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Ok, so I enjoyed this greatly, I would never have guessed that this game was beatable in such a short amount of time. Major kudos to Spoony_Bard for figuring out this route. He's also made a decent first pass on combat, you can see how it improves as he goes on.
However, quite a few major deficiencies have been discussed at the forum. As great as the route planning is here, planning item usage needs quite a bit more work. Items should be used sooner, in particular, route 17 would be much much faster without waiting. In general, Bang just moves sooo much faster with the powerups. Early on, money is passed up and fewer enemies than possible are killed, skipping out on valuable cash and force. This run looks like a well-planned first pass on a game complex enough to require several passes to get right. So although this represents some amazing work on a game that many would like to see, I'm torn as to whether it should be published or not due to the quality. What say everyone else?
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Very, very good. Excellent manipulation and glitch usage. Glad you found the jump cancelling useful, it doesn't get you as much in 2 as in 3, but it's still a neat trick. Wow, so much coolness, I think you know how my vote is going.
Now the trilogy is completed in a total time of 32:23. Not bad :)
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Lookin sharp. It seems that you have figured out you need to kill as many enemies as possible to get powerups. If you do this from the beginning it should help, but it might be a good idea to finish your current run. Is it the order you kill the enemies that determines drops? In that case you could turn around quickly and hit enemies behind you if they aren't going to drop anything, to get to the good stuff sooner from enemies in front of you. Also, it looks like you should have picked up dynapunch in your last shopping run, that would solve your force problem, at least temporarily. In general it seems like you should buy them every time you can when you shop and use them to build up force. Also, could you have gotten boots and started using items earlier? This would rock, as Bang is so much faster with powerups.
Well, there probably aren't too many people watching this run as this is kind of an obscure game, but I'm rooting for you.
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Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Much much better, I'll put in a yes. But I do think there's room for improvement. It seems like at least one of the donut uses in the last level could be avoided. Also, when you are shooting balloons in the secret area of stage 3, could you respawn them faster by turning around sooner or do you have to go right a certain distance? Would it be better to get one more there and go right to sideshow bob instead of having to hit the last balloon and run back and forth before him?
Also, if you are having trouble with FCEU I found disabling sound stops the crashes. And are you using frame advance? Overall, pretty nice work, I liked it. Among other things, the early jumps in the museum were a nice touch.
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I agree, opal bracelet will probably be the leader's armor, and since he will take 50% of the attacks (even more if you have someone dead), this will help a lot. I was wondering if prorings would be doable, it would require quite a bit of money. What if you did Gurgu Volcano before visiting Gaia? You would have to do it without some useful items, but you could get a pretty nice chunk of cash.
Say, how do you plan on getting past the lava? I think with one hp you can just keep walking and you don't encounter any enemies, so going over as much of it as possible would be faster. It seems the only in-dungeon healing you'll come across is going to be a heal helmet from floating castle, unless you buy heal potions. Both are s...l...o...w. Is no-damage combat reasonable? In Gurgu there are quite a few not-too-tough fights with high payouts if you can manage it. But it seems that it would just be so much easier to wait until you have Bane sword, Kary would be a bitch to kill without it. Wow, there sure are a lot of things to worry about, huh?
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Well, if you get BANE after you go back to Melmond with the SLAB then you'll barely get any use before you get bane sword. I guess you should be all right with the waterfall treasure, but I was thinking in the future you would get this on your way to or from earth cave. If you aren't going to hit level 12 then never mind. Also, I was wondering what treasure you're planning on getting? At least one of the Cardia islands has a 5-figure stash which might be worthwhile.
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FEAR is level 4 and can only be used by a white mage/wizard. I don't see it being useful considering other options. I will vouch for HOLD though, I've messed around and had an enemy stunned for quite a while. It's level 3 black magic and can be used by red and black mage/wiz and also ninjas.
If you want to talk about status effects, what about the wizard staff? You could confuse Chaos and make him kill himself! You'll have to visit that treasure room anyway, and you can use the item as much as you want then. I know confuse lasts multiple turns, and the enemy stays confused even if you hit him or he hits himself.
