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1-Up!
Game Page: http://speeddemosarchive.com/CastlevaniaLoI.html

Single Session, Completed with Pumpkin run

Verifier Responses

Quote:
CLOI results here Flip!

Audio/Visual/No Cheating are all in good order.

Castle crashing...

Basic start, as to be expected.  I'm gonna go ahead and reject, because I'm already sick of listening to his squeaking as he walks.  Had I known it was a Pumpkin run I would have stayed out of verification.  Thank God for water terrain.  I kid, I kid.  Kind of.  Not really.  Anyway.
I'd forgotten how ridiculous his whipping is.  You pretty much destroy everything in every room by mashing your strong button all day.  Lovely.
Pretty standard running through the waterfalls.  But I swear Pumpkin runs like a cross between a kid throwing a tantrum and Marvin the Martian.  J Man is disposed of.  I wonder if a one round is out of the question.
Dashing pumpkin attack!  Couple of back to back bad rooms with the spikes and then floating skulls.  Meh.  The rest is pretty smooth.  The slutubus fight is good.  She's normally a pain, but Pumpkin is so beast.
I'd like to point something out in the next area.  Pumpkin doing pumpkin dash = Screw you flea men, we finally have something faster and more annoying than you.  So there!  Parasite is exterminated.
Garden variety.  As much as Pumpkin kicks ass, he can't take to the sky.  Them gargoyles test you.  Runner gets through it all quickly, but Medusa isn't as readily bested as the other bosses are.
Alchemy.  Goes very well.  Again, good use of the pumpkin dash.  And the runner destroys the Golem.  Great level.
Things get a little more "normal" here as Leon would have the vampire killer anyway.  Doppleganger still doesn't stand a chance.  Plenty of dashing room down these halls.  Holy crap!  We actually see item use during the Dracula fight.  What a treat.  Given how careful you have to be with his tiny life bar, the Death fight was great.
Overall, I really enjoyed this.  Very creative for such an odd character, but necessary to complete the LoI page.

I definitely ACCEPT.  If for nothing else, the Peanuts comments were spectacular.


Quote from Dragondarch:
This is going to be ugly. I'll start off by saying this is Dragondarch.

tl;dr version: Solid Reject. I've beaten this time by over three minutes. And that run was garbage.

Longer version:
I'm gonna base all of this on his chosen route. My route is different.
The Bad
Bad route through Dark palace.
Since the runner isn't needing money, it's faster to go the long way to the basement. This ONLY applies if you don't need the $1,000 bag or the money from the elevator ride, AND if you're strong enough to drop the battle rooms quickly, which Pumpkin obviously is. The Elevator is 50 seconds by itself. I timed it out, and it's at least 18 seconds faster to go the long way, not including the time it takes for the Heavy Armor to break the wall for you.

Missed the one round on Joachim.
One round on Joachim is entirely doable, and not very difficult. You can use one of the infinite combos on him and pretty much destroy him before he puts up his barrier again. Picking up the Svarog Statue actually helps since the flames on the ground help keep the combo going. Granted, VG not once has MP in this run since he never Perfect Guards anything.

Bad whip combo usage.
The combo he uses is the same one he uses in his Leon run. For Leon, it's acceptable since even by endgame Leon doesn't know many of his moves in any%. For Pumpkin, it's painful to watch. There's 2 infinite combos currently known. One is a 6 hit (Triangle, triangle, square, triangle, square, square just before hitting the ground) and the other is a 2 hit (Triangle immediately followed by square, square just before you hit the ground). The reason these 2 combos are so powerful is due to how the combo system works in this game. For every hit after the first, a ~5% bonus is applied for each hit. The more hits, the higher the damage will be. The best the runner ever gets is 10 or so, with his 5 hit ground + 5 hit air. Most normal enemies and some bosses can be stunlocked like this (All 3 Elementals, both Dopplegangers, Joachim in short bursts, Succubus, and Walter). There's other useful combos as well, such as replacing the last square in the 6 hit with triangle, which causes a ground slam that does fairly good damage (not possible to infinite, but good when you know you'll need to move/dodge/block). You can find a lot of usage of the infinite combos in almost any good Boss Rush vid on YouTube. How the runner didn't know about either infinite is beyond me, since I've actually known about them for quite some number of years now (note that I didn't know about them when I made all my runs back in 2005, and all those runs of mine are garbage by my current standards). To be honest, it doesn't even look like the runner ever even played around with other combos. There's only 2 that he ever really uses, and those are "Square x3, Triangle x2, Jump, Square x5" and "Triangle x2, Rotate Left Stick + Triangle."

Didn't pick up the Heart Repair in Dark Palace. Instead, waits until Ghostly Theatre to pick one up, and has to wait until after that to be able to dupe them. Thus, he has to conserve hearts all the way through Ghostly Theatre.
There's a Heart Repair in a side room just before Joachim. He could have used that one for duping, and had no heart issues in Ghostly Theatre. Would have saved more time than it took to get it.

