy named Claude and starts on a journey that develops special significance for her and the entire universe.

Timing note: The in-game timer is not used because it drops seconds when saving and loading. Thanks go to Damien 'Dragondarch' Moody for pointing this problem out and timing Arcand's Rena run.

Now with 59% less segments! After seeing how all the characters who were not named Claude contributed rather mediocre damage-over-time in the last run, it was time to take a solo approach. Thanks to everyone who filled me in with lots of helpful criticism, some good new ideas were spawned.

Segment 1- Second most tedious part of the run. Claude has such a high chance of learning Talents; it took a great many tries to get 5 out of 7 learnables unlearned. Got into an unnecessary battle here with some Bunnies, but since I didn't find out about how this could be avoided until near-halfway through the speedrun, the wound remains.
Segment 2- Alen-Tax, the one battle where Rena's damage is practically as good as Claude's. Cross Castle, Celine and the Treasure Map, fetched some Ancient Writings, Clik sequences, Mars opening, yadda yadda yadda... Could have saved some time going to Old Mrs.Roof's before spending the night at Elder's (sigh) Oh well.
Segment 3- Bandits and Varmillion. If I had made another segment just before the Boss, Celine would have been quite useful as an Anger-inducement. But I was determined to keep the Segment count lower this time around :P
Segment 4- Tournament of Arms. The Ogre enemy was a pain since its attacks almost always beat out Claude's normal, and it can be quite fast on foot making it difficult to quickly get into Long range to fire off HeadSplitters (the best way to make HS connect).
Segment 5- Mole (a.k.a. Old Lady) PA, Sanctuary of Linga, Hoffmann Ruins.
Segments 6-10: Talent Unlocking!
Segment 11- Mithril mining!
Segment 12-13: 2x Atlas Ring, anyone?
Segment 14-15: Eternal Sphere
Segment 16- 2x Harfainx Boss
Segment 17- The most tedious part of the run. Over a hundred attempts to get through Invincible Shin without one Foehn being used. All failures, such a horrible streak of bad luck with parrying. Eventually gave up and went with what you see here. Almost made it, though!
Segment 18- Eluria dungeon-crawling. Thank you for my fast 'n' free Meteor Ring.
Segment 19- Die, Shin, die. And some tag with Berle.
Segment 20- Plot progression
Segment 21- Synard fight, and a bunch of sloppiness in the Cave of Red Crystal. Can't believe I saved over the file! This one needed a smoother repeat.
Segment 22- 2x Arcmene. Ripper Blast was constantly interrupted by their mid-range claw attacks, so standard methods proved more reliable.
Segment 23- Bunny Shoes =D
Segment 24- Lover + 2x Breakwing, Field of Power navigation. Found out those apes give out Rainbow Diamonds, meaning the Old Lady PA was essentially a poor decision compared to waiting for a second Atlas Ring here.
Segment 25- Guardian of Power
Segment 26- Magic Hand and Boxes
Segment 27- Guardian of Courage
Segment 28- Robots, Marsilio
Segment 29- Bark
Segment 30- Marsilio
Segment 31- Shigeo
Segment 32- Berle (getting Claude angered and Berle NOT opening with Meta-Guard took some patience)
Segment 33- Ruprecht, Nicolus, Jibril
Segment 34- Vesper and Decus
Segment 35- Cyril
Segment 36- Indalecio (couldn't stop Time of Truth this time around; too big of intervals between hits)

Many thanks to PWOPLW, Red Shifter, and all the users at SDA Forum for their support! And of course to Enhasa for inspiring me to start a SO2 speedrun and, depending on his reaction to this new version, go back to the drawing board again looking for more improvements.

Warmest Greetings to any visitors from the SO3 General Board on GameFAQs (drkhades probably the first to see xD)

I entered into this game expecting around 10 hours to speedrun. A lot more battles were also expected, which is why such heavy preparation was put into the first disc. Some of the preps really did help cut down the time, but others... well, guess I overestimated what the AI was capable of in damage support. That or I underestimated the power of Claude =P

To save time, I didn't go out of the way to obtain party members. The only ones allowed to join were the people who ask to tag along during the main plot. Therefore, my speedster party was composed of:

Claude Kenni- THE god of speedrunning SO2. Eternal Sphere > All (minus the rare instances where the enemy negates the star damage) Sorry, Indalecio... no Time of Truth for you!
Rena Lanford- Never used Heal or Cure Light once, to my surprise. She was good at triggering the Anger status for the guys when killed. All-Star Pickpocketeer of this speedrun.
Celine Jules- Good at Anger-inducing and Thunderbolting Indalecio in the face. Thought I'd use her for Alchemy in Disc 2, but that proved to be unnecessary.
Dias Flac- Master of Bandit-slaying, Shin-disrupting, Synard-shredding, and Enemy-placeholding while Claude and Bowman do all the actual work.
Bowman Jean- Poison-Poison-Poison-Poison-Poison Pills! Excellent damage support when Claude wasn't knocking targets out of the pills range.
Noel Cha- ...just kidding!

Overall, I was satisfied with the speed of the battles. Some of the out-of-battle parts could have been better, but that was not where my main concern lied. Event Skip would have been an awesome feature for this (and make the run much much shorter), but sadly that's only for Till the End of Time in this series. Right, well, that's all I've got to say. Have fun, m'kay?