Castlevania: Harmony of Despair

Edit history:

SDAVerification: 2016-04-19 02:18:01 pm

2016-03-29 10:29:39 am

Game Page: http://speeddemosarchive.com/CastlevaniaHD.html

Castlevania: Harmony of Despair (ntscus) (xb360) [Any %] [Individual Level] [Hard] [DLC] [No Zips] [Character: Julius]

Decision: Accept

Reason: One level was mentioned as being improveable, but it's also the longest one. When a full set of individual levels is submitted for the first time, they are seen as one submission. So it can be acceptable even if there are a few levels that look improveable.

Congratulations to 'Wizdaddy'!

Thread title:

SDAVerification

2016-03-29 10:29:39 am

Run Information

Castlevania: Harmony of Despair (ntscus) (xb360) [Any %] [Individual Level] [Hard] [DLC] [No Zips] [Character: Julius]

Verification Files

http://v.speeddemosarchive.com/castlevaniahd-20160326/

Please refer to the Verification Guidelines before posting.

Please post your opinions about the run and be certain to conclude your post with a verdict (Accept/Reject). This is not a contest where the majority wins - I will judge each verification on its content. Please keep your verification brief unless you have a good reason otherwise.

OneTrueBelmont

2016-03-31 07:16:38 pm

Ah, what I love to see. Castlevania games being destroyed flawlessly. Runner makes excellent use of terrain, liberal usage of Omnia Veritas to invincibly dash and even jumping on enemies to pass each level. Audio and visuals are clear and no problems with syncing in any of the levels.

Accept!

Satoryu

2016-04-10 03:20:13 pm

Visually Appealing

Chapter 1: Pretty solid. The early phase 1 kill on Gergoth is cool.

Chapter 2: Very nice. A couple errant slides were the only blemishes, really.

Chapter 3: Not bad. I'm personally not a fan of the screwing around waiting for the chest to fall, but he barely lost any time from it so whatever.

Chapter 4: More or less perfect.

Chapter 5: I think he could have stayed on the doorway to the Death fight the entire time. But that wouldn't have saved a huge amount, so this is good.

Chapter 6: Only error I saw was a divekick that missed its mark. Otherwise this was perfect.

Chapter 7: The stage was great. Bad luck on the fight maybe cost him a second or two. I would've kept grinding this until I got a favorable pattern. There was also a delay opening the chest cause he was trying to play around. I recommend against that for the future.

Chapter 8: The stage is nice. He nailed all the water corner boosts. I really don't like the boss fight though. It's very sloppy and doesn't have the DPS I expect.

Chapter 9: I kinda question the decision to use Ricochet Rocks to clear the flies. Were Axes not an option, like in PJ's Simon run? I'm not going to discount this chapter because of it, though. The run is still very good.

Chapter 10: I like that he was playing the beginning less safe, but it did force him to slow down a bit in the middle. I love the path through Stage 3. But after that is when the problems show up. The Creature fight was really bad. Most of Stage 5 is played conservatively, stopping to kill enemies and more MP conservation. The shortcut above Stage 6 was kinda slow. The Dracula fights were alright considering how random he can be.

Chapter 11: This stage had a lot of problems too. The first two enemies hit him, which I'm surprised didn't warrant a reset. He tried a different strat on Oxocutioner and it didn't work, making the fight slower. There were execution errors on Chimyriad, though those didn't quite waste as much time. Decapiclops was a tiny bit slow, but he's friggin scary when level 3 so I can't really complain. Ryuukotsuki's first form teleported right away. What a jerk. But I can look past all of those problems just because of the final form. A one cycle kill is absolutely incredible.

Quality of the videos are excellent.

The main 6 stages are perfectly acceptable. I just have reservation about some of the DLC chapters, namely 7, 8, and 10. I would reject those if I can. I will accept Chapters 9 and 11 though.

Chapter 1: Pretty solid. The early phase 1 kill on Gergoth is cool.

Chapter 2: Very nice. A couple errant slides were the only blemishes, really.

