(Link to video)

Game objectives

  • Emulator used: BizHawk-2.3.2
  • Best ending
  • Heavy luck manipulation
  • Forgoes save data corruption

About the game

Valkyrie Profile is an RPG where the goddess Lenneth, one of the three valkyries, must collect the souls of slain heroes to sent them to Odin in preparation of Ragnarok. Three different endings are possible depending on some of your actions throughout the game. While the B and C endings are trivial to get, the A ending has some requirements that make it very hard to get if you don't know them.

Comments

Versions differences

Due to faster dialogs overall, the japanese version is faster the the US one by 4 minutes (rough estimate).
RTA runs use PS2 fast disk speed, which would also save 4 minutes (rough estimate).

Movement

MovementSpeedNotes
Jump1024The speed starts to decrease after some time
Run1024
Slide~1303Starts at 3072 then decreases by 12.5% every frame, 1303 is the best average speed you can get from it
Crystal boost2400Situational since it takes time to setup and it only lasts while in the air
Crystal boosting is the fastest way to move but since it takes time to setup, it is usually only worth it when going down slopes. All stairs (and some grounds with rubble) have a weird mechanic slowing you down repeatedly to a speed of 1 when on the ground, which is the only case where jumping may be the fastest movement method. Some screen transitions (up or down the screen) are faster when done at the center of the door/stair, while for the others it's faster to take them as soon as possible. Reaching a screen transition faster by sliding isn't necessarily faster overall for unknown/unconsistent reasons.

RNG manipulation

The first 55 RNs are initialized at the boot of the game, and all the others and determined from the previous ones (RN[i] = (RN[i-55] - RN[i-24]) mod 0X100000000).
There are Three ways to manipulate the RNG out of battle :
  • Waiting before starting a fight (a global timer is used to "randomly" increase the RNG at the start of a battle)
  • Sword attack (+1 RN)
  • Crystal shoot (+300~800 RNs)
In battle, you can either wait for the RNG to slowly increase (several frames per RN) or change the order of your actions.

Route details

This TAS follows the RTA route with some changes in the menuing and the battles strategy. In particular, opening and closing the menu takes at the very least 7 seconds, and was only done 10 times throughout the TAS (including 7 times to go to the next sacred phase).
To get the A ending, you must:
  • Complete the tower of Lezard
  • Recruit Lucian and Mystina
  • Send Lucian to Valhalla before chapter 7
  • Lower Lenneth's seal value to 37 or less
Lowering the seal value is what makes this ending hard to achieve by accident, as sending an hero to Valhalla (what you are encouraged to do to increase your "evaluation") increases it by 12, and not sending any may result in the C ending instead if your evaluation reaches 0.

Prologue

The harpy was manipulated to not block any of my attacks.
With high roll damage, I don't need Freya (longest attack animation) to finish the ghoul.

Artolian Ruins

A 20s detour was made to get the Element Scepter, for a faster Lezard fight later on.
8 Two-Handed Swords were created. All the starting items were converted to MPs to save time menuing long term. The Two-Handed Swords were transmuted into Holy Gems, the Element Scepter into a Tome of Alchemy.
The boss was manipulated to have his attack blocked by Lenneth (fastest animation). I got the two artifacts so that I can increase my evaluation later on.
After exiting the ruins, I unequipped the Nibelungen Ring (so that the seal value decreases by 2 every sacred phase instead of increasing by 2) and went straight to chapter 4. Before entering the tower of Lezard, the time was set to 1 period away from the next sacred phase to dodge Freya's warning until the next chapter.

Tower of Lezard

One glimmer was manipulated twice to temporarily disappear for the passage of Lenneth.
With the Tome of Alchemy, the enemies with Lezard were killed in one hit, instead of slowly deleting their 10000 HP. Lezard's fastest attack is also the only one that Arngrim can tank, saving me the time of opening the menu to get some equipment/add a 4th member to the team.

