Look, buddy, if you think I'm going to be able to come up with an intentionally misspoken version of Kouryuu Densetsu Villgust Gaiden for my usual lead-in submission text joke, you're about as mistaken as I am in this long-running and unfortunately ongoing bit. Anyway, Ninja Gaiden tells the tale of
Game objectives
- Emulator used: BizHawk 2.9.1
- Aims for fastest time
- TASes a normal JRPG without any horrifying game destruction for once in my career
- she kouryuu on my densetsu til i villgust
FLASHING LIGHTS WARNING
There are flashing colors at a few points in the run, including the title screen and in several cutscenes throughout the run. If you are sensitive to flashing lights, I would recommend skipping this one until a comprehensive list of timestamps is made.
Kōryū Densetsu Villgust (甲竜伝説ヴィルガスト Kōryū Densetsu Virugasuto, "Armored Dragon Legend Villgust") is an RPG that is only available in Japan for the Super Famicom. The object of the game is to rescue your girlfriend and to return to modern Japan from a parallel medieval world. The player controls five people as they fight apes and skeletons for experience points. There are lots of weapons to buy and players can only enter certain houses that have doors visibly on them.
That wasn't my writing, that was a direct pull from the Manga Fandom wiki, and it is far funnier than anything I could have started this section with. The phrase "The player controls five people as they fight apes and skeletons for experience points" alone might be one of the funniest things I've ever read. I'm going to get that quote framed. Hang it on my wall. Nice little wooden frame, soft light blue background, fancy black text. Not sure who to attribute it to, the citation leads to a MobyGames page that doesn't exist. Maybe just Anonymous.
Anyway, that's the wrong game. Let's talk about the right one.
Kouryuu Densetsu Villgust Gaiden (甲竜伝説ヴィルガスト外伝 Kōryū Densetsu Virugasuto Gaiden, "Armored Dragon Legend Villgust Side Story") is an RPG that is only available in Japan for the Famicom. It is, as you can infer from the Gaiden, a Gaiden to Kouryuu Densetsu Villgust. Released in 1993, poorly translated in 1998, and nicely translated in 2018, the game serves up a unique action-oriented battle system mixed with, like, four women that look almost exactly the same and two guys that probably would look exactly the same if one of them wasn't quite obviously a buff armored dog. The game follows Murobo, who is quite obviously a buff armored dog, as he follows the orders of a goddess to collect, like, four women that look almost exactly the same and one guy who doesn't. Murobo enlists the help of these unique and fun characters: Ryuquir, a catgirl with a name that definitely doesn't sound like the last thing you say to a Street Fighter character before getting Shoryuken'd in the throat. Remi, who leaves the party briefly to get stoned and somehow that is not even close to a joke. Lita, a princess who I'm positive only joins the party because she's about as sick of the castle she lives in as I am. Bostov, who carries this TAS so I have no jokes about him. Finally, Sylvie, who is in the game to deliver lines, and literally just hecks off because Remi stopped being stoned and you can only have five party members at once, and that too is not even close to a joke. The player controls five people as they fight apes and skeletons for experience points.
I admit I don't know the first, second, third, fourth, or even fifth thing about Villgust as a franchise, which makes my collective lack of knowledge able to fight apes and skeletons for experience points. What I do know is that there's a couple episodes of an anime, a SNES game, and this game. The SNES game appears to be more of a straightforward RPG surrounding an entirely different group of characters, the anime just looks like a fairly standard early 90s thing, and this is a game too. Look, you don't come to Samsara submission texts for accurate information, or any information at all. You come here for cringe jokes and me constantly claiming that I don't know what I'm doing despite me being an admin at time of writing. Hopefully at time of submitting, too! You can never discount the possibility of sudden catastrophic failure!
Unlike my
previous Japan-only
RPG nightmare runs, nothing is horribly broken from a gameplay standpoint. There's no secret shops, dimension warping, reality-destroying planks of wood, or... glitches. At all. At least, I didn't find anything. The one thing I found that could have led to something huge still ended up being completely stable in the end. This is just a straightforward TAS of an obscure RPG with a fun battle system. No, that's not a bit. I promise. I wish it was, though. Maybe I'll do a bit like that for Sweet Home when I finish the improvement run in 2027.
