Kagero: Deception II is the second game in Tecmo's Deception series, which are in the Home Alone genre of games, mainly revolving around placing traps to stop and/or kill invaders.
Continuing with an old theme of mine, that being "games that really only have a Japanese audience", I'm starting up a thread and compiling some information for a potential TAS. No word on whether or not I'll ever get to it myself, but maybe someone else will be inspired enough.
RTA run in 1:39:15, from 2019:
https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm35099224
Playaround(?) TAS, from 2011:
https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm16093143
Some notes:
- The (J) version seems to run a lot smoother and faster than the (U) version, but comparing the TAS and RTA runs above I'm not quite sure if this is a legit performance increase or something weird with the emulation, since the RTA run appears to run at the same speed, possibly even slower, than (U) on BizHawk/Nymashock.
- The game has 4 endings and NewGame+ functionality. Ending 2 appears to be the fastest, having one less chapter than the other three. Each ending unlocks a new trap for successive playthroughs, and getting all 4 endings unlocks one last trap, meaning an NG+ branch would definitely be viable. Each ending could also get its own branch, as they all have fairly unique requirements.
Early route theorycrafting:
- The RTA route should be used as a baseline. I haven't watched it all the way through yet, as I want to rewatch from the beginning and transcribe the route as I go (trap placement, making, Ark management, etc), but it is definitely focused on speed. However, I do think the TAS has some merit with what it does. The TAS is able to combo enemies so effectively that tens of thousands of Ark are gained off of single enemies even without a wide selection of traps. It could be faster in the long run to set up a very early high Ark combo or two and make the traps we need for the run in advance instead of following the RTA route directly. Having access to more traps early on could significantly change the strategies in the first half of the run or so, making up for the time taken to combo.
- Generally, runs should start with the name easter egg (Astarte in the US version, Yuri in the JP version) for the free 2800 Ark. This is essentially nothing - the max you can get per stage is 65535 through a good combo - but it should speed up the very early game, especially if it turns out to be faster to combo out all of the needed Ark early, as you can pick up a couple traps before Chapter 1 and extend your combo options.
More information coming whenever I have the motivation.
