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Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen (100 %) (Single Segment) [Ogre Battle: World Ending]
Verifier Responses
Decision: Accept
Reason: This is a weak accept, but the one verifier who rejected even said he was on the fence and that this is a good run. Is it beatable though? Yes.
Congratulations to Tony 'Brootus' Robertson!
Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen (100 %) (Single Segment) [Ogre Battle: World Ending]
Verifier Responses
Quote:
A/V I had an issue in one place, but I feel it was more my laptop acting up, I couldn't find the static portion while watching on my desktop.
The run itself was very good at the end, my big problems came from several minutes of loss over the first 10 stages. Several bad luck fights early in the run, the runner abandoning a fight that seemed possible to finish, and the 70+ seconds of time loss to bouncing between enemies in stage 10 are huge. This category is very long, but the beginning is pretty ugly, I don't remember anything at the end that stood out as much as the beginning's major issues.
I'm torn between an accept and reject, the A/V is good, and the run isn't necessarily bad, but it does have many ugly moments and just random moments the runner could've made a better decision.
I'll go with an accept, if something else major enough is brought up that I forgot about I may change it, but I still feel this run is worth watching and would be entertaining for anyone that likes this game. I do hope the runner plans to try to improve this, whether he receives competition or not.
The run itself was very good at the end, my big problems came from several minutes of loss over the first 10 stages. Several bad luck fights early in the run, the runner abandoning a fight that seemed possible to finish, and the 70+ seconds of time loss to bouncing between enemies in stage 10 are huge. This category is very long, but the beginning is pretty ugly, I don't remember anything at the end that stood out as much as the beginning's major issues.
I'm torn between an accept and reject, the A/V is good, and the run isn't necessarily bad, but it does have many ugly moments and just random moments the runner could've made a better decision.
I'll go with an accept, if something else major enough is brought up that I forgot about I may change it, but I still feel this run is worth watching and would be entertaining for anyone that likes this game. I do hope the runner plans to try to improve this, whether he receives competition or not.
Quote:
OK, I watched this with the audio commentary, though I did check the game audio as well. Both audio tracks are fine in quality, the video is good as well. No cheating evident.
Now, the runner does an excellent job, but he overall does huge mistakes that cost him about 2ish minutes in total. About 1 minute of them is the "ping pong" between a mermaid and wizard enemy, and he has to flee from 2 bosses, as well.
Normally I would be saying "that's fine, the run still is great, despite the mistakes. It's the nature of this game to be kinda random like that with enemy aggro.", but then the runner is incredibly cocky in the audio commentary, saying things like "there's nobody who can do better" or "if you verify this and think this can be done better, please do it better". And that although he is aware there's at least another runner that he could swap times with, as he mentions in the commentary. I'm really not a big fan of that.
So, I will reluctantly give this an Accept, but only under the condition that the runner not only will try to improve his time, but also provide us with a Pumpkin% run eventually (not necessarily on SDA, but generally).
Now, the runner does an excellent job, but he overall does huge mistakes that cost him about 2ish minutes in total. About 1 minute of them is the "ping pong" between a mermaid and wizard enemy, and he has to flee from 2 bosses, as well.
Normally I would be saying "that's fine, the run still is great, despite the mistakes. It's the nature of this game to be kinda random like that with enemy aggro.", but then the runner is incredibly cocky in the audio commentary, saying things like "there's nobody who can do better" or "if you verify this and think this can be done better, please do it better". And that although he is aware there's at least another runner that he could swap times with, as he mentions in the commentary. I'm really not a big fan of that.
So, I will reluctantly give this an Accept, but only under the condition that the runner not only will try to improve his time, but also provide us with a Pumpkin% run eventually (not necessarily on SDA, but generally).
Quote:
Wall of text incoming...
Quote:
I have to say this was by far the hardest verification I've ever done. I spent the majority of my time 50/50 on what verdict I should give. So I guess I should thank the runner for actually making me work at being a verifier.
As for the run itself...
Game: Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen
Audio/Video: Audio was fine (both game and commentary), video stuttered every now and again, but it's semi-reminiscent of what happens when there's a VOB split for any of my runs. It looks perfectly fine otherwise.
Cheating: It doesn't look like a single segment TAS, so no, I didn't see any signs of cheating.
I'll start off by saying that this is Dragondarch, and that you should be prepared for a wall of text.
I've done 4(?) segmented any% runs of this now? I've actually lost count, but I've learned enough about this game both from first-hand experience and reading various information to have a fairly good grasp on how things work, and to an extent, why they work.
While I haven't actually done a 100% run yet, I did route one that needed some hard playtesting. This run does some of that, and also helped to determine a few things that I wasn't 100% sure about.
Now, I'm gonna break this up into two sections: General, and stage by stage. I was originally going to do just stage by stage, but found that I'd be saying the same thing in a lot of stages, so it just seemed redundant.
I'll start with General stuff:
Text Skipping
Right from the get go, I notice that his text skipping is a bit slow. Not "Holy shit this guy sucks" slow, but just...suboptimal. Realistically you want to skip text by pressing A the first time dialog appears, and holding it until all lines of text are displayed. Following that, you just let go of A and re-press and hold it for the next box. There's no mashing involved, and doing it this way you should never see any individual letters appear, only entire lines. For a comparison, vs. his run starting at about 28 seconds (both runs going through character creation...pay attention to the speed at which text appears on screen). I don't think this cost him that much time, even over the course of a run as long as this one, as this is more of a nitpick. Realistically, it just kinda looks bad.
Excess Camera Movement
This is present in quite a number of stages, starting with Castle of Warren. When the camera is in motion, game time stops. At any point where game time is stopped, units stop their movement. Thus excess movement of the camera causes units to take longer (real time) to reach their destination. Camera movement occurs when either you press and hold the Y button, if you move the sword to the edge of the screen to scroll it around, if you're zoomed out and moving it at all, and also during the zoom in/out animation.
