Post subject: Final Fantasy 2
Joined: 1/14/2005
Posts: 216
Now before anyone gets on me for making a new thread, the other one is FF4. Think about it. Also it's buried and it seems kinda dead. I know this game pretty well, and I'd do a (legit) speedrun if I had the time. Playing on ZSNES with save states but without massive luck manipulation I can get to Zeromus in 3:58. On a console several years ago, I beat the game in under 6 hours, which is amusingly 2 hours better than the guy with the very smug FAQ on Gamefaqs. For anyone who would like to attempt a tool-assisted speedrun on this, I have a basic idea, which I will put in the next post. Keep in mind though, that with an emulator run, it's probably not optimal, but it's a start.
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sure. why not... everyone else seems to be doing one or talking about the other... cant remembr if Mystic Quest is involved yet or not. but would you be playing the PAL or NTSC version? both have some major differences. i personally would want to see the PAL. though its tough and leveling up in some places would become necessary... i think... i only played the PS version (Hard Type). anyhow, post away.
Joined: 7/20/2004
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/*- wrote:
cant remembr if Mystic Quest is involved yet or not.
It is. Yours truly is working on a test run. The first two worlds are done. I won't be doing attempting a FF2 run anytime soon, but I am wondering what your plan is. Post it, please.
Post subject: maybe I should turn this into an FAQ =/
Joined: 1/14/2005
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Be forewarned, it's been a long time since I've played this game, so I might say something stupid or leave something important out. Feel free to hammer away with the questions! Also, for anyone wanting to speedrun this, reading the algorithms guide on Gamefaqs is a must. In fact, I haven't done so myself in a long while, so hopefully I don't say anything wrong. First and foremost, I believe that from a speed standpoint, leveling up is a waste of time. In many RPGs, it will help you win faster but I think the difference here is more than lost by the time it takes to do so. Leveling up is only needed near the end of the game. I'll say where I think levelling should happen. In general, it's a waste of time to buy any equipment. Armor tends to do stuff like improve your defense by 1 in this game. I'll mention any time I feel it would help to buy something. Curative items, like in any Square game and most RPGs in general, are ridiculous, so you'll want to spend your money on that. Mostly Life potions, as we'll get to later. Picking up chests for the most part is also wasteful, of course. It's cool to disequip people right before they leave, but I can't recall if it's ever actually beneficial. I'll assume it's not, although I did it when I was playing quickly. The Float trick and the equip a shield trick don't come into play here. Keep in mind that this is from a legitimate speedrun perspective. And off we go... I would first like to get this out of the way and say that while it's not worth the time to do just this, Kain should typically be placed in the back row if possible since it doesn't affect his Jump. If you have the need, however, place him in the front with 3 back people for even more aggregate damage reduction. I typically get the Black Sword or whatever in the caves; it's right in the way. When you get to Octomamm, let Rydia get off all the Chocobos she can before she dies. It's not worth reviving her. (If she somehow survives long enough, start using the Rod.) However, you'll want to have Tellah Life1 her during the vacuous part at the end. This is to make Antlion quicker with more Chocobos. During Antlion, Cecil should attack for speed. Edward is Operation Human Shield. I think I've actually had him die to the upcoming Water Hag. Against Milon and friends, focus on Milon with Cecil and Tellah. One Twin should take care of all the zombies. Don't heal him either, luckily for Cecil and his dark sword he's not undead yet. Against Milon Z, don't forget to swap your ranks! I think healing him works here but it's probably not worth it since the others have Fire and someone needs to heal. For the Dark Knight, just sit there. Sadly, Yang is really tough at low levels. The quickest and easiest way to win this fight is not to kill or even attack him. Have everyone focus on staying alive, including Cecil with his Cure2. After Yang attacks you the third time, you can hit him once with Cecil and he'll "come to his senses." I don't remember Baigan too well but I think Twin is good versus his Wall. For Kainazzo, his Big Wave will wreck your team, so the Lits need to be timed so this never happens. If you can pull that off, he dies incredibly fast. Now we get to do some stuff with the Airship. The only thing I can think of is to go to Rydia's house and get the gear, namely the Tiara. I think the rod might be worth it too for any extra magic damage? I mean, it's right there. In the magnetic cave, don't bother with any of the unequipping stuff, of course. When Dark Elf goes "ME CHANGE!", use Weak on the Dark Dragon and bash his face. When I went