My feelings on The Demon Rush
Game Page: http://speeddemosarchive.com/MarioRPG.html
Andrew 'romscout' Schroeder's run
Verifier Responses
Runner's response to the verifier above.
Verifier's final verdict
Decision: Accept
Reason: This run is an improvement over the ancient segmented run that's on the site, despite some errors. But we're still waiting for that super suit run, romscout.
Andrew 'romscout' Schroeder's run
Verifier Responses
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I have to say that this run started off amazingly well. The runner obviously knows the beginning of this game very well. Then there was some bad luck in the Sunken Ship where he got trapped by an onscreen enemy, forcing him to fight out the battle. After this mishap, it seemed that the runner lost his focus for a while, which made him prone to more mistakes (ie running into more enemies, messing up in menus). Then in Bowser's Castle, he ran into both battle rooms, and had some difficulty killing off his own party in the second one. Still, this SS run beats the current segmented run by ~14 minutes, which goes to show that the segmented run is pretty outdated.
One big improvement to this run would be to get the Super Suit by doing 100 jumps. The runner has said that he plans to go for a Super Suit, and I would definitely love to see it someday. Until then, though, this run is a worthy improvement over the segmented run and should definitely be put up on the site.
One big improvement to this run would be to get the Super Suit by doing 100 jumps. The runner has said that he plans to go for a Super Suit, and I would definitely love to see it someday. Until then, though, this run is a worthy improvement over the segmented run and should definitely be put up on the site.
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This run definitely beats the segmented run by several minutes. Though watching it creates a dilemma...do we accept it, flaws and all, and obsolete the segmented run, or let that 5 year old bad run stand?
Frankly, a lot of the things that went wrong in here were simply bad luck. 3 successive water blasts by Valentina, Petal Blast by the Pink Axem Ranger, then having Geno knocked down twice by one of the bosses near the end is rough. The only real player driven mistake is not getting the Super Suit (100 Super Jumps) which is far from an easy task to do, especially in single session.
Even though there's still a wide margin between this and the TAS (which currently stands at just over 2:31), there's some noticeable improvements to be made, and some bad luck to overcome, I'll accept this as an obsoletion of the current segmented run.
Four hour long RPGs are a pain, and some margin of error has to be given, in my opinion.
Frankly, a lot of the things that went wrong in here were simply bad luck. 3 successive water blasts by Valentina, Petal Blast by the Pink Axem Ranger, then having Geno knocked down twice by one of the bosses near the end is rough. The only real player driven mistake is not getting the Super Suit (100 Super Jumps) which is far from an easy task to do, especially in single session.
Even though there's still a wide margin between this and the TAS (which currently stands at just over 2:31), there's some noticeable improvements to be made, and some bad luck to overcome, I'll accept this as an obsoletion of the current segmented run.
Four hour long RPGs are a pain, and some margin of error has to be given, in my opinion.
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Super Mario RPG
A/V: Good
This game is rather long. I know it is. The best time I have ever beat this game is roughly 7 hours. I cant seem to get more that 60 on the super jump. So I have never got the Super Suit. I just suck like that. But this is not about me. This is about the run. I will be breaking it down in smaller segments for me to comment on just to make it easier on me. Here we go...
Start through first star:
Spotted only a few mistakes here. Not one cost much any time at all. Mostly just made it look less clean cut. Hammer Bros., Croco, and Mack fights were very well planned. Sadly no Mack skip. But that is a rather tough to pull off. Even so, this first part went rather well.
Through second star: MOVE MUSHROOM MAN, OUTA MY WAY!!!
To me this seems a lil sloppy. Again, nothing really took away from time, just mostly looked bad. Prolly over all that I have seen so far, at most 2 seconds of it. So being roughly 45 min into the run, that is still damn good. Belome went down nicely I thought. Boywer fight was really clean. Item choosing was a lil slow, but there is quit a bit to choose from and the one your looking for can get lost.
Through third star: LOL, Goomba is a baller. Doing tricks behind Bowsers back
Croco 2 went well except that Mallow went down, but cost no time at all. Punchinello fight was really nice imo.
Through fourth star:
The "Guy" duo went down nicely. The cake got its ass eaten. And Mario got his ask kicked on Boosters Hill, iono why but I could not stop laughing about this.
While watching this something came to mind. While hiding in Boosters Tower would it be faster to just fight him asap? Given the fight goes faster than running around and hiding. Just an idea that prolly has already crossed the runners mind.
Through fifth star:
There we go, when things do go as planned, ppl panic. The runner did not really panic though. It was obvious that the runner was shaken up for the moment though. Still pulled through rather well. Yaridovich, this guy is the bane of me playing this game. I REALLY HATE THIS GUY. Runner destroys him though, but with a lil indecisiveness. But all came out well in the end.
Through sixth star:
All went really well here. I really like the aggressive strats. Some really crappy luck with the rangers. but still finished ok.
Question about the rangers, why not use rock candy and another bomb? from what I saw, it would have taken out at least 3-4 of the rangers in the first round.
Through seventh star:
Again I am liking the aggressive play. I could not believe the luck with Smithy.
Overall: The game was picked apart very well. Every aspect was well planned. Nice to see the runner think on there feet too. Too bad Mario did not get the super suit, but still overall a really skillful run.
Accept
A/V: Good
This game is rather long. I know it is. The best time I have ever beat this game is roughly 7 hours. I cant seem to get more that 60 on the super jump. So I have never got the Super Suit. I just suck like that. But this is not about me. This is about the run. I will be breaking it down in smaller segments for me to comment on just to make it easier on me. Here we go...
Start through first star:
Spotted only a few mistakes here. Not one cost much any time at all. Mostly just made it look less clean cut. Hammer Bros., Croco, and Mack fights were very well planned. Sadly no Mack skip. But that is a rather tough to pull off. Even so, this first part went rather well.
Through second star: MOVE MUSHROOM MAN, OUTA MY WAY!!!
To me this seems a lil sloppy. Again, nothing really took away from time, just mostly looked bad. Prolly over all that I have seen so far, at most 2 seconds of it. So being roughly 45 min into the run, that is still damn good. Belome went down nicely I thought. Boywer fight was really clean. Item choosing was a lil slow, but there is quit a bit to choose from and the one your looking for can get lost.
Through third star: LOL, Goomba is a baller. Doing tricks behind Bowsers back
Croco 2 went well except that Mallow went down, but cost no time at all. Punchinello fight was really nice imo.
Through fourth star:
The "Guy" duo went down nicely. The cake got its ass eaten. And Mario got his ask kicked on Boosters Hill, iono why but I could not stop laughing about this.
While watching this something came to mind. While hiding in Boosters Tower would it be faster to just fight him asap? Given the fight goes faster than running around and hiding. Just an idea that prolly has already crossed the runners mind.
Through fifth star:
There we go, when things do go as planned, ppl panic. The runner did not really panic though. It was obvious that the runner was shaken up for the moment though. Still pulled through rather well. Yaridovich, this guy is the bane of me playing this game. I REALLY HATE THIS GUY. Runner destroys him though, but with a lil indecisiveness. But all came out well in the end.
Through sixth star:
All went really well here. I really like the aggressive strats. Some really crappy luck with the rangers. but still finished ok.
Question about the rangers, why not use rock candy and another bomb? from what I saw, it would have taken out at least 3-4 of the rangers in the first round.
Through seventh star:
Again I am liking the aggressive play. I could not believe the luck with Smithy.
Overall: The game was picked apart very well. Every aspect was well planned. Nice to see the runner think on there feet too. Too bad Mario did not get the super suit, but still overall a really skillful run.
Accept
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I originally wrote a loose, running commentary for most of this run during my first watch of it. It was lost accidentally and I didn't
complete it. I'm glad I didn't, because even though that commentary was pretty entertaining and comical, it didn't exhibit the depth of
verifier analysis that should be there for a run this long and complex. Due to falling ill shortly after the run became available for
verification (big thanks to rom, by the way, for submitting the run at this particular point in time - it helped stave off massive boredom
lying dizzy in bed), I was able to assess a lot of reference material for the game relevant to speedrunning: 0xwas' TAS, rakku's super suit
RTA in the nicovideo thread, Peardian's useful maps of the game at vgmaps, and various item/enemy/etc. statistics. Since first
watching the run I've even discussed various strats with rom about the current route, differences in the early game between rakku's
RTA, and more, so these comments should reflect a more informed view of all the various aspects of speedrunning Super Mario RPG
on console.
I want to address one obvious thing right now: this run does not attain the super suit, which heavily changes strategies in the latter
half of the game and sets a higher limit on the final time that can be achieved in the run. Without the Super Suit you can't deal as much
damage and you have to actually worry about dying and status ailments. Rakku's RTA, despite containing roughly similar pre-Super
Suit strategies to rom's run, is a whole half an hour faster, and he even makes some very sloppy mistakes toward the run's end. I do not
believe rom's run should be rejected solely on this basis, as getting 100 super jumps is just fucking hard, plain and simple. After 16
jumps or so, there's a 3-frame window in which you can make the next successive jump - that's roughly 84 jumps where you have only
3 frames to successfully execute them in. Failing to attain the super suit is the biggest downside of the run, but that fact shouldn't
automatically invalidate it.
In rom's comments he claims the main reason he submitted this particular run is that he feels the current run on the site does a poor job
representing the game's speed capabilities - which it does. It's segmented and attains the super suit and is still roughly 15 minutes
slower than rom's run. Though runs shouldn't be accepted solely because they improve upon an existing run, I do factor this rationale
into my decision to accept or reject.
Delving into the specifics of the run: the strategies are quite sound on the whole. Minor details regarding unnecessary text and scenes
are handily addressed, and there are few really glaring execution errors. The early game, especially, is really fine-tuned - strategies like
jumping on wigglers for frog coins and visiting the hidden area in the Forest Maze for the 3 flowers and frog coin were considered and
tossed out for other faster and more consistent strategies.
Due to limited FP and Mallow's terrible physical attacks, a lot of the battles of the first two star pieces consists of Mario jumping and
Mallow defending/using items. Thus, Mario's special stat is boosted for his first two or so level-ups. Hammer Bros. and Croco are
pretty much ideal, you're not going to get to Mushroom Kingdom overriden by Mack much faster. Now, rom chooses not to even
attempt the Mack skip in this run. Apparently Belome and Bowyer are more random and take longer if you skip Mack, but I regard this
decision as a mistake - this early into the run, you should be taking chances that you wouldn't take later on in the run. The Mack
fight goes very smoothly, though - he only casts three spells and Mario is never once injured! In Kero Sewers rom fights the first
treasure box enemy, Pandorite, for a host of reasons: 30 coins, a flower jar (big $$$ here), and a trueform pin (equipped to Mallow,
because it has better def. and m. def. than the wake up pin). This fight goes fine and Belome goes okay. He sleep sauces Mario and
then swallows Mallow, but Mario is woken up soon afterward so it's not much time lost. Again, Mario's jump is the main source of
firepower, though Belome's thunder weakness allows Mallow to do some fair damage with lightning when he's not restoring HP or FP.
