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

Grandia (ntscus) (psx) [Any %] [Segmented]

Verifier Responses

Quote from LCC:
As a preface, I have only learned the Grandia run up to Chang, but have watched runs in the past so I am familiar with how it plays out. I am by no means an expert on the game.

Overall movement looked good to me throughout the entire run. All extra encounters fought were either routed in or undodgeable. I'm not familiar enough with the route to say whether or not all the shopping and item pickups were necessary, but i didn't see anything that looked bad, so I'll assume you know what you're doing. The amount of segments could have been cut down a bit, since some just seemed like you didn't want to watch a cutscene every time you attempted a section. Segment 94 for example was literally just 1 menu then you resaved at the same save spot.

Rock Bird could be improved by using auto battle instead of choosing commands. It shouldn't take long to get a good segment that is at least 20 seconds faster than the one in the video.

In the early game skills tend to waste time from menuing+charge time and they don't give a major damage increase unless you get a counter for bonus damage and cancel chance. They don't give any extra weapon xp compared to combo attacks either. I think other bosses could have been a bit faster using auto battle more as well on segments 6-9 (after using magic+items ofc).

I wonder if the water grind on Segment 15-16 could be cut shorter. I know RTAs i have seen recently do very little grinding here but i'm not very familiar with all the route differences to make a judgement call on this. I know you end up getting better spells early, more hp and faster charge time on water spells as a result of doing this.

Segment 17 I noticed a lot of manual attack selection on ganymede as well. I'm not sure how often auto battle likes to use crits here, so that might be why. Also it was funny watching Justin be an idiot with running.

I like the decision to use Daggers with Feena as knife throw allows you to attack enemies without moving. It's nice for stunning enemies in tight situations and keeping your distance (especially vs the trio). I assume the weapon itself gives more damage at this point too.

I don't have much to say about the train section all the way through to useless Sue leaving, it was well done. Mainly using spells and letting Gadwin carry the team.

The Gadwin duel on segment 47 was insanely good. Didn't need to waste any time healing and got really good luck on Gadwin's actions. You can see the water levels paying off here and on Grin Whale on Segment 50.

Ruin Guard on Segment 67 didn't use the hot AI locking confusion strat which makes me sad. I get the feeling it wasn't well known at the time of this recording, though. Otherwise the strat for the fight looked good.

From that point on the run looked good. Not much else to say really.

In many places throughout the run I noticed the music skipping and/or looping early as though the disc was having issues. It wasn't too jarring, but definitely noticeable, and did not happen often. The video quality is SD, so nothing to write home about, but it is sufficient.

Overall there are improvements to be made but it's a much better run than the existing one on SDA and is now on NTSC instead of PAL. A lot of work was put in to route and perform a run this lengthy. I did not see any evidence of cheating or using inconsistent saves.

Easy ACCEPT


Quote from eLmaGus-:
I am very pleased that Chris finally decided to do a Segmented Run on the NTSC Version of the Game, which gives this game something
you can actually compare to when it comes to RTA Routing. This is an immensley long run and the work put in is remarkable, let me lead
with this.

As a small sidenote at the start, since I can not find the Information I would be curious about the Playstation 2 Model that was used and if
softlocks were ever encountered when playing. But that is a personal curiousity here.

Audio and Video
Let us get the pleasantries out of the way, Video and Audio was good for the most part. It is SD but it is very watchable and the audio
is very good. There is a few very minor video issue's but I pointed those out in my detailed Verification.

Quality (Gameplay)
Since this game is long (even 10 Hours in a Segmented Run), the Route planning had to be insanely on point, which is why sometimes there
just happen to be minor time saves like 1-2s Menu's or an Item pick up that are questionable, but in my opinion this sort of thing is easily
forgivable especially granted that this run is a major MAJOR improvement compared to the old one.
Regarding his actual gameplay, it is marvelous. Menuing and Fighting is executed almost perfectly anywhere (excluding the Final Boss but
those fights are of the length of the better part of 20 Minutes so some thinking time should be allowed). I am really pleased the execution is
as amazing as it is.

Cheating
Everything in this run was of course achieved because of Game Genie Codes. Just kidding, at no point were inconsistencies or even cheating
detected while watching this run.

Now having said all of this, I will list possible future improvements or considerations and an in-depth commentary (from my point of view)
below here. This will just include some small things I noticed that could possibly be done better, some things that could be experimented
with and some commentary I had about the way the run is segmented. If you do not wanna read all of this, just ignore it.

There is also 2 minor video blurrs here that I will mention in Segment 81 and 83, I hope those can be remedied. They do not indicate cheating but
faulty encoding so hopefully that can be fixed easily by just encoding the Video File again.

First of some general things: I think for the routing that was chosen this was done marvelously, the money and Item routing was tight and
worked out perfectly through the end. I will mention that I will not agree with the early game Equipment purchases as I feel like they are not
necessary though and in this run a total of 24420 Gold has been picked up from the Floor and I really feel like this could be completley routed
out. All these pickups add up to a huge amount of time wasted and with a little better routing it could be ignored.
For the purpose of this routing though it works out perfectly and the money pickups do not waste that much time to begin with (that being said
some money pickups are out of the way).
Regardless lets take a look at the segments.

Segment 1-3:
Let me lead with Segments 1-3. While I know this is tedious and your work is done easier the more segments you have, I feel like these
3 Segments could be 1 big segment. This would be roughly 34-35 Minutes and yes, getting a good segment for this huge amount of time could be
very tedious but there is not a lot happening and the Boss Fight is easy enough. That way I could also forgive using V-Slash and Puffy Kick
on the Boss instead of Auto-Battling, which loses this run about 20-25 seconds in the grand scheme of things. But this is really nitpicking,
I very well understand the choice of making this 3 segments as you dont wanna watch 10 minutes of introduction when you farm a good Boss Fight
for Rockbird.

Segment 4-6:
The same goes for Segments 4-6, again running through Leck Mines its understandable that you want an additional segment for it because it would
be tedious to go through the Mines and get a good segment forthis. In segment 5 the Workcloth and Rubberboots pickup serves no purpose as it is
not necessary to fight any of the bosses up ahead.
I will say though that I wouldve really liked to at least have Segment 5 and 6 together since Segment 5 is 2:40 and it shouldn't have been very
difficult to get those 2 together.
The bossfight itself was pretty good, but I'd like to see 1 less V-Slash and more Auto Attacks here aswell, 1 V-Slash was really good since it
countered the bosses attack.

Segment 7:
Very well thought out Segment and very well executed. I want a sub 25 Minigame in the next segmented run though B).

Segment 8-9:
Now here is a problem again, while this is terrificly executed it bothers me that this is 2 segments because Segment 8 is 1:50. I get why it is
that way, because the Boss can be tough and whatnot but really, I feel like this should be 1 big segment.
Again I feel like the Equipment Pickups thus far would not be necessary in a Segmented Run since you can beat Squid easily without them.
Does not even get hit. I will exclude the Pirate Hat from this since it is going to be necessary for the Boss after Squid King, but I feel
like we can do without the Wind Charm aswell (picked up for selling purposes).

