1-Up!
Game Page: http://speeddemosarchive.com/FinalFantasy9.html
Final Fantasy IX (Any %) (Single Segment)
Verifier Responses
Decision: Accept
Congratulations to Tristan 'Caracarn' Helwig!
Final Fantasy IX (Any %) (Single Segment)
Verifier Responses
Quote:
The video of the 2 GB-version is fine, the audio is as it should be. I don't see the slightest suspicious moment that would point towards cheating.
Unless I miscounted, the encouter rates should be as follows: (more than one number means we get into that area more than once)
Evil Forest: 0/3
Ice Cavern: 2
Gizarmaluke's Grotto: 2
Burmecia: 2
Total disc 1: 9
Gargan Roo: 0
Cleyra Trunk: 1
Pinnacle Rocks: 1
Qu's Marsh: 0
Fossil Roo: 2
Black Mage Forest: 1
Mountain Path: 1/0/0/0
Iifa Tree: 6/2
World Map on the way to Iifa Tree 2: 1
Total disc 2: 15
Cumulative total disc 2: 24
Whale Zombie shore: 3
Hilda Garde 1 room: 2/2/2
Oeil Vert: 3
Desert Palace: 3
Esto Gaza: 1
Mt. Gulug: 0
Ipsen's Castle: 2/1
Terra: 2
Pandæmonium: 1
Total disc 3: 22
Cumulative total disc 3: 46
Memoria: 6
Crystal World: 1
Total disc 4: 7
Cumulative whole game: 53.
The play quality was pretty high all throughout the run. Minor lapses here and there, but nothing to be ashamed of. He got lucky quite a few times, as you have to do when running this game competitively. He has his menus well under his control. Altogether this run is a pretty solid accept!
Comments while watching:
Mage masher steal first try. Go!
Doesn't go for the easter egg during the thieves' meeting after Masked Man fight. It's highly recomended in every speedrun to follow him here
Attempts Puck skip but fails. Oh well.
Incredible ATB luck during the King Lear fight … neither of the Eneros get an attack in, before meeting their maker.
King Lear destroys that beautiful luck though, by doing one stage magic and evading one attack. Such a bugger!
Good use of the ATB-wait mechanics to stop Lear's ATB gauge filling before he needs it to fill.
Doesn't get 100 nobles. Still a pretty swift sword fight ^^
Garnet runs away. Quick, follow her!
Didn't steal a silk shirt on Steiner I despite two tries. Bad damage luck: Needs three attacks to bring out Steiner's laggy attack.
Fails suicide strats on Steiner II. Does this guy also play Goof Troop as Goofy?
Steiner III: That's the way to do suicide strats!
No encounter in the first evil forest screen; wastes time on Prison Cage 1 by de-trancing.
Prison Cage 2: Needs three tries to steal that Broadsword. That really cost time. Let's see this run come back north now, shall we?
Almost thought he was going to forget the ether in Vivi's room, but he gets it on the way back.
Standard Baku fight.
Fast flee from the first random encounter: Good!
Doesn't heal in the forest, although everybody took damage against the second encounter. Risky!
Another fast flee, although that was pushing his luck imho.
Gets extremely lucky on Plant Brain with Vivi surviving by 1 HP. This run could have ended here!
Only two Plant Spiders. Not ideal considering Zidane has yet to gain a level. The fight goes well, though.
Close shave getting past the mist in the first Ice Cavern screen. Fights his encounter cleanly in the next screen, levelling Zidane up to Lv4. Very well played, sir.
Trances on Sealion. Definitely not something to write home about. Particularly, because the trance uselessly kicks in on the last attack. I would have been so frustrated at this point … But no encounters on the way out of Ice Cavern certainly lightens things up.
Gets trolled by kids playing around in Dali … Hands up who never has been?
Deals very nicely with an uncooperative Black Waltz 2 … But Steiner, why did you have to miss? Another one close to ending the run.
Oh, there's a mistake: Goes back to Dali instead of boarding the airship strait away. Good thing that only costs one or two seconds.
Impressive menuing speed on Black Waltz 3. Steals the steepled hat, as he should. Gets damage-unlucky though, and needs to watch Vivi's de-trance animation.
Let's go for a bathroom break here
The runner is obviously a member of the RSPCA, because he suicides in the festival of the hunt, without harming that poor, helpless Mu, that kicked a rock at him. Nothing else of interest happening in Lindblum.
