Funny Bits in Star Ocean 2 (98)

This scene simply fails at being funny, because of how badly it's handled; on second thought, the whole process of character development in this game is terrible, especially that of Leon. Oh, and Claude, despite being so full of himself, Leon is still a kid, so it's hardly surprising that he'd be scared of monsters; if you had him participate in battles, you'd know right away (but you didn't, because he was 4 or 5 levels ahead of the others).

Things couldn't have been so simple, we're in a game, a long game, and what would be unexpected in real life has come to be expected in these situations. Here comes the 'boss' of the 'dungeon' (see how silly it reads if you think about it?), or rather two of them! They look like Egyptian deities, they're pretty dangerous, and will give you a beating if you're not careful: a pretty high evade rate and spells like 'Lightning' and 'Cure all' make them very powerful, but all these aren't good reasons for them to attack our adventurers. I guess they couldn't ask them later either (Celine: not even bones this time).

Funny Bits in Star Ocean 2 (97)

Wow, I sure wouldn't have noticed that huge heap of shiny green mineral if you hadn't told everyone, and you certainly looked for it very hard, Leon; I mean, it's not like you didn't guide the group to this place, did you?

Finally the search of the mineral required to build the Lacour Hope has come at an end; while Leon rejoices (dissimulating his embarrassment at not taking a map of the place beforehand to find the site faster) and starts searching for a suitable quantity of the material, Rena notices that her pendant seems to be glowing lightly, but nobody can really explain the reason for it.

Funny Bits in Star Ocean 2 (96)

I was actually a bit surprised to find an item description like this, but what I was even more surprised of was the fact that you can use this item on your characters, even in battle. What's the point? I mean, offering a deadly item for use isn't really smart. You might also want to know that there's some more items like this, but I cannot remember them right now.

The item screen once again. Why, you ask? Claude was really tempted to dip this delicious-looking root into Leon's food rations; Rena reproached him, saying that, while Leon isn't very friendly, his smart-aleck attitude makes him so much cuter. Then Claude finally realized that the blue hair theory he had in mind wasn't too much of a fantasy; he knew his school grades were high for a reason.

Funny Bits in Star Ocean 2 (95)

This is one of the most refined 'leftovers' we've found in our journey, and this makes it even more disappointing that the game didn't elaborate more on these lost civilisations; but it also makes me feel like the game designers had simply decided to throw in as many stereotypical 'ruins' (meaning mysterious ruins in sci-fi movies and science fiction) as possible, which is perfectly in line with the objective of the game, that is making it the most cliché imaginable.

That squeezing lift showed mercy on Claude and the others, letting them access an underground cave instead of offering them a painful death. In here we can find loads of dangerous, not to mention funny-looking, monsters, mainly fearsome palette-swaps of enemies they've met before (which means stronger and more vicious). But our heroes won't stop at these petty annoyances, they've got a mission to accomplish: search every nook and cranny of the mine, open every single treasure chest they find, and trigger every switch they happen to find on their way...

Funny Bits in Star Ocean 2 (94)

Ouch! So Claude fell into a trap and died... Not really. This is actually a lift to the underground mine, but looking at it always makes me feel like the party was squished in that thing. It doesn't make sense if you ask me, but a lot of things in this game don't.

Not much to say here, apart that Claude has made sure all the treasure chests were empty after their arrival; apparently Leon doesn't care much about that, he must be so deep in his studies that he doesn't think about much else (other than regularly bragging about his 'skill').

Funny Bits in Star Ocean 2 (93)

Claude: I can see that, and I'll ignore the fact that you failed your first two or three attempts at opening it, as well as the other fact that you needed my collaboration to open it
Leon: as if pushing a button at the same time I pushed the other one could be called collaboration; also, I was the one who figured it out, certainly not you.

Not even a massive steel gate secured by ancient mechanisms can stop our adventurers from proceeding towards their goal! Thanks to Leon's intuition (which, by the way, had no reasonable explanation), and Claude's cooperation (yeah, pushing the right buttons is a man's job), the gate magically opens, showing the way to a dark corridor and some rooms. Time to loot... I mean, time to gather our well-earned treasure!

Funny Bits in Star Ocean 2 (92)

I imagine that, in his previous attempts at opening this gate, Leon must have used some pretty rigorous and highly scientific methods to figure out its hidden mechanisms. On the other hand, it's weird that the locking system on the gate wouldn't work the same way all the time; it kind of reminds me of a certain PC operating system in the Nineties.

Once again at sea, this time Claude & friends are in for a slightly longer trip, towards the uninhabited island to the north of Lacour: a large, desolate island, covered by woods and surrounded by ice, with nothing on it of note except the mysterious Hoffmann Ruins, which stand out in the middle of the forest, towering over the silent land. Here sleep the remains of yet another lost civilization, one even more advanced than the one responsible for the cavern near lake Col, one even more imperscrutable in its inner workings and structure: more precisely, why would they have built such a high building when inside there isn't much apart from a lift that goes underground? Ah, mysteries...

Here Leon is struggling to open a sealed gate at the entrance of the ruins, which he claimed he could open with utmost ease; he's also started getting a little bit more friendly towards Claude, as he now calls him 'big brother' (it does sound a bit weird, at least to me, but then I know about the Japanese habit of addressing other people like this, in this case a kid to a youngster).