Persona 4 Golden

2015-01-18 03:54:48 pm

I posted on reddit under noob questions regarding why this isn't a thing, its a fairly popular game, and the parts added to Golden would decrease the length by a fair bit compared to the original ps2 version. Maybe we could try working out some routing for this game together. I don't have a video of it but I did a couple attempts just on the early game and got the following splits.
Shadow Yosuke 16:18.7
Shadow Chie 26:49.5
Shadow Yukiko 47:59.8
Bathouse Unlocked 1:19:01.6
Daring Gigas 1:36:23.6
Shadow Kanji 1:51:44.1
Unlock Strip 2:32:06.1
Shadow Rise 3:08:11.2
Shadow Teddie 3:16:19.1

Sorry for the rough formatting. The above times are after like 5 run throughs and no route other than going fast. Done on very easy as it would be the fastest you would think. So yeah I will be working on this and if others would like to help or compete that would be great.

Thread title:

Ghoul02

2015-01-19 06:09:29 pm

www.twitch.tv/ghoul02

Well... Persona 4 Golden kinda sucks for speedrunning, relative to Vanilla, sad to say.

I started working on routing, using the traditional SMT guidelines of True End, Hardest difficulty. It just doesn't work. Somehow, even when cutscenes take half the time, the game is slower.

I scrapped Very Hard almost immediately; it changes nothing but the money and exp multiplier. It's bullshit difficulty and actively detracts from the run, so yeah. Hard mode routing went okay, although it was still slower than Persona 4. If you want proof, I have it:

Granted, that's not a great run, and new optimizations would cut about 10+ minutes off the grinding. The problems that caused me to stop routing the project happened in Shadow Kanji's dungeon, although I heard them secondhand from NMarkro who was doing the same work I was independently. Midboss exp doesn't scale with level like it did in Persona 4. Instead of getting massive experience and levels off the midboss and using that to cruise to the final boss, there's an extra hour of grinding to get to the same level you have to be to beat Shadow Kanji. This would happen for almost every dungeon, and we're adding a dungeon on top of that. It's a longer run, more boring, and in every way worse.

I might play around with Very Easy, but when I found that out, I dropped it in favor of learning Vanilla. It's just not a good game for speedrunning, despite what you might thing.

Well... Persona 4 Golden kinda sucks for speedrunning, relative to Vanilla, sad to say.

I started working on routing, using the traditional SMT guidelines of True End, Hardest difficulty. It just doesn't work. Somehow, even when cutscenes take half the time, the game is slower.

I scrapped Very Hard almost immediately; it changes nothing but the money and exp multiplier. It's bullshit difficulty and actively detracts from the run, so yeah. Hard mode routing went okay, although it was still slower than Persona 4. If you want proof, I have it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15jFav8rzas

Granted, that's not a great run, and new optimizations would cut about 10+ minutes off the grinding. The problems that caused me to stop routing the project happened in Shadow Kanji's dungeon, although I heard them secondhand from NMarkro who was doing the same work I was independently. Midboss exp doesn't scale with level like it did in Persona 4. Instead of getting massive experience and levels off the midboss and using that to cruise to the final boss, there's an extra hour of grinding to get to the same level you have to be to beat Shadow Kanji. This would happen for almost every dungeon, and we're adding a dungeon on top of that. It's a longer run, more boring, and in every way worse.

I might play around with Very Easy, but when I found that out, I dropped it in favor of learning Vanilla. It's just not a good game for speedrunning, despite what you might thing.

izra709

2015-02-08 03:14:24 pm

This isn't a good game to speedrun but I can't help but like it.

Did a practice run and got a time of 9h 01m on new game+ very easy but made quite a few mistakes so under 9h won't be difficult to do.

Ghoul02

2015-03-29 02:22:14 am

www.twitch.tv/ghoul02

So as it turns out, I came down a bit too hard on the game, so I'm going to eat my words some.

All my stuff is done on hard mode at the moment, but there's not a real reason to think a majority of it wouldn't work on Very Hard; you'd just have to grind more. And be careful to not die more, meaning that Gohom's are much more valuable. Basically, the game completely overhauled the exp system from P4, so in some ways it's more abusable, in others, less. Basically, every enemy gives fixed exp, no matter what your level is now. And if a party member is dead, rather than the exp going to waste, it's redistributed.

Also, there's actually an efficient way to grind now. Just kill gold hands, ignore everything else, unless we need persona cards.

Current PB through Shadow Kanji is 3:16, with perfect luck, that can probably go down as low as 2:55 maybe. That makes it approximately 1/4th faster than vanilla P4 on Hard, I'd imagine they'd be a bit closer if the run were to be done on Very Hard. Also of note: Marie's dungeon probably adds quite a bit to the estimate, so I still have no idea how long a full run will be.

So as it turns out, I came down a bit too hard on the game, so I'm going to eat my words some.

All my stuff is done on hard mode at the moment, but there's not a real reason to think a majority of it wouldn't work on Very Hard; you'd just have to grind more. And be careful to not die more, meaning that Gohom's are much more valuable. Basically, the game completely overhauled the exp system from P4, so in some ways it's more abusable, in others, less. Basically, every enemy gives fixed exp, no matter what your level is now. And if a party member is dead, rather than the exp going to waste, it's redistributed.

Also, there's actually an efficient way to grind now. Just kill gold hands, ignore everything else, unless we need persona cards.

Current PB through Shadow Kanji is 3:16, with perfect luck, that can probably go down as low as 2:55 maybe. That makes it approximately 1/4th faster than vanilla P4 on Hard, I'd imagine they'd be a bit closer if the run were to be done on Very Hard. Also of note: Marie's dungeon probably adds quite a bit to the estimate, so I still have no idea how long a full run will be.