Chocobo doesn't want to leave the bridge. Yes, I'm so bored, I'm seriously writing down everything existant, even if it only costs fractions of seconds (like here). Dem analog sticks.
Very nice ATB against the first set of black mages. Vivi, what are you doing to yourself? :C
Oh wow, a second set of luck against the second pair of black mages, getting an attack in before they do. Impressive.
His encounter in Gizarmaluke's Grotto just has to be Lamia, and she has to play the absolute bitch she can be. Can't have gone much worse here.
I'm kupo for kupo nuts! ^__^
Gizarmaluke playing very nice and being snakebitten on the first tent. That's the way we like it. Made up for Lamia at the very least.
And another set of black mages, where one doesn't get an attack in, this time in spite of absymal ATB. This is turning into a favourable pattern.
Ah, it's always a shame if you break a screen, but still get encountered after the break. At least he got into a very fast flee. On another note, unless I miscounted, it's a 9-encounter disc 1 … I think the runer can live with that.
Also, I've never seen that cooperative a Beatrix 1 battle =O Chain plate first try, a miss second turn … Wow. Let's sit back and enjoy Kuja's awesomeness at the end of disc 1.
Very tiny menuing mistake on the summit. I'm just writing this, because I was so impressed by great menuing so far.
Extremely smooth Black Waltz 3.2 fight, Only that git could have not frozen Steiner to save us some seconds because of no long animation.
For some reason he grabs the 1600 odd Gil on Treno's South Gate side. No idea what he needs that money for
Oh Garnet, you've been mugged so~ many times at that very spot, can't you learn? But thanks for the Power Belt, gov. (As usual nothing happens in Treno except for an extended shopping trip in the weapon shop which was well practised.) Epic way to pass ninja-NPC.
Zero encounters in Gargan Roo. Good for the time, not so good for Steiner's experience, but I'm sure that can be managed (he sent lots of experience Steiner's way in Evil Forest/Ice Cavern).
Cue Ralvurahva as the first extremely uncooperative boss fight in this run. Y U keep killing Steiner?
One encounter Cleyra Trunk and that encounter also came at the most uncooperative moment with the least cooperative ATB luck. Oh well, we had so much good luck so far
Antlion shows his very cooperative side, giving a counterpoint to what Ralvurahva just ruined. Now let's sit back and enjoy Riverdance!
The first Alexandrian soldier is such a scaredycat! But unfortunately she took Zidane's experience with her … Oh well.
And the fourth one proves to be a bitch … Freya misses, and Zidane doesn't kill her on his one shot.
During the battles of Cleyra he sends the mother with her children a direction I haven't seen before, but it obviously works well since they survive, and he still gets into less battles than if he had sent them the safe direction. I'll remember that for my next run. Nothing else of importance to note during those battles, altogether they're probably just faster than average, but that's just gut feeling.
Against Beatrix 2, Vivi is essentially reduced to a white mage because his MP are drained, but he does his job well. Beatrix cooperates by only shocking Freya once, and not thunderslashing anyone else. Enjoy watching the destruction of Cleyra. Thou shalt never return!
He attempts to dodge both soldiers in the basement of the Alexandrian castle, but fails the second. Oh well, shame but can happen. At least Steiner gets good experience from that fight.
I'm sure he could have saved fractions of seconds by jumping onto the right side of the revolving bridge, not needing to jump off and back on, but I've never tested that theory. But we really would be talking fractions.
Zorn and Thorn played like they always do; no surprises there.
He goes all in on Beatrix 3 as he should, and successfully ignores Zidane dying. Beatrix proves to be a mere bump on the road to success.
The fight against three black mages also shows extreme cooperation, as do the following two ugly puppies. Unfortunately, the pair of puppies encountered without Steiner decide to be uncooperative again. You give some, you lose some. Beatrix gets her revenge by Climmhazarding the next pair xD
The Ralvuimago fight goes well. How can that beast die and revive itself a second later? Did it learn Auto-Life?
As is to be expected, the poor sod Ramuh is skipped in this setting, because all speedrunners hate him. Sorry, but you need a shorter animation to be useful …
He is back attacked in the Pinnacle Rocks, but is able to fast-flee away from there. Wow, that was being lucky in an unlucky way …
Passing through the half-destroyed Lindblum after Brahne's attack in the suspected fashion. Leaves for Qu's Marsh without taking the chocobo shortcut … Hooray for safe stutter-stepping.