Mechanic Explanations
Speaking of Sweet Home...
It's actually pretty funny how much these two games have in common. Both games have a step counter that determines when the next random battle occurs: Villgust's is a bit more strict, though, with a range from 8 to 63. Both games have simple luck manipulation through waiting frames: Villgust, once again, is more strict here, which I'll get to in a moment, though a good amount of manipulable things in this game run on a global timer. Both games have the player control five people as they fight apes and skeletons for experience points. Villgust is a bit more catgirl-heavy, though.
Enemy Spawns
The primary thing that Villgust is strict on in regards to manipulation, much to my chagrin while working, is what enemies appear in battles. It's not completely uncontrollable, but it is extremely limited. Enemy groups appear to be controlled by a global timer, and they're set in stone: The only way to change what enemies appear in a group is to change the group entirely by waiting upwards of a full second or two. Enemy positions in combat also appear to be set per group. You can change their patterns, but you can't change where on the battlefield they spawn in.
I wasn't able to determine how this system worked despite a lot of hemming and hawing at the ol' RAM Search. A better understanding would almost certainly lead to a better run.
Dialogue Triggers
Certain NPCs need to be talked to for future events to occur. Yes, this is an RPG, and that's standard for a lot of RPGs, but I'm pointing it out here because the game really isn't obvious about what triggers are necessary or not. The guide I found and used mostly just ended up saying you had to talk to everyone in every town to be able to trigger certain events, but that's never the case. Some NPCs that say very important things aren't even triggers, while other NPCs that say very innocuous things can be. Sometimes you need to talk to them in the right order, even if they're in the same room.
It's just weird. The NPCs I talk to should be the absolute bare minimum required for triggers, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was an extra one in there. Checking is extremely time-consuming since there's no immediate feedback on triggers and most of the time you need to advance a fair bit through the game to see whether or not the next event happens.
Text Skipping
Just hold A or B throughout most of the game, honestly. It makes text and textboxes faster. I'll often hold A or B even when it isn't necessary just to ensure that I'm not losing time.
The Battle System
Every battle is made up of 1 to 5 enemy groups displayed in a pie chart. Each living member of your party fights one group at a time in an action battle system that plays more like a platformer than an RPG. You may set the order in which your five people fight apes and skeletons for experience points, which is something that I never do in this TAS for reasons that will be very obvious to anyone who watches the first five minutes of the run. If you have less living party members than enemy groups, your order will loop to the beginning, which is something that happens in every single battle in this TAS for reasons that will be very obvious to anyone who watches the first five minutes of the run. The most crucial thing to point out is that there's a Zelda 2 downstab that, when used correctly, does double the damage of a normal physical attack. This is used as often as possible, save for situations where it doesn't save time. EXP is split between all living party members.
There are a couple time-saving things I couldn't quite figure out, unfortunately. One of them is initiative: Sometimes battles will start automatically, which loses time since it takes longer to start those battles, but I wasn't able to find a way to manipulate this at all. The other, bigger one is escaping: You can escape battles in this game, but once again I was unable to find a way to manipulate it. Much like basically everything else I TAS these days, there isn't much information about this game online, or at least not a lot in English, so I'm not sure if these are even manipulable. They could just be a stat check that I never pass because of my lower levels, or they could be on an entirely separate RNG from everything else that's manipulable. If they are manipulable, the early game of this run can be improved by a good amount.
Here's some other things I don't use in this TAS, just for much better reasons:
- Auto-battle, which is a much slower turn-based battle system. Nice to know it's there, though!
- Magic, which is a whole complicated system with depth, but it takes time to equip spells and they have absolutely no usefulness in the TAS.
- Women.
I, uh... I should explain that last one.