Midas River features a minor route error. Throughout the first half of the run rom collects as many frog coins that aren't too out of the
way as he can in order to buy in-battle stat-uppers and the exp. booster. You can get 5 total in the waterfall segment of Midas River,
but one requires you to go inside a tunnel that eats up roughly 20 seconds. There's one frog coin he doesn't go after in the Sunken
Ship that is just as easy to get and definitely takes up less time (and another one that only takes like 2-3 seconds but is really risky to
get), but this is just really minor quibbling. After Mallow finds out he's not a tadpole rom stocks up on 4 froggiedrinks to counter
Bowyer's Static E! and for general purpose mass-healing, and also picks up a power blast! This was a recent change in the route, and I
have to say that it's a boost for both speediness and consistency. Rom still has enough frog coins for the exp. booster later and deals
significantly more damage against Bowyer than otherwise (remember, Geno doesn't have geno boost yet). It's interesting to note what
rakku does in his 3:14 RTA, though: he buys 2 sleepy bombs and an energizer, which costs 1 less frog coin in total. The two sleepy
bombs are used near the end of the run on a couple factory bosses to great effect - perhaps picking up one in addition to the power
blast might be beneficial for rom's route. The energizer was used against Bowyer but boosting only one of the two main attackers for
that battle pales in comparison to boosting both. Regardless of whatever frog coin options might be available, Bowyer was really nice
to rom in this run - sending a bolt and g'night both to Mallow, the one party member who can take both of those with no problem.
Rom's Bowyer strategy is very quick, too - he goes down in roughly 6-7 turns or so. There's a silly menu flub where he tries to find the
power blast but scrolls past it but whatever, SMRPG's in-battle menu is kinda wonky at times. On top of the great battle he even
freebies the power blast, which gets put to use soon enough.
After Bowyer (specifically when he gets the punch glove) rom stops using jump and boosts Mario's attack stat for the rest of the run.
Next up in Moleville Mines is Croco 2, who pretty much gets shat on via the power blast rom freebied during Bowyer. Additionally, he
fights the three bandits for flower tabs and coins, which help out in buying bombs at Seaside Town later. Punchinello goes smoothly
as well, though there's a bit of bad luck with most of the bob-ombs exploding. Now, the mine cart mini-game is one part that could've
benefited from more practice. There are at least a few stretches of the track where a mushroom could be used but isn't, and there are 2
mushrooms left over by the end. It's not much of an issue but it's one of those things that, if executed really well, would increase the
entertainment value of the run as well as save some time. For comparison, rakku does this over 7 seconds quicker than rom.
Booster Pass and Booster Tower are fine. He manages to get all the frog coins and the zoom shoes in the one checkerboard room
without stepping on a fireball which is cool. At this point in the run I'm tempted to reject due to the password taking up 7 more frames
than it should (he chooses an 8-letter name, and a silly one at that) but I'll let it slide this time d: Terrorize strat works wonders against
Knife + Grate Guy, though there are still a couple mishaps in the battle, like Geno being put to sleep and Mario dying.
The Booster Hill mini-game is pretty hilarious to watch, he only gets 6 flowers. I don't think this ever ends up mattering and a little
comic relief is always a welcome thing in a long run like this, so no problem here. And here comes probably the most brutal mandatory
boss in the game (when going for speed, anyway - no Toadstool yet, remember), Bundt. To mitigate some of the randomness and spell
spam rom opts to use one of the two red essences you get on Mario. For an attack scarf run, I'd say this is the right place to use it at.
I have some doubts about whether it is still the right choice for a super suit run (having both red essences for Smithy possibly opens
up a no-Toadstool guns blazing strat for him, more testing needs to be done), but it helps tremendously for consistency nonetheless.
The Bundt battle actually goes really well this time, I can't see how it could go much faster barring never getting sand stormed, which
will pretty much never happen. One ass-long boring cutscene and one pointless star-laden area later it's time for... SEASIDE TOWN
SHOPPING SPREE!! Right here in the pre-Sunken Ship bomb emporium is where all the $$$ that's been collected throughout the run so
far goes. I have to say that this run features pretty mediocre menuing here; not only are there a few spots of hesitation, he actually
leaves the shopping menu once accidentally before selling all his equip items and buying the last of his bombs. He ends up going with
7 frights/6 fire/6 ice (I believe through a menuing mistake), which later proves to be a less than optimal ratio, though I'll touch on that
when it actually matters.
The Sea is fine, and the Sunken Ship starts out well enough. One thing I was momentarily confused about was that rom boosts Geno's
special stat at his level-up to level 8, since Geno pretty much never uses offensive magic after Bowyer, but I realized later that this is
necessary for him to be able to survive a water blast from Yaridovich. 3 of the fire bombs purchased at Seaside are used in the Kalamari
battle to one-shot all the tentacles, while the main body of the squid is finished off primarily with super jumps. Funny thing in this
battle: Kalamari sand storms once and it misses all three party members. The path to Johnny marks the spot where the run starts to
derail. In the one room submerged in water with the narrow stairwell leading downward and two fish swimming around, he runs into the
fish swimming at the bottom of the stairs. After running away once he tries to jump past it but runs into it again. After running a
second time he fails again at getting past the fish and runs into it a third time - whence he resolves to just kill the fish in battle. What
makes this all even worse is that there are 4 fish in the battle and he has NO attack options that target all enemies besides his bombs,
which he can't afford to waste in a non-mandatory battle. So he has to kill each fish individually via normal attacks, and of course each
one takes two hits to die. All of these charades waste an entire minute and 20 seconds (and the game laughs at rom by having Geno
level up after this accidental battle). Now, part of this is definitely attributable to bad luck - the fish turned direction just when rom was
nearing the bottom of the stairs and it catches him at the left edge of the screen, since he was trying to circumvent the thing. I'm sure
after getting into battle the second time rom panicked and decided to pursue the reckless course of action, but the sensible thing
would've been to wait until the fish unfroze and let it swim out of the way, instead of wasting a minute killing it in battle. This is the first
big execution mistake of the run, though it's understandable why rom did what he did.
2 more of the fire bombs are used on the mandatory pre-Johnny battles (he freebies one, though unfortunately this is a rare occurrence
in this run), and then 1 fright bomb is used on Johnny to soften his defenses. To be honest I'm not sure how get tough! interacts with
the stat decreases from the fright bomb but the 150 damage is incentive enough to use one on him. Johnny is the best boss to do the
100 super jumps in a non-TAS run; pulling off 100 before he gets tough will kill him, but it's costly if you fail, since once he DOES get
tough none of your attacks will do much damage to him at all. Rom has to use super jump 4 more times before Johnny finally goes
down, but luckily he does get over 30 jumps on the second attempt of the battle, securing the attack scarf. Again, it's ridiculously hard
to get 100 super jumps and thus finish this battle quickly, but it's still one of the biggest time wasters of the run on its own.
The derailment doesn't end there, though! The Yarid fight doesn't go according to plan either, though it's not awful all things
considered. See, rom kinda banks on freebieing some of the fright bombs for this fight, since the whole strategy is geno boost
everyone and spam fright bombs. 10 frights will kill Yarid clean, since he has 1500 HP. Now, the earlier flub while buying bombs comes
into play here - he should've bought one less ice bomb and 2 more fright bombs, as he only has 6 frights going into Yarid. Combine
that with only freebieing a single fright bomb, and you've got 450 damage you need to deal in order to end the battle. After running out
of frights, he uses his last fire bomb (he doesn't freebie it), which should've been used later on the Axem Rangers. He's still got 270
damage left to go - so he does a few regular attacks and then decides to use an ice bomb (he doesn't freebie it either), which I must say
was the best decision in that situation. It's not a big loss either, since a third bomb after a rock candy + ice/fire bomb to the Axems isn't
as big a time saver as that previous ice/fire bomb. This was definitely not the best Yaridovich fight in any case.
Afterwards he picks up better weaponry and the exp. booster and heads to Land's End. He does some fancy jumping to pick up a
hidden kero cola and red essence in the first couple rooms and then gets really bad luck in the rotating flowers + bees room, but it
doesn't matter much. 4 of the 5 remaining ice bombs take out the shoguns going down the whirlpools and then he does the death abuse
with the stars. He gets in a battle stupidly before even getting the first star (comic relief! :w) but does get pretty good luck dying
quickly to the dog things. Belome 2 gets straight trashed, there's nothing to really say about the battle. Next up rom abuses the sky
troopa minigame for frog coins - 40 of them! Unforunately without the super suit he has to buy a bunch of power blasts and
crystallines for factory bosses. I must say that it's sort of ridiculous that the prize for doing the minigame is 5 frog coins - it kind of
renders all the other minigames that have frog coins as rewards pointless (after reaching this point of the game, anyway, and moreso
for normal playthroughs), since it's so easy to get below the time needed for the 5 frog coin reward. Anyway, moving on we have
Megasmilax, who doesn't die as quickly as it should have, since rom was forced to use the one ice bomb on Yarid. The phase with 3
smilaxes is tackled with normal attacks, and unfortunately rom misses a crucial timed hit with Mario on the last one, wasting 15 seconds
or so. The Megasmilax phase of the battle goes swimmingly.
After picking up the seed dropped after that last battle needed to obtain the lazy shell we head up to Nimbus Land. Right away on the
first screen after climbing the vine he runs off a vinetop and into a bird enemy, wasting a fair bit of time since all three initial attempts to
run away from the encounter fail. (On the plus side, you get to see heavy troopa ready to launch ;w). Another round of item shopping
starts off our long stay in Nimbus Land, followed by rom momentarily forgetting that you get in the palace by talking to Garro, not by
storming the entrance. d: More boring cutscenes and boring minigame things (he gets the feather that dodo drops) and then it's time
for Birdo, who gets murdered pretty damn quickly. One little quibble is that he geno boosts Bowser, but he does so little damage to
Birdo even after the boost that it was probably a slight waste of time to do so.
Prior to the upcoming Valentina fight rom makes a small equip switch - he takes the amulet off of Bowser and puts the safety ring on
him. I have to say that I'm confused by this change; the amulet gives better boosts for every stat except speed, and even the safety
ring's speed boost doesn't allow Bowser to outspeed Dodo. The only attack of Dodo's that the safety ring negates is flutter hush,
which doesn't even matter because Bowser never uses a special attack in this battle. Perhaps a better equips strategy for this battle
would be to give Geno the feather and Bowser the troopa pin - this would allow Bowser to two-turn Dodo through a 360 damage fire
bomb and then a normal attack, and Geno would still be faster than Mario in order to get a geno boost off right away. Geno would also
have more defense to help survive Valentina's onslaught, though it might not have mattered in this situation given her two consecutive
water blasts. By the way, the bad luck train continues chugging for this battle - after killing Geno with the second water blast she sends
a THIRD water blast, though luckily the first and third ones both miss Mario. Her next two turns feature solidify and drain beam, killing
a freshly pick me up'd Geno. The safety ring does help out Bowser here allowing him to survive the solidify (drain beam misses him),
but he does such inconsequential damage that it doesn't even matter. And then when Valentina only has one shot left from Mario, rom
fails the timed hit which causes an auto-miss, allowing Valentina to get a light beam off which kills Bowser and puts Mario to sleep. The
latter gets woken up soon by a normal attack from Valentina and subsequentially finished her off, but perhaps a better equips strategy
and definitely not missing that timed hit could've avoided some of the extra time wasted there. Definitely not a pretty fight in any case,
though the three water blasts in a row is pretty funny, gotta say.