Segment 10-12:
Again very well executed with the dodges and all of that, but feeling like you can merge together 1 or even all of these.
Again understanding why that isn't the case but defenitley a possibility.
The shopping in Segment 10 amounts to 2820 Gold for the Equipment which can easily be reached without the Wind Charm, rendering it completley
useless.
Sidenote:
I hope that the next Segmented Run will use the Confusion Strats on Ruin Guard, the reason I am pointing this out right here is that you can
buy Truffles here that will inflict confusion, effectively saving Money over the Confusion Roots you can buy in Zil Padon.


Segment 13:
Very nice good luck on my boy Chang here, we only saw 2 Spin Kicks and 1 Tornado Punch which is incredible. I am really not a big fan of
defending here but the pattern he gives more than makes up for losing Justins DPS.
This is still improvable but man, its Chang. Good Job on this fight.

Segment 14:
Wind and Water purchases are defenitley a must for Crackle,  it is just way too overpowered to ignore and obtained very easily.
The Boots pickup seems unnecessary.
Additionally there is a Miracle Potion in the Forest Part here that replenishes 5 MP for the whole party, which could be very good for Wind
Magic Grinding.

Segment 15:
Instead of using Burnflame you should use Howl here, if possible twice to get Wind Magic Experience. I am irritated by the Music Change in the
Battle here but I am just going to blame the Playstation for that.
As far as the Water Magic Grinding goes, I did some testing and it is (very minimally) faster to get hit once by the statue and then Heal once
and go back out of the Menu compared to getting hit 6 times and healing twice (we are talking 0.5s difference). Of course since this is
somewhat "extensive" grinding, it makes somewhat of a difference.

Segment 16:
Pretty straightforward, I like that you finished the Magic Grinding in this Segment, dodges were good.

Segment 17:
Ganymede fight went really well, Hunters Knife defenitley shines here. Not much to improve here. An alternative strategy for some Grinding
aswell could be to buy Earth and use Diggin' 7 Times and then whack him with Play Fair, but that could be a strategy that takes a little too
long.

Segment 18:
I have been slightly irritated by the money pickups so far and here is why: This segment picks up the Magic Lamp which sells for a Fortune and
it is a gift for this run. But this is exactly why I dont understand the rest of the money pickups so far.
It has been a total of 810G which you can not really do much with anyways, probably losing roughly 10 seconds in the process.

Segment 19/20:
Very reasonable Herb Mountain, Life Seed seems like a very good choice to pickup here since Justin needs all the HP he can get.
Again I have a very big gripe with ending this segment (19) this early, the next Segment (20) is just cutscenes and walking so these 2 segments
could have easily been merged, effectively saving the time to save.

Segment 21:
Probably the toughest fight out of the 3 for the segmented run since Saki's Defense is insane and Combo Attacks don't do much. Very well
handled though, reasonable outcome

Segment 22:
Not much to say here, good menuing and the fight was amazing (nice clutch at the end).

Segment 23:
Surprised the Army Dart that is on the way is not picked up since it is a good Range Weapon for Sue and gives her Attack more meaning since she
doesnt have the delay she has with a Mace. Disregarding that, I do feel like you can use more Play Fair in the Mio fight to save some time and
gain a little more Weapon EXP, granted it would probably take a little bit longer to farm a reasonable fight.

Segment 24:
The Soldier fights are used to get some Wind EXP and finish off Crackle which is a very good thing to do here.
Additionally having enough MP for 3 Burnflame is a nice attention to detail. I think that this Segment can be improved though, especially the
first fight vs. Sergeants is not really that great.

Segment 25:
Very straightforward, would have liked to see the SLOUCH WEED be picked up (decreases WIT by 2 on an enemy) and that be used on a boss later
but overall not much to say here.

Segment 26:
The start of this Segment (including the shopping and the cutscenes) could have been included in the previous segment, but again it is
a Mountain of menuing so I understand opting into making this another Segment.
The Equipment purchases here are more than questionable since they are absolutley not necessary. There is 7135 Gold invested into
new Equipment that effectively raises the Defense by 5-7, which I do not think (ESPECIALLY) in a segmented run is necessary.
Furthermore there is an Item in the Shop here that is completley ignored called "Zap Scroll". If you put 10-12 of them on Sue
here for instance she can just Zap everything for 110-130 damage which would speed up a TON of segments here. You might even wanna consider
buying more of these since, well there is nothing that you get in the near future that will beat their DPS. Regardless the rest
of the Segment is pretty straightforward, cutscenes and whatnot.

Segment 27:
The aforementioned Zap Scrolls work wonders here, 1 turning all the Sergeants with ease, not even having to (but recommend to use) Burnflame.
Using Crackle here kicks there butt pretty nice but is wasted EXP for Justin that could be put into Fire or something else
like his Sword. HIGHLY recommend Zap Scrolls.
As far as what this segment holds in itself, the fights are pretty good for what it is and are handled well.

Segment 28:
Good segment, the Baobab Fruit pickup was probably just a safety that got discarded in the process.

Segment 29:
The Fruit pickups here at the start are not necessary and cost a lot of time (getting stuck in the rocks).
Straight forward segment otherwise, should try to use Auto Battle vs the Bird, the Bird should not get a turn because it will fall down and
take a while to get up and thats probably faster than using techs.

Segment 30:
Very nicely done overall here, the Bird fight is probably one of the worst things on Disc 1. I have to come back to what i said in Segment 26
though, the Zap Scroll work wonders here killing all 3 Birds in one fell swoop.
(You need to use 2 and then maybe 1-2 Combo Attacks)

Segment 31:
Very reasonable. 1 Minor slipup at the end there by talking to Gadwin again, but eh I mean thats not even 0.3s lost.

Segment 32:
Nothing out of the ordinary, good dodging. (This is my least favorite area in the game)

Segment 33:
Another questionable shopping segment. I am not sure about buying all this Equipment, especially on Sue since it will not be
needed for any of the upcoming Bosses in Disc 1. The Shield pickup on Mt.Typhoon could be justified if no Equipment was bought but it is put
on Sue for the time being and thus pretty much not needed (it is going to be handed down later but a miniscule difference in Defense to what
was bought and it only gives a measly 500G when sold)

Segment 34:
Begins with a Menu that could be avoided if the Shield was not picked up. All the Equipment swapping here is also not necessary
(Justin and Gadwin interchange a couple of things for Minor stat changes).
In the first Room you only need to activate 1 of the Barrels, not all of them. This will create less lag if you rotate the camera perfectly,
and the enemies will stay on their stones. Reasonable segment otherwise.

Segment 35:
Going back to segment 26, Sue could really benefit from having a Zap Scroll here. The Dynamite is fine and all but with a Scroll this fight
could be shortened a bit. Additionally this fight should be farmed for a better outcome and you should have  Justin use Burn or Howl here aswell
to delay the Serpents ATB. Giving Gadwin the weaker Weapon on purpose in the previous Segment is also something I dont really understand given
the fact that he is the Main Damage Source.
Rest is pretty straightforward as it is cutscenes and dodging.