If you build up to level 12 you can cast the BANE spell. It's level 5 black, usable as black mage (or red mage at higher level). Likely targets would be Kraken and the blue dragon in Mirage Tower. This would take you to getting Bane sword and then it would be free. By the way, is it confirmed that BANE works on everyone? I've never tried it on Chaos, but some pretty trustworthy faqs seem to say that some enemies are immune, including Chaos and Kary.
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Reworked things so that I beat Stom on level 4 and get level 5 right before the boss, saving buildup time. One more d'oh I just realized is that if I'm shopping for warp boots in Portoa then I should get the medical herb there instead of in the sealed cave. Should be plenty of money after the ice zombies. Upon getting level 6 I'm now over a minute better than before.
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Hmm, interesting. For sure, you should definitely not just skip out on using jet pack and boots to speed things up. However money will be a problem, you'll probably end up doing a stock-up loop somewhere. By the way, is it necessary to talk to Michael there? I guess the fairy won't be there? If you get more cash than apples, which seems to be the case, you can buy the dynapunch or whatever it's called that ups your psych power. Would it be possible to spread out your shopping into 2 visits, for the second one you would have more time to earn money and you could also get 3 psych powerups each trip. Well good luck with this one, you're gonna need it!
Also, the prices at the store vary. Have you looked into this? By manipulating this you could reduce the amount of cash you need, particularly if you take 2 trips and get the cheaper items in each. Unless you can manipulate everything to be cheap which doesn't sound probable.
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http://home.comcast.net/~f_amoroso/Crystalis-TheAxeManv0.5.fcm
I'll show off tonight's work on Crystalis. Everything is the same until I start leveling in the sealed cave. I earn level 3 faster with an improved killing method. Level 4 was earned only slightly faster, though I use very different tactics. Level 5 in the swamp is done much faster by sticking to a loop. My new warp boot usage also proves advantageous. I still don't have an elegant solution for Stom, but as far as I can tell, the method here is the fastest. It appears that his first two victories are assured long before the fight takes place, so I take a dive twice. The third time I used frame advance to get fastest possible slashing (faster than just holding down turbo).
When this ends I have already earned about 40 seconds of improvement. This run should be completed under 45 minutes, and there's hope for even more. Unfortunately, I'll still need at least 4 minutes to kill the 150 ice zombies for the next two levels.
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Oh man, that would be a pretty sweet run, but unfortunately it isn't possible with any of the emulators currently in use. I wonder if this could be done anyways, I'll throw out some ideas here:
Pick a party to levelup with magic, manipulate all drops to get max gold (assuming it's possible). Leveling would be pretty quick if done right.
Go to Death Gulch, it has a ton of treasure chests. Open them all, manipulating luck to not call guards and to up the amounts of each chest. I believe there's a moongate leading here, but a ship is really needed to use the money anyway. With uber guys, run the dungeons, get everything and whup exodus. With lots of magic the dungeons will be simple--sink down, get needed treasure, rise back up. Some dungeons are also loaded with cash, this could be part of the money-raising effort.
Wait, there's already a thread for this game. Use the search before you post next time!!!
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Yes, you seem to have that running manuever down pretty well. FAST does prove pretty worthless, I didn't think about this either, but you don't really do much damage without crits. I guess more hits means a bigger chance to get them, but along with manipulation probably doesn't give you much besides 1 dam/hit. Also, having one of your fighters dead not only means you only have 2 chars doing all the work, but your pointy-hat's chance to get hit goes up from 1/8 to 1/7. So not only is he worthless, but also a liability in combat. Almost better off dead at this point. Anyway, later on you can give him wizard staff and bane sword and he'll become your most powerful warrior. Also, with better weapons equipped later on, FAST might actually be useful. Of course if you had zeus gauntlet from the Ordeal then you could slaughter just about every fight in one turn--cockatris, wizards, mummies, bring em on!