The Characters
I kinda lied a bit when I said nothing is horribly broken from a gameplay standpoint. It's just a different definition of broken, the "overpowered" one. The truth is that the characters are extremely not balanced well. They all perform fairly differently in combat and all have various strengths and/or weaknesses, but not all of those strengths are good, not all of the weaknesses can be worked through, and most importantly there is just straight up one character with all good strengths and no weaknesses that can't be easily worked through.
Murobo
The main character by virtue of being the one you start the game as. His strengths revolve around his strength: He's tanky as heck and hits like a wolfman-shaped truck. He's the only character in the game who doesn't get any magic, but that's fine, because magic isn't useful in the TAS. His main weakness for the TAS is his speed in battle. Given how small the battlefields are, though, it's not the biggest detriment in the world, though it does come into play as a weakness eventually.
His other weakness is, strangely enough, also his strength. More accurately, it's his stat growth. Murobo hits like a truck mainly because his base weapon is quite strong. His starting STR is actually a hilariously low 5. It's technically the lowest starting STR in the game (Sylvie and Ryuquir start with 10 and the other characters join at higher levels and naturally higher stats). You'd think he would get stronger quick, but that's not the case either.
Character stat growth is completely set per level, no way to manipulate it to be higher or lower. Murobo does end up dwarfing everyone else's STR at max level, but there's a catch: He's a late bloomer. He needs to fight quite a few apes and skeletons for experience points to reach his max potential. He gets his first big STR gain at level 12, gaining 5, with preceding levels only giving 0-2 points a piece. The turnaround from his early gains to his later gains is insane. Here's a small sample of what his base STR is at various levels:
Level 1 - 5
Level 11 - 20
Level 12 - 25
Level 14 - 34
Level 20 - 65
Level 25 - 106
Level 32 (Max) - 160
He is actually the only character with STR growth like this. Everyone else grows consistently all the way from levels 1 to 32 save for a couple that pick up exponentially in the final few levels.
Of course, this is where his speed comes into play, because while he could soak up EXP throughout the TAS and dominate the endgame more effectively than anyone else, the fact that he moves so slow in combat just makes him slower to use overall. Spoiler alert: Murobo doesn't even make it to level 12 in the TAS.
Sylvie
Sylvie's fast! That's... That's about it. I could make the argument that she's the worst character in the game, but that argument is primarily based on the fact that she leaves permanently about halfway through the game and thus isn't worth investing any time or effort into. Her biggest weakness for the TAS, and get ready to hear this three more times in a row, is her lack of strength. Murobo can tear through the early game even at low levels and base equipment, but Sylvie needs some good investment and new equipment in order to achieve the same results... And, again, any investment into her is lost permanently halfway through the game.
Ryuquir
Reread the section on Sylvie, but disregard the parts about her leaving permanently. They're functionally identical otherwise as far as the TAS is concerned.
Remi
Remi is JUST powerful enough to save roughly one second in a single battle. She's also fairly slow, leaves the party several times after joining, and suffers from a severe case of sameface, similar to the catgirls. That last one isn't bad or anything, but I needed something to point out.
Lita
I'm skipping ahead to Lita just to get her out of the way. Lita is actually pretty good! Not very fast, but has a pretty high starting strength that puts her around the same level as Murobo. The speed, like Murobo, remains her biggest weakness for the TAS, and that's because of...
Bostov
Oh hi, character with literally zero applicable weaknesses.
You know how Murobo and Lita hit really friggin' hard? So does Bostov. You know how Sylvie and Ryuquir move really fast? So does Bostov. You know how everyone has melee attacks? Probably not, I didn't exactly mention anything about them until now. Anyway, Bostov has a boomerang. His weakness is supposed to be a lower defense, but that's entirely mitigated by the fact that he's the only character with a ranged physical attack, and thus can easily stay out of harm's way while slamming down damage faster than any other character can.
