Submission #4275: pirate_sephiroth & ForgoneMoose's PSX Castlevania: Symphony of the Night "Richter mode" in 05:39.85

In the distant future, the world is a utilitarian place fueled by. It is a hostile and desolate land ruled with a glass fist, and it takes the brave and heartful Richiter Belmondo to attempt to stop it. He fails, so he decides to storm an abandoned castle and kill some black guy instead.

This is a general improvement to the previous submission, no exciting new tricks were abused. Note that pirate did not actively work on this run with me, I just made improvements to the previous submission using his TAS as a base. Many parts (especially later on) are unchanged.

Alongside the standard subweapons of the Castlevania games, Richter retains from Rondo of Blood his ability to do really powerful super attacks with them as well, at the cost of many hearts. Only one used here is Hydro Storm, the crash for the holy water.

Richter retains his ability from Rondo of Blood to backflip out of the air if you press jump before he starts falling. Not particularly useful.

Richter can slide across completely flat surfaces. Doing this rapidly is the fastest form of movement, but is limited in that exiting a sliding state is slow outside of certain situations and any sort of incline in the ground at all makes it impossible to slide. Can be canceled into slide kick.

Richter impossibly throws himself into the air out of a slide. Does a lot of damage, and can be canceled into backflip by holding whip while contacting an enemy or candle with it. Has the fastest top speed of any of his moves at the start. Can be ended early by holding back during it.

Richter does sort of dash forward, wherein he is invincible and anything he touches gets hurt a lot. This is generally the go-to movement when sliding is impossible.

Richter does an uppercut slash thing that sends him high into the air very quickly. It can be chained into itself infinitely. Cannot be done midair until Richter starts falling. Hitting a ceiling makes Richter pause for a moment and the input buffer is cleared until he starts falling again.

Throwing holy water on specific frames after casting Hydro Storm, the hit timer for the Hydro Storm's AoE effect goes to shit and hits everything on screen much more frequently than it should.

The retracting staircases in both versions of the castle keep are poorly coded, and cause a scrolling glitch if you move past them too quickly. Abusing this allows you to end up inside a wall for a frame, which is just enough to force yourself out of bounds and under the level. This is slightly faster than just going the intended route.

Sliding down inclines is normally impossible, but at certain slopes you can force Richter to repeatedly do the beginning of a slide to get down them, which is faster than waiting for him to get up if you're already sliding when you come to such an incline. This only works at certain points at the slope, so it's generally optimal to have as much speed as possible when hitting the slope, a trick that saved frames here over the old TAS.

Richter lacks most of Alucard's prowess in moving the RNG, though he fortunately has less use for it. His only actions that push it are the whip, which is very slow, and headbonking the ceiling during an uppercut, which is even worse. Besides that, your only option is really to just try timing things differently, opening the map to allow RNG to pass if need be. This mostly just concerns getting criticals on bosses.

Faster stair slide saved a couple frames. The way I blade dashed onto the platform at the end of the second Warg room saved a frame. My uppercuts in the proceeding room saved a couple frames.

I saved almost half a second here by avoiding the slide kick > backflip > uppercut strats of the previous TAS, as Richter has to start falling before you can uppercut out of a backflip.

Time was saved here by not doing the uppercut straight up in the room after the staircase, as this allows me to slide instead of blade dash through the entire next room. I simply get all the hearts I need later in the run. I avoid an uppercut in the large vertical shaft past that room, and some the uppercuts in there following that are slightly faster. The old TAS did a strat through the second tower that involved sliding around the right side of the bell and uppercutting up from there, but I save almost half a second by just uppercutting up the left side instead. Hippogryph is a couple frames slower due to RNG, and perhaps a difference in lag.

I lose a few frames getting a big heart during the section where I blade dash through the candles. I gain these frames back over the old TAS by getting onto the teleporter platform at the end slightly faster.

Unchanged.

Medusa fight is slightly faster due both to me finding a faster way to activate her A.I. at the start and just overall getting a faster damage stack, making up for the slower Hippogryph. Worth noting, I save frames on basically every full slide kick in this run by spacing them properly to end them early, which is faster by several frames.

Unchanged.

I save a frame by inputting the blade dash in the second-last room more efficiently. Otherwise, unchanged.

Unchanged.

The Slide kick is faster, but otherwise unchanged.

Noxxa: Judging.

Noxxa: Instead of just saying the usual thing here, I just want to state the following: this is the fifth run of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night by ForgoneMoose that I've accepted, in a span of less than three months. I'm really liking this trend.

Aside from that, there's the usual thing of course: accepting as an improvement to the published movie.

Guga: Processing...