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spineshark: 2006-06-03 05:51:38 pm
新世紀進歩的羽扇子 音楽
okay, i did in fact kick dhaos' sorry ass last night.  neo dhaos is actually kind of a pain because the arm dies before the head and then it gets really crazy because the head seems to react immediately with two volleys of his evil balls right away.  at any rate, i got cress revived after that crap and finished it off (judgement and aska are still the best...ugh...and they definitely out dps cress on the second and third forms).

now, some things to think about for the future (i'm not re-practice running this yet, as my sig states)...

first and foremost, is aska worth it?  by my estimation it takes about ten minutes to get (1 minute for the detour to alvanista and talking to the girl there, 5 to get the pact ring, and 4 to get in and out of thor).  i suppose i need actual fight times to figure out if it saves ten minutes but i'm actually still leaning toward "yes."  with four battles in odin's tower, that's probably a minute there.  probably the first really big one is the evil eye (i don't think that's what they call it) at the beginning of dhaos' castle.  according to an faq, it has basically 56k health.  it constantly blocks, so cress and chester suck against it (cress does get about 2000 for each slash-thrust-tiger blade-chaos blade combo) so given maybe 8 of those, that's 7 castings of aska needed (40000/6000=6.something...maybe with a stronger combo i could cut it to 6 even...) versus (40000/4500) 9 of origin.  next one is the two seal eyes.  cress with the same combo plus a light spear (what i used) is probably 4000 on the front one and 2000 on the back one.  klarth with aska is still 6000, so that's probably 9 askas for the whole thing and then 12 or 13 origins. difference is probably 5 or 6 at this point.  hrmm...maybe not.

then dhaos.  i think there's still a 4500/origin 6000/aska ratio on the first form.  he goes down hard, it's probably only one more origin vs. aska.

neo dhaos...i'm also using judgement for this one (so yes, it's surely worth getting).  considering that it takes probably 22 aska+judgements to finish off the head (even with all the tiger blades...) that's 24 origin+judgements.

okay, so no.  even with final dhaos, who takes very little damage from cress' attacks and has 160k health...

a sentence in this post indicates i had more to say, but i don't think i do.
Edit history:
alexpenev: 2006-06-06 10:50:32 pm
I'd say no to Aska.

One of the earlier towns sells Holy Bottles. You can try to pre-empt encounters by using a Holy Bottle before they trigger.. theoretically, you should be able to clear whole dungeons (e.g. Morlia) without random encounters this way.

I think fighting Flamberge with the Vorpal should be quicker than 3 minutes... hmm.

For Arche, Cyclone is probably worth getting, since it's quite good damage for her for the first half of the game. It's a slight detour. Thunder Blade is also pretty decent. What's your preferred setup for the first half of the game?
everybody wanna tell you the meaning of music
Quote:
I beat the game last week at 23 hours total.  I played that "Let's Go Arche" crap...but I'm done.  I'm gonna return it to GameStop for credit this weekend.  Fun, but no way I'm playing it again.

There is perhaps nothing sadder VG-wise for me than people who play ToP for the first time on GBA. Sad Well I guess it's to be expected. If they released say FF2/3/7/whatever for the first time today, it'd pretty much be the same thing.

The funny thing is that apparently this version has very slow and easy boss fights, which seems strange to me because I remember the SFC version as having the most brutally quick yet tough bosses (as in both sides can slaughter each other) in any RPG ever. tri-Ace has always been mostly like this, since equipment/skills/setup/strategy/etc is more important than levels, but never as much as ToP.

What is "Let's Go Arche" anyway? Apparently it's a mini game you unlock when you beat the game (didn't get near that far on GBA), but what is it exactly?



spineshark: Hmm, sorry to (indirectly) put you through this, heh. I just realized I started this thread in the first place.

Quote:
(sometimes it seems that the cutscenes must be longer than kevin's whole ff4 run...

Speaking of which, have you watched this yet then? I want someone from SDA to acknowledge that my comments are indeed funny, since I wasted a whole afternoon writing them. Tongue
welcome to the machine
Quote:
theoretically, you should be able to clear whole dungeons (e.g. Morlia) without random encounters this way.


