1-Up!
Game Page: Doesn't exist yet
Milon's Secret Castle (Any %) (Single Segment)
Verifier Responses
Decision: Accept
Congratulations to 'HavocProdigy!'
Milon's Secret Castle (Any %) (Single Segment)
Verifier Responses
Quote from PJ:
I'll begin by saying this is PJ.
Milon's Secret Castle is an incredibly hard game to speed run. I had never played this game until this year, but I found a copy locally for $3.25 so I decided to give it a whirl. I love this game. Despite it's reputation, it's actually a really fun game to play. So, naturally, I tried to run it. I immediately regretted this decision. The randomness of the bosses is crippling. There is just no way around it. Sometimes you get an unwinnable pattern and just lose. Other times you just get zoned forever and take like 2 minutes to kill the boss. Healing is extremely limited in this game and later bosses do loads of damage, so you're basically left to either farm for a million years to recover health, farm for money to buy health refills, or just don't get hit by bosses. Then, at the very end of the game, the true final boss is in one of four rooms and there is no indication of which is the true boss. So yea, I pretty quickly realized this would be impossible to run.
...until Havoc showed up!
His comments pretty accurately describe what is going on in this run. He lists all the mistakes and room for improvement, and the discoveries that made this run possible (manipulating final boss location!!). I seriously never thought I'd see the day that a run of this got submitted, especially one that beats the best nico time! His route is really smart and he has exceptionally good boss fights. The escape from the well could be done faster in theory (as he mentions), but it is ridiculously hard/risky to kill the balloon enemies in the fire room. His plan of escaping to the well to kill one is honestly probably faster than trying to kill one in the fire chamber. Really the route overall is just really well planned. All the umbrella drops are planned, the farming he does for triple umbrella is very very justified because these later bosses are stupidly hard, his health refills and money route are really smart, and he got strong luck. This is a phenomenal run.
So yea. Very accept. Can't believe he's going to try for an improvement.
Milon's Secret Castle is an incredibly hard game to speed run. I had never played this game until this year, but I found a copy locally for $3.25 so I decided to give it a whirl. I love this game. Despite it's reputation, it's actually a really fun game to play. So, naturally, I tried to run it. I immediately regretted this decision. The randomness of the bosses is crippling. There is just no way around it. Sometimes you get an unwinnable pattern and just lose. Other times you just get zoned forever and take like 2 minutes to kill the boss. Healing is extremely limited in this game and later bosses do loads of damage, so you're basically left to either farm for a million years to recover health, farm for money to buy health refills, or just don't get hit by bosses. Then, at the very end of the game, the true final boss is in one of four rooms and there is no indication of which is the true boss. So yea, I pretty quickly realized this would be impossible to run.
...until Havoc showed up!
His comments pretty accurately describe what is going on in this run. He lists all the mistakes and room for improvement, and the discoveries that made this run possible (manipulating final boss location!!). I seriously never thought I'd see the day that a run of this got submitted, especially one that beats the best nico time! His route is really smart and he has exceptionally good boss fights. The escape from the well could be done faster in theory (as he mentions), but it is ridiculously hard/risky to kill the balloon enemies in the fire room. His plan of escaping to the well to kill one is honestly probably faster than trying to kill one in the fire chamber. Really the route overall is just really well planned. All the umbrella drops are planned, the farming he does for triple umbrella is very very justified because these later bosses are stupidly hard, his health refills and money route are really smart, and he got strong luck. This is a phenomenal run.
So yea. Very accept. Can't believe he's going to try for an improvement.
Quote from ktwo:
This is ktwo. I could literally have written the same, word by word, myself (not sure I got my copy for 3.25 though, but nevermind!).
A/V - Good
Legit - Yes
Gameplay - As already has been said, this is one hardcore game to speedrun. It's random, non-linear, the movement is not evident to optimize and the bosses are incredibly powerful (don't get fooled by their cartoonish appearance!). The execution is really tight throughout the run and the runner clearly kicks ass at this game.
As for the route, the runner played this as kind of a "solo project" and did not show any videos of the route. While there is a certain appeal to just bring forward the finished product, there is also the risk of overlooking something that another pair of eyes could have pointed out. I must say that I'm overall impressed by the route though.