The runner fidgets with the camera A LOT during the course of the run. In some cases, he moves it closer to a location that the game will automatically move to in a short while, which in theory doesn't cost (much) time, but you also have to factor in that while zoomed in the game moves the camera MUCH faster than the player ever could. Zoomed out the game and player movement speeds are the same. There's also the fact that the game will always get he camera in the exact spot it wants, and the player can only (realistically) get close. Unless the runner NEEDED to have the camera somewhere (such as to watch enemy troop movement), he needs to just leave it still.
Also, zooming out is only really faster when it's a long distance. Using it on any of the first few maps is slower due to the zoom in/out animation. Good uses are ones such as late game stages where you have to send one unit clear across the map.
Opinion Leader
Originally, I 100% agreed with him on using the Iainuki Lord, as that's what I had planned for segmented (and still plan on). But there's a couple things about this run that don't lend well to it:
1: He stops using him altogether less than halfway through the run. The main point to the Iainuki Lord is it's back row attack being able to hit so hard. I understand WHY the runner chooses to stick him on liberation duty, since Tristan does the same job but so much better.
2: He can't accurately control his ALI without stopping to grind in Pogrom Forest, and even then he got lucky he only had to do one battle.
I'm beginning to think for a single segment 100% run that the Icecloud Lord might be the best option. Icecloud Lord starts with 65 ALI base (Iainuki starts with 50), and with a good pull for the final card during character creation, it's possible to start with 70 ALI from the get go, making the grinding unnecessary. The drawback is that Icecloud doesn't hit as hard as Iainuki, even if it's the enemies' primary weakness and has low INT. So there's a bit of a tradeoff. Also, take into consideration that Opinion Leader has a hard time hitting anything from Slums of Zenobia onward, and that if need he can be placed in the front row for Banish.
Speaking of character creation...
Character Creation
In terms of what cards he got, I'd say it was almost passable. He got a Devil (useful against Debonair, albeit slow), Star (Boosts AGI, VERY useful late game), and Justice (INT based damage card, quick animation).
He also got Strength (raises defense, meh), Temperance (removes status conditions, only really useful against Diablo if someone gets petrified), and Hierophant (puts all non-boss characters to sleep, pretty much not worth using in all cases).
So 3/6 isn't bad, except...
The card he manually pulls is Death. The card itself is useless for speedruns. It's also VERY detrimental to the Opinion Leader's starting stats.
The Opinion Leader's starting stats are based on what Lord type you get (all 4 Lord types have their own base stats that don't change). Beyond this, the final card pulled determines the randomness to those starting stats. Each card has a value associated with each stat, and each stat can receive a "bonus" up to the each of those values.
Death has the following "bonuses"
HP -5 (Runner got -4)
STR -3 (Runner got 0)
AGI -4 (Runner got -4)
INT -1 (Runner got -1)
CHA +2 (Runner got +1)
ALI -7 (Runner got -2)
LUK +7 (Runner got +5)
Death is by far one of the WORST cards you can pull last.
Now, we could argue that since he doesn't use his Opinion Leader for that long, that his stats aren't as important. This is partially true. You still want a good starting set for early game bosses. The big one here, though, is ALI. The runner NEEDS this stat to be 70+ to obtain the world ending. The combination of Lord Type and ALI modifier from the cards was outright bad.
Priestess (-2 STR, -3 INT, +5 ALI)
Emperor (+5 STR, +2 INT, +5 ALI)
Lovers (+2 STR, -4 INT, +7 ALI)
Chariot (+3 STR, -5 INT, +7 ALI)
Hermit (-2 STR, +7 INT, +7 ALI)
Fortune (-5 STR, -2 INT, +6 ALI)
Justice (+2 STR, +4 INT, +7 ALI)
Hanged Man (-7 STR, +5 INT, +7 ALI)
Moon (-2 STR, +5 INT, +6 ALI)
Sun (+3 STR, +5 INT, +7 ALI)
Any of the above cards combined with Icecloud Lord type would give a chance to start with 70 ALI. Obviously some are better than others (Priestess and Fortune are bad choices, the rest are all a matter of what kind of damage he'll be doing. Icecloud Lord uses INT as it's attack stat in both the front and back row, but some tarots use STR). I know the runner said in his audio commentary that he wanted to not have to rely on RNG manipulation (which he doesn't have to for pretty much the entire run since it's pretty much impossible in real time single segment), but character creation is NOT counted against his completion time, and having better starting stats can save good amounts of time.
As far as having for farm for ALI, it took him a total of about 1:05 to do it, between the battle itself, switching his battle formation (twice), and healing his Opinion Leader after the battle.
Even in the case that he starts with the base ALI of 65, Hierophant (+2) and Priestess (+1) cards aren't particularly rare, and there's still a fair chance that the Opinion Leader will kill at least one boss.
TBH, I think it would be worth to just keep reseting until you managed to start with 70 ALI. You can either check it during Castle of Warren (quicker reset, but small time loss) or wait until after when reforming units (no time loss since the cursor has to pass over the Opinion Leader anyway). If we factor in the time lost from slightly slower boss kills, it'd probably be about ~40 seconds saved or so.
Swapping Units in Edit Units
For certain special characters, it's faster to switch them in by deploying their unit on the next map, changing their leader, then swapping them to the main group from there. For this run, it includes Aisha, Tristan, Yushis, and Gilbert's Wyrm. With the exception of Gilbert's Wyrm, this is only a couple seconds faster, at the cost of some extra goth (Tristan and Yushis are both rather expensive). I was going to nitpick this, but them realized money is a slight concern here, and the couple seconds isn't all that worth it.
For Gilbert's Wyrm, however, it definitely IS worth it since Gilbert's unit is relatively cheap, and there's no leader swapping necessary.