Chapter 3: Not bad. I'm personally not a fan of the screwing around waiting for the chest to fall, but he barely lost any time from it so whatever.

Chapter 4: More or less perfect.

Chapter 5: I think he could have stayed on the doorway to the Death fight the entire time. But that wouldn't have saved a huge amount, so this is good.

Chapter 6: Only error I saw was a divekick that missed its mark. Otherwise this was perfect.

Chapter 7: The stage was great. Bad luck on the fight maybe cost him a second or two. I would've kept grinding this until I got a favorable pattern. There was also a delay opening the chest cause he was trying to play around. I recommend against that for the future.

Chapter 8: The stage is nice. He nailed all the water corner boosts. I really don't like the boss fight though. It's very sloppy and doesn't have the DPS I expect.

Chapter 9: I kinda question the decision to use Ricochet Rocks to clear the flies. Were Axes not an option, like in PJ's Simon run? I'm not going to discount this chapter because of it, though. The run is still very good.

Chapter 10: I like that he was playing the beginning less safe, but it did force him to slow down a bit in the middle. I love the path through Stage 3. But after that is when the problems show up. The Creature fight was really bad. Most of Stage 5 is played conservatively, stopping to kill enemies and more MP conservation. The shortcut above Stage 6 was kinda slow. The Dracula fights were alright considering how random he can be.

Chapter 11: This stage had a lot of problems too. The first two enemies hit him, which I'm surprised didn't warrant a reset. He tried a different strat on Oxocutioner and it didn't work, making the fight slower. There were execution errors on Chimyriad, though those didn't quite waste as much time. Decapiclops was a tiny bit slow, but he's friggin scary when level 3 so I can't really complain. Ryuukotsuki's first form teleported right away. What a jerk. But I can look past all of those problems just because of the final form. A one cycle kill is absolutely incredible.

Quality of the videos are excellent.

The main 6 stages are perfectly acceptable. I just have reservation about some of the DLC chapters, namely 7, 8, and 10. I would reject those if I can. I will accept Chapters 9 and 11 though.

Wizdaddy714

2016-04-11 11:30:56 pm

Castlevania HD and FFT Fanatic

Quote from Satoryu:

Chapter 5: I think he could have stayed on the doorway to the Death fight the entire time. But that wouldn't have saved a huge amount, so this is good.

I was afraid the door was going to close on me locking me out of the boss room due to the recoil from backdash canceling causing an instant reset Tongue

Quote:

Chapter 7: The stage was great. Bad luck on the fight maybe cost him a second or two. I would've kept grinding this until I got a favorable pattern. There was also a delay opening the chest cause he was trying to play around. I recommend against that for the future.

I agree with all of this. Idk if losing 1-2 seconds would warrant a rerun given how random (and as a result frustrating) in movement and positioning the mummies and ectoplasms are when climbing up and down the passageways. It's pretty easy to envision the perceived perfect run of the chapter from this run despite the very few flubs imo, but that's just me Tongue

Quote:

Chapter 9: I kinda question the decision to use Ricochet Rocks to clear the flies. Were Axes not an option, like in PJ's Simon run? I'm not going to discount this chapter because of it, though. The run is still very good.

From testing, the R. Axes are only as fast if not slower than ricochet rocks due to the latter being applicable with utilization of BDC'ing and all of the individual rocks hitting multiple times when bouncing off the walls. NEStrider on Youtube cleared them (The Flies) with Julius ~0.8 seconds faster with R. Axes, despite about one second being wasted consuming the Mousse Cakes slowly in mine. Another thing to note is compared to PJ's Simon run, not only is Simon's throwing speed faster than Julius, but he also took advantage of eating the Caviar, which yields 12 INT whereas the Mousse Cakes only give out 4 INT. Julius needs to use Mousse Cakes for MP to Omnia Vanitas, and that's something Caviar doesn't provide. When the Caviar's stacked with Berserker Mail's multiplicative effect for INT (And ATK) coupled with a higher DPS from a swifter throwing speed, the time it takes to slay bosses drastically quickens for Simon.