I've used tons of holy bottles in my playthroughs.  And no, they don't help that much at all if you're not properly levelled to begin with.  Even with them, he'll still get random encounters.
Edit history:
spineshark: 2006-06-07 06:58:15 pm
新世紀進歩的羽扇子 音楽
Quote:
I'd say no to Aska.

yeah, i decided that too.  in retrospect, it was obvious that it should have been obvious =/
Quote:
One of the earlier towns sells Holy Bottles. You can try to pre-empt encounters by using a Holy Bottle before they trigger.. theoretically, you should be able to clear whole dungeons (e.g. Morlia) without random encounters this way.

i will disagree with maur here.  in general, holy bottles are adequate (i wish they were better, but that's probably asking too much)...the encounter rate in morlia is simply ridiculous, and it being the third longest dungeon in the game doesn't help.
Quote:
I think fighting Flamberge with the Vorpal should be quicker than 3 minutes... hmm.

i don't know, i think i did some equipping and stuff first, and there's of course the cutscene.  fight was still longer than the one with fen beast somehow though...
Quote:
For Arche, Cyclone is probably worth getting, since it's quite good damage for her for the first half of the game. It's a slight detour. Thunder Blade is also pretty decent. What's your preferred setup for the first half of the game?

not quite sure what you're talking about here, but...i have a piece of paper that marks all the segment breaks right now.  there are 58 (that's down from 61 with extra segments for efreet, undine, and stupidly, volt =/).  i believe the furthest detour for a save point is in final dhaos' castle (the level with all the buttons...which i segment before and after) followed by undine's cavern (hahahaha) and morlia level 4.  the segment with jahmir is horrible, but any save is so far out of the way that...not worth it.  also, segment 52 is marked "FUCK" on my paper.  and i have one for each basilisk.

assuming you mean equip and spells, arche basically used debris fall (which will be switched out for thunder blade at appropriate times in my next try) until ray, ray until indignation, then judgement against volt and final dhaos.  klarth goes sylph->undine->maxwell->luna->volt->origin with each pretty much totally obsoleting the ones before.

cress' current weapon plan is long sword->knight saber->ranseur->gungnir->mecha halberd->laser blade->vorpal sword->eternal sword->? sword (some sort of rapier whose name i never paid attention to...in the chest after the big door...i will be trying blade storm on final dhaos...also the reduced slash rating may "help" on neo dhaos)

armor i only upgraded once...in fenrir's cavern after getting the omega shield and that plate thingy.  the only thing that hurts in this version is spells anyway, which you can (have to) prevent from casting.
Quote:
There is perhaps nothing sadder VG-wise for me than people who play ToP for the first time on GBA. Sad Well I guess it's to be expected. If they released say FF2/3/7/whatever for the first time today, it'd pretty much be the same thing.

The funny thing is that apparently this version has very slow and easy boss fights, which seems strange to me because I remember the SFC version as having the most brutally quick yet tough bosses (as in both sides can slaughter each other) in any RPG ever. tri-Ace has always been mostly like this, since equipment/skills/setup/strategy/etc is more important than levels, but never as much as ToP.

i have not made it to the point where you get weapons that stop kinda sucking on the snes version (more on that below =( ) but my greatest complaint is actually that mint sucks way too much in the original game.  considering the strength of her spells, she should heal way more often than she does.  instead she just leaves you at half health, ready to be instantly destroyed by demitel's flame whip or molecular attack or what have you.  i actually don't hate jahmir in that one anymore though because he's not as much of a cheap pussy as i thought.  still, i think the maxwell and demitel fights are longer than they "should" be considering how many times you have to avoid fast deaths.
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What is "Let's Go Arche" anyway?  Apparently it's a mini game (didn't get near that far on GBA), but what is it exactly?

minigame with arche and suzu where you're supposed to perform (non-sexual...hrmm, that wasn't funny.  too bad) favors for people.  i actually got bored before i did anything, if that's any indication.
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spineshark: Hmm, sorry to (indirectly) put you through this, heh. I just realized I started this thread in the first place.

you can ask molotov, hahaha, and he'll tell you that i talked about running this game on aim...and said it'd be really easy =/  he'll also tell you how much he hates top ("i got to the second town and i thought it was kind of boring...i talked to everyone and nothing happened" >.< actually i've heard that like four times from people in #metroid and stuff...they apparently forgot what was going on in just one minute!)  of course i also said i'd never do it, but i wasn't expecting anybody here to be interested.

i have a strong feeling that i want to run the psx version...so i can kill myself trying to match the ultimagarden time and then watch it slowly die a maken x-style death in the verification queue.  even though i don't hate the sfc battle system all that much any more ("it's unique and challenging!") i still prefer the combo-happiness.

also, i really don't have anything else to do, because i dropped my laptop yesterday and shattered the hard drive!  lemmings 2 level 2?  gone!  12-hour lufia save?  gone!  sfc save in dhaos' castle?  gone!  nearly complete star ocean 1 playthrough?  you guessed it!  also this means that i will not be on aim probably for a good long while.  so, molotov, because you're not reading this, use messages.
Quote:
Speaking of which, have you watched this yet then? I want someone from SDA to acknowledge that my comments are indeed funny, since I wasted a whole afternoon writing them. Tongue

i have watched...hum...20ish segments.  yes, your comments are funny.
everybody wanna tell you the meaning of music
Quote:
minigame with arche and suzu where you're supposed to perform (non-sexual...hrmm, that wasn't funny.  too bad) favors for people.  i actually got bored before i did anything, if that's any indication.

Well I assumed it was a cheap throw-in and pretty dumb, and I don't like minigames anyway, but I still don't know anything about it. Wait, nevermind, I just found a FAQ on gamefaqs like I should have done in the first place. Tongue

Oh and you can ask darkwasabi... X-2 has a minigame where you actually perform sexual favors, lol.

Quote:
you can ask molotov, hahaha, and he'll tell you that i talked about running this game on aim...and said it'd be really easy =/

Ha, I wonder who else this happens to. I've had one weekend turn into 3 months, one week turn into giving up, and one day turn into postponing indefinitely.

Quote:
i have a strong feeling that i want to run the psx version...so i can kill myself trying to match the ultimagarden time and then watch it slowly die a maken x-style death in the verification queue.

To be fair, I don't get the feeling Serious Cacodemon cares if/how long it takes to get things verified, heh.

Quote:
also, i really don't have anything else to do, because i dropped my laptop yesterday and shattered the hard drive!  lemmings 2 level 2?  gone!  12-hour lufia save?  gone!  sfc save in dhaos' castle?  gone!  nearly complete star ocean 1 playthrough?  you guessed it!  also this means that i will not be on aim probably for a good long while.  so, molotov, because you're not reading this, use messages.

Wow that sucks. Sad

Where were you exactly in those games? FO might be able to get you a Lufia save since he's gone through it a lot on emulator to say the least. If your ToP and SO1 are really near the end, you might be able to find save states or SRMs at zophar.net, or I might have them. I had a similar thing happen in some game's last dungeon on PS1, because my crappy 3rd party super-big memory card wiped. I got a standard card, a dexdrive, and someone's save. It didn't really feel like my characters, if you know what I mean, but it was good enough for me to finish and see the ending I guess.

About AIM, if the problem is that you can only use public access now, you can either use GAIM on something like a flash disk, or AIM Express, which is crap but works. It uses a popup too, so if that is blocked, there's a link there back to their old version of AIM Express that doesn't need that. Although most labs I see nowadays, like at the university library, come with AIM or GAIM or Trillian or something.

Quote:
i have watched...hum...20ish segments.  yes, your comments are funny.

The problem is that they're long and not universally funny (i.e. out of context). You have to either have great memory, just played the game, or at least be watching the run simultaneously.
Edit history:
spineshark: 2006-06-07 11:45:54 pm
新世紀進歩的羽扇子 音楽
Quote:
Well I assumed it was a cheap throw-in and pretty dumb, and I don't like minigames anyway, but I still don't know anything about it. Wait, nevermind, I just found a FAQ on gamefaqs like I should have done in the first place. Tongue

my expectations of how cheezy it would be were vastly exceeded.  "a terrible fate will befall you in five minutes!  but time only passes when you're not talking to people."
Quote:
To be fair, I don't get the feeling Serious Cacodemon cares if/how long it takes to get things verified, heh.

as long as i do a good job on this version, i wouldn't care either.
Quote:
Wow that sucks. Sad

Where were you exactly in those games? FO might be able to get you a Lufia save since he's gone through it a lot on emulator to say the least. If your ToP and SO1 are really near the end, you might be able to find save states or SRMs at zophar.net, or I might have them. I had a similar thing happen in some game's last dungeon on PS1, because my crappy 3rd party super-big memory card wiped. I got a standard card, a dexdrive, and someone's save. It didn't really feel like my characters, if you know what I mean, but it was good enough for me to finish and see the ending I guess.