Well, unless you run from battle, your odds of doing each battle with a reasonable amount of damage keeps getting slimmer and slimmer. You almost need a scheme like acmlm's method for Dragon Warrior, though the factors are much more complex here. One thing that might help is removing all your armor. No really, this will increase your evade, it might be easy to just dodge every attack.
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I'll reiterate what everyone else has said, the short answer is no for this time. You have a good start, but you have much to do before this is publishable. Using what you have you should be able to figure out which goals will be easiest to get, and jump much less. I don't think you should waste any time picking up extra lives, it doesn't look that cool. I have to admit that calling Moe is pretty classic though. You already know most of what you have to do, so do it. With better planning and more precise movements, this could be very interesting.
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QBOB, you play through this game like an arrogant show-off. I love it! It's just as you said, you have sped things up and added much more variety. I found it very enjoyable, I think this deserves a place besides Phil's.
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I agree, could be quite interesting. I wonder what level it could be beaten on? Quite a bit of planning and work for a fairly obscure (but cool) title, but certainly worthwhile.
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isn't that like entering a code?
In this case I would say it's more like luck manipulation, but whatever. You could say it doesn't look like anything special, like ICARUS FIGHTS MEDUSA ANGELS, etc.
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I was also very impressed with the Astos fight. Mr. KRF, I believe the money will go towards buying the BOTTLE later on, though warp magic may also be useful. Also, bane sword is in the floating castle near the end. The Rune and Were swords in the temple of fiends are not only too far off the path to be worth getting, but aren't that great anyway. I would like to ask why you didn't get the coral sword, I guess you are going to get the great axe in titan's tunnel, but there are some fights until then. Well, it's not a really big improvement over short sword, but it does have a decent sell price.
I have to agree with Mr. KRF on selling items, you skip some nice sells while picking up tiny amounts of gold. The silver hammer in Elfland particularly stands out since it's worth about as much as the two chests right next to it (combined) that you do pick up. At the very least you must walk through Crescent Lake anyway so stopping into the shop to sell some things would be pretty quick. If you are saving up for the bottle, you can get tons of money in ice cave either in the one treasure room or by hunting the Eye, which would also level you up. Then you wouldn't need some of the gold you get either. Well, whatever, this isn't a real big deal.
Finally, I think you had a good idea in leaving one fighter dead, not only because the others will get more levels but also better equipment. Though you could even this out pretty easily.
Say, have you thought any more about whether to transform or not? If you do, you could do this right after getting the canoe. You have to go back to the ship anyway to get to ice cave, this would just be an extra trip. Otherwise, you'll probably park the ship right by the desert when you get the airship, which would be pretty convenient for a sea-based excursion later--faster than walking, I think, because the ship is faster and encounters fewer enemies. Looking more closely, you probably don't need to bother--your weapon and armor selection will be fine. You could really could use warp though, even if your level is only high enough for one shot.
Ok, one more thing I was curious about. Did you consider getting SLEP for your black mage right off? Though normally useless, this would become extremely powerful if it could be manipulated (as good as in dragon warrior??), at the very least stretching out your hps. The 100 gold could easily be made up and as it is you simply waste your level 1 magic shots and your pointy-hat's battle turns.
Well, overall this is pretty sweet, good luck!
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Ok, after doing some more console-based testing I'm ready to start another run. Changes to levelup plan I'm considering:
--Levelup to 9 will still be in the Kirisa cave, but it will be at the stairs between the first and second floors of the dungeon instead of right by the entrance. I'll also fight as I go through the cave.
--Levelup to 5 will be in one shot with the trip to Oak afterwards. Actually, I will leave some exp off and kill some warthog dudes on the way to Tornel. I'll be using warp boots to teleport to Brynmaer after the first visit to Oak. Anyway, I want find and stick to a nice, tight loop, as it makes leveling faster.