Continuing on, rom gets the lazy shell (fucking hilarious cutscene btw), equips it to Mario, puts the safety ring back on Toadstool,
switches her in for Bowser, buys 3 power blasts and 5 crystallines, and then heads into Barrel Volcano. Movement in the volcano is
pretty good until the one room with the big stone golem blocking the doorway; some strange shit happens here. So Mario's jumping
up the ledges and shit and then a spiny lands right on top of an edge that Mario's in the process of jumping over, and a battle ensues.
After running away, the spiny lands so that it's partially over the ledge, and Mario lands underneath it after getting out of the
encounter. Rom tries jumping over the spiny but while the thing is in its paused, blinking state, Mario jumps into it and it actually sits
on top of his head during the jump! I didn't even know this was possible until I saw it, and rom seems to be so surprised that he just
kind of backs away from it and tries to jump over it again in a couple seconds, though of course he gets into an encounter another time.
I'll have to attribute the time lost due to all this mostly to bad luck, but yeah, it's pretty weird, and to top it off another spiny lands in the
doorway that exits the room after rom kills the golem thing blocking it. Two more encounters ensue, and he ends up having to kill the
enemies to eliminate the spiny from the map. In the next room he fails to jump past the stump sitting in the middle of the room, which is
not impossible to do, btw. So uh, ugly and slow traveling to the Czar Dragon. This fight is fine, nothing noteworthy about it.
And here we go, most glaring error of the run coming up right here. Rom first switches out Toadstool for Bowser (note: the safety ring
is now out of commission) and heads for the Axem Rangers. To start the fight off Geno uses the rock candy rom's been saving for 300
to each ranger. He then kills Green with Mario. Black does his spiel next, and then disaster strikes: Pink petal blasts and hits all three
party members. For more than a minute all three party members are either mushroomed or dead, and even though Bowser and Mario
come out of mushroom status naturally, Bowser has to revive Geno and Mario has to later revive Bowser, who dies shortly after
Mario unmushrooms. It was just a really awful oversight. After all five individual rangers go down, the machine head's initial breaker
beam kills off Bowser (and Geno's dead again at this point). Rom was lucky enough that Mario had enough defense to withstand two
breakers at full health without dying. Note that if he had bought the right number of bombs at Seaside OR if he had freebied another
fire bomb (though you can't really expect to freebie that many of them), this would not have happened, since even a normal 120 damage
fire bomb would kill Pink after a 300 damage rock candy. So a confluence of instances of poor judgment as well as some bad luck
contributed to over 1.5 minutes lost, and the severity of the mishap is obvious to anyone who might watch the run.
Following that disaster we have, oh yes, even more bad luck and mistakes. Rom, of course,
draws both battle rooms, but what are you gonna do about that in an SS besides death abuse back to the 6-door room. What
particularly sucks this time around is that the he wastes more time than he should've in the battle room starting with the 4 Terra Cottas.
See, the Terra Cottas get confused by Bowser's presence, but not all the time. 3 terras get confused this time and 1 remains normal. I
don't quite know what rom was thinking going into this encounter, since he goes no equips/Toadstool/Mallow, but he thunderbolts
with Mallow once before he's killed off by a Terrapunch from the unconfused terra. Meanwhile he has Mario and Toadstool do
untimed normal attacks on the NORMAL terra for one turn. I assume he was trying to account for either possible situation - getting
lucky by dying to terrapunches or getting unlucky by having the terras all kill each other - but it also seems that he wasn't quite sure of
how to handle this kind of situation, since he quickens up the death of the normal terra. I think he realizes the turn after Mallow dies
that he might be able to get a game over if the normal terra stays alive and keeps attacking, since he switches to untimed attacking a
confused Terra with Mario and Toadstool. Mario gets killed soon after Mallow dies, but to rom's misfortune, 2 of the confused terras
attack the normal one the next turn and the normal one dies. Toadstool has no hope of dying now and rom's forced to continue on in
the battle room for two more battles. It's really a pity that he gets so incredibly unlucky drawing the battle room and having the
confused terras kill the normal one, and on top of that handles the situation poorly here, since this battle alone actually causes more
time wasted than any other point in the run even if it's not very apparent that this is so.
And then after getting through all of the action and quiz rooms, rom fails the quick kill on Magikoopa - meaning he doesn't deal enough
damage to kill the guy before he summons bahamutt (which makes Magikoopa untargetable). This is mostly due to the lazy shell
randomizer giving rom a bad draw for Mario's second attack, since Magikoopa only has 105 HP when he summons Bahamutt. A rock
candy could've been used by Geno to prevent this, but that arguably has better use elsewhere, so it's hard to really blame rom for the
time lost here given that he doesn't get the super suit. The next room with the thwomps is another spot where it's clear he could've
practiced a bit more, since he doesn't time all his jumps correctly, gets mauled by the big thwomp, and gets hit by the second golden
bullet at the end of the walkway. Fortunately he runs away from that battle on the first attempt. Boomer battle is good, but Exor battle is
kind of unfortunate. Rom gets HORRIBLE lazy shell randomizer luck for his attack against the Left Eye - such bad luck that even a
Bowser normal attack can't bridge the damage needed to get rid of Exor's protection. So he uses his second rock candy to be able to
1-turn Exor before Geno gets slaughtered by spells.
I believe that is the last bit of rather bad luck for awhile. Smooth travel to Count Down, who goes down with no trouble thanks to
Mallow with the troopa pin thundering into the ding-a-lings' thunder weakness. 2 rock candies are used here and one is freebied, so
that's a nice plus. Movement from Count Down to Yarid 2 is very smooth, and Yarid 2 dies before he's able to split into the 4 drill bit
thingies. Cloaker & Domino are killed quickly as well - nothing goes wrong here. The other red essence is used on Mario during the
Mad Adder segment of the fight, which actually runs out to be a smart move - 5 of the 6 spells used end up affecting/targeting Mario.
We're heading into the final stretch here - the inner factory. Not much to say on the three factory guys with horns - Mallow might be
a better choice than Bowser because the hammers are weak to thunder, but whatever, it's not a huge deal. Rom can't use rakku's
strategy against Gunyolk and the Factory Chief due to lacking the super suit, but it's still relatively fast anyway.
And finally! It's time for Smithy! Pretty conventional strat here, power blast and crystalline to start off, Toadstool heals and defends
otherwise, and Mario and Geno just hammer away at Smithy. Rom does use a rock candy in this phase, which I think could've probably
been better used in the second phase. I assume he was trying to kill Smithy before the second Shyper spawned, but alas, it was not to
be. The second phase starts off with some pretty shitty luck - first Toadstool crystallines, then tankhead (yes, he transformed to
tankhead before anyone did anything) magnums Geno. Mario revives him and then tankhead immediately sends a regular bullet at
Geno, which kills him again because he lost the defense boost from crystalline. So rom has to use crystalline again after Geno is revived
again, and only Mario is doing damage to the guy for the whole tankhead segment. On top of this, the lazy shell randomizer doles out
pretty average damage amounts throughout the whole battle. The battle goes well for awhile after the tankhead fiasco - he gets two
wizardhead cycles, and then a chesthead cycle. All his remaining attack items are used on the chesthead while Mario attacks normally.
And then, after only a couple turns as chesthead, he turns into maskhead - disaster when trying to kill Smithy quickly. The scripted
shredder forces rom to use his last power blast, and only Mario can do any kind of damage to him in this form. Then back to chesthead
in a couple turns, who scarecrows the two attackers. He has Toadstool use a kero cola, which struck me as odd even when I was
watching this on the stream. Mario finally finishes the job with a jump, of all attacks. So the front and tail ends of the battle were fairly
rough, but on the whole, this was an okay Smithy battle.
Conclusion: I'm torn about this run. It beats marshmallow's run by quite a bit of time, and it would be nice to get that thing off the site,
but that's not the whole story. This run's route, for being an attack scarf run, is pretty damn solid. There are no major flaws in the
route decisions, only very minor things that would only be noticed by someone who has really studied the game with speed in mind.
And the early game features almost impeccable luck. But on the downside: it's an attack scarf run, for one. That automatically makes the run a lot slower than the theoretical human limit.
There are quite a few crucial spots of bad luck after the early game, though with a single segment run this long, it's incredibly difficult to
get a run with little to no bad luck. But particularly damning for me when appraising this run, there are a sizeable number of execution errors that add time,
many of them clearly visible to the average gamer. Some happened in tandem with bad luck like the multiple encounters with enemies
on the map, but things like targeting Axem Green before Axem Pink and botching getting killed by the Terra Cottas really detract from
the quality of the run. Though it's clear that the many months rom has spent with the game have resulted in a near-optimal route and a
deep familiarity with the game, there are still several spots throughout the run that could've used a little more practice and
experimentation. I've really enjoyed watching and analyzing this run but there are quite a few negative points to it that could have been
eliminated with some more time.
I'm going to suggest a very soft rejection of the run. I'm not sure what the desireable course of action is in this situation, given the
horribly outdated run currently on the site. If that run's obsoletion is preferred even in spite of imperfections in the run at stake, then
accept this one. This run is only a placeholder of sorts anyway, perhaps it might be best to just accept it while the runner works on
improving it more.
Note: I wrote these comments over a few days and I skipped around in some sections, so the details of my comments might not be
100% consistent. Also if this run ends up being rejected apologies for using the runner's name but I'm sure everyone who visits the site
with any sort of regularity knows who is running the game.
Finally, I hope you appreciate that I spent more than 27 seconds on these comments rom, and sorry for my decision :w
complete it. I'm glad I didn't, because even though that commentary was pretty entertaining and comical, it didn't exhibit the depth of
verifier analysis that should be there for a run this long and complex. Due to falling ill shortly after the run became available for
verification (big thanks to rom, by the way, for submitting the run at this particular point in time - it helped stave off massive boredom
lying dizzy in bed), I was able to assess a lot of reference material for the game relevant to speedrunning: 0xwas' TAS, rakku's super suit
RTA in the nicovideo thread, Peardian's useful maps of the game at vgmaps, and various item/enemy/etc. statistics. Since first
watching the run I've even discussed various strats with rom about the current route, differences in the early game between rakku's
RTA, and more, so these comments should reflect a more informed view of all the various aspects of speedrunning Super Mario RPG
on console.