Quote:

Chapter 8: The stage is nice. He nailed all the water corner boosts. I really don't like the boss fight though. It's very sloppy and doesn't have the DPS I expect.

This is spot on for sure. Like chapter 9, with Julius having a slow throwing speed, it's much harder to line up R. Boomerang's to hit Legion's core compared to Simon since the double jump needs to be delayed when doing so. Not only that, but there was some bad luck with some of the corpses falling into Julius's throwing range that had to be dispersed of & the flamethrower from one of the tentacles taking up a big chunk of time. Of all the characters, Simon would reign King in terms of speedrunning on this stage imo since he can traverse the underwater skip without bumping into the ceiling above losing momentum due to being small.

Quote:

Chapter 10: I like that he was playing the beginning less safe, but it did force him to slow down a bit in the middle. I love the path through Stage 3. But after that is when the problems show up. The Creature fight was really bad. Most of Stage 5 is played conservatively, stopping to kill enemies and more MP conservation. The shortcut above Stage 6 was kinda slow. The Dracula fights were alright considering how random he can be.

Mmm, I miscalculated where The Creature was going to step with the R. Fire Bombs and could've racked up some big damage saving a few seconds in the process. I lost 8 seconds of time or so in Stage 5 (R. Death's stage) due to killing the birds & ghosts, which would've followed me around throughout the stage otherwise making it a very scary experience especially since they congregate at R. Death the boss himself if left alone Tongue

I was mostly concerned with setting up Death with the R. Fire Bomb & R. Boomerangs sans distractions. I had to play conservatively in the latter half so there'd be enough MP to take down R. The Count from the Mousse Cakes. Other thing is, I had much less experience playing Stage 5 until the end since I only got to that part less than 60 times out of the 100's of attempts comprising 10 hours worth of fails, and this was the only successful run I've ever been able to do. Majority of the deaths were from the RNG in the beginning from Medusa Heads, Merman, and the shenanigans of dive kicking off of enemies and still getting hit.

All in all, I definitely appreciate the comments and your insight on them, and they're all the more solidified since they match up with my analysis of these runs as well! I just think you have to consider the fact these are all very execution heavy and the plausibility of performing at these levels consistently is extremely low given how little time they're completed in. The fast corner boosts in Chapter 10 (First two corner boosts + the one passing through all the enemies underneath Stage 3), are a newish edition to display as well since this technique's absent from the other runs hosted here for instance.

Not sure if you have, but the run comments I provided go into much greater depth about the chapters, and might give you a better idea where I'm coming from in how intricate each chapter's tightly packaged.

Hope you don't feel like I'm being adversarial, just wanted to clear some things up and potentially sway you & maybe others in accepting all these runs despite the setbacks given how big of a pain it is to run these.

Thanks again ^_^

[quote="Satoryu"]
Chapter 5: I think he could have stayed on the doorway to the Death fight the entire time. But that wouldn't have saved a huge amount, so this is good.[/quote]

I was afraid the door was going to close on me locking me out of the boss room due to the recoil from backdash canceling causing an instant reset :P

[quote]Chapter 7: The stage was great. Bad luck on the fight maybe cost him a second or two. I would've kept grinding this until I got a favorable pattern. There was also a delay opening the chest cause he was trying to play around. I recommend against that for the future.[/quote]

I agree with all of this. Idk if losing 1-2 seconds would warrant a rerun given how random (and as a result frustrating) in movement and positioning the mummies and ectoplasms are when climbing up and down the passageways. It's pretty easy to envision the perceived perfect run of the chapter from this run despite the very few flubs imo, but that's just me :P

[quote]Chapter 9: I kinda question the decision to use Ricochet Rocks to clear the flies. Were Axes not an option, like in PJ's Simon run? I'm not going to discount this chapter because of it, though. The run is still very good.[/quote]

From testing, the R. Axes are only as fast if not slower than ricochet rocks due to the latter being applicable with utilization of BDC'ing and all of the individual rocks hitting multiple times when bouncing off the walls. NEStrider on Youtube cleared them (The Flies) with Julius ~0.8 seconds faster with R. Axes, despite about one second being wasted consuming the Mousse Cakes slowly in mine. Another thing to note is compared to PJ's Simon run, not only is Simon's throwing speed faster than Julius, but he also took advantage of eating the Caviar, which yields 12 INT whereas the Mousse Cakes only give out 4 INT. Julius needs to use Mousse Cakes for MP to Omnia Vanitas, and that's something Caviar doesn't provide. When the Caviar's stacked with Berserker Mail's multiplicative effect for INT (And ATK) coupled with a higher DPS from a swifter throwing speed, the time it takes to slay bosses drastically quickens for Simon.