--Moving level 13 from Styx cave to the first area of Goa fortress. I think I've found a good spot to kill the knights and bats that swoop in with good frequency. It should be at least a little faster than the sorceror in Styx cave and a whole lot more impressive, as this is definitely not a spot you would normally want to level. The hard bounds I have to meet are level 12 for first Mado fight and 13 for Kelbesque, so I will try to hit these pretty close.
--All other levelups will be in the same spot as before, but I will experiment some in speeding these up.
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do you have to leave the name space blank in the beginning?
Read acmlm's submission for DW1 about how he picked his name. Pretty interesting, definitely worth checking here.
I forgot what metal slimes dropped, if you can get helms from them you'll be set. You could get the lottery ticket for the golden card as a free gift from an item shop. Will wings speed up anything? There's definitely chances to get it from treasure too, just not sure where.
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May the light shine on thee, Acmlm! This feat is simply godly, you really have this game down.
By the way, does anyone else agree that the ending is much better without rescuing the princess?
"Take me with you"
>>no [there's plenty of princesses waiting for me out there]
"But you must"
"Take me with you"
>>no [you'll weaken my bloodline for the sequel]
"But you must"
"Take me with you"
...
What an annoying bitch!
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Looks ok but probably not perfect. I'm sure I played through this game at some point. Also, it looks like you could have been a little more aggressive on the first subboss. Have you considered FCE Ultra, frame advance allows for much higher quality, particularly in an action game. There don't seem to be any critical sound queues anyway.
Why haven't you used any magic? I believe any of the transformations are more powerful than the normal dude unless he gets to charge up his shots. Don't know if the offensive damage magic is worthwhile though. I guess up to this point you don't need any tricks, but good use of magic could make this a pretty sweet run.
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No entertainment value? What are you people talking about? I personally noticed that a lot of effort was taken to put the knees in good spots, show off, etc. The complaint about jumping into the ceiling shows a big lack of understanding about this game. I found it amazing that he was able to hit multiple enemies with one knee at so many spots. Being knocked back on the final hit was priceless! He does use some variety, breaking out spin kicks, hair pulls, jump kicks and even normal kicks sometimes.
As far as comparing this to Phil's video, I don't think it should obsolete it. The difference between 1 and 2 players is a good excuse, as is one for pure speed and another with more variety.
I do have some questions and suggestions. There are spots where more variety can be achieved. You could spin kick the abobos that come out of the hut at the top of the vine--this might be faster too. Also, I think the helmethead in the trap room could be done faster. Maybe spin kick him left and then knee him onto the spikes?
Anyway, I'll give this a yes with the suggestion that it not completely obsolete the current version.
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As far as gold is concerned, Metal Babbles give 255 (the maximum possible for one enemy) so I'd be able to buy a Falcon Sword or two.
25K for a Falcon sword, so about 100 metal babbles!! Now if when fighting those metal babbles you can manipulate drops for Mysterious hats (15k each) or dragon potions (7.5K each), then you're in business. I think you can get other high-price item drops, but you'll probably be fighting metal babbles anyway. Also, to make falcon sword worthwhile you'd have to either be able to manipulate critical hits or get to a pretty high level. Maybe if you use defense a lot or manipulated stats on levelup. But still, I think you'd be better off with sword of destruction or thunder sword on your first guy. Maybe the second can get falcon sword, but you could just cast fireball.
you can sell the staff for 32000gp and then fight him again and get another one. you can keep doing this indefinately
Well, I don't mean to keep shooting people down, but this requires saving your game, turning the power off and reloading. Is this even possible in a timeattack? Without doing this you can only sell it once, and only for 19500 anyway. You may want to do this anyway, unless you have more turns than magic on the fights you'll do. Also, one thing to consider is how you'll raise the 2000 for jailor's key. I guess if you don't buy armor up to this point it's no problem. Do you plan on playing the lottery? Lottery tickets are in several chests and also dropped, you can get one golden card to reduce the price on everything and then wizard rings which sell for 1875 each. You may want to keep one, then manipulate it so it never vanishes.
