Suikoden II

2008-04-14 05:27:32 pm

sda loyalist

Yeah, you don't see me starting topics too often do you?

This gem of an RPG deserves a run, and though I can't record a 'legit' one, I'm certainly going to make one on an emulator and share it out. Normally I just do this for my own enjoyment and work it out myself, but I think there is a little too much planning involved in this game, so this is a call for help.

No, I have no idea how long the resulting run will be.

Most important points:
* Optional characters to get
* Trading - could be abused to make silly amounts of money
* Runes to buy/equip
* Tough boss battles

Any useful information (assume I am able to read GameFAQs) is appreciated.

Thread title:

getter77

2008-04-15 01:48:55 am

100% runs=great to watch

I can offer encouragement and thanks...but that's all as is usually the case. Closest thing otherwise is to watch that longplay dealie of this game that lurks in the earlier pages of my Fullgame Youtube Stuff thread in general and see if anything in there lights the fires of imagination.

Best of luck with this. 8)

i6e0m

Edit history:

i6e0m: 2008-04-15 03:12:45 pm

2008-04-15 01:54:10 am

I love YaBB 1G - SP1!

Quote:

I have no idea how long the resulting run will be.

6.5 hours.

Quote:

* Optional characters to get

~~None.~~

Quote:

* Trading - could be abused to make silly amounts of money

Just use the armor shop glitch to make 999,999, if it's allowed by SDA rules.

Quote:

* Runes to buy/equip

Fire, fury, lightning, double-beat, double-strike, kindness, fire lizard, spark, darkness, earth (def+ might be useful on Luca), wizard, rage, alert (if battles last more than 4 turns) and violence (maybe).

Quote:

* Tough boss battles

If you use the kindness rune glitch, they become very easy, unless it's considered cheating by SDA rules.

Lag.Com

Edit history:

Lag.Com: 2008-04-15 11:41:04 am

2008-04-15 10:18:03 am

sda loyalist

Hmm. While those glitches are interesting and obviously useful (though it takes some time before you can recruit the Armour Vendor), they do seem to eliminate almost all of the planning needed for the run, which is the difficult part.

For this reason I don't particularly want to use the Muse-Matilda gate bug either.

kariohki

2008-04-15 12:38:31 pm

waifus are laifu

Only thing I really know is that it's possible to go under 12 hours, even with getting every character (Clive's Quest and all). And I really never did much trading, but I'm sure planning out a route so you could trade stuff along the way as you hit certain towns would work well. IMO, money is the biggest problem, since sharpening weapons is SO expensive.

Tough bosses...really I'm just thinking of strategy battles and how they could go wrong when you have few characters.

Lag.Com

2008-04-15 02:43:32 pm

sda loyalist

Also, wouldn't it be a good idea to recruit Stallion? Being able to dash on the world map and run from battles 100% has obvious uses.

i6e0m

Edit history:

i6e0m: 2008-04-15 03:13:55 pm

2008-04-15 03:12:29 pm

I love YaBB 1G - SP1!

Quote:

IMO, money is the biggest problem, since sharpening weapons is SO expensive.

well, you only have to sharpen for a few characters. those who attack (like viktor). you get enough money from fights. sharpening weapons isn't so important. luc can do a lot of damage with his magic.

Quote:

Tough bosses...really I'm just thinking of strategy battles and how they could go wrong when you have few characters.

in most battles you actually don't have to do anything but survive a specific amount of rounds and you can usually survive by just choosing "end turn" all the time (weird, i know). in battles where you have to kill or inflict damage to someone, fire spears, luc's magic and lightning magic (jeane) work well.

Quote:

Also, wouldn't it be a good idea to recruit Stallion? Being able to dash on the world map and run from battles 100% has obvious uses.

definitely. so there are at least 3 optional characters that would be good to recruit: hans ($300,000), jeane (runes) and stallion.