Segment 36:
Missing out on 2 very crucial Items here, the Dragonslayer Sword and the Demon Eye Stone. The Sword is effective against Dragons
(coming up: a Dragon Boss). The Demon Eye Stone speeds up spellcasting (Crackle/Healing etc.).
Those 2 Items can be gotten in South Lama Mountains in the timespan of 45 seconds and I am pretty sure they would pay for themselves very quickly.
Disregarding that, this is a pretty straightforward segment. Again shopping for a miniscule Shoe upgrade here that costs you a total of 5040 Gold
seems pointless.

Segment 37:
There is a Chain of Gems here in the Volcano that would probably take 40 seconds to pickup but gives you +1 Combo Attack.
Combined with the Dragon Killer on Gadwin that would mean massive damage for the upcoming Boss and I am pretty sure it would pay for itself
(additionally it will sell for good money later). Disregarding that, the Hot Dog fight was handled well, 2 Rainstaffs
are amazing for Money but not needed for the Boss. Well executed dodges.
In return though, not needing the Rainstaff means you can dodge the doge, saving a battle here.

Segment 38:
The aforementioned Item pickups would make Gadwin hit for 150+ with Combo attacks, and he would have 3 of them. Since you have
Crackle on both Justin AND Feena, that deals a whooping 120-150 damage aswell. This boss would probably die in roughly 2 1/2 Turns with that setup.
Sue could use maybe 1 Power Mushroom to buff up Gadwin for even more Damage.
As it stands, this fight was well executed with what was gotten, can not really ask for much more here.
Additionally all the Equipment pickups were indeed rendered useless since we did not get hit exactly once. Sue would have died here without the
Equipment pickups but that is not really an issue.

Segment 39:
Straightforward segment, no mistakes.

Segment 40:
Okay with the Speed Seed pickup here, but can probably be skipped. Dodging everything nicely, Revival Stone is defenitley something
you absolutley want to have since you can use more risky strats in a Battle further down the road. Very straightforward.

Segment 41:
Dodging the Toads swiftly, a Zap Scroll (yes they keep coming back) would dispatch of all Toads in the forced fight in 1 fell swoop.
Other than that this Segment can probably be extended to where Segment 42 goes because nothing much is happening here regarding actual
dodges.

Segment 42:
Not much happening, dodges are handled well up until Save Point.

Segment 43:
The fight against Massacre Machine here is another example where the Chain of Gems would be incredibly useful. 1 Power Shroom on Gadwin
and he would go to town on this thing. This is the first fight where the Equipment pickups do kick in as Massacre Machine does get a fair
amount of turns and does physical attacks, so IF you want to pickup Equipment doing a shopping segment as you return from Gumbo seems like
a fair assesment. (That being said I am pretty confident it is still not necessary for the Massacre Machines, just looking forward to the
Gadwin and Grinwhale fight Justin and Feena should have upgraded Equipment by now)
The reason I am pointing this out right here is that by delaying the shopping you can probably skip picking up some Items and Money I have
been harboring on about for a couple of segment entries now.
The Massacre Machine fight itself is handled splendidly, can't really complain. The power of Crackle does show.
Rest of the segment is straightforward up to the Save Point.

Segment 44:
Similar to the first Massacre Machine, Gadwin can go to town on this thing with the Chain of Gems and a Power Shroom. Not much else to add
really since the fight is crackled... I mean handled well. :>)

Segment 45:
BibleThump. Should consider filling up Sue's Inventory with Power Mushrooms here since they will be in the Stash once she is gone and that
way in Segment 49, you can get the amount you need from your Stash.

Segment 46:
Short but straightforward, could possibly attach this to Segment 45.

Segment 47:
If you would have picked up the Dragon Killer Justin would have a better Sword, the Chain of Gems would give you 3 Combo Attacks here at the
cost of 15 WIT. But then again, you could have picked up a Slouch Weed in Segment 25 or at the start of the Valley here to slow down Gadwin by 2.
Using Crackle here is defenitley a good alternative, but it should be considered that you use a Slouch Weed/Power Mushroom and go to town on him,
raising your Sword Levels significantly.
All of this being said, its nuts that he did not get to use a single Tech, incredible luck.

Segment 48:
Should consider merging this with either Segment 47 or 49, but man I do understand why this is singled out. Valley of the Flying Dragon sucks.

Segment 49:
Taking things out of the Stash now is a very smart move, you would have the Chance on the Boat later but then you could not sell things.
As far as the shopping goes, it is merely to get some Power Shrooms. I mentioned earlier that this could have been done in a different segment
to cut down on time on the Stash and walking back between Inn and Shop, but that is a minor detail.
Selling all the things he got from Sue and Gadwin is a must for upgrading Equipment in Disc 2, so that is a given here.
The Boat cutscenes are pretty straightforward, BUT it has laid out 1 trap for you. You get multiple choices here and while you would think it is
faster to just mash through them, it actually saves 1 second choosing the 2nd option for the first one. Just a minor detail though.

Segment 50:
The Fruit of Life pickup is ESSENTIAL since it gives you 10 HP for free. I dont even know why the developers thought 10 HP for free was ok.
Anyways straightforward up to the Boss. Here is where the fun begins. Grinwhale is one of the toughest Bosses in the game as you only have Justin
and Feena but this run exploits its weakness very well. The Lure will only ever target Justin, which is a godsend since Feena can just finish him
with Burn/Burnflame/Burnflare.
HOWEVER, it should be considered to have Justin carry 2-3 Zap Scrolls (maybe even more) since those deal a ridiculous amount of damage to this Boss
and could probably cut down the time it takes to beat this guy by minutes.

Segment 51:
Straightforward segment here, not much to add. There is a Slouch Weed again that I would love to see used right at the start but oh well.

Segment 52:
The use of Sidethrow is somewhat questionable but delays Trents turns. I would rather see a farm for a good fight with using a Power Mushroom on
Rapp and just Missiling the main Body, as I think the fight could be faster that way.
Still very nice luck and execution.

Segment 53:
The shopping here irritates me a little bit again. Buying Winged Boots seems like a total waste of money since Ninja Sandals are just as good
and save roughly 4000 (!!!!!!!!!!!!!) gold a piece. Also buying a Sword for Rapp seems kinda weird for the upcoming parts since a Shuriken
enables him to use better Techs. It would kind of make sense to buy it for Justin or at least put it in your inventory for the Milda Fight and
then give it to Rapp, if you want to even buy it that is (I would save up the money for Zil Padon).
The rest is pretty straightforward, the pickups make sense since we are not leveling up a bunch.

Segment 54:
The Slouch Weed would work wonders here aswell. Maybe even use 2 on her, since her attacks are pretty powerful. A nice little trick you can do in
this battle is use Diggin' 7 times and then just Auto-Battle, you will probably effectively have to heal twice with Alheal but can just destroy
her within roughly 3-4 Minutes (provided you still have the Chain of Gems, a Power Mushroom to spare and the strongest Weapon possible for Justin).
Alternatively this makes a great fight to level up your Weapon Levels by using a weak weapon, not using a Power Mushroom and just letting your
guys hit with Auto Battle until there is no tomorrow. In testing I raised Justins Mace level and Feenas Whip level by 10/6 respectively within
10 Minutes, so I do feel like this is defenitley something to be considered for a segmented run especially since you can farm the fight until
she does nothing to you.
As it stands this fight has been crackled... executed well and she does cooperate very nicely.

Segment 55:
Picking up the Run Seeds in this Segment seems like a waste at the start (Movement is almost never important).
Dodging the Soldiers here is a nightmare so no shame in fighting them, the fights are handled well and disposed of quickly.
Besides the Ult Drink drops are quite handy for Gaia so in that regard it is probably favorable to fight them. That being said, since there is
quite the amount of fights here, I would have liked to see farming for more drops. In my latest RTA run, granted that I did fight 2 more battles,
I got 7(!) drops, it should not be too difficult to go for a couple more.
That could cut out a couple of Item pickups/buying OR you could use the Items/Money for something else. (Zap Scrolls, yes I am in love with them,
deal with it).
Additionally you can potentially (and thats probably actually a bad idea) do some Magic Grinding here since hte fights are forced,
but only 3 enemies so probably not worth it at all.

Segment 56:
There is an Item called Plug Suit here that Justin/Rapp can Equip that has better Defense AND Increases your WIT (!!!) which I think would be
REALLY good for either of them. (pickup probably takes around 20s extra since all you gotta do is turn of the Switches, get it, turn them back
on and move on).
The main dish of this segment is one of the worst bosses in the game since his Lighting attack can be devastating.
The main gripe I have here is Rapp using a Sword over a Shuriken. His Missile attack is SO MUCH FASTER than his Doppelganger attack while
utilizing the same Damage output.
Additionally the Power Mushroom should go on him since he almost gets twice as many turns as Milda.
Having Justin and Feena use Magic here is a natural thing since, well lets face it they are pretty useless from here on out,
so not much you could change there.
Fight was handled terrificly, getting awesome luck on the Battlers Arm Attacks so it misses the people.
Even if you ignore the Plug Suit for the Battler, I think it is worth picking up after the Fight at the very least.

Segment 57:
With a Shuriken Rapp could Sidethrow in two of the Battles, making it a little bit faster. One thing I neglected to mention by now is the
Black Belt that got sold earlier and I dont really understand why.
The Irid AM that was bought for it has 10 Defense but in a segmented run that shouldnt really matter, especially for Rapp at this point.
With the Black Belt his damage output with Moves would be nuts.

Segment 58:
Not much to say here. I am not sure it is worth picking up the Cactus Thorn/Armor/Helm here since you can get better stuff fairly easily.
Instead it might be worth diving into the Castle of Dreams and pickup a couple of Items there for usage or selling.
The Bloody Knife/Binding Whip/Death Mask/Dark Armor can all be gotten without getting into an Encounter, so that is something to look into.

Segment 59:
As I mentioned before, the Item pickups are probably not necessary. Instead of the Cactus Thorn you can buy a Discus here which is incredibly
powerful but also very pricey (22000). That being said with all the items that were bought so far that are probably not necessary I am pretty
sure you could afford it.
The Mystic Mask and Moonlight Shield are reasonable assesments.
You are taking the immediate way to Laine which I also understand, but the secret shop in the West Savanna holds Accessories giving you
+50 ACT for the mere price of 10000G. If not bought here I would have hoped to see the shop utilized past Alent since it does make a lot of
fights way faster but unfortunatley that did not happen.

Segment 60/61:
Understandable to split up these 2 segments as especially the second part of Brinan Plateau is a nightmare in dodging. However I feel like
it should be reasonable to think that this could be one segment.
Sidenote: No blame or shame but you can actually dodge the Monkies you fought here, its just insanely difficult.
Farming for that would probably be insane.

The Rest is pretty straightforward.

Segment 62:
Straightforward and reasonable. Could pickup Wolf Boot here to save money if needed for rerouting potentially.

Segment 63:
Very nice fight here, could argue to just use single target attacks to make the arms go faster and try to put Justin to sleep but thats just
playing with fire here. Not much to add but good job.

Segment 64:
Straightforward, not sure it is necessary to buy the Chain Earrings for Guido.

Segment 65:
Reasonable start for this segment since Inventory Management is necessary plus we need to do shopping relatively soon. The Hammer could have
been traded from Milda in a previous segment to save a couple frames but thats really just nitpicking.
The biggest issue with this segment is that it can probably be nullified if all the shopping is done when Zil Padon is reached for the first
time. Alternatively the shopping done at the first visit could pushed into this segment, just making it a little less running around.

Segment 66:
Mage Seed pickup seems reasonable given that Feena needs to cast Magic for the rest of the run.
Falling down for the Power Seed is questionable since it is sort of out of the way but oh well, not neckbreaking.
Main Gauche would not be necessary if Discus would have gotten in Zil Padon (better Money/Equip Management).
The main drawback of this Weapon is a loss of aproximatley 30 seconds because the platforms line up perfectly if you run through this
room normally with skipping it. The main dish awaits in the next segment though.

Segment 67:
Unfortunate that the Confusion AI Bug was not used on Ruin Guard. Not only is this one of the worst Bosses of the game that would be trivialized
with it but you could skip on buying Armor and grind in this Battle. As it stands, here we are fighting this thing. Kudos.
There is not much to critisize about this fight really, the Diggin' is justified and the usage of Guido to stall him to skip ATB is marvelous.
Good positioning aswell. Since if there is another segmented run, this fight would be "cheesed" I dont think there is a point in pointing out
potential improvements. Well done sir. (Again Seed of Running can probably be skipped out on)

Segment 68:
Another Seed of Power/Running pickup out of the way that I dont know if its worth it for a segmented run. Anyways, other than that this is a
pretty straightforward segment.

Segment 69:
Very straightforward, Fruit of Magic could've been kept for Feena (argueably but oh well thats not important).

Segment 70:
Very short so I would love to see this merge with Segment 69 perhaps since they are both not really difficult.
Leading up to the best fight in the game for the next segment.

Segment 71:
Here we go!
This is where the Chain of Gems that could have been gotten in Segment 37 would really shine. As Guido has 3 Attacks as it stands,
he will get 4 (!) Combo Attacks, combined with a Power Mushroom that you could use he would just destroy the 3 Officers.
The thing with these 3 is that they are extremely fast and every single lady can use the Trinity Attack as long as they are alive so using Diggin'
a couple of times is not a bad move, but could be skipped out on if you were to farm this segment since you can kill Mio relatively quickly if
you use the Power Shroom on Guido and use Attacks. Rapps Missle should do the rest for you.
Another (and my preferred way to start this fight) is to have Rapp and Justin move out of the way and use Mogay Bomb to delay all 3 Ladies IP.
The run gets control of this fight after about 2 minutes of it starting so I can see a lot of improvement being made here with a slightly
different setup, but from there it was handled really well and the luck with their spells/attacks was reasonable after the rocky start.
Sidenote: Instead of using Alheal you can use a Mikeroma Scroll here, you can buy them aswell if you need more. Just a small thing since
they are faster to use than Alheal and heal more.

The rest of this segment is pretty straightforward as it is just cutscenes.

Segment 72:
Nicely done on that of course the Hammer shines here because its a 1vs1 and it stuns enemies on Combo Attacks. That is amazing and well done.
On the other hand wasted 2 Revival Stones but saved some nice time I suppose. Hoping this does not come back to bite on later bosses.