Fun fact about Bostov: His ultimate weapon, the Shining Star, can pretty easily be purchased in a required town. Not only that, but you don't even have to detour for it, because you're required to buy something else from the store that sells it. Second fun fact about Bostov: In this TAS, he joins at level 6, and does the exact same damage with his starting weapon as level 8 Murobo with a weapon upgrade, and that's before the weapon upgrade he gets before he even gets into his first fight. He even gets a second free upgrade after that first fight (though it's useless in the TAS, as I'll explain later). Third fun fact: Bostov goes into the final boss at level 17. Due to Murobo's late STR growth, Bostov's base STR at level 17 is a full 8 points higher than Murobo's would be at that level. Bostov actually has the STR advantage until level 21 where Murobo finally pulls ahead by a point.
Bostov being Bostov is the reason this TAS is possible, let alone as short as it is.
All this being said, Bostov does have a couple minor annoyances that are worked around in this TAS. One is that the trajectory and range of his boomerang changes whether or not he's in the air or on the ground. It doesn't go as far in the air. Generally you want to be in the air when throwing as you can't move on the ground when it's out, though you can still jump and move in this state. You need to start on the ground and wait for a few frames before jumping in order to keep the ground range but gain back the movement. Also, there are times where Bostov is unable to pick up the boomerang and it just circles at his feet, but this is more of a casual play annoyance than a problem that the TAS needs to deal with.
Intro through First Tower
Murobo spawns into this world as a talking protagonist and starts looking for fierce warriors to join him on his quest. He talks to a man near the town exit, who tells him of a fierce catgirl warrior in a nearby town. This is pretty much the extent of my plot knowledge, so enjoy this paragraph while I transfer into pure mechanic talk from here on out.
I fight a quick battle right outside town. This serves two purposes: One, it levels Murobo up, and two, it gives me enough money to buy an Iron Axe in the next town. Since his STR gain in the early levels is so slow, the Iron Axe is basically a free two levels for him, and it's only a small detour for quite a lot of time saved in upcoming battles.
In the next town, talking to the elder is required for Sylvie to spawn, and recruiting Sylvie is required for Ryuquir to spawn in the upcoming little dungeon area. Both of these are done, with the Iron Axe picked up along the way. The forest is long enough to require a battle, so I manipulate a small one. Sylvie is, of course, knocked out immediately in order to keep Murobo fighting every group. In the early game, I'm minimizing battles as much as I can, both in terms of group size and EXP values. I want to keep Murobo's level low even though I'm funneling all of the EXP into him. Keeping his level low means I can knock him out faster later on once I switch over to Bostov as my carry.
Getting Ryuquir, and yes, I am very sick of typing out her name, opens up the path to the boss. Murobo at level 2 with the Iron Axe is able to two-shot everything in the boss battle using downstabs. The magician here could've been taken out a bit faster with a better teleport position, but I wasn't able to manipulate it quickly enough. After some classic female sameface in the following cutscene, it's time to do this game's favorite pastime: Backtracking. Another short battle's fought here before we return to the second town and talk to the elder again. This spawns the boss in the first tower.
This tower's quite long, with multiple floors requiring multiple battles. I once again aim for smaller, lower EXP battles in order to save time and minimize leveling. The boss can be triggered farther to the left to save a couple steps, but those steps need to be taken anyway and it's faster to take them now. The boss group goes down pretty easily. Each one starts with a normal attack, since they hit a few frames earlier and it doesn't change how many attacks are needed.
The Pit
Enjoy the world map for a few seconds! You'll see much more of it later, just know that it exists and that a magical goddess rabbit occasionally takes you to it. In the first town, a bunch of soldiers and Remi are getting ready to go be slaughtered in a cave. Remi and the soldier next to her must be spoken to before the soldier on the opposite side will trigger the upcoming events. You may be wondering why I enter the shop and immediately leave. Me too. This is, for some reason, another trigger. There's another NPC in the town that tells you something about the weapon shop looking for people, which itself is not a trigger, but speaking to the shop owner is despite you seemingly not getting dialogue out of it. It's almost like you can tell that this is the exact section of the game I was thinking of when I wrote the explanation of the dialogue triggers earlier.