through the game, I didn't do this, but in retrospect I recommend getting weapons in the Tower of Zot for Cecil and probably Cid. I know when getting the sword for Cecil, you fight guys who die easily to Ice3, and if and only if the same is true for Cid I'd do the same. The Magus Sisters is the first place you need a bit of luck to go quickly, and lack of bad luck if you want to not die. You basically need Tellah to Whatever3 whoever has Wall and hope it hits the fat one. Twice would be nice as well. If you proceed like this, Valvalis is finally where you hit the brick wall level wise. However, this is where I figured out the tanking strategy that will be very useful for the rest of the game. Kain is your savior for this fight, but not because of "Jump, Kain!" It's because the evil baddies deemed fit for Kain to receive uber-gear. What you do is you immediately put all this insane armor on Cecil. Optimally, you would put him in the back, but for a speedrun it's best to put Kain in the back for 4x beatdown. Anyway, the only person you heal is Cecil. Whenever someone else dies, they get a Life potion. Basically, it gets to the point where Cecil Covers for everyone if you keep him at enough health. Now you can beat Valvalis, because she never targets more than one character at a time. She doesn't use Storm this fight but if she did, we'd be well prepared. ;) While fighting Calbrena, it is important not to let them combine or you will not be able to do enough damage and go into an iterative loop. If I remember correctly, you should kill 2 of the easy front ones, then 2 of the back ones, then injure the last back one, and then kill them both really quickly before they can combine. The end of this fight also allows you to cure Cecil to the max, because he'll need it. Try to get Kain to Jump against Golbez, but in my experience he is simply not fast enough. When Rydia comes, use her to Life people, starting with Kain, who should Jump repeatedly. Cecil can attack if he has the opportunity but I seem to remember him having to Life people as well. When you win, it is important to use Warp immediately and get the Dark Crystal. Dr. Lugae and the whole next tower is strangely a pushover even at low levels. I can't remember if there are any special tricks to beating him quickly, but I think if you just sit there and let Balnab explode that's better than trying in vain to kill him first. I forget if you have Bersk now, but Lugae sucks, so it would be a good idea here. Before fighting Edge's parents, get the treasure chest to the left, because I remember it's got LOTS of money. While fighting, just sit there to speed it up. Don't worry about healing, Rubicant's got you covered. Now most people think Rubicant is hard, but the truth of the matter is, like Behemoths, he mostly counterattacks, and with AE moves, which kill the tanking strategy. Rosa heals, Kain Jumps, Edge and Rydia hit him with Flood and Ice2 respectively. Now here's the key: Cecil can't either attack or parry, for tanking purposes, so sometimes you just gotta cast Cure1 or something. Because he's not attacking, feel free to put Cecil in the back along with Rosa and Rydia. Now is where the game finally gets a bit non-linear. Also, we can now buy our final equipment with all the money we have. First go to the Sealed Cave and then go to the moon and come right back, for Excalibur reasons. Now go through the Cave of Summoned Monsters and don't heal from the damage tiles. Get the rat tail, and buy 2 Aegis Shields and the Summoner's Robe. In the dwarf town, buy 1 Gauntlet, 2 Rings, 1 Tiara, 1 Diamond Armor, and 1 Diamond Helmet. I think that's about right, I just looked at some ZSTs to try to figure out what I did. Now make the Excalibur. Now make some more. Outside Baron is the best place for the dupe trick. Because your guys are at 1 from the tiles, non-Cecil people can kill themselves off and it'll go by blazingly quick. I made 20 and won with 7, so 15 sounds like a nice number. I don't think any need to be made for money. I can't remember if I used them or Edge's magic against the Elements, but I'm getting ahead of myself. I will say that Edge should now typically be in the back row for Darting, given his poor defense. Get FuSoYa. Rosa will then pimp him and take all his gear. Now in the Giant is where you want to finally level, so I guess the fact that you couldn't beat the Elements at this stage is irrelevant. Go to the save point and walk around. You are looking for those alerter guys, who summon dragons. Harvest dragons really quickly by using FuSoYa's Weak. If the timing is impeccable then the dragons won't even get to do anything; otherwise, they hurt you and you need to heal. When FuSoYa is low on MP have him Psych from your teammates. Whenever you run out of MP, go ahead and win the fight. You should level like a madman. I stopped when my guys got up to the low 40s. This took 2-3 harvests. Now you can bash the Elements with all your elemental damage and decent stats and such, although Rydia didn't even have all the 3s yet for me. Against the CPU, you'll want to win the aggro way of course. I typically have FuSoYa start off with Meteo, Bersk Cecil, have Rydia use Titan, and Edge Dart of course. Titan