Segment 73:
Again better shopping would probably erase the start of this segment, especially considering not having to prep for Ruin Guard.
Buying the Assasins Dagger can be circumvented by going to the Castle of Dreams to get the Bloody Knife and the Discus should have been bought
earlier.
Anyways the Rainbow Mountain pickups are more than reasonable and the dodges are very well executed. Kudos.

Segment 74:
The first fight here could have been handled a little bit better I feel like, especially pointing out it was a One-Take.
But regradless the rest of the segment was reasonable and the pickups more than pay for themselves since the upcoming Bosses are only
going to get worse.

Segment 75:
This Boss is tough and I completley support the strategy utilized here. This is the fastest way to get rid of this enemy, unfortunatley you just
have to deal with the Poison and whatnot. Using the Revival Stone here is probably a really good idea for a segmented run since I cannot think of
a much better spot to use one in than here.
That all being said, using Sidethrow drains a lot of SP from Rapp, which ultimatley your primary target is the Nice Head, the others dont deal
lethal damage and delay the Killer Head.
So I would have rather have seen some Missle usage on the nice Head and from there you should have targeted the Main Body.
I am pretty confident that way you can skip 1 Sudden Death from the Boss.
Still handled perfectly fine, the Moonlight Shields really shine here aswell since the Boss uses Crackling.

Segment 76/77:
Now here is another thing that could potentially be done in the future, merge these segments.
First off, Great Susano-o, the shopping and the pickups paid off as he cant deal damage with normal attacks to Justin and Rapp,
so this fight is virtually unloseable. Great! Could have probably utilized more Combo Attacks with Justin and Feena to make it a little faster
but oh well, nice.
Theeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeen I dont agree with what happens next after the fight. Going back to the Savepoint, healing and going back forth wastes about
40 seconds which is a huge amount of time.
The reason that is the case is I recently found out that Phantom Dragon, the Boss of Segment 77, is actually dealt with faster with JUST using
Combo Attacks.
So all you have to do is to Alheal after Susano-o and go to town, no healing should be necessary since your Characters are protected against
Blizzard and you should be able to evade his other Attacks.
Also in this Phantom Dragon fight the game eats the V-Slash damage from the first V-Slash, which is not very nice from the Game.
Fights were handled splendidly of course, just would like to see this merged.

Segment 78:
Well honestly, this Segment can also be attached to Segment 76/77, its just cutscenes.
(There is the Shop at Tower of Temptation here selling a bunch of overpowered stuff, could be a consideration in future runs).

Segment 79/80:
Another 2 Run Seed pickups that seem pointless.
Other than that straightforward, the rest of the pickups seem reasonable enough.
Could merge these 2 segments aswell since they are both relatively short and another short one is coming up.

Segment 81:
Singeling this one out makes sense to me as there is a lot of hard pickups to get here (dodging is very difficult here to get the items you want.)
And you defenitley want all the pickups that are gotten here. (Barring the Run Seed of course)
There is also a small video issue here at roughly 1:20, which I am not sure how it got there but that should defenitley be done over if possible.

Segment 82:
Resistance is futile. haHAA. Using Stram here with Liete on the Human part can work wonders since his Attacks will stop doing damage and he will
be forced to use Vanish at some point gifting you a turn.
Other than that this fight is amazing to be honest, just 1 Death from Feena (to be expected) and a reasonably fast conclusion to the fight
clocking in at 6 Minutes. Personally I did not manage to get that fast of a fight in my RTA routing besides 1 time where I beat this guy in
4 Minutes because I focused the Human Part and the Tentacle just kept looping and never did Gaia Strike. (I have more SP/MP and power of course
for the RTA Route so that can not be viable here).
Insane and well done.

Segment 83:
Small Video issue for me at 1:35-1:36 here, not sure if thats because of my player.
Selling the Assasins Dagger so shortly after you got it, I do wonder if it is worth to get it in the first place for 20000G.

Segment 84:
Collecting the Seed could be part of the previous Segment.
Pigs#1+#2 is handled perfectly with Sidethrow, I would sort of wish for the Gaia Battler to be fought immediatley here since he is sort of
a pushover, but it is reasonable to push it into the next segment since Rapp will recover SP.

Segment 85:
Gaia Battler 3 is handled well, I could see this fight being a little bit faster but oh well, especially the 1 Lighting attack he gets hurts
this segment.
That being said for the first time including shopping in a fighting segment so I do not want to complain too much here, it is tough to get a good fight
and not screw up the menus here. Instead of buying Crimson Potions you can Resque Sets in the Field Base earlier on,
they are a bit cheaper and do effectively the same thing. (150 vs 120 HP heal)

Segment 86/87:
I feel like Luzet could be 1 full Segment and if you really need a Break you can save in Zil Padon. But this way works too, just the 22 Minute
segment is kind of long at the end of the day.
Regardless not much happening here besides dialogue, so yeah.

Segment 88:
At this point getting the Revival Stone at the start is (probably) not a necessity.
I am also not sure about fighting the Stingray compared to running away twice, and if you are going to fight it might aswell keep the
Chain of Gems from earlier and get a Bonus Attack.
Regardless undodgable and it sucks :(.
Spirit Shoes can probably be skipped but very understandable pickup, aswell as the Fruits here.
The Critters encountered are actually dodgable if you go onto the platform after the Sphinx disappear, it is very difficult to pull off.
Mage King is certainly improvable by the looks of it, especially getting hit by Atomic Shot the way it happened here can be avoided by farming
this segment, I get why that wasn't done though.

Segment 89:
The Item pickups here are all reasonable and probably a necessity. Movement is very good. The Encounter that is being fought is technically
dodgable but because of the Angel Robe pickup it is defenitley better to fight it. (Though one might be able to skip that pickup.)
Fight is done reasonably fast. Evil Shuriken is a must and no mistakes at the Bubbles.
One could even be cheeky and include the Gaia Battler 4 in this segment, but reasonable to make an additional segment for that.

Segment 90:
Very nicely done, abusing Sleep here again after even getting a hit in with Justin.
The only small detail that I dont like about this fight is Rapp and Liete cancelling out their damage at 1:35-1:45 but not much
that can be done about that.

Segment 91:
Preparation for Mullen was done splendidly by getting the Warrior's Mail back on the Grandeur (Move Block Resist).
Making good use of the Power Mushroom and got a pretty decent start to the fight here, all in all I dont think you can skip out
on using a Revival Stone here period (even in RTA he sometimes still kills you if he uses Rising Dragon Cut twice in a row) and having consistent
damage output outweighs dying once.
Not much more to say, handled really well. In a different Money Route I would love to see the Soul of Asura being used here since it will give you
2 Critical Attacks.

Segment 92:
Getting the Whip of Light is defenitley very reasonable at the start as it gives Feena +2 onto Skill.
The fight with the Tree's and the Slimes here is very dodgeable unfortunatley, so that can be improved in the future.
Very nice Trent fight, utilizing Combo's perfectly.