Takes the right-hand track through Qu's Marsh. Can anyone tell my why that is considered shorter? Does it have to do with a 'break' in the screen and reduced encounter probability? Because my intuition has always told me to go strait ahead …
He isn't sure whether to take the top or the bottom route on the second set of pendulums, but he redecides just in time before disaster takes place, and makes it through the way he should. Maybe lost irrelevant fractions of a second there.
The Lani fight is pretty OK. Again, nothing to write home about, but nothing to swear or reset on.
One very uncooperative encounter in Fossil Roo with the worst possible Zidane ATB luck and the worst possible enemy attack with the longest possible animation. Fumbles picking up the flower thing after switch 1 twice. Must be hard to pick up.
Buys Stiltzkin's deal for 555 Gil, because he can sell it for moa~r.
Nice and quick switching from running to stutter stepping on the Outer Continent, and again good and fast stutter stepping.
Rally-ho! He parks his chocobo extremely close to whereever he needs to go in, so it's slightly harder than it would need to be to get back on. But not much lost here.
Only one encounter in the Black Mage Forest. Wow!
Rally-ho, and let's get the main characters married. This has to be the first occasion where the two main characters get married even before one of them knows she loves the other … Unfortunately no marriage for Quna and Vivi, but that would have wasted time anyways.
Buys Stiltzkin's package again, this time for the beautiful number of 666 Gil, that Essentia commented on during her segmented run.
Misses once against Mr Eat-your-veggies Hilgigars … From then on he has to improvise the fight, but manages pretty well, even cancelling out the Curaga phase. Definitely well coped with bad RNG.
The Iifa tree gives him them stupid flying toadstools and they both get an attack in … bad RNG. Otherwise his way down there is pretty standard.
Takes a little while to realise he's in control of Zidane on that rotating leaf elevator … not too much time lost here, though.
Big time won by elixiring Soulcage before he can get his Level 5 Death in.
Fumbles in the menu after the Iifa Tree, accidentally deselecting distract, losing about one second.
Trances against Amarant at what seems like a good if only slightly late time; solution 9's him.
Stutter steps into a world map encounter on the way back to the Iifa Tree.
Bit of bad ATB luck in the first Mistodon battle. Second and third Mistodon battles go so~ much better.
Sit back and enjoy the awesome FMV's at the end of disc 2.
As usually there are only boring inputs at the beginning of disc 3.
Goes for the goblin card strats in the card game, otherwise hoping for luck. Gets insane luck on the first round (almost lost it, but ju~st survives). Chooses suboptimal strats for round 2, but brings that one home safely. Has no real problems in round 3 along with a touch of luck to bring home the championship.
Correctly assigns the soldiers as expected, to win a loot item he can sell later.
Skips the first (expected) and second (impressive) Mistodon battles in Alexandria. Has a solid amount of good luck on the following Mistodons. Wastes Steiners near-full trance bar by getting into a useless storyline trance. Well, he couldn't have evaded that one anyway. Shame it's nowhere near useful. Could have gotten killed in said battle buck luckily does not.
Cue incredibly long and boring Lindblum segment. Not even the synthesis segment is interesting (but he does it well). Actually getting to the end of it, he fumbles in the artist's house looking for the third potion, loosing something like a second.
Selects the wrong option in the elevator at the end of that long period. Probably still half asleep, wouldn't hold it against him.
Nice menuing work before calling Choco on the Outer Continent, even though he stumbles once; but this is an incredibly complex menu.
Bad luck while looking for a whale zombie … gets unlucky with a squid three times. Then also has a fight which runs incredibly bad, Quina needing to be revived twice. But s/he finally gets to eat his/her meal, and on we go. Lost a few minutes there.
Follows the North American tactic of taking Freya to Oeil Vert instead of taking Garnet and leaving Freya in the Desert Palace.
Perfect stutter step of death up to the chocobo tracks at the end of the world. Also very nice menuing at the beginning of Oeil Vert.
He ignores a treasure chest I'm sure I would have opened, but then again, we follow slightly different routes running this. And I could be remembering things wrong.
Oeil Vert doesn't seem to be playing as nice as other places, judging by number and placement of the encounters, but again, it's nothing really bad. Ark, on the other hand, is very cooperative, if you don't count him killing Zidane in his last move.
He follows the lose-five-times strat on the Hedgehog Pie minigame, so those first five fails are intentional.
