My feelings on The Demon Rush
Game Page: http://speeddemosarchive.com/LegendOfMana.html
Nicholas 'Sir VG' Hoppe's Dragon's quest single-segment run
Verifier Responses
Another verifier wanted his comments withheld, but he said that this run was a fine improvement to the current run.
Decision: Accept
Reason: It's a big improvement.
Nicholas 'Sir VG' Hoppe's Dragon's quest single-segment run
Verifier Responses
Quote:
Quality (Capture)
Looks like a Blu-Ray in VLC, minus the $35 they charge for one.
Quality (Gameplay)
Since I’m kind of late verifying this run, I won’t get too much into specifics in terms of how time was lost and gained.
Wastes time by spelling out his name as “SirVG”, complete with lower and upper case letters, and doesn’t even put the space in between the Sir and VG after all of it. Should have taken a lesson from the Pokemon FireRed guy and just put “U” for the best effect. Oh well, at least it’s not like the old run where it seemed that he didn’t even know where the letters were.
God damn it, the tree is writing poetry.
Less than a minute into the old run, the player got caught on a pole while running out the door to the house. I mean, Jesus. Anyway, the runner avoids that mistake here. Except now, he access the save menu for a reason I’m not entirely sure of, and doesn’t save. He loses 5 seconds because of it.
The first round of bad guys goes 6 seconds faster. I’m know right now that because the runner selected the BFS (Big Fucking Sword) instead of the smaller one that was used in the old run, enemies will be killed a lot faster.
The boss is defeated faster.
More time is saved in the next chapter thanks to the same two things happening: faster field enemy defeats and a faster boss defeat. In fact, the bunny boss goes down over 65 seconds faster thanks to a non-stop offense from the BFS.
Sells all the lamps over 30 seconds faster. For whatever reason, the player of the last run decided to run past the main objective and buy all the stuff first, instead of doing it the other way around.
Does the Monster Corral section 10 seconds faster.
Defeats the flaming skull boss 20 seconds faster.
For the second bird boss, he doesn’t defeat it as fast, but the enemies before that go faster.
Misses a Rising Crush on the dragon bird boss thing, but still manages to kill it at the exact same time the other run did, and the newer one actually had worse luck with the attacks.
Defeats the robot ninja skeleton thing 7 seconds faster.
Defeats the unicorn dog over 15 seconds faster.
Defeats the second form of the dragon boss 6 seconds faster.
About half way through the run, he makes a route change. It involves him going back to beat up the Death-whatever guy he beat once already for a Heis-something. It’s also for the experience, which allows him to beat the bosses of the forest level the player did next in the old run in less than 30 seconds. The old run battled them for at least 2 minutes.
This means that pretty much all of the “x seconds faster” I’ve been saying mean nothing now. Well, they do, because he’d be behind, but you know what I mean.
Enters the wrong room after the boss, costing him about 10 seconds.
Evil Larc goes down 41 seconds faster. This is mostly due to him being defeated before he can launch his long attacks.
In the last run, there was a lot of poor planning in the Underworld. In the new run, the runner enters the underworld, kills everyone, watches the map cutscene, and revives Larc in almost 10 minutes even. In the old run, it took 15 minutes.
Beats the Summer Lovin’ chapter over a minute faster than the old run did due to better enemy handling and a much better boss fight.
In the old run, the player also had a lot of trouble with the enemies in the chapter before Legend of Mana which cost him well over a minute.
Reaches the top of the Mana tree 20 seconds faster than the old run due to the usual enemy battle improvements.
The old run danced around with the last guy for a minute. In the new one, the runner kills him with 3 hits in 8 seconds. Holy shit.
Timing
I have no idea where you want to start and end timing, but I’ll provide some quick points in case:
Character select: 1211
Moves pointer on name select: 1385
Moves map selector: 1850
Ending curing of the Mana tree cutscene starts at: 196102
Importance
The runner has improved the old time by at least 9 minutes using a variety of timesavers, including new paths, better, faster, and less damaging enemy fights, way faster boss battles, and better route planning. Even though the runner makes some mistakes, like accessing the save menu at the start and heading into the wrong room at one point, it looks a lot less messy than the old run and more like an SDA standard one. Yes, this should replace the old one.
Looks like a Blu-Ray in VLC, minus the $35 they charge for one.
Quality (Gameplay)
Since I’m kind of late verifying this run, I won’t get too much into specifics in terms of how time was lost and gained.
Wastes time by spelling out his name as “SirVG”, complete with lower and upper case letters, and doesn’t even put the space in between the Sir and VG after all of it. Should have taken a lesson from the Pokemon FireRed guy and just put “U” for the best effect. Oh well, at least it’s not like the old run where it seemed that he didn’t even know where the letters were.
God damn it, the tree is writing poetry.
Less than a minute into the old run, the player got caught on a pole while running out the door to the house. I mean, Jesus. Anyway, the runner avoids that mistake here. Except now, he access the save menu for a reason I’m not entirely sure of, and doesn’t save. He loses 5 seconds because of it.