I want to address one obvious thing right now: this run does not attain the super suit, which heavily changes strategies in the latter
half of the game and sets a higher limit on the final time that can be achieved in the run. Without the Super Suit you can't deal as much
damage and you have to actually worry about dying and status ailments. Rakku's RTA, despite containing roughly similar pre-Super
Suit strategies to rom's run, is a whole half an hour faster, and he even makes some very sloppy mistakes toward the run's end. I do not
believe rom's run should be rejected solely on this basis, as getting 100 super jumps is just fucking hard, plain and simple. After 16
jumps or so, there's a 3-frame window in which you can make the next successive jump - that's roughly 84 jumps where you have only
3 frames to successfully execute them in. Failing to attain the super suit is the biggest downside of the run, but that fact shouldn't
automatically invalidate it.
In rom's comments he claims the main reason he submitted this particular run is that he feels the current run on the site does a poor job
representing the game's speed capabilities - which it does. It's segmented and attains the super suit and is still roughly 15 minutes
slower than rom's run. Though runs shouldn't be accepted solely because they improve upon an existing run, I do factor this rationale
into my decision to accept or reject.
Delving into the specifics of the run: the strategies are quite sound on the whole. Minor details regarding unnecessary text and scenes
are handily addressed, and there are few really glaring execution errors. The early game, especially, is really fine-tuned - strategies like
jumping on wigglers for frog coins and visiting the hidden area in the Forest Maze for the 3 flowers and frog coin were considered and
tossed out for other faster and more consistent strategies.
Due to limited FP and Mallow's terrible physical attacks, a lot of the battles of the first two star pieces consists of Mario jumping and
Mallow defending/using items. Thus, Mario's special stat is boosted for his first two or so level-ups. Hammer Bros. and Croco are
pretty much ideal, you're not going to get to Mushroom Kingdom overriden by Mack much faster. Now, rom chooses not to even
attempt the Mack skip in this run. Apparently Belome and Bowyer are more random and take longer if you skip Mack, but I regard this
decision as a mistake - this early into the run, you should be taking chances that you wouldn't take later on in the run. The Mack
fight goes very smoothly, though - he only casts three spells and Mario is never once injured! In Kero Sewers rom fights the first
treasure box enemy, Pandorite, for a host of reasons: 30 coins, a flower jar (big $$$ here), and a trueform pin (equipped to Mallow,
because it has better def. and m. def. than the wake up pin). This fight goes fine and Belome goes okay. He sleep sauces Mario and
then swallows Mallow, but Mario is woken up soon afterward so it's not much time lost. Again, Mario's jump is the main source of
firepower, though Belome's thunder weakness allows Mallow to do some fair damage with lightning when he's not restoring HP or FP.
Midas River features a minor route error. Throughout the first half of the run rom collects as many frog coins that aren't too out of the
way as he can in order to buy in-battle stat-uppers and the exp. booster. You can get 5 total in the waterfall segment of Midas River,
but one requires you to go inside a tunnel that eats up roughly 20 seconds. There's one frog coin he doesn't go after in the Sunken
Ship that is just as easy to get and definitely takes up less time (and another one that only takes like 2-3 seconds but is really risky to
get), but this is just really minor quibbling. After Mallow finds out he's not a tadpole rom stocks up on 4 froggiedrinks to counter
Bowyer's Static E! and for general purpose mass-healing, and also picks up a power blast! This was a recent change in the route, and I
have to say that it's a boost for both speediness and consistency. Rom still has enough frog coins for the exp. booster later and deals
significantly more damage against Bowyer than otherwise (remember, Geno doesn't have geno boost yet). It's interesting to note what
rakku does in his 3:14 RTA, though: he buys 2 sleepy bombs and an energizer, which costs 1 less frog coin in total. The two sleepy
bombs are used near the end of the run on a couple factory bosses to great effect - perhaps picking up one in addition to the power
blast might be beneficial for rom's route. The energizer was used against Bowyer but boosting only one of the two main attackers for
that battle pales in comparison to boosting both. Regardless of whatever frog coin options might be available, Bowyer was really nice
to rom in this run - sending a bolt and g'night both to Mallow, the one party member who can take both of those with no problem.
Rom's Bowyer strategy is very quick, too - he goes down in roughly 6-7 turns or so. There's a silly menu flub where he tries to find the
power blast but scrolls past it but whatever, SMRPG's in-battle menu is kinda wonky at times. On top of the great battle he even
freebies the power blast, which gets put to use soon enough.
After Bowyer (specifically when he gets the punch glove) rom stops using jump and boosts Mario's attack stat for the rest of the run.
Next up in Moleville Mines is Croco 2, who pretty much gets shat on via the power blast rom freebied during Bowyer. Additionally, he
fights the three bandits for flower tabs and coins, which help out in buying bombs at Seaside Town later. Punchinello goes smoothly
as well, though there's a bit of bad luck with most of the bob-ombs exploding. Now, the mine cart mini-game is one part that could've
benefited from more practice. There are at least a few stretches of the track where a mushroom could be used but isn't, and there are 2
mushrooms left over by the end. It's not much of an issue but it's one of those things that, if executed really well, would increase the
entertainment value of the run as well as save some time. For comparison, rakku does this over 7 seconds quicker than rom.
Booster Pass and Booster Tower are fine. He manages to get all the frog coins and the zoom shoes in the one checkerboard room
without stepping on a fireball which is cool. At this point in the run I'm tempted to reject due to the password taking up 7 more frames
than it should (he chooses an 8-letter name, and a silly one at that) but I'll let it slide this time d: Terrorize strat works wonders against
Knife + Grate Guy, though there are still a couple mishaps in the battle, like Geno being put to sleep and Mario dying.
The Booster Hill mini-game is pretty hilarious to watch, he only gets 6 flowers. I don't think this ever ends up mattering and a little
comic relief is always a welcome thing in a long run like this, so no problem here. And here comes probably the most brutal mandatory
boss in the game (when going for speed, anyway - no Toadstool yet, remember), Bundt. To mitigate some of the randomness and spell
spam rom opts to use one of the two red essences you get on Mario. For an attack scarf run, I'd say this is the right place to use it at.
I have some doubts about whether it is still the right choice for a super suit run (having both red essences for Smithy possibly opens
up a no-Toadstool guns blazing strat for him, more testing needs to be done), but it helps tremendously for consistency nonetheless.
The Bundt battle actually goes really well this time, I can't see how it could go much faster barring never getting sand stormed, which
will pretty much never happen. One ass-long boring cutscene and one pointless star-laden area later it's time for... SEASIDE TOWN
SHOPPING SPREE!! Right here in the pre-Sunken Ship bomb emporium is where all the $$$ that's been collected throughout the run so
far goes. I have to say that this run features pretty mediocre menuing here; not only are there a few spots of hesitation, he actually
leaves the shopping menu once accidentally before selling all his equip items and buying the last of his bombs. He ends up going with
7 frights/6 fire/6 ice (I believe through a menuing mistake), which later proves to be a less than optimal ratio, though I'll touch on that
when it actually matters.
The Sea is fine, and the Sunken Ship starts out well enough. One thing I was momentarily confused about was that rom boosts Geno's
special stat at his level-up to level 8, since Geno pretty much never uses offensive magic after Bowyer, but I realized later that this is
necessary for him to be able to survive a water blast from Yaridovich. 3 of the fire bombs purchased at Seaside are used in the Kalamari
battle to one-shot all the tentacles, while the main body of the squid is finished off primarily with super jumps. Funny thing in this
battle: Kalamari sand storms once and it misses all three party members. The path to Johnny marks the spot where the run starts to
derail. In the one room submerged in water with the narrow stairwell leading downward and two fish swimming around, he runs into the
fish swimming at the bottom of the stairs. After running away once he tries to jump past it but runs into it again. After running a
second time he fails again at getting past the fish and runs into it a third time - whence he resolves to just kill the fish in battle. What
makes this all even worse is that there are 4 fish in the battle and he has NO attack options that target all enemies besides his bombs,
which he can't afford to waste in a non-mandatory battle. So he has to kill each fish individually via normal attacks, and of course each
one takes two hits to die. All of these charades waste an entire minute and 20 seconds (and the game laughs at rom by having Geno
level up after this accidental battle). Now, part of this is definitely attributable to bad luck - the fish turned direction just when rom was
nearing the bottom of the stairs and it catches him at the left edge of the screen, since he was trying to circumvent the thing. I'm sure
after getting into battle the second time rom panicked and decided to pursue the reckless course of action, but the sensible thing
would've been to wait until the fish unfroze and let it swim out of the way, instead of wasting a minute killing it in battle. This is the first
big execution mistake of the run, though it's understandable why rom did what he did.
2 more of the fire bombs are used on the mandatory pre-Johnny battles (he freebies one, though unfortunately this is a rare occurrence
in this run), and then 1 fright bomb is used on Johnny to soften his defenses. To be honest I'm not sure how get tough! interacts with
the stat decreases from the fright bomb but the 150 damage is incentive enough to use one on him. Johnny is the best boss to do the
100 super jumps in a non-TAS run; pulling off 100 before he gets tough will kill him, but it's costly if you fail, since once he DOES get
tough none of your attacks will do much damage to him at all. Rom has to use super jump 4 more times before Johnny finally goes
down, but luckily he does get over 30 jumps on the second attempt of the battle, securing the attack scarf. Again, it's ridiculously hard
to get 100 super jumps and thus finish this battle quickly, but it's still one of the biggest time wasters of the run on its own.
The derailment doesn't end there, though! The Yarid fight doesn't go according to plan either, though it's not awful all things
considered. See, rom kinda banks on freebieing some of the fright bombs for this fight, since the whole strategy is geno boost
everyone and spam fright bombs. 10 frights will kill Yarid clean, since he has 1500 HP. Now, the earlier flub while buying bombs comes
into play here - he should've bought one less ice bomb and 2 more fright bombs, as he only has 6 frights going into Yarid. Combine
that with only freebieing a single fright bomb, and you've got 450 damage you need to deal in order to end the battle. After running out
of frights, he uses his last fire bomb (he doesn't freebie it), which should've been used later on the Axem Rangers. He's still got 270
damage left to go - so he does a few regular attacks and then decides to use an ice bomb (he doesn't freebie it either), which I must say
was the best decision in that situation. It's not a big loss either, since a third bomb after a rock candy + ice/fire bomb to the Axems isn't
as big a time saver as that previous ice/fire bomb. This was definitely not the best Yaridovich fight in any case.
