What happened to red ring Rico?

[DarkFalzIsComing]

This has been driving me nuts since I beat Dark Falz anyone know?:-?

[Sinue_v2]

She died.

If you want to know more, you'll have to play PSO Ep III.

[spoiler-box]
Falz can't actually be killed, so he never truly let go of Rico as a focus to gather his power. Same thing with Heithcliff Flowen. The story goes that the battle against Olga Flow and Dark Falz kept repeating over and over again, until at one point - the souls of Rico and Flowen were able to exert some influence over the weakened Falz and Olga Flow and forced them into combat. The resulting battle destroyed them both, but in the conflict, two new factors were synthesized. The GERM (which the C.A.R.D technology was based on) and the child who would become Endu. Endu could be seen, so in a way, as the child of Flowen and Rico.
[/spoiler-box]

[DarkFalzIsComing]

Well. That explains why Dark Falz drops her ring after he's "defeated".
But who's Olga Flow? Is that from ep. 2 or 3?
I never really played episode 2 and don't have 3

[gigawuts]

That would be Heathcliff Flowen. You ever find a Flowen's Sword? He's that dude. He was mortally wounded, submitted himself to experimentation and infected with d-cells by scientists in the seabed labs, and then died in the process. Then he absorbed a supercomputer and grew really tall. Or something like that.

[Cranberry]

I'd like to add that there is a bit of a plot hole related to Rico.

In "Blue Star Memories" there is talk about the "4 heroes", which are credited with defeating Falz and freeing Rico's soul. Then in Episode 3 it talks about these repeated battles with Falz and Olga.

There are direct contradictions within PSO itself over what happened to Rico.

This seems the most likely scenario:

When the game was originally made, the plan was that when you beat Falz, Rico's spirit is freed. The original plan might have even been for her to return home after you beat Falz. This is supported by the ending credits having a picture of Reco standing before Tyrell with him and his assistant having surprised expressions.

In Episode 2 they even refer to your character at one point as the "Savior of the red captive". This heavily implies that if nothing else you at least rescued her soul. You might explain that ending credit picture as either her spirit bidding her father farewell, or just a scenario they changed their mind on and forgot to remove from the ending credits.

Going into Blue Star memories, they are still going with this, but rather than just your character they credit 4 people, which of course assumes you were in a party of 4 when Falz was defeated.

With Episode 3, it seems they retcomned the part about Rico's soul being freed, and decided that your victory over Falz and Olga was essentially meaningless and they just kept coming back. This might be a way to try and explain how game-play wise you can fight Olga and Falz every time you go into a game in Episode 1&2.

Rico is one of those things you just have to take with a grain of salt because retconning kind of screwed up her story.

[Sinue_v2]

Well, originally, you only hand Normal ~ V. Hard mode, and all of those endings just leave it at her discarded ring falling to the ground. Her scene with the Principal wasn't added until v.2 came out and introduced Ultimate mode. Also, the one who regarded your character as "savior of the red captive child" was a possessed Flowen in the seabed message capsules. If it were anybody else, it might indicate that she was alive. But since Flow and Falz share the same essence, from their perspective, freeing her soul and freeing her body would have been inconsequential to it's meaning. It works both ways.

Anyhow, to muddy the water even further, PSP2i takes place in a sub-space recreation of Ragol based on Falz/Nagisa's memories. By "creating a miracle with the power of friendship" (*retch*), you end up saving both Rico and Flowen, and can get their partner cards so that they can come adventure with you in Gurhal.

Since it all happens in (magically) created space, it's not the "real" Red Ring Rico... I guess... but you could still count that as her living. In a sense.

[gigawuts]

This is supported by the ending credits having a picture of Reco standing before Tyrell with him and his assistant having surprised expressions.

To me it always looked like he was crying, and she was consoling him. Or maybe we're thinking of different pictures?