should activate after awhile and kill the two little globes. Meteo should go off soon after for the win. Now we have our final party. I have Kain in the front so Edge and the girls can be in the back. In the Lunar Subterranean, the chests we want are the Dragoon stuff, the Protect Ring, and the White Robe, chests without monsters. Once we get all this we can go to the menu and setup. I have Rydia: Charm, null, Tiara, Sorcerer, Diamond; Kain: Aegis, Gungnir, Diamond, Dragoon, Dragoon; Rosa: Lunar, null, Tiara, Sorcerer, Protect; Cecil: Excalbur, Aegis, Dragoon, White (yes!), Samurai; Edge: Middle, Middle, Samurai, Samurai, Diamond (Ring). I have tested and I'm pretty sure that physical defense does not matter at this point. This is where I confess that Rydia, although my favorite character in a typical game, is complete dead weight. Zeromus counters with Nuke, which is not worth the trouble. Big Bang almost always kills her, even from full HP. In fact, sometimes Edge can die from full as well, and occasionally Rosa, in which case you lose. Before you use the Crystal, I typically have Rosa buff up Edge with Fast, but I don't know whether or not it is worth it because Zeromus just deactivates buffs later. Anyway, a lot of Attack, Jump, Dart, Cure4 happens. It's mainly a war of attrition. When he gets into his Meteo stage, you are home free, in the grand Square tradition of ending the final battle on a low dramatic note, a la Kefka being much easier than the other stages in FF3. Whew.
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Joined: 1/14/2005
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One thing I forgot about. Does the PS version have Easy Type? Because since you can run on that version I've heard, that would potentially be the fastest. Easy Type is a must for Cecil's auto-cover, by the way. And sorry, but I definitely don't have the time to undertake this, but I hope I've been helpful in layout out the framework. If I'm going to do an emu speedrun, it'll be something on a much smaller scale. I actually have something in mind, but I'll keep it a secret until I actually do it I guess. ;)
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The Playstation version of FFIV has the normal version. No Easytype.
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so its a speed run... meaning not tool assisted? im just a little confused on the terminology, sorry.
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Personally I think a run of the hard-type (FF4j) would be much more entertaining than a run of the easy-type (FF2 US). Plus, some of the stuff removed from easy-type was actually useful: - abilities -- Cecil's Dark Sword, Tellah's ultra-powerful Random Spell (Bolt3 and Death-All at beginning of game) - spells -- Protect, Shell, Dispel - lots of cool items -- haste/stop-all/reflect-casting, attack items, permanent HP/MP up... - weapons -- Kain's Blood Lance, I think - summons -- Cocatrice and maybe some others Anyway, I get the feeling that all this extra stuff can be abused to save time in creative ways, possibly letting you avoid some leveling with optimal item and ability use. (edits for typo + formatting + extra examples)
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Very thorough information, sounds great. It takes a brave soul to do a run of an RPG, and hopefully someone will put this information to good use. /*-, I'm pretty certain he's talking about it being a tool-assisted run.
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Enhasa wrote:
Try to get Kain to Jump against Golbez, but in my experience he is simply not fast enough.
I've done this a few times on a console, it doesn't always work but save states and luck manipulation should practically guarantee it. Also, do you think the Excalibur / the Rat-tail side-quest / optional summons side-quests are really worth doing, time-wise? I don't think the single thing you get from doing each of these can save as much time as it takes to do the side-quest.
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nitsuja wrote:
Also, do you think the Excalibur / the Rat-tail side-quest / optional summons side-quests are really worth doing, time-wise? I don't think the single thing you get from doing each of these can save as much time as it takes to do the side-quest.
Excalibur is dupable for consistent damage-capping via Throw.
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What kind of time do you usually make it to achieving Paladinhood with Cecil at? (Just checking, since I've attempted a speedrun of FF4 as well, and there are a couple things I did differently which may make it slightly faster than your version up to this point). Also, in the Giant, what kind of dragons does the Searcher summon? If it were Red Ds or Blue Ds or some other dragon that gives 20000+ EXP/kill I could understand this being the fastest way, but if not, then why not harvest Attackers/Defenders off the CPU? They give 50000 EXP each and can be killed fairly quickly as well.
Joined: 3/22/2004
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nitsuja wrote:
do you think the Excalibur / the Rat-tail side-quest / optional summons side-quests are really worth doing, time-wise?