The first round of bad guys goes 6 seconds faster. I’m know right now that because the runner selected the BFS (Big Fucking Sword) instead of the smaller one that was used in the old run, enemies will be killed a lot faster.
The boss is defeated faster.
More time is saved in the next chapter thanks to the same two things happening: faster field enemy defeats and a faster boss defeat. In fact, the bunny boss goes down over 65 seconds faster thanks to a non-stop offense from the BFS.
Sells all the lamps over 30 seconds faster. For whatever reason, the player of the last run decided to run past the main objective and buy all the stuff first, instead of doing it the other way around.
Does the Monster Corral section 10 seconds faster.
Defeats the flaming skull boss 20 seconds faster.
For the second bird boss, he doesn’t defeat it as fast, but the enemies before that go faster.
Misses a Rising Crush on the dragon bird boss thing, but still manages to kill it at the exact same time the other run did, and the newer one actually had worse luck with the attacks.
Defeats the robot ninja skeleton thing 7 seconds faster.
Defeats the unicorn dog over 15 seconds faster.
Defeats the second form of the dragon boss 6 seconds faster.
About half way through the run, he makes a route change. It involves him going back to beat up the Death-whatever guy he beat once already for a Heis-something. It’s also for the experience, which allows him to beat the bosses of the forest level the player did next in the old run in less than 30 seconds. The old run battled them for at least 2 minutes.
This means that pretty much all of the “x seconds faster” I’ve been saying mean nothing now. Well, they do, because he’d be behind, but you know what I mean.
Enters the wrong room after the boss, costing him about 10 seconds.
Evil Larc goes down 41 seconds faster. This is mostly due to him being defeated before he can launch his long attacks.
In the last run, there was a lot of poor planning in the Underworld. In the new run, the runner enters the underworld, kills everyone, watches the map cutscene, and revives Larc in almost 10 minutes even. In the old run, it took 15 minutes.
Beats the Summer Lovin’ chapter over a minute faster than the old run did due to better enemy handling and a much better boss fight.
In the old run, the player also had a lot of trouble with the enemies in the chapter before Legend of Mana which cost him well over a minute.
Reaches the top of the Mana tree 20 seconds faster than the old run due to the usual enemy battle improvements.
The old run danced around with the last guy for a minute. In the new one, the runner kills him with 3 hits in 8 seconds. Holy shit.
Timing
I have no idea where you want to start and end timing, but I’ll provide some quick points in case:
Character select: 1211
Moves pointer on name select: 1385
Moves map selector: 1850
Ending curing of the Mana tree cutscene starts at: 196102
Importance
The runner has improved the old time by at least 9 minutes using a variety of timesavers, including new paths, better, faster, and less damaging enemy fights, way faster boss battles, and better route planning. Even though the runner makes some mistakes, like accessing the save menu at the start and heading into the wrong room at one point, it looks a lot less messy than the old run and more like an SDA standard one. Yes, this should replace the old one.
Quote:
Didn't find much to criticise. There were a few small slip-ups with accidentally talking to NPCs/pushing a button an extra time, and most noticeably having trouble getting a key that was hidden behind the foreground. However, overall I'd say these came to less than 25 seconds, which seems fine for a SS of this length. Battles are definitely quicker and so less subject to randomness than in the existing run, with the better weapon used this time.
Quote:
Ok, just finished watching this. As it's an improvement, I don't really see any reason to reject it.
Video Quality: S'all good
Play Quality: Obviously SirVG has serious ingame knowledge and has planned the run out perfectly. However that doesn't instantly transform into execution skill. The switch to killing Deathbringer II was a good call, allowing him to annihilate the later bosses with ease... in the general non-boss combats there are many small mistakes such as being hit (first battle, no less, haha), whiffing attacks, etc. The boss battles are played far more skilfully though he does whiff a couple of specials which can be a bit time-costly (yes I know about using them to avoid damage, but they can almost always still hit afterwards)
Overall it's hardly perfect but as it's an improvement and shows some occasionally badass play (the final boss battle being a humourous conclusion to the whole thing) I say yes.
Video Quality: S'all good
Play Quality: Obviously SirVG has serious ingame knowledge and has planned the run out perfectly. However that doesn't instantly transform into execution skill. The switch to killing Deathbringer II was a good call, allowing him to annihilate the later bosses with ease... in the general non-boss combats there are many small mistakes such as being hit (first battle, no less, haha), whiffing attacks, etc. The boss battles are played far more skilfully though he does whiff a couple of specials which can be a bit time-costly (yes I know about using them to avoid damage, but they can almost always still hit afterwards)
Overall it's hardly perfect but as it's an improvement and shows some occasionally badass play (the final boss battle being a humourous conclusion to the whole thing) I say yes.
Another verifier wanted his comments withheld, but he said that this run was a fine improvement to the current run.
Decision: Accept
Reason: It's a big improvement.
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