Recently, the PSO2 community released an unofficial English patch. It’s far from complete and very limited, but it at least gets important stuff like menus, character names and quest objectives translated. This has greatly increased my enjoyment of the game.
BTW, Summer updates. The centerpiece in the shop lobby has changed from generic cubes to a surfing Rappy. I don’t know if this is connected to the update or summer, but Gettemhart and his lackey showed up in the lobby as well. Turns out I wasn’t quite right about “Shina’s” name.
Matoi is in the quest lobby.
I never noticed her before until it was “too late.” You see, from time to time she’ll unlock a cutscene. It’s optional. And you automatically watch it if you get close to her. After the cutscene you reappear in front of her. And if she has another cutscene you haven’t watched, you’ll be forced to watch it. Repeat until all the unlocked cutscenes have been watched. This took a long while.
I finally unlocked the Tundra area and entered the Chapter 2 Story area. I’m only in Chapter 2. Yeah.
From what I gather, the Matter Board is a device that needs to be powered up before it allows you to re-enter a Story area and choose a different time branch. Interesting idea. Notice the scepter pictured above. We’ll get to that in a bit.
In between the two branches, I did some quests and searched for new threads. I finally found something passable for Natsume.
Ready to kick ass and look damn good doing it, it was time to enter the alternate path.
The story is that the Arks ship detected strange readings on Planet Naberius. And for some reason, a Tundra appeared in the middle of a Forest. In the initial branch we drilled for mineral samples. Going to the alternate path had Natsume finding this floating crystal. Inside…
This strangely bland looking scepter. Is it perhaps the cause of this natural aberration?
Turns out, Masked Figure was about to get his mitts on that thing. And now he wants a fight. I was happy to oblige with a one-on one duel…
When suddenly, backup. Jerks.
Seriously, who looks more like the hero here?
Surprisingly, it’s not a tease! We actually get to fight this time!
I sadly didn’t get the S-Rank. I didn’t deal enough damage. Apparently it’s a timed battle and the goal is to deal as much damage against the Masked Figure as possible. Meaning all the battling I did on the way was for nothing.
After successfully defeating the Masked Figure and retrieving the scepter, I returned to Shion to ogle her. Oh, and to pick up my next Matter Board.
After that it was just clearing a few more quests and finally entering the Free Tundra area to fight the boss there. Make that bosses.
This guy hits hard. It took a while, but I finally managed to get its pattern down. Then the OTHER one jumped in and screwed the timing all up. I’ll get them eventually. Next time. NEEEEEEXT TIIIIIIIME!!!