Submission #4189: ForgoneMoose's PSX Castlevania: Symphony of the Night "Replay Mode" in 13:21.60

Through throwing myself into enemies and throwing boomerangs everywhere, I am the sun. I mean the wind

A video with commentary by Romscout, the WR real time runner for this game, is available here.

This one uses the same general route and such as my previous submission and so most of the submission text there still applies. This one implements a number of minor timesavers and fixes dumb errors I had made because I was dumb and inexperienced when making the previous TAS. I found some of these soon after submitting the old TAS, but I kept finding more and more improvements until I decided it would be better to just start pretty much all the way over and remake it from scratch. Unfortunately, the RNG wasn't as kind this time around, but the improved quality of play still results in a sizable improvement.

Zircon drop - Slightly faster by using the randomness generated by having multiple Mermen onscreen to push the RNG towards my target. Throughout the run I stop and open the map for a split second before getting rare drops; this allows me to observe outputs of the RNG that would otherwise get pushed past due to enemy RNG.

Slogra and Gaibon - I first found that one jump is the best way to optimize the fight, but doing two after getting both them and Alucard into a specific angle is a little faster.

Slightly faster Library Card edge travel - I got fewer flickers this time around, not much else to say

2K gold from Spellbooks - I had initially thought that this would require getting the drop and a crit on the same frame, but I found a way around this by manipulating weaker than usual criticals with my first attacks then getting the drop with normal hits.

Faster Library escape - I first had to jump over an enemy on my way out, but I found that using Summon Spirit further to the right let me avoid the fairy trying to heal me while I'm stuck to the wall, allowing me to use her potion to pass through the enemy instead.

Faster Flea Riders - I just overall got them to cooperate more. They flew me straight up as opposed to the slight curve in my previous submission.

Faster Masamune drop - Blah blah blah RNG blah

Faster Guardian kill - I was using faulty logic in my previous submission when optimizing this. I was trying to get hit by its first attack at all costs, when that doesn't even matter since you have to wait on the Ghurka to get close to you afterwards anyways. I save time by using fewer menus in exchange for being hit by its second attack instead.

Faster Shaft climb - I found a much more efficient way to do the death jump past that ledge not long after my previous submission, and that was what made me want to make this new TAS in the first place. This also allows me to use my Shield Potion without an extra menu access.

Early end of input Drac kill - The TASes before mine both used this, but it saved so little time that I wanted to just go for time to credits instead out of personal taste. However, with the new death jump I mentioned, a menu access is cut from doing this making it significantly faster than using the Alucard Shield spell.

Extended Frontslide - Every frame that you pull out a shield or use a throwing item, your horizontal momentum calculation stops. Thus, flicking your shield out rapidly allows you to maintain the burst of speed from frontsliding for a longer amount of time. This is faster than shield dashing when going uphill, and about the same speed on flat surfaces

The biggest improvement that could be made is better RNG for crits on bosses, which isn't even a big deal. Drop RNG could've been better too but there were no big fiascoes so I'm alright with how this turned out.

Again, thanks to everyone for being supportive of my work, but especially fellow SotN TASer Desquall for helping me find some of the improvements I made.

Noxxa: Judging.

Noxxa: Accepting as an improvement to the published movie.

feos: Publishing...