I finally beat Star Ocean tonight! I wasn't planning to actually do so but I made it to the 10th level (of 13) in the Cave of Trials and the difficultly jumps way up. It would have probably taken me an hour or two of leveling to get me through the level. So I said screw it and went for the final boss instead.

When I had last been in the final dungeon my characters were level 80 or so. This time they were up around level 125 so I just waltzed through the random encounters. The final boss himself (with the limiter on) was a complete pushover. Around level 80 he is beatable (though not easily) so you can imagine what kind of threat he presented to character who were 45 levels too high for him. My three fighter characters just swarmed him and hit him repeatedly. He was dead within two minutes and he never even managed to get off a single attack. It would have been nice to have a bit of challenge but if I had shut the limiter off, my characters would have been the ones who were killed without getting to perform any attacks. The limiter makes a HUGE difference.

The ending wasn't quite what I expected but it was still cool. I was kinda disappointed that I only managed to pair up four of my seven characters (mainly due to the other three not getting used much) but I got the two pairings I was trying to get so it wasn't too bad.

I think I'm going to go back and finish off the Cave of Trials next (and probably try to beat the final boss without his limiter). Then I'll probably put the game down for a while. I plan to come back to it over the summer though and try it again from Rena's perspective. I'm also going to pick up the characters I haven't had before (Opera (Ashton is pretty cool but I've yet to try Opera), Ernest, Bowman (though I much prefer Precis), Dias (who isn't available on Claude's perspective) and Chisato (who I should have had this time but I messed up something)). I really like all the characters I had this time through (I won't be able to have Leon, Precis, Ashton and one of Celine/Noel) and I would rather still have them next time but I want to see what all the other people are like.

Defunct Word of the Day: Ert
It's a transitive verb which means to encourage, to irritate or to be eager depending on the usage.