Once in the titular (according to the GameFAQs guide based on the old bad translation) Pit, going around the left side of the gigantic pile of future corpses takes two less steps, despite it looking faster to go to the right. This of course remains true in the next room although it is much more clear that it's faster this time. I hope you like the exact same battle twice in a row, by the way. Thankfully each layer is short enough that it can be traversed through without any random battles. After the second battle and a lot of perceived casualties, Remi is picked up, and if you were expecting her portrait to look like anything but an anime girl with shoulder length hair and middle-parted bangs, then buddy you are sorely mistaken about the art direction and character design of this Video Game. Remi immediately proves her usefulness in the boss battle by smacking a zombie a few times while being knocked out so Murobo doesn't need to do a third hit when he fights it later. As a result, she receives the coveted title of third most useful character in the game. Congratulations! I hope you like backtracking, because the exit to this place doesn't spawn until you go back to town and talk to a man or two. One of them flashes you, so epilepsy warning for him. Also, I hope you like backtracking, because you do indeed need to walk all the way back through the Pit.
Bostov Time, Time for Bostov
A few dialogue checks in the next town later and we're in some other dungeon that Bostov happens to also be in. I think he's been accused of doing a Thievery. Either that or drug trafficking, because he immediately offers the party some pot. They're empty or something though. I've unfortunately committed to the "I don't know anything about the games I TAS" bit too much and I'm afraid to stop for fear that people only enjoy my submission texts for my gimmicks. Wait, that got too real. Speaking of real, Bostov officially joins the crew and from here on out absolutely no one else is useful for any reason.
Back in town, I ignore the current objective to walk an unnecessarily long path to the shop, where I buy a Silver Boomerang for Bostov. Even though it's a long detour, it makes the upcoming fight about 30 seconds faster which just barely makes up for the unnecessarily long route to get to the store. That, and I'm able to leave and re-enter the town to bring me back to where I need to be faster than retreading the path. Murobo falls victim to the dangers of pot before Bostov rushes in and smokes 'em all. The second pot is slightly healthier and slightly different than the others and thus requires two downstabs. As a reward for the outstanding effort he put into slamming a boomerang into some slime, he receives a slightly stronger Storm Boomerang. You might think a free, better weapon is useful. It isn't! It very much isn't! I had intended to sell this if I didn't have enough money to buy Bostov's best weapon later, but I didn't even need to end up doing that. The Silver Boomerang is the superior choice because of that little L1 you might've noticed when I bought it. Some weapons, not all of them, have the ability to be upgraded at special shops in certain towns. Not only is it incredibly cheap to do so, it's quite powerful. There's an upgrade shop in the next area that puts the Silver Boomerang far above the un-upgradable Storm Boomerang.
We're taken to another fun little glimpse at the world map after the battle.
I am going to punch whoever designed this upcoming castle in the face, and then I am going to punch whoever coded the dialogue triggers for this game in the face, and then I'm going to go back to the castle designer and punch them in the face again for good effect, and then I'm going to punch them in the face one more time just so I can feel something for once, but before any of that I need to make sure my punches hurt so I'm going to fight apes and skeletons for experience points
This section is where town entrances and exits start getting weirdly locational. In this castle town, both of the northern exits lead to the castle, though you can also leave through any other exit and enter the castle directly, which is occasionally faster, as it is for the first time we enter! I hope you like backtracking, by the way!
After spending way too much time walking in and out of a castle, which is something that definitely won't happen several more times, I upgrade the Silver Boomerang to the max level on the way out of town and enter the second tower. This is where the true power of Bostov finally starts to shine, at least for the two battles I fight while I'm here. Now that I'm in full control of him, I start fighting bigger battles to level him up efficiently while also collecting gold to be able to buy items I need throughout the game. This is more necessary for the levels than the gold, as the final boss is absurdly tanky and every level makes it faster due to Bostov's actually normal STR growth. Anyway, I hope you like the exact same enemy 5 times in a single battle!