The Route/Party
I'm not gonna say he should follow my segmented route to a T, because that route is based on getting extremely good RNG in every fight, but the route he uses is questionable. It has it's merit, yes, but I see some definite improvements.
What I'm thinking:
Castle of Warren
Sharom (Herostar)
Sharom District (Canopus, Gilbert)
Lake Jannenia
Pogrom Forest
Slums of Zenobia (Ashe, Lyon)
Island Avalon (Aisha)
Kastolatian Sea (Brunhild)
Balmorian Ruins (Saradin, Chaos Gate to Organa)
City of Malano (Tristan)
Diaspola (Norn)
Organa (Fenril)
Muspelm (Slust, return for Crown)
Pogrom Forest (Silver)
Deneb's Garden
Kalbian Peninsula
Antalia (Yushis, Chaos Gate to Antanjyl, Sunshines)
Tank Rep Now
Deneb's Garden (Deneb, 35 Rep)
Antanjyl (40 Rep)
The Tundra (45 Rep)
Shangrila (Debonair, 48 Rep)
Fort Allamoot (53 Rep, Chaos Gate to Ruined City)
Dalmuhd Desert (58 Rep, Doun Gem)
Pogrom Forest (Olden Orb)
Rhyan Sea (63 Rep, True Gem)
Shangrila (Tablet of Yaru, Sapphire)
Ruined City (Fogel, 68 Rep, Diamond)
Fort Shulamana (73 Rep, Armband)
Dalmuhd Desert (Amethyst)
The Tundra (Turquoise)
City of Malano (Ruby)
Organa (Cake)
Muspelm (Peridot)
Valley of Kastro (Rauny, 83 Rep)
Island Avalon (Emerald)
Lake Jannenia (Opal)
Slums of Zenobia (Garnet)
Diaspola (Pearl, Aquamarine)
Rhyan Sea (Topaz)
Shrine of Kulyn (88 Rep, Grail)
City of Xanadu (93 Rep)
Zeteginea (98 Rep)
Temple Shalina (100 Rep)
This gives him his primary damage dealer (Tristan) earlier, and realistically allows him to create the Boss Killer unit a bit sooner. It gets Yushis a bit sooner since that's where he buys Sunshines, and he needs high Rep to obtain her. It leaves just enough room to get Rep back to full after tanking it for Deneb, while still having enough for everything necessary.
I understand why he needs the Crown (a segmented run would skip it).
This route also eliminates backtracking for Lyon and the Key, which cost about 1:08, along with reducing the number of party switches from 7 to 4.5 (still have to get the Wyrm from Gilbert, just would do it with a fatser method)
As for party: I was looking in to using Yushis over Saradin myself, and hadn't come upon anything concrete. Watching this run has basically solidified the fact that she's NOT worth the time it takes to add her to the party. With his Iainuki strat, the damage type of that character is pretty inconsequential. Neither has a real edge over the other overall (Yushis is ahead on Galf, Prochon, and Gares 3 - Saradin is ahead on Previa, Luvalon, and Hikash - and both are about even everywhere else). The big one is Diablo, where Yushis is immensely helpful, but Saradin isn't so far behind that he's unusable. Also, add in to all this that he has a Princess already covering white damage, and it really makes Yushis redundant.
He mentions in his audio commentary that he once had Saradin as a Lich miss 4 times against Diablo...to be honest I find that EXTREMELY hard to believe give Diablo's low INT score (145) vs. what Saradin would have (should be closing in on 200 at the very least). If he missed 4 times in a single fight then he had the absolute worst luck possible, and Yushis could theoretically fall to the same circumstances.
The only other party I could see that would be worth ending with would be trading out Saradin for Slust and having 4 Iainukis. May be worth looking in to.
Beyond that, Waiting to get Norn to make the Boss Killer unit is pointless. Yes, Norn has the highest base INT of all the Princess-capable characters, but Aisha is only 4 points behind her, which is negligible late game. Better to just get Tristan early, and make Aisha the Princess and save one extra trip in to play around with units.
Tactics
Runner doesn't ever change the tactics off of Leader. Leader and Best have no changes to them in terms of damage output, but Weak grants +4 and Strong grants -4. These numbers are both giving and receiving. While Strong may seem like a bad tactic (it's good defensively...I need to look into if the tactics bonus for defense is factored in with or after all other calculations are made...), weak - with it's damage bonus - can sometimes win a fight a bit, or even a lot sooner, depending on how many extra attack animations occur after where the fight could have been won.
Boss fights I observed that could have been won faster with weak: Figaro, Fogel, Randals, and Hikash. For Hikash, having Saradin would have made this a moot point.
Obviously, you can't just start in the weak tactic, since a lot of bosses have higher HP than the rest of their cohorts. Start in Leader, and when boss HP drop down to being the weakest, you switch to weak for the extra damage output. Especially early game, the extra 4 damage per attack CAN make a difference with how low damage is at that point.
Stage by Stage
Castle of Warren
-Moves the camera around too much here. Shouldn't have been moving it at all since there's no enemy units here. I'm not gonna bother mentioning camera movement issues in later stages because it would get redundant fast.
Sharom
-Missed the item in the center of the map. MAY have been useful, but could have been equally useless, so no points docked for accidentally missing it.
-Fight could have been won without the card if every attack connected after the first miss. Probably should have waited for one more miss to burn the card, though I understand playing it safe.
Sharom District
-Really good positioning for the 2 towns, made for less camera movement, and correct liberation order without having to order one unit to move an extra time.
-If he had saved the Justice he used on Usar, he could have used it here to greater effect than Devil. Would have done ~7 more damage, and has 8 seconds less animation time.
Lake Jannenia
-Should have deployed Gilbert as his liberation unit, and swapped the Gryphon and Wyrm out that way, as it's quite a bit faster than doing it from the World Map.
Pogrom Forest
-Good positioning of the liberation unit here, didn't accidentally discover Alagoyas on the way to Para.
-Really good Kapella fight, everyone connected, and Opinion Leader beat 2 Imps to the punch.
Deneb's Garden
-For what it's worth, this stage went decently for the time he did it, but it's really better to save this for later when he has Tristan, as Tristan can pretty much OHKO Deneb. This would save almost a minute over his current fight, due to significantly less animations.
Slums of Zenobia
-Difficult to determine what cards he keeps due to canceling out of the yes/no prompt rather than selecting no. Card set looked good, but it's a bit difficult to tell what he's really shooting for.
-Needs to get Lyon during the stage, ever with the higher cost. Backtracking wastes so much time...
-Awful Debonair fight, has to burn 3 Devil cards (at 16 seconds each) just to kill him. Granted, he would have had to run otherwise, so it worked out. At the very least, one is acceptable.
Island Avalon
-Really good Joker pulls here: 3/4 useful
-Skipping the pull is a good safe strat here, since fighting Gares at night is not such a good idea (for his current party, he really wants to be fighting around dusk due to his mid-ALI wizards)
-I only wish my Gares fights went that well...
Kastolatian Sea
-Got absolutely awful luck on Porkyus, Aisha and Warren both missed every attack. Blew 2 Hermit cards (at 16 seconds a pop), and still had to run. This was all luck though and was out of the runner's control.
Balmorian Ruins
-Mystic Mace was a decent find. Not good, but decent (worth abbout 3.5 damage).
-Worst mistake of the run right here, gets ping ponged back and forth 4 times. Had he just used L to switch the view to his Opinion Leader, he could have selected the unit fast enough to get it out of harm's way. Loses about 1:15 to this alone.
-Albeleo fight was meh. Warren missed twice, Iainuki missed, and the Wyrm pretty much carried the team.
Diaspola
-I've already gone over route, so I won't mention it again.
-Incorrect deployment order. Should be Boss killer to Somyul, Liberation 1 to Anglem, Liberation 2 to Temple. If he'd done City of Malano before this, he could have had his Boss Killer not include his Opinion Leader, which would have streamlined the destination selections nicely.
-Reason for sending Boss Killer to Somyul is that from there it can go straight north/northwest and pretty much beeline for the boss. May have to dodge around a flying unit. Much less travel time than from Anglem.
-Liberating Ajan right now was pointless. He Boots'd to it later, then walked to Somyul after. Would have been faster to skip the liberation now and just Boots to Somyul later, then walk to Ajan. Less dialog boxes that way.
-Decent Norn fight, got lucky that Saradin went first on round 2.
Valley of Kastro
-Accidentally ran from Ares, then flubbed the menu a bit, costing about 20 seconds.
-Ares fight was solid.
Muspelm
-He didn't need to discover that Chaos Gate. That one leads to Organa, and he already opened that stage up through Balmorian Ruins.
-Good Slust fight, given the party he was working with.
City of Malano
-Would been easy navigation-wise if he'd done this before Diaspola, since it's almost a straight shot from Bel Chelry to Malano (one Evil One group will try to block you/retake Bel Chelry). Easily doable with 2 groups, and doesn't have to worry about getting the Opinion Leader out of harm's way.
-Does a mass tarot pull here, can't tell exactly what he's keeping and discarding for the first half of it.
-During the pulls, he chooses to keep a Temperance card, and discards...a Temperance card for it...
-Apros is piss easy with Saradin, regardless of group. Could have easily done this right after Balmorian Ruins. Good fight nonetheless, despite all the deaths.
Kalbian Peninsula
-Detours for the Chaos Gate (Leads to Organa). Pointless, since Organa is already available.
-If he'd had weak tactic set, the fight would have ended on Saradin's turn.
Shangrila
-I find it better to go east to the tip of that peninsula, then northwest, rather than straight north. No chance of accidentally discovering a hidden temple like that
-Pretty much perfect Gares fight.
The Tundra
-Flubbed his first destination, lost about 15 second re-doing it.
-Panicked and used a Devil, Saradin had 2 turns left still.
Fort Allamoot
-Didn't use a panic card here, even though it was pretty much the same situation as Mizal.
Organa
-Sent a unit to the Chaos Gate here (leads to Muspelm). Pointless, just like that last 2.
-That's pretty much how Slust would have went if he'd gotten Tristan first.
Ruined City
-Would have killed Fogel one attack sooner if he had the Weak tactic set.
Antalia
-I had oringally questioned the idea of using Sunshines, primarily since he has to detour to buy them, but I don't think it costs him time overall, and definitely makes things safer vs. the final bosses.
-Probably should have only deployed 2 units here...sent Opinion Leader to shop/Yushis temple, and Boss Killer to the Chaos Gate, then to the boss.
-Omicron dropped like a stone. GG Iainuki.
Antanjyl
-Not gonna make a second comment on Yushis vs. Saradin.
-Galf went well.
Dalmuhd Desert
-Perfect Prochon fight. Note that Prochon has the highest AGI of any enemy unit in the game, so it's not likely to beat him to the punch.
Rhyan Sea
-Would have won on Yushis' turn if he'd switched to Weak tactic after Tristan's attack.
Fort Shulamana
-I...really have nothing to say about this stage, outside of the fact that Saradin beats out Yushis here since Previa is strong vs. everything but Electric (27 res, next highest is Cold at 43, then White at 52)
-May not have made a huge difference timewise which character he had.
Shrine of Kulyn
-Saradin wins against Luvalon by a mile. Weakness is Fire only, everything else is 60+. Probably could have won an attack or two sooner if he'd had Saradin.
City of Xanadu
-Saradin wins pretty heavily here too, since White is Hikash's highest resistance.
Zeteginea
-Technically Saradin beats out Yushis by a little bit here, since Endora's weakest to Physical damage.
-Lost some time trying to decide what card to use.
Temple Shalina
-Won't comment on Yushis vs. Saradin here, since I did earlier.
