Overworld
For some reason they decided to add an overworld for the last episode. There is not much of note here, other than that the collision boxes with the trees can be weird.
Level 1 - The Valley
An extremely simple level to start off. There are only 2 enemies and a switch to pull.
Level 2 - The Village
Thankfully for speedrunners, they forgot to take your keys away if you die in most of the levels, so this will be one of many deathwarps.
Level 3 - The Dam
The first thing to do is fetch a jump upgrade, and then immediately do another death warp. Damage can be intentionally taken along the way to speed up this process. The exit is only reachable by transforming into the bird. Like the previous episodes, optimal flying requires frame-perfect mashing. The bird dies if it touches any water (even waterfalls Jill can normally travel through), which is why this path was taken.
Level 5 - The Aerie
Some overworld notes here: level 7 has no key and can be completely skipped, and it's a little faster to do level 5 before level 4. It's very slightly faster to collect the keys in a clockwise direction rather than counter-clockwise, and then of course do another death warp. In the second part of the level, one of the elevators gives you a quick vertical boost to get to the exit.
Level 4 - The Secret Forest
After getting the key, why not do yet another death warp? This skips the entire fish section. The rest of the level is tricky to optimize but not dangerous to get through.
Level 6 - The Aqueduct
The gate switch has to be flipped twice to clear the way to the first key - it's unclear why the leftmost switch is there, as it does the exact same thing. Both keys are required in the second part because one is automatically expended on the way up in the elevator.
Level 8 - The Mega Puzzle
There are some disappearing block cycle bottlenecks that are extremely annoying, as you'll be able to see. The way to the exit is a bit weird - there's a trigger around the "MEGA" sign that makes the bridge disappear, and you need a jump upgrade to be able to reach it.
Level 9 - The Jail
The rotating blue entities on the chains do really weird things with Jill's collision. They are technically solid, but they're moving and the game engine really doesn't handle solid moving objects well. The result is that you can clip through the left wall of them at the beginning and then jump mid-air. Jumping up to the apple after this looks really pointless, but it actually sets off a trigger that opens a gate to the next room. In the short bird section before the fish transformation, there's a one tile wide gap that the bird can fit through, but it requires pixel-perfect precision and some setup time, so it's not worth doing. In the 3 key area, it's about 0.7s faster to collect the bottom key first and then climb up for the other two, rather than saving it for last. Health gets a little scary at times, but no actual damage management is required in this level.
Level 10 - The Pyramid Puzzle
The order that things have to be collected in the puzzle is fairly straightforward. There's a rare frog transformation here. Jill constantly bounces as a frog, and can do a higher jump with the jump button (leap and hop do the exact same thing). It's possible to skip the Jill trigger as both the bird and the frog, and they're both able to climb the building and reach the other side, but the game will not trigger the exit in this level while transformed.
Level 11 - Level Eleven
Cool name. The starting point is very close to a couple of locked doors, so some more deathwarps are done after collecting keys to save some time. Some intentional damage is taken on the way to the first key to expedite the dying process. We get a free blade, so damage management isn't a problem for the rest of the level.
Level 12 - Number Twelve
This is the level that many people will remember if they've played through Jill 3. It's notoriously difficult because of the massive amount of enemies and spikes lining every path. In addition to that, for some reason, the game softlocks if you get killed by certain spikes.
It starts you off on a bridge surrounded by triggers that turn the bridge off. There are some invisible blocks under the bridge, which is why it looks like Jill isn't optimally dropping down from it. The first objective is to pick up two keys and reach the larger part of the level. The central tree is actually made up of solid platforms on top, so you can use it as a shortcut to get the second key and leave the beginning section. It's dangerous to leave without any weapons, but we can manage. The next area is much larger and has five keys to collect, with only four of them being necessary. From some testing, it was determined that the key on top of the stack of branches and worms is the one to skip. After getting the first two it's a little faster to do a deathwarp, and thankfully these spikes don't cause a softlock. The last two keys are pretty close to each other and put you close to the exit as well.
Level 13 - The Castle Part 1
We're done with the overworld now, as level 13 and 14 are connected. It's possible to skip the second door by standing on top of one of the ladders and jumping over the wall to the left. This skip also puts you in a great position to grab the third key. Of course, you can still grab the second key because you're pretty close to it anyway. This allows you to skip one of the remaining sections of the level. Both the fourth and fifth keys were tested, and it's about half a second faster to skip the fourth one.
Level 14 - The Castle Part 2
The final level of the series moves along pretty normally until you transform into a bird. The trigger to turn you back into Jill appears to be directly in the middle of the doorway and looks unavoidable, but the triggers actually line the floor and ceiling underneath it. With some very precise flying, you can sneak directly through the middle and escape as the bird. This breaks the level wide open. The bird is able to fall through platforms, as demonstrated in level 10, and this includes bridges, so you skip the entire switch-flipping section. This also means that you can fall directly through the bridge above the prince, skipping the other key collecting section and triggering the ending.
feos: Judging...
feos: Great job as always, accepting to Moons.
TheCoreyBurton: Publishing III.