One thing I'm extremely grateful for is the global timer RNG. I originally did the entire run without messing around after battles, and I was able to go back through and add in bits and pieces of entertainment in each one without affecting anything later on. If things were tougher to manipulate, y'all would be getting a slightly more boring end result. Speaking of boring, I hope you like this castle! This time we go in to talk to the king, and then I hope you like backtracking because we need to go all the way back to the first floor chapel to talk to the goddess again, and then I hope you like backtracking because we need to go all the way back to the king again, and then I hope you like Attitude Era WWE because we recruit Lita, and then I hope you dislike Remi because she hecks off for a while, and then I hope you like backtracking because we need to go all the way back out of the castle again! This entire sequence takes almost three minutes!!! ABSOLUTELY RIVETING GAMEPLAY!!!
Anyway, speaking of things that have happened before, we enter a random house in town and find that boss we just fought 5 distinct times in the same battle again. Over the comfy, soothing, pleasant tones of the town theme, he turns everyone in the town and castle to stone, including Remi who's currently not appearing in this TAS. We then fight the boss a sixth time. Princess Lita, who I just realized is the only character in the game whose name includes the honorific so I'll have to refer to her as Princess Lita from now on, immediately runs into a wizard and heckin' dies. Bostov does a few murders. Now that we've beaten this new magician boss for a sixth time, the stone spell absolutely definitely does not wear off whatsoever and we need to do something else about it. We head north out of town and oh no ._. Thankfully we only need to go halfway in and out this time.
We need to head to a different town this time and talk to a grandma. This town's in the middle of a desert! That's unique! There's also an area with a conveyor belt puzzle and, shockingly, no battles. It really feels like an area that'd be ripe with random encounters, but all we need to do is pop in and grab an item that does something else about the stone thing. Man, that was a nice little detour into a different-looking area, and we got an item that's supposed to help with the whole stoned town thing. I wonder where the game expects us to go no-
I have incredibly good news: This is the last time we go through the castle. After spending A GRAND TOTAL OF SIX MINUTES AND FIFTEEN SECONDS IN THIS CASTLE OVER THE PAST TEN MINUTES OF THIS TAS, losing Sylvie and gaining Remi back, we are finally free.
Post-Castle Depression
We're so free that I immediately make two mistakes that cost me about 30 seconds total. I stop by the store on the way out of town to pick up a few Doors of Inspiration. Escape ropes, basically. I hope you dislike backtracking, because there's going to be five less instances of it in the future! The mistake is that there should be six less instances, there's one possible usage I missed while researching. I'll let you know what it is when I get there. I'll even let you know whether or not it works, because there's somehow a possibility it doesn't!
The second mistake is that I take an extra random battle prior to the next required fight, and let me tell you the story of why you should never immediately trust anything you see online even if several sources are corroborating each other. The next required fight happens immediately upon entering the next town, and there's a gimmick to it: Right before it happens, a shady merchant forces a shady potion onto you, and you choose a party member that drinks it. This party member gets absolutely juiced the heck out for that fight, but since it's a shady merchant and a shady potion, it comes at a cost. The guide I was referring to for maps and route references states that the side effect of the potion is that it tanks all of that character's stats after the fight and makes them useless until they're cured. The guide even recommends not using it on a stronger character for that reason. The RTA run for this game seemed to back up the guide, as it uses the same strategy of Bostov only, and the subtitles specifically mentioned not wanting to use the potion on Bostov.
This sort of creates a problem for the TAS: We need everyone but Bostov knocked out as soon as possible in order to save the most time, so we want to do that in the first possible fight after everyone is healed. If this was to be the first fight, then everyone would be involved in the fight, and we'd need to use the potion on someone who will be participating. Bostov, according to this information, is completely off the table as he wouldn't be able to fight properly in the upcoming section, which to me is a run killer. Since the potion essentially maxes a character's stats for the fight, though, every other character is similarly off the table, as they wouldn't be able to be knocked out fast enough. So, in my mind, the only sensible solution was to take the extra battle on the way to knock everyone out and then use the potion on a KOed character to not have to worry about it.