Segment 93:
Very nice dodges in Gaia (3). Those are insanely difficult to pull off correctly. The fight with the Crabs could just be run
away from I feel like, saving some time on that.
Gaia Armor is handled very well.
Then it gets kinda weird because instead of running away from the Battles they are actually fought which I'm not sure is really something that should
be done. Liete does get a couple of Magic Levels out of it but they waste a HUGE amount of time.

Segment 94:
I understand the need to make preparations before the final 2 Bosses.

Segment 95:
This is it. The battle strategy for the first battle is defenitley the way to go, killing of the Cyst followed by the main body is just the
best way to handle this guy. And I must say the start of the Battle could have gone a little better but man, also a hell of a lot worse.
Lowering the Main Bodies Attack with Stram is a pretty nice move, could consider doing that even 1 more time and just not care about him doing
anything really (could save up some criticals that were used earlier in the Battle to cancel his move).
I also would have liked to see Liete use Zap! a little more often, while it doesn't do as much damage as Meteor Strike does, it does delay
both arms for a little bit and the Arm that debuffs you will be casting Alhealer eventually, giving you free reign.
Anyways fight was handled amazingly and a well earned victory here.
The small pauses in the Menu before the next fight are defenitley excusable as the previous fight surely takes its toll on the player.
Moving into Gaia Core, the strategy of Rapp using Sidethrow to kill the Tentacles is probably the most reasonable one you can do without
actually grinding out some sort of Moves/Magic for other characters so from here, it is just a matter of getting the right amount of luck to
actually be able to finish of both Mega Gaia's in time. This fight was handled well and I am not going to lie, also very clutch multiple times.
Very unfortunate that the Core actually managed to get a Vanish off in the End but that is such a minor detail here that it doesnt matter.
I would have wished for a little more Play Fair at the end but I understand wanting to control the actions after getting this far.
Moving into Evil Gaia, this boss is a joke, just annoying. Very straightforward from here and congrats on a well executed run.


Ultimatley of course this is a huge improvement and an easy ACCEPT.


Decision: Accept

Congratulations to 'Chris-X'!
Thread title:  
A third verifier replied outside the verification thread:

Quote:
Segments

1: 15:13 (15:13)
2-3 seconds of movement errors.

2: 23:24 (8:11)

3: 33:11 (9:47)
Speech cuts out for a few seconds during cutscene (4:00), doesn’t seem to affect timing. 1 second mistake during boss.

4: 40:33 (7:22)
Tiniest of movement errors.

5: 42:51 (2:18)
6: 52:26 (9:35)

7: 1:08:55 (16:29)
2s movement.

8: 1:10:25 (1:30)
1-2s lost collecting an item and backtracking, vs saving early and collecting it during #9.

9: 1:14:22 (3:57)
<1s menu during boss. Strategy of killing one arm easily quicker than allowing it to attack.

10: 1:21:30 (7:08)
11: 1:26:07 (4:37)

12: 1:28:13 (2:06)
A really good run through a tough dungeon.

13: 1:37:15 (9:02)
A couple of minor battle menu optimisation mistakes, and on around 8 occasions doesn't use AI (the difference between manual and AI is about 2 seconds each). The battle itself is handled well, and considering losing Justin is a legitimate risk, missing AI to make sure defend/heal is used appropriately is understandable.

14: 1:42:43 (5:28)

15: 1:54:52 (12:09)
The extra battle takes 45 seconds, but it’d be a major ballache to dodge the enemy as many times as they go back and forth. Only 5 seconds or so lost in execution mistakes during the MEXP farming, and it looks like each character is levelled only as far as they need to be and then ignored for speed.

16: 1:59:31 (4:39)
Some hesitation towards the end in manoeuvring around enemies, but otherwise good execution.
There’s a small MEXP farm at the start of this segment (6 heals for Justin, 3 for Feena). I’m guessing this was a case of seeing what the situation was after Seg15’s lengthy farm, and cleaning up during Seg16, but I think around 14-15 seconds could be saved by keeping track of the numbers during Seg15 and cutting out one save point backtrack.
[Edit: an attached table is found at the bottom]

17: 2:05:37 (6:06)
There's a lot of manual combos on this boss, but it's not really avoidable as there are two targets.

18:  2:10:15 (4:38)
19:  2:13:18 (3:03)
20: 2:23:24 (10:06)

21: 2:28:50 (5:26)
Again, heavy use of manual combos against Saki (25-30 seconds).

22: 2:32:19 (3:29)
Some use of AI vs Nana, but still a decent amount missing.

23: 2:35:09 (2:50)
Pretty good vs Mio. AI could save 4-5 seconds.

24: 2:48:58 (13:51)
Tricky set of battles handled well.

25: 2:52:05 (3:07)
Good music, good play.

26: 2:55:47 (3:42)

27: 3:07:39 (11:42)
Segments 27 to 29 are missing left-channel audio. Battles well-handled.

28: 3:10:55 (3:16)
29: 3:18:14 (7:19)

30: 3:26:51 (8:37)
Battles looked optimal, good movement.

31: 3:32:55 (6:04)
Left audio is missing again. Movement very good. Gadwin looks optimal (Withdraw AI mode would probably be a few seconds faster, but I think Grandia 1 doesn’t allow you to switch between AI modes on the fly?).

32: 3:36:55 (4:00)
33:  3:41:16 (4:21)
34: 3:43:58 (2:42)
35:  3:56:24 (13:26)
36: 4:05:42 (9:38)
37: 4:08:30 (2:48)

38: 4:13:13 (4:43)
Madragon handled really well, not much to improve.

39 4:18:46 (5:33)
40: 4:26:09 (7:23)

41: 4:37:14 (11:05)
Frogs were a mixed bag. On the one hand Justin took four very slow hits while practically at ACT, but on the other hand saved a move by getting a counter hit.

42: 4:42:45 (5:31)

43: 4:48:31 (5:46)
Massacre Machine went reasonably, if not spectacularly, well.

44: 4:55:28 (6:57)
As mentioned in the comments there’s a 3-4 second mistake in the button-pressing puzzle. Massacre Machine 2 didn’t seem exceptional, so I’m a little disappointed this attempt was kept with this sort of obvious mistake. That said, it’s far from a major time loss.

45: 5:01:09 (5:41)

46: 5:02:43 (1.34)
About a second lost in movement.

47: 5:08:56 (6:13)
A couple of seconds of hesitation when Gadwin unexpectedly defended – I’m not sure why you’d worry about choosing combo or critical in that situation, it’s a potential 1 HP more against an opponent with over 1500 HP. The rest of the battle was handled well, and RNG was good except for the Crackle that wasn’t quite fast enough.

48: 5:10:34 (1:38)
49: 5:19:47 (9:13)

50: 5:31:31 (11:44)
Interesting strategy. Entice has a far quicker animation while Justin is KO, and it looks like the RNG was favourable (at least, up until the last few moves, which isn’t bad for an 8-minute battle). It looks much simpler (and probably quicker, despite allowing Grinwhale more moves) by virtue of not having to worry at all about doing a lot of non-attacking moves to keep Justin alive. Not sure about the defend for Justin at the end, but may not have made any real difference to time.