[quote]IMO, money is the biggest problem, since sharpening weapons is SO expensive.[/quote]
well, you only have to sharpen for a few characters. those who attack (like viktor). you get enough money from fights. sharpening weapons isn't so important. luc can do a lot of damage with his magic.

[quote]Tough bosses...really I'm just thinking of strategy battles and how they could go wrong when you have few characters.[/quote]
in most battles you actually don't have to do anything but survive a specific amount of rounds and you can usually survive by just choosing "end turn" all the time (weird, i know). in battles where you have to kill or inflict damage to someone, fire spears, luc's magic and lightning magic (jeane) work well.

[quote]Also, wouldn't it be a good idea to recruit Stallion? Being able to dash on the world map and run from battles 100% has obvious uses.[/quote]
definitely. so there are at least 3 optional characters that would be good to recruit: hans ($300,000), jeane (runes) and stallion.

Lag.Com

Edit history:

Lag.Com: 2008-04-15 04:04:29 pm

2008-04-15 04:03:42 pm

sda loyalist

I wonder if I'll run 50 times by the time I get to Radat... Smiley

I'm just planning out the Mist Monster fight now. I know it's not hard, but I'm really trying to minimise the time it takes. While it can be beaten in 4 turns having everyone Angry Bolt/Flaming Arrows/Fire Breath, it's not exactly quick watching all those magic animations. Circus Attack does about 80 less than FB+FA+FA, by the way. Also, if the Male form of it hits Jowy, he dies. Hmm Smiley

Yes, I am finding a Double Beat rune on the run up to the Mist Monster. That's not a problem, usually.

By using the GPU and SPU recorders, I can easily capture my run at full framerate then play it back with GPUplayer and turn into AVI then. This means it's much easier for me to play the game, no slowdown etc.

i6e0m

2008-04-15 05:33:47 pm

I love YaBB 1G - SP1!

Quote:

While it can be beaten in 4 turns having everyone Angry Bolt/Flaming Arrows/Fire Breath, it's not exactly quick watching all those magic animations.

you should save some fire items for bonaparte (fire weakness) and the soldier fight after mist monster, otherwise they're gonna take a long time.

Quote:

Also, if the Male form of it hits Jowy, he dies. Hmm Smiley

put him in the back row.

Quote:

By using the GPU and SPU recorders, I can easily capture my run at full framerate then play it back with GPUplayer and turn into AVI then. This means it's much easier for me to play the game, no slowdown etc.

for some reason there is a little slowdown when i record this game with the gpurecorder (or maybe it's the spurecorder that makes it slow?). how do you turn it into avi? with fraps?

i did a run of this game with the gpurecorder a while ago. the end time was 6:21. i used save states, autofire (for text) and also the silly glitches.

Lag.Com

2008-04-15 05:54:51 pm

sda loyalist

Hey, if it hits Eilie or Rina they also die. Grin

For Bonaparte, surely Family Attack + Fire Breath + whatever that second level Fire Rune spell is should beat him fairly quick? If there is a spare Fire rune, could even embed it in Riou's weapon, but I'm not sure it's worth it.

OFSheep

2008-04-16 02:42:57 am

I'd push the gate to get to Matilda early to get a bucket of levels that'd last until... Matilda. free Humphrey and Futch may not be a bad idea, especially if they get S1 boosts.

the strategy battles would be harder without so many characters, wouldn't they? most of them are 'attack character X!' anyway, but that may be hard, considering that X is often a really overpowered unit.

some of the better characters join automatically, which is nice. Viktor, Flik, Nina, Luc, Sierra, Kahn...

I dunno, just rambling about the idea.

Lag.Com

2008-04-16 09:48:53 am

sda loyalist

Yeah, basically the non-automatic people suck anyway, excepting Pesmerga. I'll be telling most who ask to join to get on their bike just to skip the character join thingy, I guess.

i6e0m

2008-04-16 02:37:32 pm

I love YaBB 1G - SP1!