I can see three major changes that could have cut roughly half a minute if done well. The first would have been to learn how to spawn Maharito (the last boss) in the green room. It's dependent on when you press start on the title screen and I think it should be possible to learn how to manipulate it (although I have admittedly not tested it myself). The second one is to go for a more aggressive tactic when escaping the well. It's very luck-dependent though, because it depends on where the enemies spawn. The third is to skip healing before the skeleton boss. However, I remember the skeleton boss being a major pain even with all health upgrades, the best weapon and all aid items, so trading a few seconds to improve the odds is by no means shocking.
I have not gone over this run with a comb to see if I could find any minor improvements to the route. If anyone is crazy enough to work on an improvement, I'd probably be more willing to do so though. Anyways, I still found two things that looked slightly odd in my eyes. At 6:43, there was some trouble breaking the wall by jumping and shooting. I think that can be done in an easier way. At 7:05, I didn't understand why the runner chose to shrink (and there was no mention in the comments either why they took that option).
Overall - This is a very impressive speedrun. The nature of the game makes it impossible to fully optimize, both in terms of the route and the execution. There might a few minor things to improve, but further improvements from this point will basically rely on getting better general luck and/or adding very risky/luck-based strats.
ACCEPT
Quote from PJ:
Milon's Secret Castle is an incredibly hard game to speed run. I had never played this game until this year, but I found a copy locally for $3.25 so I decided to give it a whirl. I love this game. Despite it's reputation, it's actually a really fun game to play. So, naturally, I tried to run it. I immediately regretted this decision. The randomness of the bosses is crippling. There is just no way around it. Sometimes you get an unwinnable pattern and just lose. Other times you just get zoned forever and take like 2 minutes to kill the boss. Healing is extremely limited in this game and later bosses do loads of damage, so you're basically left to either farm for a million years to recover health, farm for money to buy health refills, or just don't get hit by bosses. Then, at the very end of the game, the true final boss is in one of four rooms and there is no indication of which is the true boss. So yea, I pretty quickly realized this would be impossible to run..
A/V - Good
Legit - Yes
Gameplay - As already has been said, this is one hardcore game to speedrun. It's random, non-linear, the movement is not evident to optimize and the bosses are incredibly powerful (don't get fooled by their cartoonish appearance!). The execution is really tight throughout the run and the runner clearly kicks ass at this game.
As for the route, the runner played this as kind of a "solo project" and did not show any videos of the route. While there is a certain appeal to just bring forward the finished product, there is also the risk of overlooking something that another pair of eyes could have pointed out. I must say that I'm overall impressed by the route though.
I can see three major changes that could have cut roughly half a minute if done well. The first would have been to learn how to spawn Maharito (the last boss) in the green room. It's dependent on when you press start on the title screen and I think it should be possible to learn how to manipulate it (although I have admittedly not tested it myself). The second one is to go for a more aggressive tactic when escaping the well. It's very luck-dependent though, because it depends on where the enemies spawn. The third is to skip healing before the skeleton boss. However, I remember the skeleton boss being a major pain even with all health upgrades, the best weapon and all aid items, so trading a few seconds to improve the odds is by no means shocking.
I have not gone over this run with a comb to see if I could find any minor improvements to the route. If anyone is crazy enough to work on an improvement, I'd probably be more willing to do so though. Anyways, I still found two things that looked slightly odd in my eyes. At 6:43, there was some trouble breaking the wall by jumping and shooting. I think that can be done in an easier way. At 7:05, I didn't understand why the runner chose to shrink (and there was no mention in the comments either why they took that option).
Overall - This is a very impressive speedrun. The nature of the game makes it impossible to fully optimize, both in terms of the route and the execution. There might a few minor things to improve, but further improvements from this point will basically rely on getting better general luck and/or adding very risky/luck-based strats.
ACCEPT
Quote from RedArremer:
Since everyone's revealing their identity, I'm Red Arremer (not that it matters lol).
Easy accept, this is a marvelous run. There's some minor flubs I've noticed that aren't tied to boss RNG, but the runner pointed most of them out, and this is still a very impressive run worth to be on SDA.
Easy accept, this is a marvelous run. There's some minor flubs I've noticed that aren't tied to boss RNG, but the runner pointed most of them out, and this is still a very impressive run worth to be on SDA.
Decision: Accept
Congratulations to 'HavocProdigy!'
Thread title:
