Hey guys!
So I've decided to speedrun this game for the PSP, which unfortunately not a lot of people seem to have heard of. It's a third-person RPG available only in Japanese (decided to get it in Tokyo when I lived there), so I guess the language barrier is an issue to some.
So anyway, the game is really long. A single-segment will probably be somewhere between 14-18 hours, and a segmented one could probably cut it down to around 12. The main reason for the long time is because bosses in this game have a lot of hp (around 3 million for the first few bosses), and your attacks might deal 12-50k per skill. The skill damage is heavily RNG affected as well, which doesn't exactly help. Doing two runs with the same route, I got 28 minutes on one level, and then my second run on the same floor was closer to 45 min due to the RNG deciding to deal a lot less damage with the majority of my skills.
Would be fun to see more people run the game, and for those just starting out, I will give some tips to clear out at least the first few floors faster.
1. When you are told to buy a weapon in the tutorial, either go with dagger (highest accuracy) or one-handed sword (higher damage than the dagger but lower accuracy). The reason for this is that there are 3 damage types in this game (bludgeoning, piercing and slashing), and bosses will always be weak towards a specific damage type. Those two weapons are the only ones in the game that have skills that can deal damage in each type. All the other weapons only have skills that use the weapon's own damage type (for example, dual-swords abilities will always deal slashing damage).
2. You can menu while running around in the world. Use this to your advantage when running between quest areas to buy new skills or use potions.
3. Your NPC ally will use items on you (including healing potions), if your HP gets low, so you usually don't have to worry about it too much.
4. Pressing the R button and then R again when there's blue, green or red text at the top of the R button menu is your friend. It will give you back 50 SP, which is something you will keep running out of if you don't manage it properly, which can destroy a perfectly good run.
5. Holding down the L button will allow you to speed through all dialogue and small tutorial windows that will pop up during the beginning of floor 76 (this saves a LOT of time).
As far as I know, nobody routes it, and I could find no Japanese RTA videos of this game either, so I'm currently routing the whole game from scratch and will post my routing information in a google spreadsheet and/or on the strategy wiki once I've gotten the routing finished for the first 10 floors (24 floors in total).
Timing should be done as floor 76 starts (not as the tutorial starts, since the tutorial has a tendency to be heavily delayed and/or lag quite a bit). So if you start the game for the first time, go to new game, finish the tutorial. After the cutscene and it starts loading up Floor 76, press home on your PSP and exit the game (you can't actually return to the menu from within the game). Start the game up again, and on the main menu, select "Start of the layer". Time will start when you press "Yes" on the next prompt.
Hope more people get interested in the game. I do have a channel for it on irc.speedrunslive.com: #SAO if people want to pop in and have any questions, and hopefully we can get a small community going so we can get more optimized routes!
So I've decided to speedrun this game for the PSP, which unfortunately not a lot of people seem to have heard of. It's a third-person RPG available only in Japanese (decided to get it in Tokyo when I lived there), so I guess the language barrier is an issue to some.
So anyway, the game is really long. A single-segment will probably be somewhere between 14-18 hours, and a segmented one could probably cut it down to around 12. The main reason for the long time is because bosses in this game have a lot of hp (around 3 million for the first few bosses), and your attacks might deal 12-50k per skill. The skill damage is heavily RNG affected as well, which doesn't exactly help. Doing two runs with the same route, I got 28 minutes on one level, and then my second run on the same floor was closer to 45 min due to the RNG deciding to deal a lot less damage with the majority of my skills.
Would be fun to see more people run the game, and for those just starting out, I will give some tips to clear out at least the first few floors faster.
1. When you are told to buy a weapon in the tutorial, either go with dagger (highest accuracy) or one-handed sword (higher damage than the dagger but lower accuracy). The reason for this is that there are 3 damage types in this game (bludgeoning, piercing and slashing), and bosses will always be weak towards a specific damage type. Those two weapons are the only ones in the game that have skills that can deal damage in each type. All the other weapons only have skills that use the weapon's own damage type (for example, dual-swords abilities will always deal slashing damage).
2. You can menu while running around in the world. Use this to your advantage when running between quest areas to buy new skills or use potions.
3. Your NPC ally will use items on you (including healing potions), if your HP gets low, so you usually don't have to worry about it too much.
4. Pressing the R button and then R again when there's blue, green or red text at the top of the R button menu is your friend. It will give you back 50 SP, which is something you will keep running out of if you don't manage it properly, which can destroy a perfectly good run.
5. Holding down the L button will allow you to speed through all dialogue and small tutorial windows that will pop up during the beginning of floor 76 (this saves a LOT of time).
As far as I know, nobody routes it, and I could find no Japanese RTA videos of this game either, so I'm currently routing the whole game from scratch and will post my routing information in a google spreadsheet and/or on the strategy wiki once I've gotten the routing finished for the first 10 floors (24 floors in total).
Timing should be done as floor 76 starts (not as the tutorial starts, since the tutorial has a tendency to be heavily delayed and/or lag quite a bit). So if you start the game for the first time, go to new game, finish the tutorial. After the cutscene and it starts loading up Floor 76, press home on your PSP and exit the game (you can't actually return to the menu from within the game). Start the game up again, and on the main menu, select "Start of the layer". Time will start when you press "Yes" on the next prompt.
Hope more people get interested in the game. I do have a channel for it on irc.speedrunslive.com: #SAO if people want to pop in and have any questions, and hopefully we can get a small community going so we can get more optimized routes!
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