Quote:

Hey,

hey, don't you wanna see my 6:21 run?:( might help you in your run.

Quote:

if it hits Eilie or Rina they also die. Grin

eilie does not die every time. you have to get lucky. so are you gonna use save states in your run? in that case it's not a problem to get lucky. it's best to put jowy and rina on the back row since they are the weakest.

Quote:

For Bonaparte, surely Family Attack + Fire Breath + whatever that second level Fire Rune spell is should beat him fairly quick? If there is a spare Fire rune, could even embed it in Riou's weapon, but I'm not sure it's worth it.

you don't have a fire rune or bolgan (fire breath) at that point, i guess you meant the flame arrows. yes, one fire wall + flaming arrow is quick but if you save one more flaming arrow i think it's quicker. i don't raelly know.

Quote:

Yeah, basically the non-automatic people suck anyway, excepting Pesmerga.

for me it doesn't matter if they suck or not, it only matters if they are cool. i only use cool characters like humphrey, sierra, luc etc. when i play. humphrey would take too long to get though.

[quote]Hey,[/quote]
hey, don't you wanna see my 6:21 run?:( might help you in your run.

[quote]if it hits Eilie or Rina they also die. ;D[/quote]
eilie does not die every time. you have to get lucky. so are you gonna use save states in your run? in that case it's not a problem to get lucky. it's best to put jowy and rina on the back row since they are the weakest.

[quote]For Bonaparte, surely Family Attack + Fire Breath + whatever that second level Fire Rune spell is should beat him fairly quick? If there is a spare Fire rune, could even embed it in Riou's weapon, but I'm not sure it's worth it.[/quote]
you don't have a fire rune or bolgan (fire breath) at that point, i guess you meant the flame arrows. yes, one fire wall + flaming arrow is quick but if you save one more flaming arrow i think it's quicker. i don't raelly know.

[quote]Yeah, basically the non-automatic people suck anyway, excepting Pesmerga.[/quote]
for me it doesn't matter if they suck or not, it only matters if they are cool. i only use cool characters like humphrey, sierra, luc etc. when i play. humphrey would take too long to get though.

Norrin_Radd

2008-05-31 04:27:27 am

I love YaBB 1G - SP1!

I wanna see your run Cry

i6e0m

Edit history:

i6e0m: 2008-06-06 07:14:13 am

2008-06-06 07:13:38 am

I love YaBB 1G - SP1!

Quote:

I wanna see your run Cry

you mean my run or lag.com's? i don't have mine anymore cos i deleted it by mistake.

Mishrak

2009-07-28 02:03:58 pm

Hi. New to the forums and SDA in general. Did a little digging around and I was curious about what was keeping folks from doing a speed run of Suikoden 2. Is it due to the rarity/expense of the game, the length of the game, or is there something else that I've missed? Any help would be much appreciated!

ZenicReverie

Edit history:

ZenicReverie: 2009-07-28 07:08:29 pm

2009-07-28 06:11:39 pm

Waiting hurts my soul...

People might start a run and find it difficult, or their life may change so they don't have the time to devote to running, or they may change and interests shift. How can we pick one or even a couple of reasons a run doesn't get finished or started.

Runners are people, speedruns aren't done by some machine where you input a game title and get a run out. There are MANY games lacking runs that arguably deserve a run. If you have the game, give it a shot.

I have the game, but haven't finished it, so I'm probably not going to run it... especially since I'm running other games I'm more familiar with. I may in the future get to running the series.

Mishrak

2009-07-28 06:31:45 pm

That makes sense. I just noticed it hadn't been run yet and I was wondering if there was something that was making it really difficult that I just wasn't seeing or not. Thanks for the tip!

ZenicReverie

2009-07-28 07:12:07 pm

Waiting hurts my soul...