You can probably tell by now that the guide wasn't accurate. The only stat that gets tanked after the fight is HP, meaning there's actually no downside to using it on Bostov since we can easily avoid getting hit. It's clear to me now that the reason the RTA didn't want to use the potion on Bostov is to make sure Bostov's able to tank a hit or two if necessary, since at the minimized HP he would die in a single hit from any enemy in the area. This means that the fastest way of handling this section would be to skip the random battle, go straight to this fight, and use the potion on Bostov. The battle takes longer since everyone needs to be knocked out, of course, and it's actually quite a bit longer because Murobo's still insanely tanky even at this low level, but it's still a lot shorter than taking the random battle like I did.
In short, always double check the things you research.
We do the time-honored tradition of Talk To Man, Go To Place once more, except this time the place we go to has a fun zombie fight directly outside of it! Inside, there's the first of two big wacky hydra-style bosses. Only the "body" is vulnerable, and it can't be downstabbed, but thankfully two boomerang throws takes out all of them. That is definitely not the same for the other hydra-style boss, but you'll see that in roughly 15-20 minutes from now. It's the final boss. I am talking about the final boss. That's it. That's the bit.
Remember when I said town things get weirdly more locational? That happens to be very true here, as we need to navigate through this next town in order to leave it from a different direction so we can navigate to another town. We make two purchases here. One is a required item for the next fight, and the other is Bostov's best weapon, the Shining Star. We promptly do not equip it. It will be some time before we actually need to. The significantly less expensive item is used immediately in the next fight, which instantly takes out the golem. Anyway,
I hope you like backtracking
This time, I do make a quick pit stop to reset the step counter and avoid a random battle on the way to yet another town. Next to that town is a trauma flashback to a few minutes ago and, you guessed it, that castle is the next place we go. Remi leaves. Don't ask me why. She gets possessed or something? Lured to the dark side? Realized there hasn't been any drama related to her since she got stoned? Who knows. Unlike certain other horrible castles, this one is quite a bit smaller! It also has quite a bit less random encounters, in that there are none, so it's mainly just navigating to a cutscene, navigating to an item, and then slightly navigating to the next fight, where Remi shows back up and decides to be an enemy. The whole party was healed again, so I hurl them all directly into oncoming traffic enemies until Bostov fights Remi, and by "fights" I mean "uses an item for the second time in a row". I also take a moment to equip the Shining Star here since I'm in the menu anyway, and there are no more item fights for the rest of the game. Bostov finishes off the fight at what is pretty close to the maximum power he achieves in the run. Anyway, here's that other mistake I mentioned earlier: You can Door of Inspiration out of here. This time, the RTA was what misled me as it also doesn't use one here, but I can sort of see how it was overlooked. The best possible place in the run to use Doors would be in the other castle, as that would save a disgusting amount of time, but because that section is designed for either masochists or people like me who watch long RPG TASes to help them sleep, you can't actually Door out of there. Since this is another castle with no encounters, it makes sense to assume that you also can't do it here.
I actually discovered this by accident: There's a one frame window right before the Remi fight where you have full control, including being able to open the menu. On a whim, not thinking it would work, I used a Door to teleport out, and was shocked to see it did in fact work. Had this led to a big skip of some sort, I likely wouldn't be discussing either of the mistakes I made, because I would have immediately gone back, bought another Door, and redid the whole run to a shorter result. Unfortunately, you do need to finish the fight and bring Remi back into the party in order to proceed in the game. If you Door out and go back to the room, the cutscene will just play out as normal and start the fight. What an incredibly well-programmed game! Genuinely!
We did all of this for a boat, by the way, so I hope you like backtracking. I mean boats.