-Questioned sending a unit to the shop, but the audio commentary explained it. Didn't wind up needing it.
-All 3 fights were good.
I had some nitpicky stuff about some things he talks about during the audio commentary, but it's probably better saved for the games discussion thread. Went in to the game mechanics quite a bit. Note that none of it affected my decision.
So, I spent pretty much the entirety of this past weekend mulling over whether to accept or reject this. I was 50/50 after watching it once. Still 50/50 after watching it again with audio commentary. It took me quite some time to come to a verdict, and that decision ended up being based off of one key element.
Final Decision: REJECT
Reason: I've already noted a number of improvements possible, some being over a minute. The main reason this doesn't pass, however, is because the runner initially said he was going to try and get a video up that I could take a look at and make comments on. He had some difficulty with his recording setup, and it was delayed a bit. In the mean time I posted a route suggestion based on my segmented plans. He made a few comments on that, giving me a basic idea of what kind of party he uses, but I didn't have all the specifics, and didn't know all of his tactics. I had intended to work with him on the route, after I'd seen a video. The problem is that there was no video. He got something he thought was good and just submitted it. He also mentions in the audio commentary that he wanted to submit this to see if anyone else would challenge it. This to me makes it sound rushed. Had he gotten a video up before submitting, I could have pointed everything out ahead of time on possible improvements.
So, is this a good run? Yes, absolutely. The runner clearly demonstrates that he put a lot of effort into the route and planning each stage out.
It just feels like the run itself needs more polish. There were a couple glaring execution errors that look awful, and had he gotten some initial videos up we could have done some brainstorming on the route. I really feel like sub 2 hours should be the goal here. (Side note: I have the run timed at ~2:10:23, since character creation is generally excluded from the time). I know it may seem daunting to try and find 10 minutes to shave off this time, but my gut's telling me it's possible.
As for the run itself...
Game: Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen
Audio/Video: Audio was fine (both game and commentary), video stuttered every now and again, but it's semi-reminiscent of what happens when there's a VOB split for any of my runs. It looks perfectly fine otherwise.
Cheating: It doesn't look like a single segment TAS, so no, I didn't see any signs of cheating.
I'll start off by saying that this is Dragondarch, and that you should be prepared for a wall of text.
I've done 4(?) segmented any% runs of this now? I've actually lost count, but I've learned enough about this game both from first-hand experience and reading various information to have a fairly good grasp on how things work, and to an extent, why they work.
While I haven't actually done a 100% run yet, I did route one that needed some hard playtesting. This run does some of that, and also helped to determine a few things that I wasn't 100% sure about.
Now, I'm gonna break this up into two sections: General, and stage by stage. I was originally going to do just stage by stage, but found that I'd be saying the same thing in a lot of stages, so it just seemed redundant.
I'll start with General stuff:
Text Skipping
Right from the get go, I notice that his text skipping is a bit slow. Not "Holy shit this guy sucks" slow, but just...suboptimal. Realistically you want to skip text by pressing A the first time dialog appears, and holding it until all lines of text are displayed. Following that, you just let go of A and re-press and hold it for the next box. There's no mashing involved, and doing it this way you should never see any individual letters appear, only entire lines. For a comparison, vs. his run starting at about 28 seconds (both runs going through character creation...pay attention to the speed at which text appears on screen). I don't think this cost him that much time, even over the course of a run as long as this one, as this is more of a nitpick. Realistically, it just kinda looks bad.
Excess Camera Movement
This is present in quite a number of stages, starting with Castle of Warren. When the camera is in motion, game time stops. At any point where game time is stopped, units stop their movement. Thus excess movement of the camera causes units to take longer (real time) to reach their destination. Camera movement occurs when either you press and hold the Y button, if you move the sword to the edge of the screen to scroll it around, if you're zoomed out and moving it at all, and also during the zoom in/out animation.
The runner fidgets with the camera A LOT during the course of the run. In some cases, he moves it closer to a location that the game will automatically move to in a short while, which in theory doesn't cost (much) time, but you also have to factor in that while zoomed in the game moves the camera MUCH faster than the player ever could. Zoomed out the game and player movement speeds are the same. There's also the fact that the game will always get he camera in the exact spot it wants, and the player can only (realistically) get close. Unless the runner NEEDED to have the camera somewhere (such as to watch enemy troop movement), he needs to just leave it still.
Also, zooming out is only really faster when it's a long distance. Using it on any of the first few maps is slower due to the zoom in/out animation. Good uses are ones such as late game stages where you have to send one unit clear across the map.
Opinion Leader
Originally, I 100% agreed with him on using the Iainuki Lord, as that's what I had planned for segmented (and still plan on). But there's a couple things about this run that don't lend well to it:
1: He stops using him altogether less than halfway through the run. The main point to the Iainuki Lord is it's back row attack being able to hit so hard. I understand WHY the runner chooses to stick him on liberation duty, since Tristan does the same job but so much better.
2: He can't accurately control his ALI without stopping to grind in Pogrom Forest, and even then he got lucky he only had to do one battle.
I'm beginning to think for a single segment 100% run that the Icecloud Lord might be the best option. Icecloud Lord starts with 65 ALI base (Iainuki starts with 50), and with a good pull for the final card during character creation, it's possible to start with 70 ALI from the get go, making the grinding unnecessary. The drawback is that Icecloud doesn't hit as hard as Iainuki, even if it's the enemies' primary weakness and has low INT. So there's a bit of a tradeoff. Also, take into consideration that Opinion Leader has a hard time hitting anything from Slums of Zenobia onward, and that if need he can be placed in the front row for Banish.
Speaking of character creation...
Character Creation
In terms of what cards he got, I'd say it was almost passable. He got a Devil (useful against Debonair, albeit slow), Star (Boosts AGI, VERY useful late game), and Justice (INT based damage card, quick animation).