Afterwards he picks up better weaponry and the exp. booster and heads to Land's End. He does some fancy jumping to pick up a
hidden kero cola and red essence in the first couple rooms and then gets really bad luck in the rotating flowers + bees room, but it
doesn't matter much. 4 of the 5 remaining ice bombs take out the shoguns going down the whirlpools and then he does the death abuse
with the stars. He gets in a battle stupidly before even getting the first star (comic relief! :w) but does get pretty good luck dying
quickly to the dog things. Belome 2 gets straight trashed, there's nothing to really say about the battle. Next up rom abuses the sky
troopa minigame for frog coins - 40 of them! Unforunately without the super suit he has to buy a bunch of power blasts and
crystallines for factory bosses. I must say that it's sort of ridiculous that the prize for doing the minigame is 5 frog coins - it kind of
renders all the other minigames that have frog coins as rewards pointless (after reaching this point of the game, anyway, and moreso
for normal playthroughs), since it's so easy to get below the time needed for the 5 frog coin reward. Anyway, moving on we have
Megasmilax, who doesn't die as quickly as it should have, since rom was forced to use the one ice bomb on Yarid. The phase with 3
smilaxes is tackled with normal attacks, and unfortunately rom misses a crucial timed hit with Mario on the last one, wasting 15 seconds
or so. The Megasmilax phase of the battle goes swimmingly.
After picking up the seed dropped after that last battle needed to obtain the lazy shell we head up to Nimbus Land. Right away on the
first screen after climbing the vine he runs off a vinetop and into a bird enemy, wasting a fair bit of time since all three initial attempts to
run away from the encounter fail. (On the plus side, you get to see heavy troopa ready to launch ;w). Another round of item shopping
starts off our long stay in Nimbus Land, followed by rom momentarily forgetting that you get in the palace by talking to Garro, not by
storming the entrance. d: More boring cutscenes and boring minigame things (he gets the feather that dodo drops) and then it's time
for Birdo, who gets murdered pretty damn quickly. One little quibble is that he geno boosts Bowser, but he does so little damage to
Birdo even after the boost that it was probably a slight waste of time to do so.
Prior to the upcoming Valentina fight rom makes a small equip switch - he takes the amulet off of Bowser and puts the safety ring on
him. I have to say that I'm confused by this change; the amulet gives better boosts for every stat except speed, and even the safety
ring's speed boost doesn't allow Bowser to outspeed Dodo. The only attack of Dodo's that the safety ring negates is flutter hush,
which doesn't even matter because Bowser never uses a special attack in this battle. Perhaps a better equips strategy for this battle
would be to give Geno the feather and Bowser the troopa pin - this would allow Bowser to two-turn Dodo through a 360 damage fire
bomb and then a normal attack, and Geno would still be faster than Mario in order to get a geno boost off right away. Geno would also
have more defense to help survive Valentina's onslaught, though it might not have mattered in this situation given her two consecutive
water blasts. By the way, the bad luck train continues chugging for this battle - after killing Geno with the second water blast she sends
a THIRD water blast, though luckily the first and third ones both miss Mario. Her next two turns feature solidify and drain beam, killing
a freshly pick me up'd Geno. The safety ring does help out Bowser here allowing him to survive the solidify (drain beam misses him),
but he does such inconsequential damage that it doesn't even matter. And then when Valentina only has one shot left from Mario, rom
fails the timed hit which causes an auto-miss, allowing Valentina to get a light beam off which kills Bowser and puts Mario to sleep. The
latter gets woken up soon by a normal attack from Valentina and subsequentially finished her off, but perhaps a better equips strategy
and definitely not missing that timed hit could've avoided some of the extra time wasted there. Definitely not a pretty fight in any case,
though the three water blasts in a row is pretty funny, gotta say.
Continuing on, rom gets the lazy shell (fucking hilarious cutscene btw), equips it to Mario, puts the safety ring back on Toadstool,
switches her in for Bowser, buys 3 power blasts and 5 crystallines, and then heads into Barrel Volcano. Movement in the volcano is
pretty good until the one room with the big stone golem blocking the doorway; some strange shit happens here. So Mario's jumping
up the ledges and shit and then a spiny lands right on top of an edge that Mario's in the process of jumping over, and a battle ensues.
After running away, the spiny lands so that it's partially over the ledge, and Mario lands underneath it after getting out of the
encounter. Rom tries jumping over the spiny but while the thing is in its paused, blinking state, Mario jumps into it and it actually sits
on top of his head during the jump! I didn't even know this was possible until I saw it, and rom seems to be so surprised that he just
kind of backs away from it and tries to jump over it again in a couple seconds, though of course he gets into an encounter another time.
I'll have to attribute the time lost due to all this mostly to bad luck, but yeah, it's pretty weird, and to top it off another spiny lands in the
doorway that exits the room after rom kills the golem thing blocking it. Two more encounters ensue, and he ends up having to kill the
enemies to eliminate the spiny from the map. In the next room he fails to jump past the stump sitting in the middle of the room, which is
not impossible to do, btw. So uh, ugly and slow traveling to the Czar Dragon. This fight is fine, nothing noteworthy about it.
And here we go, most glaring error of the run coming up right here. Rom first switches out Toadstool for Bowser (note: the safety ring
is now out of commission) and heads for the Axem Rangers. To start the fight off Geno uses the rock candy rom's been saving for 300
to each ranger. He then kills Green with Mario. Black does his spiel next, and then disaster strikes: Pink petal blasts and hits all three
party members. For more than a minute all three party members are either mushroomed or dead, and even though Bowser and Mario
come out of mushroom status naturally, Bowser has to revive Geno and Mario has to later revive Bowser, who dies shortly after
Mario unmushrooms. It was just a really awful oversight. After all five individual rangers go down, the machine head's initial breaker
beam kills off Bowser (and Geno's dead again at this point). Rom was lucky enough that Mario had enough defense to withstand two
breakers at full health without dying. Note that if he had bought the right number of bombs at Seaside OR if he had freebied another
fire bomb (though you can't really expect to freebie that many of them), this would not have happened, since even a normal 120 damage
fire bomb would kill Pink after a 300 damage rock candy. So a confluence of instances of poor judgment as well as some bad luck
contributed to over 1.5 minutes lost, and the severity of the mishap is obvious to anyone who might watch the run.
Following that disaster we have, oh yes, even more bad luck and mistakes. Rom, of course,
draws both battle rooms, but what are you gonna do about that in an SS besides death abuse back to the 6-door room. What
particularly sucks this time around is that the he wastes more time than he should've in the battle room starting with the 4 Terra Cottas.
See, the Terra Cottas get confused by Bowser's presence, but not all the time. 3 terras get confused this time and 1 remains normal. I
don't quite know what rom was thinking going into this encounter, since he goes no equips/Toadstool/Mallow, but he thunderbolts
with Mallow once before he's killed off by a Terrapunch from the unconfused terra. Meanwhile he has Mario and Toadstool do
untimed normal attacks on the NORMAL terra for one turn. I assume he was trying to account for either possible situation - getting
lucky by dying to terrapunches or getting unlucky by having the terras all kill each other - but it also seems that he wasn't quite sure of
how to handle this kind of situation, since he quickens up the death of the normal terra. I think he realizes the turn after Mallow dies
that he might be able to get a game over if the normal terra stays alive and keeps attacking, since he switches to untimed attacking a
confused Terra with Mario and Toadstool. Mario gets killed soon after Mallow dies, but to rom's misfortune, 2 of the confused terras
attack the normal one the next turn and the normal one dies. Toadstool has no hope of dying now and rom's forced to continue on in
the battle room for two more battles. It's really a pity that he gets so incredibly unlucky drawing the battle room and having the
confused terras kill the normal one, and on top of that handles the situation poorly here, since this battle alone actually causes more
time wasted than any other point in the run even if it's not very apparent that this is so.
And then after getting through all of the action and quiz rooms, rom fails the quick kill on Magikoopa - meaning he doesn't deal enough
damage to kill the guy before he summons bahamutt (which makes Magikoopa untargetable). This is mostly due to the lazy shell
randomizer giving rom a bad draw for Mario's second attack, since Magikoopa only has 105 HP when he summons Bahamutt. A rock
candy could've been used by Geno to prevent this, but that arguably has better use elsewhere, so it's hard to really blame rom for the
time lost here given that he doesn't get the super suit. The next room with the thwomps is another spot where it's clear he could've
practiced a bit more, since he doesn't time all his jumps correctly, gets mauled by the big thwomp, and gets hit by the second golden
bullet at the end of the walkway. Fortunately he runs away from that battle on the first attempt. Boomer battle is good, but Exor battle is
kind of unfortunate. Rom gets HORRIBLE lazy shell randomizer luck for his attack against the Left Eye - such bad luck that even a
Bowser normal attack can't bridge the damage needed to get rid of Exor's protection. So he uses his second rock candy to be able to
1-turn Exor before Geno gets slaughtered by spells.
I believe that is the last bit of rather bad luck for awhile. Smooth travel to Count Down, who goes down with no trouble thanks to
Mallow with the troopa pin thundering into the ding-a-lings' thunder weakness. 2 rock candies are used here and one is freebied, so
that's a nice plus. Movement from Count Down to Yarid 2 is very smooth, and Yarid 2 dies before he's able to split into the 4 drill bit
thingies. Cloaker & Domino are killed quickly as well - nothing goes wrong here. The other red essence is used on Mario during the
Mad Adder segment of the fight, which actually runs out to be a smart move - 5 of the 6 spells used end up affecting/targeting Mario.
We're heading into the final stretch here - the inner factory. Not much to say on the three factory guys with horns - Mallow might be
a better choice than Bowser because the hammers are weak to thunder, but whatever, it's not a huge deal. Rom can't use rakku's
strategy against Gunyolk and the Factory Chief due to lacking the super suit, but it's still relatively fast anyway.
And finally! It's time for Smithy! Pretty conventional strat here, power blast and crystalline to start off, Toadstool heals and defends
otherwise, and Mario and Geno just hammer away at Smithy. Rom does use a rock candy in this phase, which I think could've probably
been better used in the second phase. I assume he was trying to kill Smithy before the second Shyper spawned, but alas, it was not to
be. The second phase starts off with some pretty shitty luck - first Toadstool crystallines, then tankhead (yes, he transformed to
tankhead before anyone did anything) magnums Geno. Mario revives him and then tankhead immediately sends a regular bullet at
Geno, which kills him again because he lost the defense boost from crystalline. So rom has to use crystalline again after Geno is revived
again, and only Mario is doing damage to the guy for the whole tankhead segment. On top of this, the lazy shell randomizer doles out
pretty average damage amounts throughout the whole battle. The battle goes well for awhile after the tankhead fiasco - he gets two
wizardhead cycles, and then a chesthead cycle. All his remaining attack items are used on the chesthead while Mario attacks normally.
And then, after only a couple turns as chesthead, he turns into maskhead - disaster when trying to kill Smithy quickly. The scripted
shredder forces rom to use his last power blast, and only Mario can do any kind of damage to him in this form. Then back to chesthead
in a couple turns, who scarecrows the two attackers. He has Toadstool use a kero cola, which struck me as odd even when I was
watching this on the stream. Mario finally finishes the job with a jump, of all attacks. So the front and tail ends of the battle were fairly
rough, but on the whole, this was an okay Smithy battle.