Solid Desert Palace and clean Valia Pira fight with good use of the ATB wait mechanics.
So the group returns, we cross the worst room in the game, Eiko gets kidnapped, we go back through the worst room in the game, and we call our big yellow companion for one last time. *sigh* Adios, amigo!
Doesn't pick up the item on the other side of the counter in Esto Gaza, saving a ton of walking that way. Solid fight against the Red Dragons, even if they wanted to troll him. They didn't really succeed.
Decides to forfeit 11 AP for Meltigemini to have a faster fight with Freya casting beserk on everybody.
The elevator in Lindblum is not his friend.
Excellent flying to Ipsen's castle. Unfortunately will not use Carbuncle strats on Taharka: Takes off all of Eiko's equipment before entering Ipsen, so it's the last we'll be seeing of here. What a shame, the eidolon's cute.
Once again very fast menuing near the moogle in the trap door room. Taharka refuses to die to heat strats, but still doesn't pull off too much of a fight. Successfull Mythril Claws steal, but that wasn't what we wanted. Good-bye Vivi, it was nice with you!
Gets a preemptive on a random encounter, and uses it to flee. Chicken.
Looses a tiny bit of time looking for the spot to jump down from the upside-down chandelier while going back to look for Amarant.
Gets a fast flee from the next random encounter before anyone's had any turn. Made up for the time just lost.
Flawless flying to the different shrines without a detour to Daguerreo. Not-so-fast menuing in the Earth shrine, but he's been so fast so far, he's allowed to take slightly more time, and do it safely.
Tries to eat the Earth Guardian once to early. Otherwise very nice fight.
Enters Terra with Vivi and Eiko in his team. Colour me surprised. But then again, not like he's going to fight any battles.
Another preemptive on the way to Bran Bal, and one encounter where fleeing was the first move.
Eiko is nice enough to buy Zidane an Orichalcon, and Zidane thanks her by running off. Where are you manners, boy? As so often good menuing when entering the Pandæmonium.
Tries to escape in tune to the rhythm of the music. I approve!
Suicide-Auto Life strats against Shell Dragon. Continues by trancing and Solution-9's the poor thing. This trance I would call helpful.
Went through one of the worst (imho) menuing sections extremely quickly and well.
Nothing worth noting against Silver Dragon (except cooperativity). Needs two tries to steal the battle boots against Garland. Kuja kills Steiner. How dare you!
Terra gets destroyed and its the end of disc 3
Clean enough Nova Dragon Fight, even though that one tried to be a troll (and didn't succeed).
Uses a preemptive to bring Steiner's HP into the yellow. Gets another preemptive a few rooms down. RNG playing very nice.
The Tower gets left behind =(. Maliris went well. Well, well enough. Tiamat went better. RNG luck playing nice against the next random encounter. And it gets even better with the fast flee to follow up. Kraken went down the way he should. I'm always irritated by those tentacles taking forever to disintegrate. Lich tries trolling by killing off Amarant, but gets killed before anything bad could happen. Excalibur II pickup time 8:53:56 in the video. Off we go to the Crystal World.
Deathguise goes down to six Steiner hits of which two were Counters. Steiner thankfully only gets killed once and needs two Elixirs. No Meteor wipe. Getting close to the finish line.
Trance Kuja puts up a fight, but ultimately looses to our crew as expected.
The Necron battle also ends the way it should. Final hit was 9:08:12 video time, which I calculate to be 9:06:18 ingame time (but that's irrelevant, right?). End of disc 4
In case anyone's interested, I noted the ingame times of the ends of the discs to be 2:21:06, 5:12:16 and 8:23:20; the video times were 2:21:46, 5:13:22, and 8:25:06 respectively. First input (aside from selecting 'new game') was at 0:02:19 video time.
And now bring my beloved Garnet to me!
Unless I miscounted, the encouter rates should be as follows: (more than one number means we get into that area more than once)
Evil Forest: 0/3
Ice Cavern: 2
Gizarmaluke's Grotto: 2
Burmecia: 2
Total disc 1: 9
Gargan Roo: 0
Cleyra Trunk: 1
Pinnacle Rocks: 1
Qu's Marsh: 0
Fossil Roo: 2
Black Mage Forest: 1
Mountain Path: 1/0/0/0
Iifa Tree: 6/2
World Map on the way to Iifa Tree 2: 1
Total disc 2: 15
Cumulative total disc 2: 24
Whale Zombie shore: 3
Hilda Garde 1 room: 2/2/2
Oeil Vert: 3
Desert Palace: 3
Esto Gaza: 1
Mt. Gulug: 0
Ipsen's Castle: 2/1
Terra: 2
Pandæmonium: 1
Total disc 3: 22
Cumulative total disc 3: 46
Memoria: 6
Crystal World: 1
Total disc 4: 7
Cumulative whole game: 53.