I'm beginning to think that he doesn't know how to, or just isn't very good at, Perfect Guarding.
I've never had a run through this game without Perfect Guarding at least once. Hell I've Perfect Guarded by complete accident on more than once occasion. The runner never once Perfect Guards, and instead takes a pretty sizable amount of damage over the course of the run. A hit by some normal enemies here and there is acceptable, getting manhandled by a number of bosses (Joachim early on, almost Succubus, Medusa). Not that he needs the MP since he doesn't have any Relics, or the Hearts during boss fights, but the recoil on it is much lower than a normal guard. In some cases it's better than dodging as well. There's also the fact that most boss attacks aren't that hard to learn the timing for.

Wow...I've had faster Succubus fights as Leon. Only by a few seconds, but considering Pumpkin is so much more powerful, that shouldn't be happening.
I'm serious. I've managed a 48 second Succy fight with Leon only using Green+Knife. This is using in game time starting from the moment the fight starts to the first point I can pause after the orb appears. Runner's time is 52 seconds real time. Succy can also be infinite combo'd. It's hard to line up, but so much faster.

Doesn't realize that Pumpkin rampage can be used offensively. Kills most weaker enemies in one hit too.
A lot of the enemies he would walk over to and whip a couple times could have been dispatched with one use of Pumpkin Rampage (Green Orb). It does 89 base damage, and kills most weaker enemies in one hit. Would have been faster in a number of rooms.

Constantly tries to re-line himself up when Rampaging down hallways. I know the auto-aim sucks thanks to the candles, but it's much better to aim for one wall, and follow it, since candles will then always be directly in front of you.
This one explains itself.

Didn't get the one round on Undead Parasite. This is painfully easy to do with Pumpkin.
6 hit infinite combo can one round it easily if the dragon isn't being a dick.

Pumpkin Rampage can one-shot those Gargoyles once they get close to the ground.
Seriously. Whipping them has a tendency to make them guard. If you stand on the ground, they'll usually fly low and swoop at you, providing ample opportunity to OHKO them.

Boss order is off.
Green, Purple is the correct starting order. Green for obvious reasons, Purple is for obtaining Jewel Crush. The runner knows this (now, after watching my stream). After that it's either Red, Blue, Yellow, or Yellow, Red, Blue. Red gives the Yellow Key, which opens the door in Blue containing the Black Bishop relic (increases STR by 50% while active). Takes maybe 20 seconds to get both the key and relic. Brisingamen is in Yellow, right next to the Curtain Time Bell (slows MP drain when a relic is active). Takes less than 10 seconds to get this one. Since it's main use is against Death (since every other boss between obtaining Black Bishop and fighting Death can be infinite combo'd, and breaking the combo to use a Diamond and restarting the combo is completely not worth it), this may not be necessary. Black Bishop, however, makes one rounding Undead Parasite even easier, makes the infinite combo-able bosses drop a little faster, and gives a nice boost to each volley against Death, since you have to dodge during that fight (use Diamonds when not attacking).

Walter fight was painful to watch.
Runner got the lucky pattern where Walter attacks first instead of teleporting. Immediately after his attack finishes, you can infinite him to death. Runner took 5 volleys to take him down, with 3 teleports, and had to sit through his ultimate attack. Also, that Purple orb use was pointless. Sub-weapons vs. Walter are only useful for adding hits to your combo tally. The one he used would have had to been used a bit later to affect his combo.

There's more nitpicky stuff I could add, but it's not worth it.

The Good
Golem fight was actually decent.
I would say this is the highlight of the run, even with getting Paralyzed once. Unfortunately, it's the ONLY highlight. You can also use the infinite combos on Golem for better overall damage, but you'll have to break them from time to time to dodge/block.

Dodging - he can do it.
He may suck at Perfect Guarding, but he seems to know how to dodge roll around attacks. Best use was on Golem, dodging the circular swings.

Crowd Control
Runner is good at the Triangle, triangle, Rotate left Stick + triangle combo. Great for room clearing.

The New
I've been playing around with routes/equipment/everything else over the last few weeks, seeing as I'm racing VG at SGDQ. I found that the Jewel Crush accessory is actually a lot better than I had previously thought. Or rather, Rubies and Diamonds are overpowered as fuck. Diamonds give you a full HP/MP/Heart refill, and Rubies hit everything in a room for ~119 damage. Rubies can be abused to clear entire rooms the moment you enter them, or the moment the enemies spawn. Diamonds are much more efficient than Heart Repairs for re-stocking Hearts, and give MP for boss fights (Black Bishop strats). Also can be used in a pinch for healing if necessary. This is the reason you do Garden second. Dark Palace should always be first since Pumpkin Rampage (Green Orb) is ~50% faster than normal walking speed.