About AIM, if the problem is that you can only use public access now, you can either use GAIM on something like a flash disk, or AIM Express, which is crap but works. It uses a popup too, so if that is blocked, there's a link there back to their old version of AIM Express that doesn't need that. Although most labs I see nowadays, like at the university library, come with AIM or GAIM or Trillian or something.

the problem is actually literally that my dad doesn't trust jack, especially not aim.  he rather begrudgingly allows it on my own computer, but the hard drive was just the only thing we could definitely tell was busted.  i may have ruined the monitor or something too.  when i get another computer i may be able to start again, but for the time being i'm not even going to bother.  actually i can use aim on my brother's computer too, but access to that is stringently controlled because my other brother used to play waaaaaay too much warcraft iii.

i really was getting close to the end of beach 2 Sad i was so excited about the third level.
everybody wanna tell you the meaning of music
Not that I expect you to be able to change your dad's mind anyway, so this is just curiosity. He doesn't trust AIM the program or AIM the protocol, AIM in particular or IM'ing in general? And is it an internet security thing, a virus/trojan thing, or a talking to strangers thing? Because everything other than IM'ing in general and internet security can be easily worked around. Just use something like GAIM, only allow buddy list people to contact you, and don't go around clicking every link you see without looking at the URL.

I just realized you use IRC, which is more dangerous than AIM in every way. If he makes any sense at all, he wouldn't let you use IRC on his comp either.
新世紀進歩的羽扇子 音楽
Quote:
Not that I expect you to be able to change your dad's mind anyway, so this is just curiosity. He doesn't trust AIM the program or AIM the protocol, AIM in particular or IM'ing in general? And is it an internet security thing, a virus/trojan thing, or a talking to strangers thing? Because everything other than IM'ing in general and internet security can be easily worked around. Just use something like GAIM, only allow buddy list people to contact you, and don't go around clicking every link you see without looking at the URL.

I just realized you use IRC, which is more dangerous than AIM in every way. If he makes any sense at all, he wouldn't let you use IRC on his comp either.

i don't know if it's aim specifically or iming in general.

i don't use irc on his comp either.
新世紀進歩的羽扇子 音楽
could be vaguely construed as an update:

i've been working on the sfc version of this game this week.  it doesn't suck, in fact, nor do i anymore.  not for speed running or anything, just to play it (theorhetically though, i wanted ideas for a run on any version).  i didn't really find anything out except that the gba version really, totally sucks for running.  i completed dhaos' castle faster on sfc...without running on the map or from encounters (wait, okay, i saved about a minute on that cheapass puzzle before the save point).

anyway before that i tried another trial run (mania mode is enjoyably challenging from the sewers until jahmir...i gave up after the summon spirits were still really pathetic.  spells are just too broken on gba).  anyway i made it to morrison's house in 0:14 iirc but getting the knight saber cost a ton of time (i had already lost those three minutes by the golem fight).  iirc the gba version adds a chest in euclid which has 2000 gold and i'm now quite sure that using that money to get a walloon sword is faster than getting the knight saber.  also you don't need to buy two ropes i think, and you need an orange gel in demitel's manor, and...

here.  rewind...this is the most boggling part of the run planning-wise.  you need to upgrade from rapier to defeat the sylphs and oakroots as far as i'm concerned.  there are four possible choices:
knight saber (toltus)
saber (found in a chest in the catacombs...costs <10 seconds)
walloon sword (hamel)
crescent axe (hamel)

the crescent axe is very much a tossup in lone valley.  i used it on mania mode where the wall of pain (up-a a) is the only way to finish most encounters early on.  there's also the jump slash which is again too clumsy to particularly use for these fights.  what it boils down to is really that i'm just expecting to plan on getting the walloon sword again.

the other thing is that i couldn't figure out a way to not run out of mana for demitel.  cress needs to spam lightning repeatedly for that fight.  klarth too needs to cast a lot of spells.  somehow i think i need exactly one orange gel to counter this problem.  actually i always bought too many ropes before (they don't get consumed, oddly, or something) so that may help.
Edit history:
Enhasa: 2006-06-24 08:03:52 am
everybody wanna tell you the meaning of music
Just some general Tales series news, nowhere better to put this. Namco is milking this shit like Pokemon or FF heh.

On the Magic Box news page in just the last 2 days:

- Tales of the Abyss is already coming over of course.
- Tales of the Tempest on DS in Japan, Aug 24.
- New game, Tales of the Voice under development.
- Port of Tales of Destiny 2 (the real one) from PS2 to PSP, 2007 in Japan.
- Port of Tales of Phantasia on PSP in Japan, Sept 7.
- New Tales of the World installment in development for PSP.
- Port of Tales of Destiny 1 from PS1 to PS2 coming.

Suffice it to say that Namco would get more of my money if only they released less games and stopped sending me into a catatonic state. I might get Abyss though, and I already skipped on Legendia and Rebirth didn't come over. So all of these might not come over, dunno.
Quote:
- New game, Tales of the Voice under development.
I think that's supposed to be the ToP port to the PSP. It's going to have voices scenes that the PS didn't, hence the Voice part.


Quote:
- Port of Tales of Destiny 1 from PS1 to PS2 coming.
Not port, complete remake with fresh graphics and improved battle system (something about using techs in mid-air, possibly extra content. There's a youtube vid of Namco's presentation ( which has some footage of the ToD battle, and it looks supersonic. In any case, this game is vastly being revamped.

Another piece of news you're missing is that ToS is going to have an OAV.

Too bad that most of these will probably never be released outside of Japan. Well, the TOS anime will surely get subbed versions online, but yeah.
everybody wanna tell you the meaning of music
Wouldn't surprise me as Magic Box is ass when it comes to specifics. Do you know of a better general Japan-centric news site?

Thanks for telling me about the ToS OAV. Hmm, the ToP episode 4 still hasn't been fansubbed yet. Then again, I haven't watched Star Ocean EX yet so I'm behind anyway.
Ep4 was fansubbed eons ago. I think Phantasian Productions may have finished theirs (tales-cless.org), but I just went and got the Aoi-Anime torrent.

For the other part, nope... I just pick up info here and there on forums, I don't find it myself. So I wouldn't be able to give you good advice on where to look for good info.
100% runs=great to watch
Geneon is supposed to release the Tales of Phantasia anime onto R1 dvd at some point....but just haven't got around to it yet.  Much like ADV and Kurau: Phantom Memory.

The R1 license to the Tales of Eternia anime was given up on thus far though.....so it should be easily findable
Edit history:
spineshark: 2006-12-22 01:32:43 am
新世紀進歩的羽扇子 音楽
Wow, bump from page...5 or 6...

Anyway, my sig read (for about three days) that I was going to be working on videos for this game on snes9x.  I finally got started tonight.

Basically I'll be doing a (pretty good) test run on each segment, then attempting to knock it down by at least one minute on the clock (and of course attempting to prevent any mistakes from coming in even if the new segment is numerically up to standard).  So far this is a problem on segment 2 because my memory doesn't last five minutes [the formation defaults when Mint joins, actually, which I have to reset but always forget until the first battle.  Also I don't remember from my last playthrough what's in all the sewer chests except 1000 fol (wow, I'm not editing that lol) and the Rapier]. Sad  Anyway, I got an 0:07 after the ruined Toltus scenes (down from 8 minutes on a try where Chester died pretty early in the fight).  And, ahh, yeah, I'm doing this on an unpatched version of the ROM, just to prove that I can, really (I can't tell if, were I to run this on a real SNES later, it would be easier if the "test" run were in the same language as the real one or a language I know...)

My wireless network died suddenly, but I'll probably be uploading two or three (or maybe just one) video tomorrow.

Despite my calling this a test run, this is for all intents and purposes, a "real" run, because I'm not sure I'll ever have the chance/ability/will to do it again.