He also got Strength (raises defense, meh), Temperance (removes status conditions, only really useful against Diablo if someone gets petrified), and Hierophant (puts all non-boss characters to sleep, pretty much not worth using in all cases).
So 3/6 isn't bad, except...
The card he manually pulls is Death. The card itself is useless for speedruns. It's also VERY detrimental to the Opinion Leader's starting stats.
The Opinion Leader's starting stats are based on what Lord type you get (all 4 Lord types have their own base stats that don't change). Beyond this, the final card pulled determines the randomness to those starting stats. Each card has a value associated with each stat, and each stat can receive a "bonus" up to the each of those values.
Death has the following "bonuses"
HP -5 (Runner got -4)
STR -3 (Runner got 0)
AGI -4 (Runner got -4)
INT -1 (Runner got -1)
CHA +2 (Runner got +1)
ALI -7 (Runner got -2)
LUK +7 (Runner got +5)
Death is by far one of the WORST cards you can pull last.
Now, we could argue that since he doesn't use his Opinion Leader for that long, that his stats aren't as important. This is partially true. You still want a good starting set for early game bosses. The big one here, though, is ALI. The runner NEEDS this stat to be 70+ to obtain the world ending. The combination of Lord Type and ALI modifier from the cards was outright bad.
Priestess (-2 STR, -3 INT, +5 ALI)
Emperor (+5 STR, +2 INT, +5 ALI)
Lovers (+2 STR, -4 INT, +7 ALI)
Chariot (+3 STR, -5 INT, +7 ALI)
Hermit (-2 STR, +7 INT, +7 ALI)
Fortune (-5 STR, -2 INT, +6 ALI)
Justice (+2 STR, +4 INT, +7 ALI)
Hanged Man (-7 STR, +5 INT, +7 ALI)
Moon (-2 STR, +5 INT, +6 ALI)
Sun (+3 STR, +5 INT, +7 ALI)
Any of the above cards combined with Icecloud Lord type would give a chance to start with 70 ALI. Obviously some are better than others (Priestess and Fortune are bad choices, the rest are all a matter of what kind of damage he'll be doing. Icecloud Lord uses INT as it's attack stat in both the front and back row, but some tarots use STR). I know the runner said in his audio commentary that he wanted to not have to rely on RNG manipulation (which he doesn't have to for pretty much the entire run since it's pretty much impossible in real time single segment), but character creation is NOT counted against his completion time, and having better starting stats can save good amounts of time.
As far as having for farm for ALI, it took him a total of about 1:05 to do it, between the battle itself, switching his battle formation (twice), and healing his Opinion Leader after the battle.
Even in the case that he starts with the base ALI of 65, Hierophant (+2) and Priestess (+1) cards aren't particularly rare, and there's still a fair chance that the Opinion Leader will kill at least one boss.
TBH, I think it would be worth to just keep reseting until you managed to start with 70 ALI. You can either check it during Castle of Warren (quicker reset, but small time loss) or wait until after when reforming units (no time loss since the cursor has to pass over the Opinion Leader anyway). If we factor in the time lost from slightly slower boss kills, it'd probably be about ~40 seconds saved or so.
Swapping Units in Edit Units
For certain special characters, it's faster to switch them in by deploying their unit on the next map, changing their leader, then swapping them to the main group from there. For this run, it includes Aisha, Tristan, Yushis, and Gilbert's Wyrm. With the exception of Gilbert's Wyrm, this is only a couple seconds faster, at the cost of some extra goth (Tristan and Yushis are both rather expensive). I was going to nitpick this, but them realized money is a slight concern here, and the couple seconds isn't all that worth it.
For Gilbert's Wyrm, however, it definitely IS worth it since Gilbert's unit is relatively cheap, and there's no leader swapping necessary.
The Route/Party
I'm not gonna say he should follow my segmented route to a T, because that route is based on getting extremely good RNG in every fight, but the route he uses is questionable. It has it's merit, yes, but I see some definite improvements.
What I'm thinking:
Castle of Warren
Sharom (Herostar)
Sharom District (Canopus, Gilbert)
Lake Jannenia
Pogrom Forest
Slums of Zenobia (Ashe, Lyon)
Island Avalon (Aisha)
Kastolatian Sea (Brunhild)
Balmorian Ruins (Saradin, Chaos Gate to Organa)
City of Malano (Tristan)
Diaspola (Norn)
Organa (Fenril)
Muspelm (Slust, return for Crown)
Pogrom Forest (Silver)
Deneb's Garden
Kalbian Peninsula
Antalia (Yushis, Chaos Gate to Antanjyl, Sunshines)
Tank Rep Now
Deneb's Garden (Deneb, 35 Rep)
Antanjyl (40 Rep)
The Tundra (45 Rep)
Shangrila (Debonair, 48 Rep)
Fort Allamoot (53 Rep, Chaos Gate to Ruined City)
Dalmuhd Desert (58 Rep, Doun Gem)
Pogrom Forest (Olden Orb)
Rhyan Sea (63 Rep, True Gem)
Shangrila (Tablet of Yaru, Sapphire)
Ruined City (Fogel, 68 Rep, Diamond)
Fort Shulamana (73 Rep, Armband)
Dalmuhd Desert (Amethyst)
The Tundra (Turquoise)
City of Malano (Ruby)
Organa (Cake)
Muspelm (Peridot)
Valley of Kastro (Rauny, 83 Rep)
Island Avalon (Emerald)
Lake Jannenia (Opal)
Slums of Zenobia (Garnet)
Diaspola (Pearl, Aquamarine)
Rhyan Sea (Topaz)
Shrine of Kulyn (88 Rep, Grail)
City of Xanadu (93 Rep)
Zeteginea (98 Rep)
Temple Shalina (100 Rep)
This gives him his primary damage dealer (Tristan) earlier, and realistically allows him to create the Boss Killer unit a bit sooner. It gets Yushis a bit sooner since that's where he buys Sunshines, and he needs high Rep to obtain her. It leaves just enough room to get Rep back to full after tanking it for Deneb, while still having enough for everything necessary.