Chapters 5/6/7/8

After recruiting Mystina, Freya warned us because our evaluation reached 0 and put it back to 1.
Lucian got just enough skill points to get an Ether Scepter, a Guard Reinforce and an Holy wand "Adventia" during the next sacred phase. After skipping straight to chapter 7, the evaluation went back to 0. Using the 2 artifacts from the Artolian Ruins, it went up to 2. Visiting the Weeping Lily Meadow decreased the seal value to 33, thus triggering the A ending events. Lorenta had just enough skill points and equipement to keep the evaluation above 0, and get Sacred Javelin and Might Reinforce from the sacred phase.
Unfortunately one last menuing was necessary in chapter 8 because the Valkyrie-Favor (strongest weapon for Lenneth which doesn't trigger the longer version of her Nibelung Valesti) wasn't available before. She also got a Power Bangle (damage output) and a Freeze Check (Fenrir). Arngrim got the same except that his weapon is a Brutish-Edge for Hrist.
Mystina and Jelanda got an Ether Scepter, Magic Bangle and Fairy Ring for maximum damage output.
With the Brutish-Edge, Arngrim had just enough damage to defeat Hrist without needing to use Lezard.

Ragnarok

Bloodbane was manipulated to start second (e.g. Lenneth and Argrim got their turn before him). He is guarenteed to use an AoE attack at some point, and needless to say my level 1 characters can't take it, so everyone got a Lucid Potion to be untargettable and thus Bloodbane skipped his turns. Lenneth and Arngrim used Poison Crystals which has some damage variance, and is capped at 13800 against Bloodbane. For my strategy to work I must get the maximum damage almost every time, so it was manipulated, mainly by shifting the order of my actions. Thanks to their equipements, Mystina and Jelanda can cast Sacred Javelin every turn, which is faster and deal slightly more damage than Poison Crystals, while also having no damage variance. Only Mystina can deal a significant amount of damage with a PWS attack with my current equipment, but it's actually faster to throw a few Poison Crystals/Sacred Javelins instead to get the same amount of damage. Since my first Lucid Potions wore off at the final turn, Bloodbane as a chance to attack (around 50/50 I believe), so he was manipulated to not act. Finally, I manipulated one magic crystal out of the final attack to get a bit of extra experience points, which is just enough to get one extra level up, giving me enough HP on Lenneth and Arngrim for the next boss fight strategy.
Fenrir was manipulated to start first since getting an extra turn with Lenneth and Arngrim would not get me anything. His first and third attacks were manipulated to be an Ice Breath on Lenneth, and his second one, which is guarenteed to be his Frost Slash magic, was manipulated to hit Arngrim. It is the only attacks combinaison that allows everyone to survive for three turns (thanks to the extra HPs from the level ups and the Freeze Check which halves ice damage). In addition to applying various buffs/debuffs and throwing two Poison Crystals, Arngrim equipped the Demon Sword "Levantine" (more damage) and Jelanda equipped the Deluge Scepter (less damage but no time consuming animation during the PWS). The PWS was manipulated so that Argrim dealt enough damage to kill Fenrir (he can deal between 8000 and 11000 damage per hit), but also for Mystina's Ether Scepter to break (30% chance).
Loki will use a deadly AoE attack at some point in the first battle so I had to use Lucid Potions to prevent this. The strategy for the second battle involves Lenneth blocking the second attack and Arngrim getting stunned by the first one (which is actually faster than blocking it since Arngrim doesn't have any action to do this turn). It was particularly annoying to manipulate because the way the RNG increases during the 9 minutes cutscene is inconsistent and thus my only way to properly test an RNG state was to play it every time, which took a lot of time despite the use of scripts to automate the process. The odds of Loki doing a normal attack that is blocked by Lenneth are around 2~3%. I didn't need any extra damage from Mystina, which is why I broke her Ether Scepter previously so that she increases the hits count without the time consuming animation.