[quote]Chapter 8: The stage is nice. He nailed all the water corner boosts. I really don't like the boss fight though. It's very sloppy and doesn't have the DPS I expect.[/quote]

This is spot on for sure. Like chapter 9, with Julius having a slow throwing speed, it's much harder to line up R. Boomerang's to hit Legion's core compared to Simon since the double jump needs to be delayed when doing so. Not only that, but there was some bad luck with some of the corpses falling into Julius's throwing range that had to be dispersed of & the flamethrower from one of the tentacles taking up a big chunk of time. Of all the characters, Simon would reign King in terms of speedrunning on this stage imo since he can traverse the underwater skip without bumping into the ceiling above losing momentum due to being small.

[quote]Chapter 10: I like that he was playing the beginning less safe, but it did force him to slow down a bit in the middle. I love the path through Stage 3. But after that is when the problems show up. The Creature fight was really bad. Most of Stage 5 is played conservatively, stopping to kill enemies and more MP conservation. The shortcut above Stage 6 was kinda slow. The Dracula fights were alright considering how random he can be.[/quote]

Mmm, I miscalculated where The Creature was going to step with the R. Fire Bombs and could've racked up some big damage saving a few seconds in the process. I lost 8 seconds of time or so in Stage 5 (R. Death's stage) due to killing the birds & ghosts, which would've followed me around throughout the stage otherwise making it a very scary experience especially since they congregate at R. Death the boss himself if left alone :P I was mostly concerned with setting up Death with the R. Fire Bomb & R. Boomerangs sans distractions. I had to play conservatively in the latter half so there'd be enough MP to take down R. The Count from the Mousse Cakes. Other thing is, I had much less experience playing Stage 5 until the end since I only got to that part less than 60 times out of the 100's of attempts comprising 10 hours worth of fails, and this was the only successful run I've ever been able to do. Majority of the deaths were from the RNG  in the beginning from Medusa Heads, Merman, and the shenanigans of dive kicking off of enemies and still getting hit.

All in all, I definitely appreciate the comments and your insight on them, and they're all the more solidified since they match up with my analysis of these runs as well! I just think you have to consider the fact these are all very execution heavy and the plausibility of performing at these levels consistently is extremely low given how little time they're completed in. The fast corner boosts in Chapter 10 (First two corner boosts + the one passing through all the enemies underneath Stage 3), are a newish edition to display as well since this technique's absent from the other runs hosted here for instance.

Not sure if you have, but the run comments I provided go into much greater depth about the chapters, and might give you a better idea where I'm coming from in how intricate each chapter's tightly packaged.

Hope you don't feel like I'm being adversarial, just wanted to clear some things up and potentially sway you & maybe others in accepting all these runs despite the setbacks given how big of a pain it is to run these.

Thanks again ^_^

Worn_Traveler

2016-04-12 05:30:58 am

Formerly known as Skullboy

A/V is fine. No cheating detected.

I am not very familiar with this Castlevania game so my perspective might be a bit skewed. The IL's seem pretty solid to me and while there might be some mistakes, they don't seem too costly. We don't have a Julius table yet so this would be the start of one. I'm leaning towards saying Accept for all 11 though improvements are always welcome.

One question: I glanced through the runners notes and I could not find this but how and why are you starting each stage in a poisoned state? Does this help with optimized movement?