I understand why he needs the Crown (a segmented run would skip it).
This route also eliminates backtracking for Lyon and the Key, which cost about 1:08, along with reducing the number of party switches from 7 to 4.5 (still have to get the Wyrm from Gilbert, just would do it with a fatser method)
As for party: I was looking in to using Yushis over Saradin myself, and hadn't come upon anything concrete. Watching this run has basically solidified the fact that she's NOT worth the time it takes to add her to the party. With his Iainuki strat, the damage type of that character is pretty inconsequential. Neither has a real edge over the other overall (Yushis is ahead on Galf, Prochon, and Gares 3 - Saradin is ahead on Previa, Luvalon, and Hikash - and both are about even everywhere else). The big one is Diablo, where Yushis is immensely helpful, but Saradin isn't so far behind that he's unusable. Also, add in to all this that he has a Princess already covering white damage, and it really makes Yushis redundant.
He mentions in his audio commentary that he once had Saradin as a Lich miss 4 times against Diablo...to be honest I find that EXTREMELY hard to believe give Diablo's low INT score (145) vs. what Saradin would have (should be closing in on 200 at the very least). If he missed 4 times in a single fight then he had the absolute worst luck possible, and Yushis could theoretically fall to the same circumstances.
The only other party I could see that would be worth ending with would be trading out Saradin for Slust and having 4 Iainukis. May be worth looking in to.
Beyond that, Waiting to get Norn to make the Boss Killer unit is pointless. Yes, Norn has the highest base INT of all the Princess-capable characters, but Aisha is only 4 points behind her, which is negligible late game. Better to just get Tristan early, and make Aisha the Princess and save one extra trip in to play around with units.
Tactics
Runner doesn't ever change the tactics off of Leader. Leader and Best have no changes to them in terms of damage output, but Weak grants +4 and Strong grants -4. These numbers are both giving and receiving. While Strong may seem like a bad tactic (it's good defensively...I need to look into if the tactics bonus for defense is factored in with or after all other calculations are made...), weak - with it's damage bonus - can sometimes win a fight a bit, or even a lot sooner, depending on how many extra attack animations occur after where the fight could have been won.
Boss fights I observed that could have been won faster with weak: Figaro, Fogel, Randals, and Hikash. For Hikash, having Saradin would have made this a moot point.
Obviously, you can't just start in the weak tactic, since a lot of bosses have higher HP than the rest of their cohorts. Start in Leader, and when boss HP drop down to being the weakest, you switch to weak for the extra damage output. Especially early game, the extra 4 damage per attack CAN make a difference with how low damage is at that point.
Stage by Stage
Castle of Warren
-Moves the camera around too much here. Shouldn't have been moving it at all since there's no enemy units here. I'm not gonna bother mentioning camera movement issues in later stages because it would get redundant fast.
Sharom
-Missed the item in the center of the map. MAY have been useful, but could have been equally useless, so no points docked for accidentally missing it.
-Fight could have been won without the card if every attack connected after the first miss. Probably should have waited for one more miss to burn the card, though I understand playing it safe.
Sharom District
-Really good positioning for the 2 towns, made for less camera movement, and correct liberation order without having to order one unit to move an extra time.
-If he had saved the Justice he used on Usar, he could have used it here to greater effect than Devil. Would have done ~7 more damage, and has 8 seconds less animation time.
Lake Jannenia
-Should have deployed Gilbert as his liberation unit, and swapped the Gryphon and Wyrm out that way, as it's quite a bit faster than doing it from the World Map.
Pogrom Forest
-Good positioning of the liberation unit here, didn't accidentally discover Alagoyas on the way to Para.
-Really good Kapella fight, everyone connected, and Opinion Leader beat 2 Imps to the punch.
Deneb's Garden
-For what it's worth, this stage went decently for the time he did it, but it's really better to save this for later when he has Tristan, as Tristan can pretty much OHKO Deneb. This would save almost a minute over his current fight, due to significantly less animations.
Slums of Zenobia
-Difficult to determine what cards he keeps due to canceling out of the yes/no prompt rather than selecting no. Card set looked good, but it's a bit difficult to tell what he's really shooting for.
-Needs to get Lyon during the stage, ever with the higher cost. Backtracking wastes so much time...
-Awful Debonair fight, has to burn 3 Devil cards (at 16 seconds each) just to kill him. Granted, he would have had to run otherwise, so it worked out. At the very least, one is acceptable.
Island Avalon
-Really good Joker pulls here: 3/4 useful
-Skipping the pull is a good safe strat here, since fighting Gares at night is not such a good idea (for his current party, he really wants to be fighting around dusk due to his mid-ALI wizards)
-I only wish my Gares fights went that well...
Kastolatian Sea
-Got absolutely awful luck on Porkyus, Aisha and Warren both missed every attack. Blew 2 Hermit cards (at 16 seconds a pop), and still had to run. This was all luck though and was out of the runner's control.
Balmorian Ruins
-Mystic Mace was a decent find. Not good, but decent (worth abbout 3.5 damage).
-Worst mistake of the run right here, gets ping ponged back and forth 4 times. Had he just used L to switch the view to his Opinion Leader, he could have selected the unit fast enough to get it out of harm's way. Loses about 1:15 to this alone.
-Albeleo fight was meh. Warren missed twice, Iainuki missed, and the Wyrm pretty much carried the team.
Diaspola
-I've already gone over route, so I won't mention it again.
-Incorrect deployment order. Should be Boss killer to Somyul, Liberation 1 to Anglem, Liberation 2 to Temple. If he'd done City of Malano before this, he could have had his Boss Killer not include his Opinion Leader, which would have streamlined the destination selections nicely.