Possible improvements

  • Better movement and RNG
  • Better battle strategies

Special Thanks

Suggest screenshot :

frame 185204 or 195999

Samsara: WAIT IS THIS LEGIT, HOLY CRAP JUDGING
Samsara: Uh, okay, I had no idea exactly how legit this would be. Holy crap.
This... This was remarkably difficult to come to a decision on, and I'm still not quite sure it's right, and I don't think I'll ever be completely sure about it. On a surface level, there's nothing wrong with this run whatsoever. It's a well made run of a highly underrated game. The problem lies in the nature of the game itself, the choice of category, and how we as a site are equipped to handle that particular deadly combination.
Valkyrie Profile is a game that, over the past month or so, I have repeatedly described as "complicated to explain to people that don't know it", which has been consistently proven by the number of times I have tried and failed to properly explain it to people that don't know it. You are a hot blue-haired lady tasked with the judgement of souls. Hang on, sorry, that was my daily self-affirmation routine. The gist of Valkyrie Profile is that you're playing as a valkyrie, tasked with the recruitment of einherjar to Valhalla to prevent Ragnarok. Norse mythology abound. The valkyrie, Lenneth, flies around the world, occasionally stops in some dungeons, and sends people up to Valhalla to appease Odin. It all sounds simple, but in practice there is a lot of weird game mechanic stuff at work. Time to overwrite this judgement like usual try to explain this game to people that might not know it.
I'll have to start with the choice of category: "Best ending" refers to Ending A in the game, which is, well, the best ending of the three possible endings. Ending C is just a game over in ending form: This can happen at any time, pretty much as soon as Lenneth's evaluation rating hits 0, really emphasizing how bad of an ending it is. Ending B is going to be the ending nearly everyone gets, it's fairly standard and doesn't really do much. Ending A requires jumping through a few non-obvious hoops and pretty much completely changes the endgame with a drastic shift in the story, including an entirely different final dungeon. It's the canon ending of the story.
By definition, the save glitch run is the game's fastest completion. The fastest non-glitched completion state would likely be Ending B by virtue of not having to jump through the same hoops that Ending A does. That basically means that this run cannot be Vaulted under a fastest completion guideline in any possible way... But, could it be Vaulted under full completion? A game's best ending can be considered a vaultable 100% run in lieu of other full completion metrics if there's no in-game definition. This run does technically fall under that category, but it has a major problem, and that's to do with Valkyrie Profile itself.
Those who've watched the run may have seen that only about 20 minutes are gameplay. This gameplay consists of a few fights and three dungeons: Artolian Mountain Ruins, the game's "tutorial" dungeon as it were, the Tower of Lezard Valeth, a required dungeon for Ending A, and Asgard Hill, the final dungeon of Ending A. How many dungeons are there in Valkyrie Profile? By my count... 26. The maximum number that can be played on a single playthrough is 21, which is done by playing on Hard mode. Hard has 8 exclusive dungeons and only bars you from 4 in return, plus the final dungeon changes depending on your ending path. I think it's fairly easy to say that there is a LOT more gameplay content in Valkyrie Profile, it's just all technically optional given what you can do to break the game. It's all of that exclusivity that kinda breaks Valkyrie Profile's "full completion" state. Not all dungeons can be played in a single playthrough by definition. You're either missing 5 dungeons (on hard), 9 dungeons (on Normal), or 17 whole-ass dungeons (on Easy).
So this single playthrough on Hard plays 3 dungeons out of a possible 21. Can we really consider that any sort of full completion? I... don't really think so. There's so much gameplay missing that Vaulting this run under full completion metrics just for the best ending doesn't feel right at all to me. And yet, at the same time... Rejecting this run for being on the borderline doesn't feel right to me either. There's a workaround for this: We accept it to Moons and not have to worry about whether or not it meets Vault standards, and if a more "full" run comes along then it obsoletes this one, assuming the ratings on this one warrant that obsoletion. I'm... not entirely comfortable with this (mostly for the implications/precedents it could set) but at the same time I can't think of a solution I'm more comfortable with.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with the run, and the more I think about it, the more I don't even really think there's anything wrong with the game itself. I think this might be a case of there being something wrong with our rules, something fundamentally weird that can't really be fixed in an easy way to account for the kind of situation this run is in. It would take a restructuring of Vault, most likely, and that's not something we can just knock out in a day and expect everything to work out of the gate. That would take a community conversation and probably a lot of internal discussion on top of that, and any changes we make could mean a lot more Judge/Publisher work as a result due to a potentially large number of un-rejected runs. On an unrelated note, we're hiring! c:
I can't tell if that was a joke or not.
There's a lot of back-and-forth in the submission thread if people want more of an insight on how the game works, I could repeat it all here but that would pad out this judgement far more than I intended, and the less time I spend writing it, the more time I can spend on simpler things, like the Octadetayotton mod for Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, or trying to figure out a Neil Breen movie, or reading through our Movie Rules. In the meantime though, I'm taking the workaround option. I'm accepting this to Moons as a new category, with the caveat that it can be obsoleted by a more complete run in the future if the ratings end up low enough.
Spikestuff: Aren't you just a death-goddess!?