The play quality was pretty high all throughout the run. Minor lapses here and there, but nothing to be ashamed of. He got lucky quite a few times, as you have to do when running this game competitively. He has his menus well under his control. Altogether this run is a pretty solid accept!
Comments while watching:
Mage masher steal first try. Go!
Doesn't go for the easter egg during the thieves' meeting after Masked Man fight. It's highly recomended in every speedrun to follow him here
Attempts Puck skip but fails. Oh well.
Incredible ATB luck during the King Lear fight … neither of the Eneros get an attack in, before meeting their maker.
King Lear destroys that beautiful luck though, by doing one stage magic and evading one attack. Such a bugger!
Good use of the ATB-wait mechanics to stop Lear's ATB gauge filling before he needs it to fill.
Doesn't get 100 nobles. Still a pretty swift sword fight ^^
Garnet runs away. Quick, follow her!
Didn't steal a silk shirt on Steiner I despite two tries. Bad damage luck: Needs three attacks to bring out Steiner's laggy attack.
Fails suicide strats on Steiner II. Does this guy also play Goof Troop as Goofy?
Steiner III: That's the way to do suicide strats!
No encounter in the first evil forest screen; wastes time on Prison Cage 1 by de-trancing.
Prison Cage 2: Needs three tries to steal that Broadsword. That really cost time. Let's see this run come back north now, shall we?
Almost thought he was going to forget the ether in Vivi's room, but he gets it on the way back.
Standard Baku fight.
Fast flee from the first random encounter: Good!
Doesn't heal in the forest, although everybody took damage against the second encounter. Risky!
Another fast flee, although that was pushing his luck imho.
Gets extremely lucky on Plant Brain with Vivi surviving by 1 HP. This run could have ended here!
Only two Plant Spiders. Not ideal considering Zidane has yet to gain a level. The fight goes well, though.
Close shave getting past the mist in the first Ice Cavern screen. Fights his encounter cleanly in the next screen, levelling Zidane up to Lv4. Very well played, sir.
Trances on Sealion. Definitely not something to write home about. Particularly, because the trance uselessly kicks in on the last attack. I would have been so frustrated at this point … But no encounters on the way out of Ice Cavern certainly lightens things up.
Gets trolled by kids playing around in Dali … Hands up who never has been?
Deals very nicely with an uncooperative Black Waltz 2 … But Steiner, why did you have to miss? Another one close to ending the run.
Oh, there's a mistake: Goes back to Dali instead of boarding the airship strait away. Good thing that only costs one or two seconds.
Impressive menuing speed on Black Waltz 3. Steals the steepled hat, as he should. Gets damage-unlucky though, and needs to watch Vivi's de-trance animation.
Let's go for a bathroom break here
The runner is obviously a member of the RSPCA, because he suicides in the festival of the hunt, without harming that poor, helpless Mu, that kicked a rock at him. Nothing else of interest happening in Lindblum.
Chocobo doesn't want to leave the bridge. Yes, I'm so bored, I'm seriously writing down everything existant, even if it only costs fractions of seconds (like here). Dem analog sticks.
Very nice ATB against the first set of black mages. Vivi, what are you doing to yourself? :C
Oh wow, a second set of luck against the second pair of black mages, getting an attack in before they do. Impressive.
His encounter in Gizarmaluke's Grotto just has to be Lamia, and she has to play the absolute bitch she can be. Can't have gone much worse here.
I'm kupo for kupo nuts! ^__^
Gizarmaluke playing very nice and being snakebitten on the first tent. That's the way we like it. Made up for Lamia at the very least.
And another set of black mages, where one doesn't get an attack in, this time in spite of absymal ATB. This is turning into a favourable pattern.
Ah, it's always a shame if you break a screen, but still get encountered after the break. At least he got into a very fast flee. On another note, unless I miscounted, it's a 9-encounter disc 1 … I think the runer can live with that.