Items: Excalibur is worthwhile because you can dupe it and give Edge the ability to repeatedly dart a 160 power weapon. Spoon is more powerful, but takes far too much time to acquire and can be used only once. The next most powerful weapon he'd have to dupe and dart would be (IIRC) the Gugnir spear, which is only half as strong. Edge doesn't need better swords because he's either using magic, or darting.. plus the Murasame/Masamune swords in the moon are guarded by monsters, which would slow the run down more than the additional damage might help. As for Summons: Rosa wouldn't have Wall when visiting the Summoned Monsters Cave (she gets it at level 34, IIRC), so it would be nearly impossible to pick up Asura. Leviathan is worthless, there's no need to pick him up either. Bahamut is a great spell for Rydia in the final area... but you have to kill Levi+Asura, as well as 3 Behemoths to get him. The additional time needed simply isn't worthwhile. The other summons are simply too weak. There's no need for adamant armor, because the winning condition for this game is "Can the party survive the mass-damage dealt?", which means HP is (ultimately) what decides whether the party wins or loses.
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3:58?! All I can say is wow, congrats man... anyway, here's the original thread, started by me... http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1158 I've actually maintained that the hardtype is easier to play, especially to speedrun, since there are more "specialized" items. For instance, if you really wanted the adamant armor (not really worth it in a speedrun,) the Alarm item automatically calls the least likely group of enemies for a given room, so you could easily get the 5 pink puff battle in that one room...
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fuwafuwa wrote:
Rosa wouldn't have Wall when visiting the Summoned Monsters Cave (she gets it at level 34, IIRC), so it would be nearly impossible to pick up Asura.
Actually, it might be possible to beat her without the wall spell, using two items that cast reflect on the party to cast reflect on Asura. (Haven't tried it myself but it seems like it should work.) Or, maybe massive luck manipulation to prevent Asura from using Cure 4. It's still probably not worth the time either way though, if the whole summoned monsters cave is optional.
fuwafuwa wrote:
HP is (ultimately) what decides whether the party wins or loses.
Supposedly Edge can steal a Dark Matter from the final boss to greatly reduce the damage all its attacks do... this is probably worth doing, can maybe get away with less HP that way. Also, I think luck can be manipulated to get some enemies to drop HP-increasing apples.
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nitsuja wrote:
Actually, it might be possible to beat her without the wall spell, using two items that cast reflect on the party to cast reflect on Asura. (Haven't tried it myself but it seems like it should work.) Or, maybe massive luck manipulation to prevent Asura from using Cure 4. It's still probably not worth the time either way though, if the whole summoned monsters cave is optional.
Thanks for your input in general, nitsuja, but many of your ideas pertain to FF4 instead of 2US, so maybe they'd fit better in the other thread? ;) I have played through FF4 English patch, so I agree that it's a slightly better game playing normally, but since FF2 is cleaner, I think it might actually make for a more interesting run. FF5 already has the broken-ness quotient down pat. I'm really not sure which would be quicker, but they're two different games and who says there can't be a run for each? About luck manipulation, this isn't Dragon Warrior; there's just some things that I'm pretty sure just can't be done. Asura always casts Cure4, Cure3, Life1, repeat. Also, at low levels, Kain really just isn't fast enough, like I said.
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Well, like I said I'm not sure the cleaner one would be more interesting, but I wouldn't mind there being a run for each... I wonder which one would be faster? FF4 has more stuff to abuse, while the FF2 enemies (and status ailments) are easier to deal with.
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Tilus wrote:
What kind of time do you usually make it to achieving Paladinhood with Cecil at? (Just checking, since I've attempted a speedrun of FF4 as well, and there are a couple things I did differently which may make it slightly faster than your version up to this point). Also, in the Giant, what kind of dragons does the Searcher summon? If it were Red Ds or Blue Ds or some other dragon that gives 20000+ EXP/kill I could understand this being the fastest way, but if not, then why not harvest Attackers/Defenders off the CPU? They give 50000 EXP each and can be killed fairly quickly as well.