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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #7055: lapogne36's PSX Valkyrie Profile "best ending" in 2:24:12.48
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Ah yeah, there's the long movie of April Fools that's acceptable. Inject that straight into my publication shotgun.
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The first three battles Chimeras, demons, and wizards can take the first attack with adjustments.
Player (104)
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AmaizumiUni wrote:
The first three battles Chimeras, demons, and wizards can take the first attack with adjustments.
Left&circle button push flamenumber battle in
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AmaizumiUni wrote:
AmaizumiUni wrote:
The first three battles Chimeras, demons, and wizards can take the first attack with adjustments.
Left&circle button push flamenumber battle in
I checked and now I understand what you meant. For the first 3 battles, you are supposed to go second and the game doesn't even use the RNG to determine this, but for some reason if you press the left or right button at the beginning of the battle, the game will use the standard RNG check to determine if you go first or second. However for the first battle, it turns out that the RNG makes you go second if you use this trick, and as far as I know you can't manipulate the RNG at any point before this battle, so you can only save time with it for the 2nd and 3rd battles (around 10s time save in total). I will try to hex-edit my way through the game, though I will probably have trouble syncing the RNG.
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lapogne36 wrote:
I checked and now I understand what you meant. For the first 3 battles, you are supposed to go second and the game doesn't even use the RNG to determine this, but for some reason if you press the left or right button at the beginning of the battle, the game will use the standard RNG check to determine if you go first or second. However for the first battle, it turns out that the RNG makes you go second if you use this trick, and as far as I know you can't manipulate the RNG at any point before this battle, so you can only save time with it for the 2nd and 3rd battles (around 10s time save in total). I will try to hex-edit my way through the game, though I will probably have trouble syncing the RNG.
It should have changed on the frame where you pressed and held left and 0 when closing the message window. But I'm not sure if it's all the same ahead of time, since it has to do with combat randomness. I'm sorry if I'm wrong, but I haven't touched the debug mode since it was created.
EZGames69
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With the removed cutscenes encode, I was able to watch the gameplay and actually understand what the game is like. The movement is actually really fast and fun to watch, it’s just unfortunate that cutscenes take up the majority of the run time. Still I’d consider it to be worth watching. Yes vote.
[14:15] <feos> WinDOES what DOSn't 12:33:44 PM <Mothrayas> "I got an oof with my game!" Mothrayas Today at 12:22: <Colin> thank you for supporting noble causes such as my feet MemoryTAS Today at 11:55 AM: you wouldn't know beauty if it slapped you in the face with a giant fish [Today at 4:51 PM] Mothrayas: although if you like your own tweets that's the online equivalent of sniffing your own farts and probably tells a lot about you as a person MemoryTAS Today at 7:01 PM: But I exert big staff energy honestly lol Samsara Today at 1:20 PM: wouldn't ACE in a real life TAS just stand for Actually Cease Existing
Samsara
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So, there needs to be a bit of a discussion about the category and whether or not this run can be Vaulted. "Best ending" runs can be considered full completion of a game under certain circumstances, but Valkyrie Profile is a bit weird. The way Valkyrie Profile was designed, there is no possible way of attaining actual full completion in a single playthrough. Dungeons, of which there are many unseen in this run, are locked by difficulty (this run was done on Hard, which has MOST dungeons unlocked, but there is still one that is only available on Easy/Normal). Not all characters and unique items can be kept, as the central mechanic of the game is literally sending characters and unique items to Valhalla. The problem I personally have with considering this run full completion is how much of the game's content is skipped. There's something like 20 available dungeons, of which only 3 are completed, and I'd hesitate to call the final one a fun and exciting dungeon in and of itself. I'd conservatively estimate that an "all available dungeons" version of this run would be about 4 hours long, but that extra time would be all gameplay and evenly spread out over the course of the run. I could see it easily making Moons, actually. And that's kind of the problem. We need a clear consensus on full completion for this game in order to figure out what to do with this run. As per the rules, this technically qualifies for Vault, as it achieves the game's only "full completion" metric possible on a single playthrough, but as per the extreme amount of skipped content, accepting this would mean having to deal with a potential future "max completion" run or something, a run that collects as much as possible and completes as much content as possible. Would that run obsolete this one if this one was accepted, or would we consider them separate categories? If that run would obsolete this one, can we even accept this one? I'd like a few peoples' opinions on this before I make a decision. Feel free to ask questions. I'm pretty familiar with the game so I should be able to clarify.
