This is a TAS for the game Alcahest for the Super Famicom.
Alcahest is a top-down Action RPG which offers lots of movement tech and a moderate amount of glitches.
Aside from moving around with the D-pad, you can sprint by tapping the direction button twice. You also have a basic attack button which you can charge and release. The type of charge is based on the guardian you have with you, which is indicated by the colour of the player. You also have a spell button which consumes MP, and a button that makes your companion use their ability, which consumes SP.
Guardian spells:
Red Guardian: Shoots fast, big projectiles that deal high damage.
Blue Guardian: Summons 2 orbs that shoot small rapid-fire projectiles that deal minor damage.
Cyan Guardian: The guardian travels to the nearest enemy, attacking it at melee range.
Green Guardian: You get a shield which makes you immune to all damage and you are always sprinting.
The companion you have with you performs an attack every time the player performs an attack. SP allows your companion to cast a spell, which is based on which companion you are equipped with. Some companion spells cost more SP than others.
Companion spells:
Garstein: The game freezes for a while and explosions occur that covers the entire screen.
Elikshil: The game freezes for a while and she heals you automatically when you take fatal damage. It can also be used at will.
Sirius: Spins around and rapidly shoots projectiles in 8 directions.
Magna: Stops time for all enemies and shoots fast rapid-fire projectiles at the nearest enemy. It also refreshes all enemy iframes.
Nevis: The companion transforms into a dragon which flies around and shoots at random enemies on the screen.
Stage 1:
We skip the lava boots by using our iframes and pick up a HP refill. We also get Garstein as a follower whose ability we never use because it's super slow and weak.
Stage 2:
This stage plays just like it would do in RTA. Here we get the follower Elikshil which heals us when we take fatal damage or when we press the SP button.
Stage 3:
Here is where things get interesting. When I get to the miniboss I die on purpose at the same frame the boss dies. This causes me to be "dead" while still being able to control myself. This makes me able to move around while dialogues are playing. This does save a lot of time but not as much as one would think, because chests that contain "key items" need to be on-screen when the text box disappears in order for me to get the item in my inventory. You cannot skip the item jingle that plays when you pick up a "key item". I cannot pick up health items or get hit by anything while being in this glitched state, because it would either kill me instantly or cancel the glitch. While being in this state, I can skip many of the boss dialogues, which also causes the camera to detach from the player. It is just a funny side effect. I also press the pause button on the same frame a dialogue box appears. This causes the dialogue to be skipped completely. This only works on some dialogues. This also makes us able to completely skip the follower Sirius.
Stage 4:
Here I use the same glitch as in stage 3. Here it only saves about half a second due to all the spikes in the stage, which I would normally run across while having iframes. I also use the same dialogue pause glitch as in stage 3. Here we also get the best follower, which is Magna, who can use time stop, which resets enemy iframes and freeze them in place.
Stage 5:
We skip most of this stage because we completely skip the magnet boots, which allows us to walk on the conveyor belts. We do this by charging the red sword while standing on the last pixel of a conveyor belt. If we then release the charge and press a direction, we can travel forward a pixel, allowing us to get away from the belt. This makes us able to pick up a key item needed to head to the boss. Then we use the pause button to skip the dialogues as usual.
Stage 6:
Here we unlock the companion Nevis, which we also never use because it is very unpredictable and has low damage output. It also causes the game to lag a lot. Aside from that, the game plays like RTA, with the exeption of the dialogue skip glitch.
Stage 7-8:
These stages are just refights of the previous bosses. The final boss of stage 7 is a mirror of yourself. We use Magna's time stop to reset the iframes, as well as sword charge, which makes us kill the mirror in 1 cycle before it teleports away. Stage 8 is the same as stage 7. The boss of stage 8 is the final boss, Alcahest.
Final boss:
Alcahest has 2 phases and on phase 1 we start by using Magna's time stop ability together with blue sword charge. Because of the high SP cost of time stop, we trigger the Sage Stone we picked up earlier, which restores SP and MP when SP becomes depleted. We also get something called Aura Blade, which makes our regular attacks shoot out projectiles for a while. We use this to kill the first phase in 2 cycles.
In phase 2, we use the red guardian spell together with blue sword charge to kill the boss. We only use time stop at the end, because if you deal too much damage too fast, the boss goes into a phase where the boss teleports away and shoots lightning that expands in a pattern. When the boss reaches 0 HP, we have a small amount of dialogues left after we lose control of our inputs.
I finished this TAS 4 times, because new game breaking things were discovered, and I even lost my progress once. It feels good to finally be done with this TAS. And while it's not 100% optimal, I'm very happy with how it turned out.
Special thanks to:
Fred,
Odongdong,
Omnigamer,
Spiriax
Samsara: I trimmed the input file down to the final input to better reflect the time of the run, and also removed the "any%" branch as it's unnecessary on TASVideos.
Yeah, this ruled, through and through. This is a game I've wanted to see TASed for a very long time, to the point where I intentionally
left it off of my alternate DTC10 choices list strictly so I could use it in the event I host another DTC. Now I get the thrill of the final product without the stress of the hunt! It almost feels like the game was made to be TASed: Movement is quick and precise, there's that fun death glitch that leads to both solid timesaves and a lot of added entertainment, and the bosses are mindblowingly quick with the huge variety of attacks, all used to perfection in the run.
Excellent work. Accepting!