51: 5:38:25 (6:54)

52: 5:42:37 (4:12)
Strategy for Trent works well, AI’s used well (only one manual combo, and it’s when Justin and Rapp reach COM at exactly the same time). Speculation: Given that Justin is the weakest party member, maybe moving him to the front at the start of the battle would take some of the heat away from Rapp, and allow him to do his damage quicker (assuming Trent isn’t programmed to target Rapp)?

53: 5:48:07 (5:30)

54: 5:57:51 (9:44)
RNG looks good against Milda. There’s a lot of what looks like bad inputs when the attack menu appears, but I think these are intentional so the runner has enough time to see what Milda’s move is, and change to defend if necessary?

55: 6:07:16 (9:25)
Reasonable to say that all the battles taken here were unavoidable (4-person party vs soldiers standing in the middle of a narrow corridor). For the most part they went really well.

56: 6:15:29 (8:13)
Gaia Battler went remarkably well, very good segment.

57: 6:24:11 (8:42)

58: 6:27:01 (2:50)
The Cactus detour took 40 seconds, but big reward for it.

59: 6:28:53 (1:52)
60: 6:29:35 (0:42)

61: 6:36:48 (7:13)
The unavoidable battle is dealt with about as quickly as possible. Slight traveling mistake (less than a second) towards the end.

62: 6:39:05 (2:17)

63: 6:43:37 (4:32)
Really good luck on Gaia Battler. Same traveling mistake as Seg61!

64: 6:49:20 (5:43)
65: 6:51:13 (1:53)
66: 6:54:17 (3:04)

67: 7:02:03 (7:46)
A bad moment against Ruin Guard with Justin getting cancelled, but it didn’t really do anything besides boomerangs, so good battle overall.

68: 7:07:20 (5:17)
69: 7:13:35 (6:15)
70: 7:14:36 (1:01)

71: 7:29:01 (14:25)
Mio is the least threatening of the three, but she also has far less HP, so it only makes sense to take her out first (Trinity Attack is horrific for speed and HP alike). Good battle.

72: 7:36:57 (7:56)
RNG not great near the start of Baal, V-Slash got stuffed twice very close to ACT, but did manage to cancel Baal once. Not that it really matters with his IP through the roof. I see no issue with dying twice rather than once – it only loses a second or two as Revival Stone is really quick.

73: 7:41:51 (4:54)

74: 7:45:51 (4:00)
The (unavoidable) random encounter could maybe have been a little faster, otherwise good.

75: 7:53:48 (7:57)
Not sure how to judge Hydra. It’s a mess, but Hydra attacks so often and with such problematic moves that a battle at this level can’t be anything but a mess. Feena’s death towards the end costs quite a lot of time.

76: 7:57:39 (3:51)

77: 8:01:15 (3:36)
A couple of easy-ish bosses handled well.

78: 8:05:28 (4:13)
79: 8:06:54 (1:26)
80: 8:09:17 (2:23)
81: 8:10:47 (1:30)

82: 8:21:54 (11:07)
(Baal)

83: 8:23:55 (2:01)

84: 8:29:57 (6:02)
Gaia Horn battles good.

85: 8:39:45 (9:48)
Really good battle. RNG put Justin to sleep (through the medium of a Gaia Battler, not through magical RNG powers or anything…) allowing the rest to get about 40% damage at the increased speed. Final shop used up pretty much all the gold, so money management through the run was good.

86: 8:42:02 (2:17)
87: 9:02:12 (20:10)

88: 9:11:47 (9:35)
First half of Mage King wasn’t great, Liete got cancelled early on, and Liete and Justin got grouped up for a few attacks. The second half was smooth though, so I can understand why it’d be a relatively good battle. Random battles were all good.

89: 9:16:08 (4:21)

90: 9:19:23 (3:15)
Same Justin incapacitation thing as Seg85 (and others) came into play, same result.

91: 9:26:42 (7:21)
Mullen was ok. I think defending at any time is questionable since Mullen has high enough IP to get a second attack anyway, his attacks seem mostly equivalent, and it limits use of AI. Voices cut out here as in Seg3.

92: 9:31:21 (4:38)
(Gaia Trent)

93: 9:44:17 (12:56)
Gaia Armor handled pretty well. Justin lost the ability to do melee halfway through and the runner immediately switched to the appropriate magic. Considering there was no recovery opportunity, the six random battles were handled pretty quickly.

94: 9:44:47 (0:30)
I want to disagree with the choice of a segment dedicated to menu work, but I wouldn’t want to deal with it at the end of Seg93/start of Seg95 either!

95: 10:17:28 (32:41, see below)
A lot of hesitation on battle inputs and menus in this last segment, but these are long, complex battles where strategy has to be thought up on the fly, so that’s somewhat understandable. The play is almost unrecognisable from the rest of the run though – though it does still feel like it’s in a hurry, I’d hesitate to call it a speedrun segment.

Timing for Seg95:
First frame: 435 (Dungeon appears on screen after loading)
Last frame 59208 (“To Gaia (Spirit Stone Chamber)” scene change prompt disappears – last player input during gameplay)
Total frames: 58773 (32:41 at 30/1.001 fps)


Roundup

Audio:
Generally good. Segments 27, 28, 29 and 31 are missing audio on the left channel. Music skips (especially during battle) occur quite frequently, and on two occasions the voices cut out during a cutscene – IIRC these are caused by the PS2, and in any case they don’t affect gameplay at all.
Weak Reject (Strong Accept, if the left channel issues are fixed, e.g. by copying over the right channel)

Video:
Appropriate resolution (I believe Grandia is D1 during menus and D4 in-game) and framerate (F2). The picture suffers throughout from a chroma banding problem that isn’t pretty, although it did provide this wonderful image of Mi-Leen-a:
[Edit: the image is found at the bottom]

I’m not sure whether that’s a problem that tends to happen with Grandia, haven’t played the game on console for quite a while Sad
Weak Accept

Cheating:
Everything I’ve looked at checks out.

Gameplay:
Even with no context this is clearly an improvement to an existing run. Routes are well-polished, levelling is minimised, money is managed well, every item picked up has a purpose (and almost all of them are used).
Menu work in most places is very good. There are a number of long shop/equip sequences performed very quickly, dialogue choices are selected very quickly, and cutscene text is skipped very quickly.
The route, on both a macro and micro level, is good. Non-obvious shortcuts are taken in a number of places; it’s clear the runner knows the world well. Detours are rare, and always for either a justifiable save or a large reward.
Movement, with the exception of the odd minor error (maxing out at 3-4 seconds), is close to optimal. A great deal of time has been saved by doing difficult manoeuvers to avoid seemingly-forced random battles.
Battles are generally good. Random battles are usually cleared about as quickly as the game will allow. Considering the high random factor of Grandia’s battles compared to other JRPGs, bosses are handled well in most cases and RNG is usually good. There’s opportunistic use of a potent glitch triggered by the enemy in 4 or 5 boss battles. The “Play Fair” AI (which can be used in place of combo/critical to save a little over 2 seconds per move) is underutilised in the first half of the run, and could save a few minutes through the run I’d say. AI usage (and battle performance in general to a lesser extent) improves as the run goes on.
Segmenting is perhaps overdone (though not so much as the previous run). There are a number of segments under 2 minutes long, and a couple of early easy segments with a reasonable detour to the save point that would waste more time than a few minor mistakes would. Some early segments with no RNG have minor movement errors that aren’t substantial, but are disappointing when the segments are so short.
I’d like to single out the final segment for criticism. It’s by far the longest segment in the game and has two very difficult battles (and I’m familiar with the underwhelming long final segment from the Skies of Arcadia run), but the entire segment is twitchy in the menus and hesitant in the battles. I’m confident that minutes were lost due to these alone, so I’m wondering if it was a case of accepting the first reasonable recording, and that more attempts/improved familiarity would improve the (admittedly painful to run) segment as a whole.