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ViGadeomes
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First of all, I found this movie entertainning for the gameplay part and like a "film" for the rest of the movie (a really long film) but even if less entertainning, pretty interresting. So I give it a Yes vote. For the problem that we have, I already discussed on discord so I will summarize my pov of the situation : - For this movie, I feel like the B & C endings aren't the proper endings for this game, by the way the devs named the endings (A, B & C) and that we can't consider B & C as completing the game (C is for sure because bad ending but not all will agree for the B ending). -> This would mean that this submission could be considered as "no branch" and accepted to Moons without beeing obsoletable by a full completion TAS. - For full completion on this game, this current submission can't be considered as full completion to me because it skips some content. I so come up with 3 different solutions to define it and I begin with the ones I like the less and don't really agree anymore with : * Doing 3 runs for the 3 endings with the proper difficulty to then complete all dungeons of the game once (if available in 2 different game only do it in one of them), getting all end-dungeon items and characters. * Completing All dungeons of the game while getting their items and also characters + finishing the A ending. means a game on eazy to just get the item of the eazy-only dungeon and also items or characters only available on eazy if any and then the third solution. * Doing a run on hard for the A ending while getting all characters and end-of-dungeon items. For all solutions, sending any characters or items off to Valhalla doesn't have to be a problem, we can do as we wish, the only thing that matters is getting them at one point in the run.
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Is there any easy way to check whether some completion criterion has been satisfied? For example, for anything that's decided to be (or not to be) a part of full completion, if it's displayed somewhere in the game or acknowledged in-game in some other way, it's a more clear criterion than things you need to just know where they are, how many of them is there, and whether or not they have been completed, by comparing the movie with guides.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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As far as I know, you can't check for any of that. In fact, once you are in the final dungeon, you can't backtrack anymore.
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We can't even prove that we've completed everything we needed without going "just remember that there's X of these, now this is how they are being completed"?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
ViGadeomes
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feos wrote:
We can't even prove that we've completed everything we needed without going "just remember that there's X of these, now this is how they are being completed"?
From what I've undertood, the only thing that proves it are end-of dungeon unique items which can be necessary to send off to Valhalla and so not in your inventory anymore and nowhere to be listed to be able to get the A ending...
Samsara
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feos wrote:
Is there any easy way to check whether some completion criterion has been satisfied? For example, for anything that's decided to be (or not to be) a part of full completion, if it's displayed somewhere in the game or acknowledged in-game in some other way, it's a more clear criterion than things you need to just know where they are, how many of them is there, and whether or not they have been completed, by comparing the movie with guides.
There's no in-game acknowledgement of completion percentage. It could end up being the same as what I decided for Tomb Raider "all secrets", where I felt that only secrets were required for full completion due to them being the only stated finite collectable per level. I think my main issue with categorizing this submission is that accepting it would probably require either some sort of weird re-imagining of the rules to accept it to Vault, or a sudden uptick in voting and feedback to push it comfortably up to Moons and not have to worry about rule weirdness or obsoletion chains. This isn't a fastest completion run because of the save glitch run, which debug menus its way to this same ending. I'd hesitate to call it full completion because there's so much gameplay skipped. If we were talking, say, a run that does 17 out of 20 dungeons and skips 3 instead of this run that does 3 out of 20 dungeons and skips 17, it would be much easier to claim full completion in that case, but the nature of the game itself kinda makes it impossible to really define what full completion should be. My opinion's more or less been the same as ViGadeomes', where a "full completion" playthrough would require maximizing whatever is possible in a single playthrough. I'd even say that potential run has a high chance of making Moons, thus not having to even worry about the nature of full completion. I think what I really want to know is what would happen if that potential run were to actually exist. Would it be considered a more suitable full completion run and thus obsolete this one? If so, can we publish this run as full completion at all? If the "fuller" run doesn't obsolete this one, then how do we classify this one to begin with, since fastest completion is already taken care of? ...This is why audience feedback is so important. A few more Yes votes and a couple more positive posts and this run would have been published already, and that potential "maximum completion" run would just swiftly obsolete it on both content overlap and entertainment.