I don't think there's anything in the game that makes it terribly difficult, although the big Luca fight is pretty hard in general I hear. There is that portion of the game that already expects you to be going through the game quickly. I forget his name (Clive maybe) that's chasing down the woman in white, and if your in-game play time is too high you'll miss finding her... permanently. Things like that kind of turn me off a game until I have more time to play through it since it seems like it would take longer, and since I never have enough time, I haven't tried to play through it again.

Lag.Com

2009-07-29 03:04:28 am

sda loyalist

The run boils down to two sections:

Before Kindness rune
After Kindness rune

Kindness completely breaks the game. Search this forum section for other topics on Suikoden II, I think I made one a while back. Basically Kindness can underflow your attack stat and make you do a zillion damage per hit. Giving it to someone who hits twice like the hero or Nanami until she gets shot makes the rest of the game a breeze. The only planning that needs to be done is the 'before' section. Appropriate element spells/items + unions/crits everywhere will probably be fastest. Runes are slow, though. Items are only slightly faster because they skip the rune invocation anim. Unions are also usually pretty slow, but stuff like Hero+Jowy is faster because it hits everything.

Using the Kindness rune is fastest because you can just hit Auto for battle and your basic attack will kill everything.

fool

2009-07-29 07:30:15 am

Quote from lag:

Before Kindness rune
After Kindness rune

Hm... are you sure it was called Kindness rune? If I remember correctly it was called Cheating rune.

ZenicReverie

2009-07-29 02:13:45 pm

Waiting hurts my soul...

Quote from lag:

The run boils down to two sections:

Before Kindness rune
After Kindness rune

Kindness completely breaks the game. Search this forum section for other topics on Suikoden II, I think I made one a while back. Basically Kindness can underflow your attack stat and make you do a zillion damage per hit. Giving it to someone who hits twice like the hero or Nanami until she gets shot makes the rest of the game a breeze. The only planning that needs to be done is the 'before' section. Appropriate element spells/items + unions/crits everywhere will probably be fastest. Runes are slow, though. Items are only slightly faster because they skip the rune invocation anim. Unions are also usually pretty slow, but stuff like Hero+Jowy is faster because it hits everything.

Using the Kindness rune is fastest because you can just hit Auto for battle and your basic attack will kill everything.

Ah, I only searched suikoden 2 and it didn't show up. Now searching Suikoden II, I get: http://speeddemosarchive.com/forum/index.php/topic,8096.0.html

[quote="lag"]
The run boils down to two sections:

Before Kindness rune
After Kindness rune

Kindness completely breaks the game. Search this forum section for other topics on Suikoden II, I think I made one a while back. Basically Kindness can underflow your attack stat and make you do a zillion damage per hit. Giving it to someone who hits twice like the hero or Nanami until she gets shot makes the rest of the game a breeze. The only planning that needs to be done is the 'before' section. Appropriate element spells/items + unions/crits everywhere will probably be fastest. Runes are slow, though. Items are only slightly faster because they skip the rune invocation anim. Unions are also usually pretty slow, but stuff like Hero+Jowy is faster because it hits everything.

Using the Kindness rune is fastest because you can just hit Auto for battle and your basic attack will kill everything.
[/quote]
Ah, I only searched suikoden 2 and it didn't show up. Now searching Suikoden II, I get: http://speeddemosarchive.com/forum/index.php/topic,8096.0.html

Mishrak

2009-07-30 12:41:31 pm

Yeah that was the same thread I came up with. I searched a couple times for Suikoden II before I made a post. Hadn't seen anything conclusive as to why a run wasn't done yet, so I thought I'd ask. What if we looked at a run without using the kindness rune? It is optional isn't it? I've played through it a few times (never used a guide except for a handfull of things), but I don't remember that rune very much.

ZenicReverie

2009-07-30 01:50:17 pm

Waiting hurts my soul...

whether it is optional or not, unless the run would be faster without it, then you should get it.

Also, this thread can be combined with the old one.

Mishrak

2009-07-30 02:11:42 pm

Well if it would make it a less attractive run, wouldn't it be better to do a run without it?