Overall the run is a large improvement in gameplay over the existing run, and it’s polished and optimal in many places.  There are some low points and a couple of oversights, but fundamentally it’s a good run and can safely obsolete the existing PS1 Europe run.

Currently I would suggest Reject, based on the audio issues mentioned above. If those are resolved, I’d say moderate Accept.


The runner was contacted about the audio problem in segments 27, 28, 29 and 31 and uploaded new files. The runner was also asked about the segments, where the gameplay was questioned.
Quote from Segment 95:
A lot of hesitation on battle inputs and menus in this last segment, but these are long, complex battles where strategy has to be thought up on the fly, so that’s somewhat understandable. The play is almost unrecognisable from the rest of the run though – though it does still feel like it’s in a hurry, I’d hesitate to call it a speedrun segment.

Quote from Summary of gameplay:
I’d like to single out the final segment for criticism. It’s by far the longest segment in the game and has two very difficult battles (and I’m familiar with the underwhelming long final segment from the Skies of Arcadia run), but the entire segment is twitchy in the menus and hesitant in the battles. I’m confident that minutes were lost due to these alone, so I’m wondering if it was a case of accepting the first reasonable recording, and that more attempts/improved familiarity would improve the (admittedly painful to run) segment as a whole.


The runner first replied:
Quote:
The verifiers are both right. The last segment is by far the hardest and I hesitated a lot.
In spite of that I did a lot of attempts and it was not "a case of accepting the first reasonable recording". The first reasonable recording was 8 minutes slower than this one. After that I decided to equip the Devil's Robe and the Nailpolish with Rapp.
The second reasonable recording was 4 minutes slower an so on. So it was kind of an iterative process.

I orientated my time by looking at Kakyoin Noriakis runs. My segment is 2:35 minutes faster than his NTSC-J last segment and only 11 seconds slower than his PAL segment (both NTSC-J and PAL are easier).

I will think about the comments and contact you...


And finally replied:
Quote:
I've decided not to redo the last segment.
I'm very satisfied with it and it's an improvement compared to my old run in spite of higher difficulty.
I'm looking forward to the verifiers' decision.


Back to the verifier:
Quote:
In that case, I'm satisfied. Audio is good in the new segments.




Edit history:
chris_x: 2016-11-05 06:36:01 pm
Hello everyone,

wow, I'm impressed! I didn't expect such a detailed verification.
Thanks a lot for that. I'm so happy to see an accept after working one year on this run.
Many of the facts I considered myself (e.g. to merge Great Susano-o and Phantom Dragon) and decided not to do so.
But there are many other things I will think about in a possible next project.

One question regarding the Ruin Guard: Could someone please explain the Confusion AI Bug? This is the first time I heard of it and it sounds great.

Thanks again. I know that it's a lot of work and costs a lot of time to verify such a run. So I appreciate your support!
Edit history:
chris_x: 2016-11-06 06:36:41 am
Quote from chris_x:
One question regarding the Ruin Guard: Could someone please explain the Confusion AI Bug? This is the first time I heard of it and it sounds great.


Oh, sorry, I found a video today:



That's an insanely cool trick. It's a pity I didn't know it, when I did the run.
Could easily save 4 minutes plus preparation and eqipment for this encounter.
Edit history:
LotBlind: 2017-02-20 02:31:09 am
LotBlind: 2017-02-20 02:27:30 am
To optimize movement, you have to move the camera way more than you did in this run actually: think of it this way. Let's say your target, whether it's a trigger or just the next corner, is some 25 degrees off to the side compared to the camera direction. If you move forwards, you're 25 degrees off. If you move forwards and left, you're 20 degrees off. In practice, you have to combine forwards and forwards-left movement. It doesn't matter what kinds of partitions you split the movement up in, you're still covering the same exact distance (i.e. it's not better to zigzag more, provided you're not overstepping it in either direction). Now, if you were to simply move the camera 25 degrees to the left, you're now moving in the right exact direction. If you have to move an equal distance f and fr (i.e. if we change that to 22.5 degrees), looks like the zig-zagging is about 7.5% slower (simply take 1/cos 22.5 and take into account the short time while rotating the camera) and, because time is a function of speed, 7.5% more time was spent. A second every 13 seconds for an angle like that. Even if you make a mistake and rotate the view too much or too little, you're still going to be closer to the correct angle than 22.5 degrees most of the time so you should get consistently better times this way.

I'm not saying you don't ever do that, nor that it's easy to be so precise, but there's also lots of long corridors and such that look kind of absent-minded when you're not doing anything else.

Ofc this might be offset if looking a certain way causes lots of lag. Lots to think about in movement Smiley While I'm at it, I'd like to strongly encourage you to look into what's causing the minor skips and stutters in this video because I feel it's too frequent to say it doesn't distract you from the run. I'm seeing an average of 1/2 per segment. Is the music resetting due to a bad CD?
Your suggestion for improving movement sounds very mathematical. Did you ever measure if the calculations are right, i.e. if you really save time by moving that way?

The stutters in the videos are caused by the recording software. I used another software for the PAL version, which didn't caused such behaviour.
And the music is resetting because the game has problems with  it. It happened in every version and every PlayStation I've played on. My CD is brand new!
Edit history:
LotBlind: 2017-02-20 02:49:54 pm
It works the same for any similar game. Well the cos 22.5 example is very clear. I've drawn a picture...



The left thing shows a comparison of moving in a straight line (the optimal movement) and what it looks like if you're constantly moving in a zig-zag in directions 22.5 degrees on either side of it. As you can tell, the gray is clearly longer. We can also straighten the gray line out so it forms the hypothenuse of a right-angled triangle on the right, with the red just being the third side. To get the ratio between the length of the adjacent side to the hypothenuse, you need the cosine function. Hence cos 22.5. But I then turned it around so it answers the question "how much longer is the non-optimal path", so 1/cos(22.5) gives you what I said, something like 1.08 or 108%, 8% longer. I reduced 0.5% because you'll waste a little bit of time to moving the camera to the desired angle.

Here's some more visual proof (now the black ones are non-optimal, just imagine the lower black line starting from where the upper one starts and you can see there's always a corresponding segment between them and they are of equal length):



I can't immediately see any reason why the game would in reality behave any different from what the maths suggests. The difference isn't terribly big in the end, and the angle I chose is the extreme case: most of the time the optimal movement angle is probably closer to one of the 8 principal directions and so the difference is even smaller, but it clearly exists and I'm sure you can see this yourself if you do a few tests somewhere suitable.
In other words: You didn't measure it in the game.
But it sounds logical. So if I put the game back into my PlayStation one day, I'll remember this.