Wizdaddy714

2016-04-12 02:41:28 pm

Castlevania HD and FFT Fanatic

Quote from Worn_Traveler:

One question: I glanced through the runners notes and I could not find this but how and why are you starting each stage in a poisoned state? Does this help with optimized movement?

There's an accessory called the Fool's Tablet, which always poisons the user, but also provides 6 ATK and 6 INT, the highest INT boosting accessory in the game. Since I can wear two of them, maximizing subweapon damage is important in reducing the number of hits when killing bosses. Berserker Mail's multiplier effect heightens the damage even further allowing for crazy amounts coming from R. Daggers when spammed with BDC'ing aka (Backdash Cancelling).

Thanks for asking Smiley

ktwo

2016-04-12 03:00:19 pm

I'll leave this open for another week since there is a bit of discussion going on.

Wizdaddy714

2016-04-13 06:46:01 am

Castlevania HD and FFT Fanatic

Made an update to the Run Comments (Just have to wait for the edits to be approved) talking about the Fool's Tablets in the beginning as well as Chapter 4 because I improved the time from 53.67 seconds down to 51.20 seconds. As a result, the verification files for that chapter have been updated too =D

ktwo

2016-04-13 09:53:44 am

Congrats on the improved chapter 4. I also wanted to say that the new chapter 4 files are available through the link above. Same goes for the updated comments.

Satoryu

2016-04-13 04:36:30 pm

Visually Appealing

Quote from Wizdaddy714:

I was afraid the door was going to close on me locking me out of the boss room due to the recoil from backdash canceling causing an instant reset Tongue

I understand. In your shoes I would've thought the same thing. It's just a case of hindsight.

Quote:

I agree with all of this. Idk if losing 1-2 seconds would warrant a rerun given how random (and as a result frustrating) in movement and positioning the mummies and ectoplasms are when climbing up and down the passageways. It's pretty easy to envision the perceived perfect run of the chapter from this run despite the very few flubs imo, but that's just me Tongue

After thinking on it, the time lost isn't that big in scope. I accepted Chapter 11 with an improvable stage but perfect boss, I should be able to do the opposite. Same applies to Chapter 8, really. I'll rescind both rejections there.

Quote:

From testing, the R. Axes are only as fast if not slower than ricochet rocks due to the latter being applicable with utilization of BDC'ing and all of the individual rocks hitting multiple times when bouncing off the walls. NEStrider on Youtube cleared them (The Flies) with Julius ~0.8 seconds faster with R. Axes, despite about one second being wasted consuming the Mousse Cakes slowly in mine. Another thing to note is compared to PJ's Simon run, not only is Simon's throwing speed faster than Julius, but he also took advantage of eating the Caviar, which yields 12 INT whereas the Mousse Cakes only give out 4 INT. Julius needs to use Mousse Cakes for MP to Omnia Vanitas, and that's something Caviar doesn't provide. When the Caviar's stacked with Berserker Mail's multiplicative effect for INT (And ATK) coupled with a higher DPS from a swifter throwing speed, the time it takes to slay bosses drastically quickens for Simon.

Thanks for clearing that up. Just guessing in my head is nothing compared to the numbers.

Quote:

Mmm, I miscalculated where The Creature was going to step with the R. Fire Bombs and could've racked up some big damage saving a few seconds in the process. I lost 8 seconds of time or so in Stage 5 (R. Death's stage) due to killing the birds & ghosts, which would've followed me around throughout the stage otherwise making it a very scary experience especially since they congregate at R. Death the boss himself if left alone Tongue

I was mostly concerned with setting up Death with the R. Fire Bomb & R. Boomerangs sans distractions. I had to play conservatively in the latter half so there'd be enough MP to take down R. The Count from the Mousse Cakes. Other thing is, I had much less experience playing Stage 5 until the end since I only got to that part less than 60 times out of the 100's of attempts comprising 10 hours worth of fails, and this was the only successful run I've ever been able to do. Majority of the deaths were from the RNG in the beginning from Medusa Heads, Merman, and the shenanigans of dive kicking off of enemies and still getting hit.