Also, I've never seen that cooperative a Beatrix 1 battle =O Chain plate first try, a miss second turn … Wow. Let's sit back and enjoy Kuja's awesomeness at the end of disc 1.
Very tiny menuing mistake on the summit. I'm just writing this, because I was so impressed by great menuing so far.
Extremely smooth Black Waltz 3.2 fight, Only that git could have not frozen Steiner to save us some seconds because of no long animation.
For some reason he grabs the 1600 odd Gil on Treno's South Gate side. No idea what he needs that money for
Oh Garnet, you've been mugged so~ many times at that very spot, can't you learn? But thanks for the Power Belt, gov. (As usual nothing happens in Treno except for an extended shopping trip in the weapon shop which was well practised.) Epic way to pass ninja-NPC.
Zero encounters in Gargan Roo. Good for the time, not so good for Steiner's experience, but I'm sure that can be managed (he sent lots of experience Steiner's way in Evil Forest/Ice Cavern).
Cue Ralvurahva as the first extremely uncooperative boss fight in this run. Y U keep killing Steiner?
One encounter Cleyra Trunk and that encounter also came at the most uncooperative moment with the least cooperative ATB luck. Oh well, we had so much good luck so far
Antlion shows his very cooperative side, giving a counterpoint to what Ralvurahva just ruined. Now let's sit back and enjoy Riverdance!
The first Alexandrian soldier is such a scaredycat! But unfortunately she took Zidane's experience with her … Oh well.
And the fourth one proves to be a bitch … Freya misses, and Zidane doesn't kill her on his one shot.
During the battles of Cleyra he sends the mother with her children a direction I haven't seen before, but it obviously works well since they survive, and he still gets into less battles than if he had sent them the safe direction. I'll remember that for my next run. Nothing else of importance to note during those battles, altogether they're probably just faster than average, but that's just gut feeling.
Against Beatrix 2, Vivi is essentially reduced to a white mage because his MP are drained, but he does his job well. Beatrix cooperates by only shocking Freya once, and not thunderslashing anyone else. Enjoy watching the destruction of Cleyra. Thou shalt never return!
He attempts to dodge both soldiers in the basement of the Alexandrian castle, but fails the second. Oh well, shame but can happen. At least Steiner gets good experience from that fight.
I'm sure he could have saved fractions of seconds by jumping onto the right side of the revolving bridge, not needing to jump off and back on, but I've never tested that theory. But we really would be talking fractions.
Zorn and Thorn played like they always do; no surprises there.
He goes all in on Beatrix 3 as he should, and successfully ignores Zidane dying. Beatrix proves to be a mere bump on the road to success.
The fight against three black mages also shows extreme cooperation, as do the following two ugly puppies. Unfortunately, the pair of puppies encountered without Steiner decide to be uncooperative again. You give some, you lose some. Beatrix gets her revenge by Climmhazarding the next pair xD
The Ralvuimago fight goes well. How can that beast die and revive itself a second later? Did it learn Auto-Life?
As is to be expected, the poor sod Ramuh is skipped in this setting, because all speedrunners hate him. Sorry, but you need a shorter animation to be useful …
He is back attacked in the Pinnacle Rocks, but is able to fast-flee away from there. Wow, that was being lucky in an unlucky way …
Passing through the half-destroyed Lindblum after Brahne's attack in the suspected fashion. Leaves for Qu's Marsh without taking the chocobo shortcut … Hooray for safe stutter-stepping.
Takes the right-hand track through Qu's Marsh. Can anyone tell my why that is considered shorter? Does it have to do with a 'break' in the screen and reduced encounter probability? Because my intuition has always told me to go strait ahead …
He isn't sure whether to take the top or the bottom route on the second set of pendulums, but he redecides just in time before disaster takes place, and makes it through the way he should. Maybe lost irrelevant fractions of a second there.
The Lani fight is pretty OK. Again, nothing to write home about, but nothing to swear or reset on.
One very uncooperative encounter in Fossil Roo with the worst possible Zidane ATB luck and the worst possible enemy attack with the longest possible animation. Fumbles picking up the flower thing after switch 1 twice. Must be hard to pick up.
Buys Stiltzkin's deal for 555 Gil, because he can sell it for moa~r.
Nice and quick switching from running to stutter stepping on the Outer Continent, and again good and fast stutter stepping.
Rally-ho! He parks his chocobo extremely close to whereever he needs to go in, so it's slightly harder than it would need to be to get back on. But not much lost here.