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The way I see the available options. I agree that it's too little content to call it "full", because the same metric can be applied way further, increasing the same kind of content as shown here. So there's no sense in stopping here if we want to maximize it. Ideally this would just be sent to Moons, but it looks like it'd be non-trivial to achieve due to lack of interest. At the very least it's a borderline movie because there are good votes but almost no posts supporting it in terms of entertainment. Are there any RPGs on the site that are similar in gameplay to this one? If so, do they usually get Moons ratings? Might feel like a dirty hack (or a neat workaround?), but there's an option to just push it to Moons as a blank branch, and if it ever gets definitively bad rating, obsolete it with a future full completion run. Why not? We couldn't get people to post here, so they shouldn't complain that we're solving this by making them rate instead :D As for future full completion definition, simply playing all dungeons available in hard mode feels weird. Because how would you call it? "Most dungeons"? Playing all dungeons at least makes sure it really plays them all, even if it's 2 playthroughs. As for items and chars, I'd need more details on how they work, how you know you have some of them collected right now, and what sending to Valhalla means, and what the effect is.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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feos wrote:
As for future full completion definition, simply playing all dungeons available in hard mode feels weird. Because how would you call it? "Most dungeons"? Playing all dungeons at least makes sure it really plays them all, even if it's 2 playthroughs.
My main issue with that is that it kills pacing and entertainment value by requiring another 2 full hours of cutscenes just to play a single extra dungeon. It would essentially be tacking this submission onto the end of a 4-ish hour run.
As for items and chars, I'd need more details on how they work, how you know you have some of them collected right now, and what sending to Valhalla means, and what the effect is.
Each dungeon has a couple unique items (artifacts) as completion rewards. When receiving these artifacts, you are given the choice to either keep them, or tribute them to Odin (i.e, send to Valhalla). Tributing artifacts will raise your Evaluation Rating, which basically a measure of how loyal of a valkyrie Lenneth is being. Keeping these items lowers your Evaluation Rating, since, y'know, bad valkyries are selfish, or something. If your Evaluation Rating drops to 0, you receive the worst ending: C. This can happen at any point during the game. It's the same sort of thing with characters: The job of a valkyrie is to bring dead warriors to Valhalla, so that's what you're given the option to do in each chapter of the game. Sending characters to Valhalla effectively removes them from use for most, potentially all of the game. The more of the in-game requirements characters meet when they're sent up, the more Evaluation Rating you get, and the better chance you'll have at getting them back. Not doing this will absolutely tank your Evaluation Rating. For the A ending, one specific character is required to be sent up and survive. Contrary to what I initially believed, it may be possible to keep every artifact just by sending up characters good enough to keep Evaluation above 0, and by extension these characters can be "kept" as long as they survive in Valhalla. Perhaps the RTA 100% runs are already doing that, I have yet to find the time to sit down and watch one in full. Basically, VP is super complicated, I don't know how we can adapt our current rules to what it does. It might actually just be easier to send this to Moons and see if a proper full completion run comes along in the future. Hell, I could even be the one who makes it.
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How many potential full completion requirements will be met if you just maximize your evaluation rating? Does it have a known limit too?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Samsara
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feos wrote:
How many potential full completion requirements will be met if you just maximize your evaluation rating? Does it have a known limit too?
There's no benefit or anything to maxing it, the only purpose it serves is to give you the C ending if it hits 0. It's really not much different to a normal healthbar in that regard.
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
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Maybe no benefit, but is it displayed anywhere, and is there a hard cap for it?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Samsara
She/They
Expert player, Senior Judge, Site Admin (2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
It's displayed in the menu, and I believe it's capped at 100 (which is also where it starts).
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Site Admin, Skilled player (1234)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11251
Location: RU
Ah so you can send things to Valhalla without increasing it further if it's already full?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Samsara