In closing
I've beaten this run by over 3 minutes already. That alone warrants a reject. To be honest, I don't know why the runner didn't pull this submission - he was in my stream when I got that time, so he knew that this run had been obsoleted.
http://www.twitch.tv/dragondarchsda/b/314418197 - Run starts at 1:19:13.
http://www.twitch.tv/dragondarchsda/b/314423935 - 2nd part since my broadcast reset.
I died on Death a once because I was a retard. I've also learned the timing on perfect guarding Deadly Tempest since I did that run.


Quote:
No problems with the audio and video. No signs of cheating either.

As for the run quality itself, my initial instincts were to give it an accept vote. It looked solid enough, a few parts seemed slow/sloppy, but overall it went through without any major hiccups. However, as the above verifier points out, there are a number of points where the runner could stand to gain a lot of time with some minor route adjustments and more refined boss strategies. I feel like just considering a few of those points it would be acceptable, but the sum of all of them make it borderline.

For a speedrun of a game like this, I feel like it has the most worth to a casual viewer in three ways: a) general route and movement optimization, b) awesome boss quick-kills and/or strategies, c) use of glitches/technical tricks and prowess. With this run all of these things are reasonable, but not as polished as they could be given known tricks and information for this game. I feel like what it comes down to is that I didn't feel "wowed" by anything in the run. After watching the recordings posted by the above verifier (no longer available) I feel like the entertainment value of the run could increase significantly, on top of getting a better overall time. It doesn't need to be perfect by any means, but some of those optimizations can stand to do a lot to improve it both timewise and for the viewers. If nothing else, I'd definitely like to see improved boss fights. I know runs on SDA don't have to be the absolute best, but I feel like using most or all of the modern knowledge/strats for the game should be necessary.

My vote stands at a REJECT, although I strongly urge the runner to make some minor adjustments and submit again. The comments are unique and clever; keep them if possible, although some more technical content would be appreciated too.


Quote:
Video and audio were fine for me as well and no signs of cheating on my end.

I had to watch this run twice, cause I have been sitting on the fence as well. I really wanted to see this pass, but too many little errors along the way will not allow me to accept it. I think the biggest decided factor in the end was when the runner got ping ponged badly in the Medusa fight and struggled on a few of the other bosses. But as the other verifiers above me stated, a few tweaks to the route and just a cleaner boss fights and I could easily see this going up in the future.

But I do give bonus points for the Peanuts comments, was always a fan of the "Great Pumpkin"

Result: Rejected
Sum up reason: Room for improvement in both time and technique execution.


Decision: Reject

Reason: Too many errors in planning and execution.

This run will be available for a month. PM me for a link.
Thread title:  
Fucking Weeaboo
Quote:
I've beaten this run by over 3 minutes already. That alone warrants a reject. To be honest, I don't know why the runner didn't pull this submission - he was in my stream when I got that time, so he knew that this run had been obsoleted.


Because you DIED.  NUMEROUS TIMES.  SS is different then segmented, DarchVader.
.
he died numerous times and was still faster

i think you made his point for him there......
Not a walrus
Maybe the deaths reset the game timer?
Fucking Weeaboo
Make sure to hide all the kitchenware during the marathon!

Ok, I'm not THAT upset. Tongue  But somebody WILL pay during the marathon for breaking the rules of IMAMYTH Club. Smiley
Pudding%
A death just forces me to reload my last save (which in turn sticks the timer back where it was at that point). However, I still had to repeat everything I did before the final boss fights, so it still means the time I got is perfectly attainable (and realistically, beatable).

Tongue
I love YaBB 1G - SP1!
you didnt obsolete the run then
from red to blue
what is imamyth club
Fucking Weeaboo
Quote from Kryal:
what is imamyth club


It's like Fight Club, only with my rules.  Go to my twitter account and scroll down to April 6th.
from red to blue
time to obselete some runs, then :3
Is PJ
Quote from Sir VG:
Quote from Kryal:
what is imamyth club


It's like Fight Club, only with my rules.  Go to my twitter account and scroll down to April 6th.


Looks like you have to rewrite some of those rules...
Willing to teach you the impossible
VG, If you fuck up my marathon I will never let you win a hand of poker again. The marathon is when I get to be free minded and have absolutely no worries. DONT FUCK THAT UP!!!

I agree though that the run is not obsoleted but there has to be room for improvement if the time was that much lower, thus agreeing with the reject. Still looking forward to seeing this run though.
Fucking Weeaboo
Quote from Heidrage:
VG, If you fuck up my marathon I will never let you win a hand of poker again. The marathon is when I get to be free minded and have absolutely no worries. DONT FUCK THAT UP!!!


You don't need to worry about beating me in Poker.  I did a pretty good job of helping you do that as it was. Tongue