Quite literally immediately after getting the boat, it gets ruined, and we have to navigate through a big ol' hell cave to collect parts to repair it. After collecting each part, I Door out to avoid the backtracking that, indeed, I hope you still like, though shockingly there isn't too much of it left in the run. Remi needs to be knocked out again along the way, and that won't be the last time. After collecting all three boat parts, they're combined in a very specific order and the boat is free to use. Boat Time is celebrated by going off to beat up some pirates or something. The plot really gets hazy around now, and I already didn't know what was going on anyway. The pirates give us a thing that makes the boat better or something, we go to yet another cave to collect another thing, and that thing needs to be used to enter the final area to get to the final tower to get to the final boss.
Ryuquir needs to use the thing. I don't know why it only works with her, and neither does the guide I found, but that's how it is.
I've decided to make the final tower a separate part of the guide purely for pacing reasons in my writing
I don't like this place. It's not hard or anything, most of the game isn't hard as far as the TAS is concerned, but the stairs between floors are placed just far enough away that I need to manipulate two very high rolls of the step counter in order to make it there while minimizing random battles. Also, for literally no reason, your controls in battle are completely reversed for a couple floors. I can't tell you why. It's not explained anywhere. The guide I used even thought it was a glitch in the translation patch, but nope, it's a very intentional design decision in the original game. It doesn't affect the TAS of course, but it's a fun thing to mention as we move into the final boss, a hydra-style boss with so much HP that it takes nearly two full minutes to get through. Oh, and also your party is fully healed right beforehand, so they need to be yeeted into it.
Nearly two full minutes of standing there and throwing a boomerang later, input ends and the run is finished. Hooray! The boss unfortunately prevents a lot of dynamic action: I tried on the first phase but it turned out to be a lot more of a pain than I expected it to be. Every phase will OHKO Bostov, so we need to keep him out of harm's way. Thankfully, for four out of the five phases, we are in low to no danger of being hit as we can stand just outside of the boss's hitboxes and throw boomerangs constantly. The first phase, on the other hand, has ever so slightly longer reach, which makes the stand still and throw strategy not possible while the head thing is down, so when the head thing comes down I need to step back for a bit, as the body is just a pixel or two out of the boomerang's range when throwing it safely.
Speaking of the body, it actually does less damage than the rest of the boss. Bostov can take one hit from it, and doing so even allows you to downstab the body for that sweet double damage! Once. You can do it once. It takes a lot of setup and guarantees you'll get hit, so it is absolutely not worth doing this, but it is possible!
Known Improvements
- As mentioned before, I fight an extra random battle because of inaccurate data. Removing this battle would save about 20 seconds.
- One more Door of Inspiration can be bought after the castle excursions from hell, saving 10 seconds after fighting Remi.
Possible Improvements
- Better manipulation! Figuring out how to manipulate initiative, escapes, and/or enemy groups would allow the route to be planned much more effectively by paring it down just to the bare essentials.
Special Thanks
- ikamono's RTA run was very useful to help me figure out story triggers: Part 1, Part 2
- I mean there's also that GameFAQs guide but it cost me 20 seconds due to bad information so, uh, well,
Suggested Screenshot
Frame 108531:
By the way...
There are no apes in this game to fight for experience points.
nymx: Claiming for judging.
nymx: Well, I had a hard time with this one. Mainly because I couldn't find any community resources (that I could find, due to non-english languages maybe?) or speedruns to help me see the difference. Doesn't matter, your write-up is really good and explained what I was seeing in the run. As you have stated, this is a very straight forward run that speeds through where humans cannot. The only runs that I found couldn't keep up with this. Let me BACKTRACK here. :) I mean, your run pulverizes the best effort by half the time! So Its safe to say that you have done a very good job on this.
I find it funny how you describe how each of the characters would react through-out the TAS. It made me think of F-Zero and the Fire Stringray. Once you get moving well, you have to be careful and not make any mistakes. Hmmm...sounds like I've been busy with a certain game. :) So apparently, you use your character very well...as the results didn't seem to suffer at all.
Great job
Samsara, it was my pleasure to review your submission.
Accepting...wait, I need to backtrack on that decision...nah, I'll wait for some other submission.
It appears that you go through the game with out skipping anything, so I think it would be safe to classify this run under "No Major Skips".