Only one encounter in the Black Mage Forest. Wow!
Rally-ho, and let's get the main characters married. This has to be the first occasion where the two main characters get married even before one of them knows she loves the other … Unfortunately no marriage for Quna and Vivi, but that would have wasted time anyways.
Buys Stiltzkin's package again, this time for the beautiful number of 666 Gil, that Essentia commented on during her segmented run.
Misses once against Mr Eat-your-veggies Hilgigars … From then on he has to improvise the fight, but manages pretty well, even cancelling out the Curaga phase. Definitely well coped with bad RNG.
The Iifa tree gives him them stupid flying toadstools and they both get an attack in … bad RNG. Otherwise his way down there is pretty standard.
Takes a little while to realise he's in control of Zidane on that rotating leaf elevator … not too much time lost here, though.
Big time won by elixiring Soulcage before he can get his Level 5 Death in.
Fumbles in the menu after the Iifa Tree, accidentally deselecting distract, losing about one second.
Trances against Amarant at what seems like a good if only slightly late time; solution 9's him.
Stutter steps into a world map encounter on the way back to the Iifa Tree.
Bit of bad ATB luck in the first Mistodon battle. Second and third Mistodon battles go so~ much better.
Sit back and enjoy the awesome FMV's at the end of disc 2.
As usually there are only boring inputs at the beginning of disc 3.
Goes for the goblin card strats in the card game, otherwise hoping for luck. Gets insane luck on the first round (almost lost it, but ju~st survives). Chooses suboptimal strats for round 2, but brings that one home safely. Has no real problems in round 3 along with a touch of luck to bring home the championship.
Correctly assigns the soldiers as expected, to win a loot item he can sell later.
Skips the first (expected) and second (impressive) Mistodon battles in Alexandria. Has a solid amount of good luck on the following Mistodons. Wastes Steiners near-full trance bar by getting into a useless storyline trance. Well, he couldn't have evaded that one anyway. Shame it's nowhere near useful. Could have gotten killed in said battle buck luckily does not.
Cue incredibly long and boring Lindblum segment. Not even the synthesis segment is interesting (but he does it well). Actually getting to the end of it, he fumbles in the artist's house looking for the third potion, loosing something like a second.
Selects the wrong option in the elevator at the end of that long period. Probably still half asleep, wouldn't hold it against him.
Nice menuing work before calling Choco on the Outer Continent, even though he stumbles once; but this is an incredibly complex menu.
Bad luck while looking for a whale zombie … gets unlucky with a squid three times. Then also has a fight which runs incredibly bad, Quina needing to be revived twice. But s/he finally gets to eat his/her meal, and on we go. Lost a few minutes there.
Follows the North American tactic of taking Freya to Oeil Vert instead of taking Garnet and leaving Freya in the Desert Palace.
Perfect stutter step of death up to the chocobo tracks at the end of the world. Also very nice menuing at the beginning of Oeil Vert.
He ignores a treasure chest I'm sure I would have opened, but then again, we follow slightly different routes running this. And I could be remembering things wrong.
Oeil Vert doesn't seem to be playing as nice as other places, judging by number and placement of the encounters, but again, it's nothing really bad. Ark, on the other hand, is very cooperative, if you don't count him killing Zidane in his last move.
He follows the lose-five-times strat on the Hedgehog Pie minigame, so those first five fails are intentional.
Solid Desert Palace and clean Valia Pira fight with good use of the ATB wait mechanics.
So the group returns, we cross the worst room in the game, Eiko gets kidnapped, we go back through the worst room in the game, and we call our big yellow companion for one last time. *sigh* Adios, amigo!
Doesn't pick up the item on the other side of the counter in Esto Gaza, saving a ton of walking that way. Solid fight against the Red Dragons, even if they wanted to troll him. They didn't really succeed.
Decides to forfeit 11 AP for Meltigemini to have a faster fight with Freya casting beserk on everybody.
The elevator in Lindblum is not his friend.
Excellent flying to Ipsen's castle. Unfortunately will not use Carbuncle strats on Taharka: Takes off all of Eiko's equipment before entering Ipsen, so it's the last we'll be seeing of here. What a shame, the eidolon's cute.
Once again very fast menuing near the moogle in the trap door room. Taharka refuses to die to heat strats, but still doesn't pull off too much of a fight. Successfull Mythril Claws steal, but that wasn't what we wanted. Good-bye Vivi, it was nice with you!