Dunno how FF2 and FF4 stack up, but I'll assume you mean EasyType here so we don't have apples and oranges. I have 0:58 for Padalin Cecil. I would like to hear what you've done differently, so we can try to optimize this. ;) I had to actually load a ZST up to look, but... D. Machines. =/ Looking at an FAQ, a D. Machine is 8300 compared to 25000 for an Attacker/Defender. I just did some testing (with already leveled characters though, which might affect the globe value) and one D. Machine iteration is about 20 secs, and one Recover iteration is about 1 minute. So it would appear that globe killing is twice as fast, but I first need to level to get past the Elements. There are confusing pros and cons each way, but now I think it would be best to harvest D. Machines once, or until you can get past the Elements, and then harvest globes. There's a lot more dying going on this way, but as long as you have very many Life and Cure2 potions, it shouldn't be too bad because you have the slight down time between killing the globes and I-99 to catch up. Don't know what level you'd end up in, but like I said, shoot for the low 40s here.
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Yeah, I meant easytype, which is the same as what you were doing. I wound up with about the same amount of time as you did (0:58-0:59), so maybe my strategy isn't really any better than yours, but basically what I did was levelled up Rydia a little bit between when I get Tellah in the waterfall cave and the save point where the tent cutscene occurs.. just enough to get high enough level for Rydia to use Lit-2. I would then use the extra MP Rydia gains for extra chocobo summons, which would make the Octomamm, Antlion (it can't counterattack magic, and Chocobo summon is your strongest weapon), and MomBomb fights faster. The rest of the game, though, your strategy is almost certainly better than what my idea would've been (which is to level Cecil a little coming down Mt. Ordeals, live on that until you get to the Tower of Bab-il and harvest monsters off an Alarm there, then use that EXP to cruise until the Giant, where you harvest Attackers/Defenders until you're high enough level to beat the game). But 4 hours to beat all of FF4.. I'm impressed. The cheat-filled "walkthrough movie" on zophar, which disables all random combat and cheats to obliterate bosses as fast as possible, is about 3 hours long, so that's not a whole lot of extra time you spend to build up legitly. I'll be looking forward to this movie.
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nitsuja wrote:
Well, like I said I'm not sure the cleaner one would be more interesting, but I wouldn't mind there being a run for each... I wonder which one would be faster? FF4 has more stuff to abuse, while the FF2 enemies (and status ailments) are easier to deal with.
only trouble with FF4 : because of site rules, it would have to be played on the japanese version of the game, so the player would need to understand japanese at least a little bit , otherwise it would take a long time of guessing what would be what
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Mlandry wrote:
only trouble with FF4 : because of site rules, it would have to be played on the japanese version of the game, so the player would need to understand japanese at least a little bit , otherwise it would take a long time of guessing what would be what
This game is translated to english if I recall correct. That's why it's FF2 and not FF4 in USA. Edit: Orelse im confused by the thread and you are talking about the real FF2?
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Walker Boh wrote:
Mlandry wrote:
only trouble with FF4 : because of site rules, it would have to be played on the japanese version of the game, so the player would need to understand japanese at least a little bit , otherwise it would take a long time of guessing what would be what
This game is translated to english if I recall correct. That's why it's FF2 and not FF4 in USA. Edit: Orelse im confused by the thread and you are talking about the real FF2?
If this is "the real FF2" this is the wrong forum. FF2 (SNES) is in fact a direct translation of the FF4 easytype, of course watering down the dialogue so that Edward/Gilbert is a "spoony bard" and so that Cecil appears much less chauvinistic, among other things.
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...such as removing the backstory of Cecil and Kain. But you're right--a lot of the dialogue is watered down (waterlogged, perhaps?). What do you mean by chauvanistic, if I may ask?
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Yeah, an FF4 run would have to be in Japanese, just like the FF5 run. An FF2 US run would probably take less time to actually make, especially if following most of the strategies already layed out, so that might be better to do first. (Seeing how linear and relatively short FF2/FF4 is, whoever decides to do it should have less trouble than with most RPGs.)
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Viewer wrote:
What do you mean by chauvanistic, if I may ask?
Some of his dialogue with Rosa especially on the airship towards the end (and Edge's with Rydia too at various points in the game) if I recall. The biggest advantage to doing either an easytype or hardtype FF4 run, as with most RPGs, actually lies in the text layout and how it affects the game speed. Remember, -Japanese characters tend to be single-size rather than variable width fonts (although FF2E doesn't use VWFs anyway) so are generally easier to manage -More text is almost always needed for English than Japanese writing, which obviously means more on-screen printing time. Also, if you're trying to use the same ROM size this generally means you have to use a higher level, and slower, compression algorithm. (Although sometimes different size ROMs are used--see Dragon Warrior vs. Dragon Quest.)
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