She/They
Expert player, Senior Judge, Site Admin (2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
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I'll skip further research/confirmation stuff and answer the unasked question directly: We are not considering evaluation rating as part of full completion under any circumstances. Like I said, it only serves a single purpose, and that's to give you the bad ending if you bottom it out at 0. "Maximizing" it does literally nothing except give you a little extra room to keep some artifacts or characters during the game itself, rather than getting them back at the end of the game. It's literally just like a healthbar. Reaches 0? Game over. Literally any other time? Just make sure it doesn't reach 0. As someone familiar with the game, my definition for "full completion" would be getting all story-available characters and completing all possible dungeons in Hard mode, in a single playthrough, while getting the A ending. Anything on top of that would just be arbitrary due to the complexity of the game itself. Requiring all dungeons is essentially doubling the length of the run by requiring a second playthrough of a game with at least 2 hours of unskippable cutscenes. Requiring the TASer to keep all artifacts/characters is impossible as it would cause a game over, plus characters are returned at the end of the game, plus sending up a character is required for the A ending anyway. I think all artifacts can be kept as long as you're keeping up on sending up good characters, but I imagine the artifacts would just be used/transmuted/sent up equipped on characters anyway.
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Site Admin, Skilled player (1234)
Joined: 4/17/2010
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Location: RU
What would be the amount of necessary dungeons for Easy, and how many of them are Easy-only?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Samsara
She/They
Expert player, Senior Judge, Site Admin (2121)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2792
Location: Northern California
That's also not a simple question to answer. There's nothing exclusive to Easy, everything available on Easy is also available in Normal (while Easy cuts out much more content, to the point where it ironically makes the game harder), and none of that content is required anyway. From what I can tell, none of these dungeons are even interesting or unique. There's more than I thought there were (4), but in general they just seem to be straightforward areas with mostly repeated enemies, even bosses that are just ascended versions of normal enemies. The only required dungeons in the game are the ones done in this run, and even then one of them is only required for the A ending, and even THEN the final dungeon in this run is exclusive to the A ending (B ending has a different end dungeon). Hell, there's a postgame dungeon with exclusive characters in it that's accessed from the main menu, which I would consider an entirely separate publishable mode as opposed to part of the game itself, so even playing through the main game a thousand times would never be considered true "full completion". The game is explicitly designed around multiple individual playthroughs, it's not designed to be "completed fully" in a single run by any stretch, so I'm steadfastly refusing to try to apply our generalized full completion rules to it. There's just no way in which they'll work for this game. My definition from my last post is the absolute maximum I would personally require for a Vaultable 100%, and frankly even that's a moot point because I seriously doubt it would even go to Vault in the first place.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | Cohost
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Site Admin, Skilled player (1234)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11251
Location: RU
Yeah I don't remember a single full completion run that was demanded to complete the game twice. So if there's a precedent for that, I haven't seen it. A possible argument for several playthroughs would be if the game tracks things you unlock that way, and then you can access them all in a single run. But this game doesn't allow it, so there are incompatible dungeons and items. I remember a similar situation in a mobile game I used to play a lot, Diamond Rush for Nokia. It has a room where you can only open one of the 2 chests, both containing purple diamonds (50 vs. 1). https://youtu.be/WtOlUaN-HSY&t=273 Since collecting the purple diamonds is a nice way to show off more of the game, one would have to allow this "all but one" clause, at least until someone finds a way to collect them all. Technically that would be "maximum diamonds". The game tracks how many you have, but you can replay any level indefinitely, getting more and more. So it doesn't make sense to play the level and open the left chest, and then play again and open the right one. Similarly, Valkyrie Profile doesn't let you play through "literally all dungeons" in one go. Since it doesn't seem to track how many you've visited overall, indeed it's better to maximize whatever we have available right away. Because otherwise, it'd be similar to Steam's 100% achievements. We don't want full completion rules to demand that "literally everything possible is maxed out". Also we don't have to call the branch "all X". If the definition is compound, just calling it 100% is much better, as long as it's what the community wants (the staff and the audience).
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.