Gets a preemptive on a random encounter, and uses it to flee. Chicken.
Looses a tiny bit of time looking for the spot to jump down from the upside-down chandelier while going back to look for Amarant.
Gets a fast flee from the next random encounter before anyone's had any turn. Made up for the time just lost.
Flawless flying to the different shrines without a detour to Daguerreo. Not-so-fast menuing in the Earth shrine, but he's been so fast so far, he's allowed to take slightly more time, and do it safely.
Tries to eat the Earth Guardian once to early. Otherwise very nice fight.
Enters Terra with Vivi and Eiko in his team. Colour me surprised. But then again, not like he's going to fight any battles.
Another preemptive on the way to Bran Bal, and one encounter where fleeing was the first move.
Eiko is nice enough to buy Zidane an Orichalcon, and Zidane thanks her by running off. Where are you manners, boy? As so often good menuing when entering the Pandæmonium.
Tries to escape in tune to the rhythm of the music. I approve!
Suicide-Auto Life strats against Shell Dragon. Continues by trancing and Solution-9's the poor thing. This trance I would call helpful.
Went through one of the worst (imho) menuing sections extremely quickly and well.
Nothing worth noting against Silver Dragon (except cooperativity). Needs two tries to steal the battle boots against Garland. Kuja kills Steiner. How dare you!
Terra gets destroyed and its the end of disc 3
Clean enough Nova Dragon Fight, even though that one tried to be a troll (and didn't succeed).
Uses a preemptive to bring Steiner's HP into the yellow. Gets another preemptive a few rooms down. RNG playing very nice.
The Tower gets left behind =(. Maliris went well. Well, well enough. Tiamat went better. RNG luck playing nice against the next random encounter. And it gets even better with the fast flee to follow up. Kraken went down the way he should. I'm always irritated by those tentacles taking forever to disintegrate. Lich tries trolling by killing off Amarant, but gets killed before anything bad could happen. Excalibur II pickup time 8:53:56 in the video. Off we go to the Crystal World.
Deathguise goes down to six Steiner hits of which two were Counters. Steiner thankfully only gets killed once and needs two Elixirs. No Meteor wipe. Getting close to the finish line.
Trance Kuja puts up a fight, but ultimately looses to our crew as expected.
The Necron battle also ends the way it should. Final hit was 9:08:12 video time, which I calculate to be 9:06:18 ingame time (but that's irrelevant, right?). End of disc 4
In case anyone's interested, I noted the ingame times of the ends of the discs to be 2:21:06, 5:12:16 and 8:23:20; the video times were 2:21:46, 5:13:22, and 8:25:06 respectively. First input (aside from selecting 'new game') was at 0:02:19 video time.
And now bring my beloved Garnet to me!
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A/V is succulent, cheating is non-existant and everything I could possibly think of to say regarding the run has already been covered in minute detail by verifier #1. Having watched the competition for this game constantly pushing the limit of how low the time can go, my hat's off to everyone involved and it wouldn't surprise me if a sub-9 is submitted in a near future.
Accept.
Accept.
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Very cool run. First try mage masher was definitely an amazing start.
I can't really say much except that this game has some great battle music and cutscenes. I really enjoy watching the author when he streams this game and his menuing skills are amazing. Verifyer 1 really says all the noteworthy elements of thsi run so no need to copy it. Very amazing that someone can do a speedrun lasting over 8 hours. Loved verifying this and hopefully the International version of this run makes its way on this site.
ACCEPT
I can't really say much except that this game has some great battle music and cutscenes. I really enjoy watching the author when he streams this game and his menuing skills are amazing. Verifyer 1 really says all the noteworthy elements of thsi run so no need to copy it. Very amazing that someone can do a speedrun lasting over 8 hours. Loved verifying this and hopefully the International version of this run makes its way on this site.
ACCEPT
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Right, sorry about the delay, finally got through it 
Overall fantastic run, everything I wanted to say has been said already by the first verifier so apart from that just wanted to say it was an absolute pleasure to watch and can't wait to see it up on the site!
ACCEPT
Overall fantastic run, everything I wanted to say has been said already by the first verifier so apart from that just wanted to say it was an absolute pleasure to watch and can't wait to see it up on the site!
ACCEPT
Decision: Accept
Congratulations to Tristan 'Caracarn' Helwig!
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