Conclusion: I'm torn about this run. It beats marshmallow's run by quite a bit of time, and it would be nice to get that thing off the site,
but that's not the whole story. This run's route, for being an attack scarf run, is pretty damn solid. There are no major flaws in the
route decisions, only very minor things that would only be noticed by someone who has really studied the game with speed in mind.
And the early game features almost impeccable luck. But on the downside: it's an attack scarf run, for one. That automatically makes the run a lot slower than the theoretical human limit.
There are quite a few crucial spots of bad luck after the early game, though with a single segment run this long, it's incredibly difficult to
get a run with little to no bad luck. But particularly damning for me when appraising this run, there are a sizeable number of execution errors that add time,
many of them clearly visible to the average gamer. Some happened in tandem with bad luck like the multiple encounters with enemies
on the map, but things like targeting Axem Green before Axem Pink and botching getting killed by the Terra Cottas really detract from
the quality of the run. Though it's clear that the many months rom has spent with the game have resulted in a near-optimal route and a
deep familiarity with the game, there are still several spots throughout the run that could've used a little more practice and
experimentation. I've really enjoyed watching and analyzing this run but there are quite a few negative points to it that could have been
eliminated with some more time.
I'm going to suggest a very soft rejection of the run. I'm not sure what the desireable course of action is in this situation, given the
horribly outdated run currently on the site. If that run's obsoletion is preferred even in spite of imperfections in the run at stake, then
accept this one. This run is only a placeholder of sorts anyway, perhaps it might be best to just accept it while the runner works on
improving it more.
Note: I wrote these comments over a few days and I skipped around in some sections, so the details of my comments might not be
100% consistent. Also if this run ends up being rejected apologies for using the runner's name but I'm sure everyone who visits the site
with any sort of regularity knows who is running the game.
Finally, I hope you appreciate that I spent more than 27 seconds on these comments rom, and sorry for my decision :w
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Thankfully, there are a lot of cinematics to skip through, thereby cutting the actual length of this video down to a manageable SS. Also, a lot of this game is really straightforward "dungeons" and fights, so a lot of it isn't worth mentioning.
That being said, I'll only comment on the 15 minute intervals of the run!
0-15: Bowser, Hammer Bros, and Croco fights were great. Runner is over-utilizing the Jump power, since it gets stronger with each use. Green coin collection is starting early, probably to buy an EXP booster later?
15-30: The big issue here is that you can skip the WHOLE Mac fight in Mushroom Castle. If you hop around the periphery well enough, you can get to the star without any interactions. I don't know if the runner knew this, but its only ~17 mins in and it saves a few minutes of text and fighting. Granted, 2-3 minutes in a 3 hour run isn't a huge thing, but its still a big mistake to be doing. Belome fight was lucky (taking Mallow and not Mario) and unlucky (sleeping Mario and not getting another freebie Honey Syrup). Waterfall and River sections were a good time/coin ratio.
30-45: Uhh, you sold a Flower Jar? Forest section was good in avoiding the bees. The Bowyer fight was fine (getting Y locked is unlucky, but maybe not avoidable?), but I do have to question whether or not Geno should just stick with his normal attack. Geno Beam takes twice as long to do 50% more damage, so its not really efficient. On the other hand, it also gives Bowyer an extra turn or two, assuming Mario's next hit wouldn't make up for one turn. It's something for the runner to address, I guess.
45-60: Moleville is a pretty meh section of the game. I don't get why the runner is killing the bandits for Flower Tabs if they aren't going to be used. Croc2 and Punchinello are just melee fighting. Minecart ride was fast, though a little conservative with some of the cornering.
1h-1:15: I love Booster's Tower. I wonder if the Amulet is really worth playing the whole curtain game: I'm pretty sure you can just lose it off the bat and speed everything up. Booster Hill was really sloppy, even with how predictable it all is. I mean, if the runner doesn't care about FP, then its no big deal, but there is no reason to not get more FP without losing time at all.
1:15-1:30: Wedding rehearsal was fine. Cake fight is another straight shot, so long as it doesn't use Sand Storm too much. Smart move not using timed attacks on the top half, since it is effected by hit count, not damage.
1:30-1:45: Star Hill is super boring, but its also over way quick, so no complaints about that. Selling Flower Tabs for bombs seems a bit silly, since you can just manipulate freebies on the bombs with enough practice. Johnny fight was a slow slugfest, but that's the price of keeping the minions around.
1:45-2h: Yardovich is the second hardest fight in the whole game, and this run is no exception. Lots of time is spent on using Group Hug in order to counteract his attacks, which essentially reduces your party to two attackers instead of three. Luckily, there wasn't much use of Water Blast, so the fight was relatively quick. I'm not a fan of the leveling abuse at the end of this second hour, but it works...
2h-2:15: Belome's Temple is really short. The fight also went pretty well, though it would have been faster if he had eaten Mario instead of Bowser. Lots of milking the troopa minigame for frog coins. Hope its worth it!
2:15-2:30: Nimbus Castle is super boring. Yeah.
2:30-2:45: Dodo and Floppy Boobs fights. It seems like the Dodo fight went way faster than it should have. Good thing Mario was able to box Valentina's chest into oblivion. Buying those power blasts from the tadpoles seems like a big waste of time when you factor in how long it took to earn all of those frog coins. The two dragon fights were handled well, though I think the runner could skip buffing Peach.
2:45-3h: AXEM RANGERS. Cool. This is probably the hardest fight of the game if you can't handle the mob quickly. Petal Blast was super unlucky, since no one is prepared for it. I get that Geno Boost is great for buffing, but it's not really necessary once you've taken out the majority of your opposition. Geno died right after Red was taken out, so it's a waste of a turn (and more, when you factor in the other deaths in the other fights and whatnot). Luckily, Mario is too tuff with the Lazy Shell, so the second part of the fight is easy.
3h-3:15: JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE KEEP. First door has one little hiccup, but its totally worth it with how well the first part of the room went. No mistakes in the second rooms, but there is that pesky unskippable countdown that chews up time. I think door 4 was a bad choice, since all of the fights are mandatory and time wasting, but that's not really a foreseeable choice. And what was the point of the death? And what was the point of the slow beginning to room 3? And why is Mario not equipped? And why are we dead again? Coin game was quick, cannonball solitaire was a little sloppy. Mistake in room 6 as well. Very nice Exor fight, but this portion of the run was pretty terrible.
3:15-end: The Smithworks is pretty straightforward. Everything is pretty straightforward, although I don't get why Mallow was ever used. So yeah...
Long story short, this was pretty good for an SS. Unfortunately, there are a lot of parts of this run that are too huge of a detriment to mess up. Not skipping the Mac fight (HUGE), too much buffing in fights, too much frog coin grinding, power leveling when every fight is pretty under control, not manipulating freebie Rock Candies, that big chunk in Bowser's Keep where the runner couldn't even die quickly (HUGER), etc.
I really hate to turn back a ~3:45 run for 5-15 minutes of mistakes, but that's what I'm doing. I know a lot of other judges will be more lax about it, but that's the price you pay for going SS. I'm rejecting this, but I hope that the runner redoes this with more control over those big hiccups. Sorry.
That being said, I'll only comment on the 15 minute intervals of the run!
0-15: Bowser, Hammer Bros, and Croco fights were great. Runner is over-utilizing the Jump power, since it gets stronger with each use. Green coin collection is starting early, probably to buy an EXP booster later?
15-30: The big issue here is that you can skip the WHOLE Mac fight in Mushroom Castle. If you hop around the periphery well enough, you can get to the star without any interactions. I don't know if the runner knew this, but its only ~17 mins in and it saves a few minutes of text and fighting. Granted, 2-3 minutes in a 3 hour run isn't a huge thing, but its still a big mistake to be doing. Belome fight was lucky (taking Mallow and not Mario) and unlucky (sleeping Mario and not getting another freebie Honey Syrup). Waterfall and River sections were a good time/coin ratio.
30-45: Uhh, you sold a Flower Jar? Forest section was good in avoiding the bees. The Bowyer fight was fine (getting Y locked is unlucky, but maybe not avoidable?), but I do have to question whether or not Geno should just stick with his normal attack. Geno Beam takes twice as long to do 50% more damage, so its not really efficient. On the other hand, it also gives Bowyer an extra turn or two, assuming Mario's next hit wouldn't make up for one turn. It's something for the runner to address, I guess.
45-60: Moleville is a pretty meh section of the game. I don't get why the runner is killing the bandits for Flower Tabs if they aren't going to be used. Croc2 and Punchinello are just melee fighting. Minecart ride was fast, though a little conservative with some of the cornering.
1h-1:15: I love Booster's Tower. I wonder if the Amulet is really worth playing the whole curtain game: I'm pretty sure you can just lose it off the bat and speed everything up. Booster Hill was really sloppy, even with how predictable it all is. I mean, if the runner doesn't care about FP, then its no big deal, but there is no reason to not get more FP without losing time at all.
1:15-1:30: Wedding rehearsal was fine. Cake fight is another straight shot, so long as it doesn't use Sand Storm too much. Smart move not using timed attacks on the top half, since it is effected by hit count, not damage.
1:30-1:45: Star Hill is super boring, but its also over way quick, so no complaints about that. Selling Flower Tabs for bombs seems a bit silly, since you can just manipulate freebies on the bombs with enough practice. Johnny fight was a slow slugfest, but that's the price of keeping the minions around.
1:45-2h: Yardovich is the second hardest fight in the whole game, and this run is no exception. Lots of time is spent on using Group Hug in order to counteract his attacks, which essentially reduces your party to two attackers instead of three. Luckily, there wasn't much use of Water Blast, so the fight was relatively quick. I'm not a fan of the leveling abuse at the end of this second hour, but it works...
2h-2:15: Belome's Temple is really short. The fight also went pretty well, though it would have been faster if he had eaten Mario instead of Bowser. Lots of milking the troopa minigame for frog coins. Hope its worth it!
2:15-2:30: Nimbus Castle is super boring. Yeah.
2:30-2:45: Dodo and Floppy Boobs fights. It seems like the Dodo fight went way faster than it should have. Good thing Mario was able to box Valentina's chest into oblivion. Buying those power blasts from the tadpoles seems like a big waste of time when you factor in how long it took to earn all of those frog coins. The two dragon fights were handled well, though I think the runner could skip buffing Peach.
2:45-3h: AXEM RANGERS. Cool. This is probably the hardest fight of the game if you can't handle the mob quickly. Petal Blast was super unlucky, since no one is prepared for it. I get that Geno Boost is great for buffing, but it's not really necessary once you've taken out the majority of your opposition. Geno died right after Red was taken out, so it's a waste of a turn (and more, when you factor in the other deaths in the other fights and whatnot). Luckily, Mario is too tuff with the Lazy Shell, so the second part of the fight is easy.
3h-3:15: JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE KEEP. First door has one little hiccup, but its totally worth it with how well the first part of the room went. No mistakes in the second rooms, but there is that pesky unskippable countdown that chews up time. I think door 4 was a bad choice, since all of the fights are mandatory and time wasting, but that's not really a foreseeable choice. And what was the point of the death? And what was the point of the slow beginning to room 3? And why is Mario not equipped? And why are we dead again? Coin game was quick, cannonball solitaire was a little sloppy. Mistake in room 6 as well. Very nice Exor fight, but this portion of the run was pretty terrible.
3:15-end: The Smithworks is pretty straightforward. Everything is pretty straightforward, although I don't get why Mallow was ever used. So yeah...
Long story short, this was pretty good for an SS. Unfortunately, there are a lot of parts of this run that are too huge of a detriment to mess up. Not skipping the Mac fight (HUGE), too much buffing in fights, too much frog coin grinding, power leveling when every fight is pretty under control, not manipulating freebie Rock Candies, that big chunk in Bowser's Keep where the runner couldn't even die quickly (HUGER), etc.
I really hate to turn back a ~3:45 run for 5-15 minutes of mistakes, but that's what I'm doing. I know a lot of other judges will be more lax about it, but that's the price you pay for going SS. I'm rejecting this, but I hope that the runner redoes this with more control over those big hiccups. Sorry.
Runner's response to the verifier above.
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I'm honestly not sure how someone who not only didn't watch any of my SMRPG runs on my stream but also has no clue about speed running the game in general managed to become a verifier when so many people were wanting to be one. Weird.
Anyway, I'll just respond to the points by using the same time spots that he/she did:
0-15: The jump power goes up for each use, and the frog coin is obtained for both a power blast and the exp booster later.
15-30: I deliberately don't attempt the Mack skip, instead choosing to skip the first part of the Mack battle cutscene. The reason is for consistency; if I don't get the extra 9-10 jumps for my jump power from Mack, the next 2 boss battles are RIDICULOUSLY luck-based. With the extra jumps, you can manipulate Belome to skip his sleep sauce phase and thus die faster (although I mistimed a jump and he ended up getting 1 sleep sauce off anyway) and it leads to less turns to withstand against Bowyer, who can completely ruin a battle by using Bolt on Mario or Gnight on anyone but Mallow. Without the jumps, I can get sleep sauced to hell and back, and make the Bowyer battle last literally 3 times as long as it did in this run, which would completely negate the time saved from the Mack skip.
If you want to see a run of mine using the Mack skip, watch my 3:51:xx run that's linked in the SMRPG thread's opening post. I pull off the skip in that run but end up being slower than this run in even beating Bundt, let alone events after that. You're not very familiar with SMRPG if you think Belome eating Mallow is luck-based; it's scripted to happen, which is why I have Mallow use honey syrup before he is eaten.
Freebies can also be manipulated btw... but whatever, explaining it would be pointless, I'll just address everything else you said.
30-45: Bowyer's actions on locking the buttons are 100% manipulated in this battle. It's not luck-based at all. Having him switch Y + A is optimal for a SS run. When I have Geno do Geno Beam, it's because he can't do his normal attack. :\ The A button's locked, ace.
The flower jar is sold for money. Flower items are more valuable as money in this run than as FP. Flower tab as worth 100 coins, flower jars are worth 300, and flower boxes are worth 500. Ultimately, these come into play for the bombs I buy in Seaside Town. Perhaps if you are unsure of something, you should watch the whole run before writing up your verification notes.
45-60: The bandits are killed for the Flower Tabs for money, once again. The money for the bombs and the exp from the bandits are both key points in making the middle part of the game go much much faster. And yes, it's been time tested whether skipping these guys is worth it or not. It's not.
The minecart time was 2:08. I may have made a couple mistakes in there, but 2:00 is about optimal (TAS is like 1:54 or 1:55 but whatev). Anything under 2:10 is very good for this run.
1h-1:15: First of all, you'd have to fail the curtain game 3 times to trigger the next event (there goes your time right there!). Secondly, you'd have to fight Booster if you fail the game 3 times. Third, you'd be sacrificing the Amulet (which has great stats for this point in the run and even is used at the end of the run). It'd be pretty stupid to fail the game on purpose.
The FP I gain in the Booster Hill section doesn't really matter. I get anywhere from 8-12 usually, but had an off day and got 6 this time. The amount I get here doesn't affect the run at all. Ultimately, the FP hardly comes into play at all for most of the run, and only a bit at the end. I got an extra flower item in Nimbus Castle because I only got 6 on Booster Hill, and it worked out.
1:15-1:30: no issues, it seems? wow
1:30-1:45: Ok, looks like I need to get into the freebies after all.
Freebies have a base chance of happening with every item; some items have a higher chance than others. If you have perfect timing, you can increase these odds significantly, but can never 100% guarantee a freebie. I got pretty jipped on the freebies with Fright Bombs in this run, and usually I get a lot more.
At any rate, if you think I should have bought less bombs and instead chosen to try and freebie a single Fire Bomb 6 times for all the uses I'd have for it in a run, you're stupid. Plain and simple, just stupid. You say you can do this with practice? How about some vids of YOU doing this consistently? The bombs are all very necessary and lead to both better times and better consistency with boss battles, as luck is almost completely removed.
The Johnny fight was slow because it's always going to be slow if you don't just bomb the hell out of him like all the other bosses in this part of the run. The reason I can't do that is because I need to do the Super Jumps for the Attack Scarf (or the Super Suit if I can pull off 100).
1:45-2h: Yaridovich is actually one of the easiest battles in the run, not the hardest. :\ The whole battle pretty much goes according to a script; yes I have to heal, but that's because I'm underleveled. The level abuse is pretty necessary for both survivability of party members and being able to do enough damage to take out bosses fast (the 2 actually go hand in hand, because less damage = more turns, less survival).
2h-2:15: Belome's choosing the clone is luck based, nothing I can do about it. I'm not restarting a run 2 hours in due to luck. The troopa minigame is milked for necessary stat boosting items for late battles. If I had the Super Suit, I'd be able to consider not getting these, but since I don't, it's a necessity.
2:15-2:30: agreed
2:30-2:45: If I don't buy the stat boosters, the factory's boss battles consist of 2 party members dropping every 2 turns (Geno would die first every time and there goes using Geno Boost at all, hence why Crystallines are key), and I spend more time healing than attacking. With most of my frog coin farming being <10 second minigame + small cutscene attached, we're talking like 15 seconds per pop there, which means a little over 2 minutes. That's the time that can be lost on any one boss fight in the Factory if I'm unlucky... yea. Need to combat the luck factor as much as possible.
If I didn't buff Peach in the Czar Dragon battle, I'd have to pray the boss doesn't use certain moves on her, and we know how that goes...
2:45-3h: You understand Geno Boost does a 1.5x boost to attack and defense, right? It's huge. It's necessary. Mario would have gotten one-shot by a breaker beam if I didn't do it.
3h-3:15: If I took that last risk on Donkey Kong, there are like 99.98% odds I would have gotten hit and had to redo the room. The death abuse in the battle rooms is so I go back to the entrance with all my doors previously cleared still there, and I have the chance to go finish a faster room. Death abuse + going to faster rooms is still much faster than doing all 3 sections of a battle room (see the 4:37 classic games done quick marathon run to see what I mean).
The start of the 2nd battle room and not resetting the party was admittedly a mistake, but I figured I'd risk trying to have the party die off there since I was in a bad position anyway. That was a big time waster, and mostly my fault (although the bad luck with getting both battle rooms was definitely not my fault).
This portion of the run is really only TERRIBLE to you because you're not familiar with speed running SMRPG. The bad parts were the start of the 2nd battle room and not nailing the quick kill on the Magikoopa, but that was mostly a bad damage randomizer from the Lazy Shell (Lazy Shell damage is not set, even with great timing).
3:15-end: Mallow is used because the clock boss is weak to electricity. This fight would last forever with pretty much any other party (see: marathon run again)
In response to your conclusion, not using the level up death abuse in Land's End would make every boss fight after that laughably slow. Back before I started using this method, the Valentina fight had about a 10% chance of even being cleared because one of her spells could one-shot my whole party. Many other boss battles, especially in the factory, were just an epic struggle to survive rather than just piling up damage on the boss.
The frog coin + stat boosters fall into the same deal, bringing consistency to stand up against luck rather than letting the whole last section of the game be entirely luck-based. Whenever something is completely luck-based, you can pretty much count on losing time. This game is no exception. And for the last time, you can't 100% guarantee a freebie, even with great timing! The taking a long time to die in Bowser's Keep was half my fault, so I'll still give you that.
Most of the points brought up in your notes demonstrate not only having no understanding of playing SMRPG for speed, but also not being very familiar with the game in general. I hope if you choose to verify a run (of any game) again, you make sure you become refamiliar with it and learn something about its speed running scene before haphazardly writing out verifier comments as you are watching the run for the first time.
Anyway, I'll just respond to the points by using the same time spots that he/she did:
0-15: The jump power goes up for each use, and the frog coin is obtained for both a power blast and the exp booster later.
15-30: I deliberately don't attempt the Mack skip, instead choosing to skip the first part of the Mack battle cutscene. The reason is for consistency; if I don't get the extra 9-10 jumps for my jump power from Mack, the next 2 boss battles are RIDICULOUSLY luck-based. With the extra jumps, you can manipulate Belome to skip his sleep sauce phase and thus die faster (although I mistimed a jump and he ended up getting 1 sleep sauce off anyway) and it leads to less turns to withstand against Bowyer, who can completely ruin a battle by using Bolt on Mario or Gnight on anyone but Mallow. Without the jumps, I can get sleep sauced to hell and back, and make the Bowyer battle last literally 3 times as long as it did in this run, which would completely negate the time saved from the Mack skip.
If you want to see a run of mine using the Mack skip, watch my 3:51:xx run that's linked in the SMRPG thread's opening post. I pull off the skip in that run but end up being slower than this run in even beating Bundt, let alone events after that. You're not very familiar with SMRPG if you think Belome eating Mallow is luck-based; it's scripted to happen, which is why I have Mallow use honey syrup before he is eaten.
Freebies can also be manipulated btw... but whatever, explaining it would be pointless, I'll just address everything else you said.
30-45: Bowyer's actions on locking the buttons are 100% manipulated in this battle. It's not luck-based at all. Having him switch Y + A is optimal for a SS run. When I have Geno do Geno Beam, it's because he can't do his normal attack. :\ The A button's locked, ace.
The flower jar is sold for money. Flower items are more valuable as money in this run than as FP. Flower tab as worth 100 coins, flower jars are worth 300, and flower boxes are worth 500. Ultimately, these come into play for the bombs I buy in Seaside Town. Perhaps if you are unsure of something, you should watch the whole run before writing up your verification notes.
45-60: The bandits are killed for the Flower Tabs for money, once again. The money for the bombs and the exp from the bandits are both key points in making the middle part of the game go much much faster. And yes, it's been time tested whether skipping these guys is worth it or not. It's not.
The minecart time was 2:08. I may have made a couple mistakes in there, but 2:00 is about optimal (TAS is like 1:54 or 1:55 but whatev). Anything under 2:10 is very good for this run.
1h-1:15: First of all, you'd have to fail the curtain game 3 times to trigger the next event (there goes your time right there!). Secondly, you'd have to fight Booster if you fail the game 3 times. Third, you'd be sacrificing the Amulet (which has great stats for this point in the run and even is used at the end of the run). It'd be pretty stupid to fail the game on purpose.
The FP I gain in the Booster Hill section doesn't really matter. I get anywhere from 8-12 usually, but had an off day and got 6 this time. The amount I get here doesn't affect the run at all. Ultimately, the FP hardly comes into play at all for most of the run, and only a bit at the end. I got an extra flower item in Nimbus Castle because I only got 6 on Booster Hill, and it worked out.
1:15-1:30: no issues, it seems? wow
1:30-1:45: Ok, looks like I need to get into the freebies after all.
Freebies have a base chance of happening with every item; some items have a higher chance than others. If you have perfect timing, you can increase these odds significantly, but can never 100% guarantee a freebie. I got pretty jipped on the freebies with Fright Bombs in this run, and usually I get a lot more.
At any rate, if you think I should have bought less bombs and instead chosen to try and freebie a single Fire Bomb 6 times for all the uses I'd have for it in a run, you're stupid. Plain and simple, just stupid. You say you can do this with practice? How about some vids of YOU doing this consistently? The bombs are all very necessary and lead to both better times and better consistency with boss battles, as luck is almost completely removed.
The Johnny fight was slow because it's always going to be slow if you don't just bomb the hell out of him like all the other bosses in this part of the run. The reason I can't do that is because I need to do the Super Jumps for the Attack Scarf (or the Super Suit if I can pull off 100).
1:45-2h: Yaridovich is actually one of the easiest battles in the run, not the hardest. :\ The whole battle pretty much goes according to a script; yes I have to heal, but that's because I'm underleveled. The level abuse is pretty necessary for both survivability of party members and being able to do enough damage to take out bosses fast (the 2 actually go hand in hand, because less damage = more turns, less survival).
2h-2:15: Belome's choosing the clone is luck based, nothing I can do about it. I'm not restarting a run 2 hours in due to luck. The troopa minigame is milked for necessary stat boosting items for late battles. If I had the Super Suit, I'd be able to consider not getting these, but since I don't, it's a necessity.
2:15-2:30: agreed
2:30-2:45: If I don't buy the stat boosters, the factory's boss battles consist of 2 party members dropping every 2 turns (Geno would die first every time and there goes using Geno Boost at all, hence why Crystallines are key), and I spend more time healing than attacking. With most of my frog coin farming being <10 second minigame + small cutscene attached, we're talking like 15 seconds per pop there, which means a little over 2 minutes. That's the time that can be lost on any one boss fight in the Factory if I'm unlucky... yea. Need to combat the luck factor as much as possible.
If I didn't buff Peach in the Czar Dragon battle, I'd have to pray the boss doesn't use certain moves on her, and we know how that goes...
2:45-3h: You understand Geno Boost does a 1.5x boost to attack and defense, right? It's huge. It's necessary. Mario would have gotten one-shot by a breaker beam if I didn't do it.
3h-3:15: If I took that last risk on Donkey Kong, there are like 99.98% odds I would have gotten hit and had to redo the room. The death abuse in the battle rooms is so I go back to the entrance with all my doors previously cleared still there, and I have the chance to go finish a faster room. Death abuse + going to faster rooms is still much faster than doing all 3 sections of a battle room (see the 4:37 classic games done quick marathon run to see what I mean).
The start of the 2nd battle room and not resetting the party was admittedly a mistake, but I figured I'd risk trying to have the party die off there since I was in a bad position anyway. That was a big time waster, and mostly my fault (although the bad luck with getting both battle rooms was definitely not my fault).
This portion of the run is really only TERRIBLE to you because you're not familiar with speed running SMRPG. The bad parts were the start of the 2nd battle room and not nailing the quick kill on the Magikoopa, but that was mostly a bad damage randomizer from the Lazy Shell (Lazy Shell damage is not set, even with great timing).
3:15-end: Mallow is used because the clock boss is weak to electricity. This fight would last forever with pretty much any other party (see: marathon run again)
In response to your conclusion, not using the level up death abuse in Land's End would make every boss fight after that laughably slow. Back before I started using this method, the Valentina fight had about a 10% chance of even being cleared because one of her spells could one-shot my whole party. Many other boss battles, especially in the factory, were just an epic struggle to survive rather than just piling up damage on the boss.
The frog coin + stat boosters fall into the same deal, bringing consistency to stand up against luck rather than letting the whole last section of the game be entirely luck-based. Whenever something is completely luck-based, you can pretty much count on losing time. This game is no exception. And for the last time, you can't 100% guarantee a freebie, even with great timing! The taking a long time to die in Bowser's Keep was half my fault, so I'll still give you that.
Most of the points brought up in your notes demonstrate not only having no understanding of playing SMRPG for speed, but also not being very familiar with the game in general. I hope if you choose to verify a run (of any game) again, you make sure you become refamiliar with it and learn something about its speed running scene before haphazardly writing out verifier comments as you are watching the run for the first time.
Verifier's final verdict
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Meh. It's risk v reward and he isn't willing to redo the run over and over until things go perfect. It's understandable, especially since it's a 3+ hour SS of an RPG, and I would probably do the same thing, but it's no reason to act like a big baby and lash out at me. Time lost is time lost no matter what the rationale is. Maybe the runner should just do a segmented run so that his "if it's up to luck, it costs time" mantra won't get in the way of making a better run.
Also, don't get all pissy just because someone is actually doing the due diligence of forcing an explanation for slow parts of the run.
I retract parts of my verdict (Bowyer, Booster's curtain game, the clock boss), but I still stand with rejecting it. No Mack skip + useless deaths should be an insta-rejection.
Also, don't get all pissy just because someone is actually doing the due diligence of forcing an explanation for slow parts of the run.
I retract parts of my verdict (Bowyer, Booster's curtain game, the clock boss), but I still stand with rejecting it. No Mack skip + useless deaths should be an insta-rejection.
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OK, sorry for the long verification time by me.. I ended up playing and beating SMRPG again because of this run.
It's a very good run and I'm just going to say that I accept it right now. A few specific notes:
Some of the shopping/menu stuff could have been faster, but that's probably obvious.
Birdo's Egg fight: I think the egg cracks open based on number of hits, so those timed hits were wasted time I think.
Lazy Shell: I can see why you got it but I'm not really sure if it saves any time. I also wonder if getting the Frying Pan would have been a good idea during the trip at all (although I'm not entirely sure if it is available by this point).
Axem Rangers: Where was the Safety Ring for this fight.. ? Bad planning here, IMO. If you don't want to use it, at least kill Pink first. Also not sure why you killed Red before Yellow, as well as why you even bothered attacking Yellow with anyone but Mario. Just bad planning overall here. Try this next time: Rock Candy -> Pink -> Green -> Black -> Yellow -> Red. OR.. save one of those Fire/Ice Bombs, or somehow get another Rock Candy (you must be able to get at least one more somewhere). There are a million ways this could have gone better. Actually, I think the double Rock Candy would be the best solution. And according to RPGClassics, there is a Rock Candy in a hidden chest in both Bean Valley and Booster Pass, both which seem to not be too far out of the way. So.. yeah.
Bowser's Castle Trials: Originally what happened here was going to lead me to reject the run, until I was informed that those rooms are random. Really bad luck in that case, and the runner made what I thought (with my new knowledge) was the best of it.
Factory: What was the point of swapping the EXP. Booster after the clock fight? Also, I really don't agree with not equipping Toadstool with her Super Slap weapon that you acquired. The turns she was defending during boss fights could have been turns to attack and potentially end them one round sooner.
Adder fight: A clutch Red Essence.
Manager and Director fights: Geno Blast before Boost might have ended it faster.
Smithy: Wow.. if you used Geno Beam right at the end after the scarecrow transformation, you woulda won a bit faster I think. Oh well.
So, to sum up.. some questionable equipment decisions (Lazy Shell, no Frying Pan (although this is to be confirmed) and the weird EXP. Booster swap at the end (I'm guessing to prevent a level up for Bowser which would have wasted more time than gained?)), and what I thought was just some pretty bad planning on the Axem Rangers fight, and hesitation in the menus, but overall I don't think it is enough to reject it. Not in a single segment run anyways.
It's a very good run and I'm just going to say that I accept it right now. A few specific notes:
Some of the shopping/menu stuff could have been faster, but that's probably obvious.
Birdo's Egg fight: I think the egg cracks open based on number of hits, so those timed hits were wasted time I think.
Lazy Shell: I can see why you got it but I'm not really sure if it saves any time. I also wonder if getting the Frying Pan would have been a good idea during the trip at all (although I'm not entirely sure if it is available by this point).
Axem Rangers: Where was the Safety Ring for this fight.. ? Bad planning here, IMO. If you don't want to use it, at least kill Pink first. Also not sure why you killed Red before Yellow, as well as why you even bothered attacking Yellow with anyone but Mario. Just bad planning overall here. Try this next time: Rock Candy -> Pink -> Green -> Black -> Yellow -> Red. OR.. save one of those Fire/Ice Bombs, or somehow get another Rock Candy (you must be able to get at least one more somewhere). There are a million ways this could have gone better. Actually, I think the double Rock Candy would be the best solution. And according to RPGClassics, there is a Rock Candy in a hidden chest in both Bean Valley and Booster Pass, both which seem to not be too far out of the way. So.. yeah.
Bowser's Castle Trials: Originally what happened here was going to lead me to reject the run, until I was informed that those rooms are random. Really bad luck in that case, and the runner made what I thought (with my new knowledge) was the best of it.
Factory: What was the point of swapping the EXP. Booster after the clock fight? Also, I really don't agree with not equipping Toadstool with her Super Slap weapon that you acquired. The turns she was defending during boss fights could have been turns to attack and potentially end them one round sooner.
Adder fight: A clutch Red Essence.
Manager and Director fights: Geno Blast before Boost might have ended it faster.
Smithy: Wow.. if you used Geno Beam right at the end after the scarecrow transformation, you woulda won a bit faster I think. Oh well.
So, to sum up.. some questionable equipment decisions (Lazy Shell, no Frying Pan (although this is to be confirmed) and the weird EXP. Booster swap at the end (I'm guessing to prevent a level up for Bowser which would have wasted more time than gained?)), and what I thought was just some pretty bad planning on the Axem Rangers fight, and hesitation in the menus, but overall I don't think it is enough to reject it. Not in a single segment run anyways.
Decision: Accept
Reason: This run is an improvement over the ancient segmented run that's on the site, despite some errors. But we're still waiting for that super suit run, romscout.
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