Glowy eyes of DOOM!
Hi people!
This is my first post ever on this forum. Lately I've gotten really interested in watching speed runs, and, being a fairly addicted gamer myself, decided to attempt one of my own.
The game is Final Fantasy V, which was only Japanese originally, but there's a Playstation remake of it. I'm personally a big fan of this game because it pioneered the job system that is essentially the same as the one in Final Fantasy: Tactics. Because of the flexibility of the job system, there are a LOT of tricks you can use to beat this game fast and at very low levels.
I have finished testing my speed run on an emulator. I was able to complete the game in 4:14:30, to the nearest thirty seconds, using the in-game timer plus the time I manually clocked against the final boss (since it's impossible to measure this time using the in-game timer). I'm considering recording a speed run on a Playstation to post to SDA.
However, before I attempt this project, it would be really nice if I knew a couple more things. First, does anyone know of a competing fastest time for this game? Despite a moderate amount of searching, I've been totally unable to locate any other time, much less a video of a speed run.
Second, one of the purposes of this post is to see who would be interested in viewing a run of this game. If you continue to read the following paragraphs, I'll attempt to convince you that this run would be worth watching. But it seems to me that there should be at least some a priori interest, merely because of the fact that it's in the Final Fantasy series. Plus there have been a number of successful RPG runs lately. Please post a reply on this thread if it sounds like a cool idea.
Now, I do know that this game has gotten some attention relatively recently, since it's actually listed as one of the top 10 FAQ pages for SNES on the site www.gamefaqs.com/. There you will find walkthroughs for amazing challenges such as the low level challenge, wherein you beat the game with all four of your characters at or below level 3. As I mentioned above, this is made possible by exploiting the job system to its fullest. People have also attempted Single Character Challenges for every class. This means you are allowed to use only one job class throughout the entire game. For certain classes (e.g. White Mage) this is EXTREMELY difficult. For those of you that have played this game before, I would say those pages make for amusing reads.
Conspicuously missing, however, is any information on speed running the game, which seems like a real shame to me. For some reason, I decided to just go ahead and try it, using the information on that site (and especially the very complete and accurate page: Algorithms/Stats FAQ by instructorpepe) as a guide. Unlike several other RPGs, you can get through this game with ridiculously low levels (and hence ridiculously low HP) by abusing all sorts of abilities that enable you to avoid various attacks altogether. I thought: low levels = less time spent leveling. Also, many bosses are vulnerable to being killed with one or two spells, regardless of what your level is. I thought: Mucho time saved in boss fights.
Once it was all finished, I decided it was a pretty solid run, with enough little tricks to pique the interest of anyone familiar with the Final Fantasy series. Not to boast or anything, but 4:15:30 isn't bad for a game that's meant to take about 25 hours, and it does stack up against the times for other RPGs on this site. Granted, it's pretty useless to compare times for different games, which is why the lack of comparison times frustrates me to no end.
Anyways, I just thought I'd let everyone know about this, because if this thread generates enough interest, I'll do my best to get myself a Playstation and record it for real. It would probably be 5-10 minutes slower because I wouldn't be able to fast forward through the dialogue, and hence I would be able to re-record segments fewer times for a fixed amount of patience.
This is probably more than enough information for a first post. I'll be more than happy to answer your questions about my methods or questions about the game in general. I'll also say again that any information at all about speed running this game would be of great interest to me.
Thanks for reading,
Alex ("Aresake") Eustis
This is my first post ever on this forum. Lately I've gotten really interested in watching speed runs, and, being a fairly addicted gamer myself, decided to attempt one of my own.
The game is Final Fantasy V, which was only Japanese originally, but there's a Playstation remake of it. I'm personally a big fan of this game because it pioneered the job system that is essentially the same as the one in Final Fantasy: Tactics. Because of the flexibility of the job system, there are a LOT of tricks you can use to beat this game fast and at very low levels.
I have finished testing my speed run on an emulator. I was able to complete the game in 4:14:30, to the nearest thirty seconds, using the in-game timer plus the time I manually clocked against the final boss (since it's impossible to measure this time using the in-game timer). I'm considering recording a speed run on a Playstation to post to SDA.
However, before I attempt this project, it would be really nice if I knew a couple more things. First, does anyone know of a competing fastest time for this game? Despite a moderate amount of searching, I've been totally unable to locate any other time, much less a video of a speed run.
Second, one of the purposes of this post is to see who would be interested in viewing a run of this game. If you continue to read the following paragraphs, I'll attempt to convince you that this run would be worth watching. But it seems to me that there should be at least some a priori interest, merely because of the fact that it's in the Final Fantasy series. Plus there have been a number of successful RPG runs lately. Please post a reply on this thread if it sounds like a cool idea.
Now, I do know that this game has gotten some attention relatively recently, since it's actually listed as one of the top 10 FAQ pages for SNES on the site www.gamefaqs.com/. There you will find walkthroughs for amazing challenges such as the low level challenge, wherein you beat the game with all four of your characters at or below level 3. As I mentioned above, this is made possible by exploiting the job system to its fullest. People have also attempted Single Character Challenges for every class. This means you are allowed to use only one job class throughout the entire game. For certain classes (e.g. White Mage) this is EXTREMELY difficult. For those of you that have played this game before, I would say those pages make for amusing reads.
Conspicuously missing, however, is any information on speed running the game, which seems like a real shame to me. For some reason, I decided to just go ahead and try it, using the information on that site (and especially the very complete and accurate page: Algorithms/Stats FAQ by instructorpepe) as a guide. Unlike several other RPGs, you can get through this game with ridiculously low levels (and hence ridiculously low HP) by abusing all sorts of abilities that enable you to avoid various attacks altogether. I thought: low levels = less time spent leveling. Also, many bosses are vulnerable to being killed with one or two spells, regardless of what your level is. I thought: Mucho time saved in boss fights.
Once it was all finished, I decided it was a pretty solid run, with enough little tricks to pique the interest of anyone familiar with the Final Fantasy series. Not to boast or anything, but 4:15:30 isn't bad for a game that's meant to take about 25 hours, and it does stack up against the times for other RPGs on this site. Granted, it's pretty useless to compare times for different games, which is why the lack of comparison times frustrates me to no end.
Anyways, I just thought I'd let everyone know about this, because if this thread generates enough interest, I'll do my best to get myself a Playstation and record it for real. It would probably be 5-10 minutes slower because I wouldn't be able to fast forward through the dialogue, and hence I would be able to re-record segments fewer times for a fixed amount of patience.
This is probably more than enough information for a first post. I'll be more than happy to answer your questions about my methods or questions about the game in general. I'll also say again that any information at all about speed running this game would be of great interest to me.
Thanks for reading,
Alex ("Aresake") Eustis
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