-Reason for sending Boss Killer to Somyul is that from there it can go straight north/northwest and pretty much beeline for the boss. May have to dodge around a flying unit. Much less travel time than from Anglem.
-Liberating Ajan right now was pointless. He Boots'd to it later, then walked to Somyul after. Would have been faster to skip the liberation now and just Boots to Somyul later, then walk to Ajan. Less dialog boxes that way.
-Decent Norn fight, got lucky that Saradin went first on round 2.
Valley of Kastro
-Accidentally ran from Ares, then flubbed the menu a bit, costing about 20 seconds.
-Ares fight was solid.
Muspelm
-He didn't need to discover that Chaos Gate. That one leads to Organa, and he already opened that stage up through Balmorian Ruins.
-Good Slust fight, given the party he was working with.
City of Malano
-Would been easy navigation-wise if he'd done this before Diaspola, since it's almost a straight shot from Bel Chelry to Malano (one Evil One group will try to block you/retake Bel Chelry). Easily doable with 2 groups, and doesn't have to worry about getting the Opinion Leader out of harm's way.
-Does a mass tarot pull here, can't tell exactly what he's keeping and discarding for the first half of it.
-During the pulls, he chooses to keep a Temperance card, and discards...a Temperance card for it...
-Apros is piss easy with Saradin, regardless of group. Could have easily done this right after Balmorian Ruins. Good fight nonetheless, despite all the deaths.
Kalbian Peninsula
-Detours for the Chaos Gate (Leads to Organa). Pointless, since Organa is already available.
-If he'd had weak tactic set, the fight would have ended on Saradin's turn.
Shangrila
-I find it better to go east to the tip of that peninsula, then northwest, rather than straight north. No chance of accidentally discovering a hidden temple like that
-Pretty much perfect Gares fight.
The Tundra
-Flubbed his first destination, lost about 15 second re-doing it.
-Panicked and used a Devil, Saradin had 2 turns left still.
Fort Allamoot
-Didn't use a panic card here, even though it was pretty much the same situation as Mizal.
Organa
-Sent a unit to the Chaos Gate here (leads to Muspelm). Pointless, just like that last 2.
-That's pretty much how Slust would have went if he'd gotten Tristan first.
Ruined City
-Would have killed Fogel one attack sooner if he had the Weak tactic set.
Antalia
-I had oringally questioned the idea of using Sunshines, primarily since he has to detour to buy them, but I don't think it costs him time overall, and definitely makes things safer vs. the final bosses.
-Probably should have only deployed 2 units here...sent Opinion Leader to shop/Yushis temple, and Boss Killer to the Chaos Gate, then to the boss.
-Omicron dropped like a stone. GG Iainuki.
Antanjyl
-Not gonna make a second comment on Yushis vs. Saradin.
-Galf went well.
Dalmuhd Desert
-Perfect Prochon fight. Note that Prochon has the highest AGI of any enemy unit in the game, so it's not likely to beat him to the punch.
Rhyan Sea
-Would have won on Yushis' turn if he'd switched to Weak tactic after Tristan's attack.
Fort Shulamana
-I...really have nothing to say about this stage, outside of the fact that Saradin beats out Yushis here since Previa is strong vs. everything but Electric (27 res, next highest is Cold at 43, then White at 52)
-May not have made a huge difference timewise which character he had.
Shrine of Kulyn
-Saradin wins against Luvalon by a mile. Weakness is Fire only, everything else is 60+. Probably could have won an attack or two sooner if he'd had Saradin.
City of Xanadu
-Saradin wins pretty heavily here too, since White is Hikash's highest resistance.
Zeteginea
-Technically Saradin beats out Yushis by a little bit here, since Endora's weakest to Physical damage.
-Lost some time trying to decide what card to use.
Temple Shalina
-Won't comment on Yushis vs. Saradin here, since I did earlier.
-Questioned sending a unit to the shop, but the audio commentary explained it. Didn't wind up needing it.
-All 3 fights were good.
I had some nitpicky stuff about some things he talks about during the audio commentary, but it's probably better saved for the games discussion thread. Went in to the game mechanics quite a bit. Note that none of it affected my decision.
So, I spent pretty much the entirety of this past weekend mulling over whether to accept or reject this. I was 50/50 after watching it once. Still 50/50 after watching it again with audio commentary. It took me quite some time to come to a verdict, and that decision ended up being based off of one key element.
Final Decision: REJECT
Reason: I've already noted a number of improvements possible, some being over a minute. The main reason this doesn't pass, however, is because the runner initially said he was going to try and get a video up that I could take a look at and make comments on. He had some difficulty with his recording setup, and it was delayed a bit. In the mean time I posted a route suggestion based on my segmented plans. He made a few comments on that, giving me a basic idea of what kind of party he uses, but I didn't have all the specifics, and didn't know all of his tactics. I had intended to work with him on the route, after I'd seen a video. The problem is that there was no video. He got something he thought was good and just submitted it. He also mentions in the audio commentary that he wanted to submit this to see if anyone else would challenge it. This to me makes it sound rushed. Had he gotten a video up before submitting, I could have pointed everything out ahead of time on possible improvements.
So, is this a good run? Yes, absolutely. The runner clearly demonstrates that he put a lot of effort into the route and planning each stage out.
It just feels like the run itself needs more polish. There were a couple glaring execution errors that look awful, and had he gotten some initial videos up we could have done some brainstorming on the route. I really feel like sub 2 hours should be the goal here. (Side note: I have the run timed at ~2:10:23, since character creation is generally excluded from the time). I know it may seem daunting to try and find 10 minutes to shave off this time, but my gut's telling me it's possible.
Decision: Accept
Reason: This is a weak accept, but the one verifier who rejected even said he was on the fence and that this is a good run. Is it beatable though? Yes.
Congratulations to Tony 'Brootus' Robertson!
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