I completely understand that Chapter 10 is an RNG nightmare. But I feel that it's better to react to The Creature's first movement than to preemptively throw the Fire Bomb and hope he stops in time. On another look, your recovery was alright, but I still feel it was a solution that could've been avoided. Dealing with the tiny enemies in Stage 5 is what I expect to slow down for. But there were some regular Stage 5 enemies that you also approached hesitantly. Notably an Axe Armor halfway through that looked could've been avoided altogether. I also get that MP management is a big part of the run. But again, in hindsight, you did finish with surplus MP.

I'm still not sure if I can accept Chapter 10. I need to think on it a bit more. But you can definitely change my verdicts for 7 and 8 to Accept.

[quote="Wizdaddy714"]
I was afraid the door was going to close on me locking me out of the boss room due to the recoil from backdash canceling causing an instant reset :P[/quote]

I understand. In your shoes I would've thought the same thing. It's just a case of hindsight.

[quote]
I agree with all of this. Idk if losing 1-2 seconds would warrant a rerun given how random (and as a result frustrating) in movement and positioning the mummies and ectoplasms are when climbing up and down the passageways. It's pretty easy to envision the perceived perfect run of the chapter from this run despite the very few flubs imo, but that's just me :P [/quote]

After thinking on it, the time lost isn't that big in scope. I accepted Chapter 11 with an improvable stage but perfect boss, I should be able to do the opposite. Same applies to Chapter 8, really. I'll rescind both rejections there.

[quote]
From testing, the R. Axes are only as fast if not slower than ricochet rocks due to the latter being applicable with utilization of BDC'ing and all of the individual rocks hitting multiple times when bouncing off the walls. NEStrider on Youtube cleared them (The Flies) with Julius ~0.8 seconds faster with R. Axes, despite about one second being wasted consuming the Mousse Cakes slowly in mine. Another thing to note is compared to PJ's Simon run, not only is Simon's throwing speed faster than Julius, but he also took advantage of eating the Caviar, which yields 12 INT whereas the Mousse Cakes only give out 4 INT. Julius needs to use Mousse Cakes for MP to Omnia Vanitas, and that's something Caviar doesn't provide. When the Caviar's stacked with Berserker Mail's multiplicative effect for INT (And ATK) coupled with a higher DPS from a swifter throwing speed, the time it takes to slay bosses drastically quickens for Simon.[/quote]

Thanks for clearing that up. Just guessing in my head is nothing compared to the numbers.

[quote]
Mmm, I miscalculated where The Creature was going to step with the R. Fire Bombs and could've racked up some big damage saving a few seconds in the process. I lost 8 seconds of time or so in Stage 5 (R. Death's stage) due to killing the birds & ghosts, which would've followed me around throughout the stage otherwise making it a very scary experience especially since they congregate at R. Death the boss himself if left alone :P I was mostly concerned with setting up Death with the R. Fire Bomb & R. Boomerangs sans distractions. I had to play conservatively in the latter half so there'd be enough MP to take down R. The Count from the Mousse Cakes. Other thing is, I had much less experience playing Stage 5 until the end since I only got to that part less than 60 times out of the 100's of attempts comprising 10 hours worth of fails, and this was the only successful run I've ever been able to do. Majority of the deaths were from the RNG  in the beginning from Medusa Heads, Merman, and the shenanigans of dive kicking off of enemies and still getting hit.
[/quote]

I completely understand that Chapter 10 is an RNG nightmare. But I feel that it's better to react to The Creature's first movement than to preemptively throw the Fire Bomb and hope he stops in time. On another look, your recovery was alright, but I still feel it was a solution that could've been avoided. Dealing with the tiny enemies in Stage 5 is what I expect to slow down for. But there were some regular Stage 5 enemies that you also approached hesitantly. Notably an Axe Armor halfway through that looked could've been avoided altogether. I also get that MP management is a big part of the run. But again, in hindsight, you did finish with surplus MP.

I'm still not sure if I can accept Chapter 10. I need to think on it a bit more. But you can definitely change my verdicts for 7 and 8 to Accept.

SDAVerification

2016-04-19 02:18:02 pm

Decision posted.