HAHA, reading this thread again is funny.  Also, I don't feel like updating until I finish the sewers, which is being really difficult.  For anybody keeping score, I'm barely working on this anyway, so...
Edit history:
spineshark: 2006-12-22 01:45:53 am
新世紀進歩的羽扇子 音楽
Oooh lovely.  I put in maybe 10 minutes on this, realized that I actually HAVE Psion Bolt/Demon Fang, assigned it to a button, and put out a decent fight in eight tries.  I have it recorded, even, even though I should probably try again because I botched the recording horribly...by putting a failed attempt in the same video >.<  The site I used to use for hosting seems dead and I don't really think I should use the tasvideos microstorage for this, so if anybody wants to host a nice, small zip...I'd like to be your guest.

Also, halfway through the segment, I realized you can skip text faster by holding "b" and mashing "a" (as opposed to simply the latter).  Or maybe it's just me trippin'.  Anyway...I may be able to hammer out a big chunk of this over break (which started early thanks to a crazy blizzard).  Or I'll get stuck at Demitel. Tongue

Oh, one more thing.  The GBA version of this game plays noticeably better on a DS than a GBP or one of the original GBAs.  It's still not good, really, but I think the idea of...doing this run under such circumstances...would approach a level of tolerability on the level of say redoing FE9.  i.e. if nate were to grant an exception it'd still never happen.  Woof.
100% runs=great to watch
Yay for some degree of progress...I think!    Grin
新世紀進歩的羽扇子 音楽
Um, if it wasn't clear (and I don't know how it would be clear) I've given up on running the GBA version of the game.  I did, however, want to try to put together something for fans of the game, so I decided to put together some sort of speed demo on the snes version (I'm doing it on an unpatched ROM though).  It's hard so this is an incredible pain in the ass, but it's fun too. Wink  Unfortunately, even when I'm successful I keep making bizarre mistakes...

but I think this game is a great counterpoint to practice/running Radiata Stories.
100% runs=great to watch
Ah, I see.    Smiley  Could be cool to see somehow whatever form it may take.  Maybe the rumors of the PSP version being the best afterall will bear fruit in the future tasty to speedrunners one day.
Edit history:
spineshark: 2006-12-22 10:35:10 pm
新世紀進歩的羽扇子 音楽
I have a .zip containing the first six segments of the run, which I'm labeling "Chapter 1"-it goes until after the scene where you meet the elder in Belladem and find out you've time traveled, etc.  After this scene, I had 0:36, which I was afraid for a second meant I'd messed up horribly somewhere, but I realized then that I had actually saved with 0:36 before that scene on GBA so I'm actually 4-5 minutes ahead!  It's also worth noting that I did redo the sewer fight, netting an incredibly close call ^_^ and an 0:19 (1 minute saved) in the process.

Oh, and segment 5 has one re-record...because I forgot to stop recording when I started practicing the Golems fight for segment 6.  Oops.  I edited that out, but I didn't cheat. Tongue

As for the psp port, I don't think it will come out here.  It's just as well; as much as I like this game, the snes version will always be my favorite, and I'd find it hard to justify rewarding namco for putting out another version of ToP.  (though it would continue the laughable streak of the psp being only worth buying for other platforms' games...)  Of course, they sort of messed it all up for me with all these announcements of ports and remakes-now they either have to come off as hating American fans or being total money-grubbers to me :-/.  The Tales of Destiny remake looks pretty fucking cool tho. Sad
Edit history:
VorpalEdge: 2006-12-22 11:33:32 pm
welcome to the machine
Are you going to host those movies somewhere?
新世紀進歩的羽扇子 音楽
Uhh, well I was hoping that somebody else would share a bit (seriously the current file is .3 MB or something) since I didn't think I had anywhere to host and didn't want to sign up anywhere, but I have a geocities account from a very long time ago, so I'll throw it over there.

http://www.geocities.com/yevhassem/ToP_Chapter_1.zip

enjoy!
Edit history:
spineshark: 2006-12-27 07:09:01 pm
新世紀進歩的羽扇子 音楽
I have a question about Savories.  I sell one Rune Bottle to ride the boat to Demitel's Island, and have two others, using one on each of the savories that I can grab at Demitel's Manor.  If I use the Red Savories (Max TP+10%) now, will they be "wasted" because my TP will always only be 13 (or whatever) higher than it would be otherwise, or will my TP always be 20% higher than it would be if I hadn't used them?

The other question is, do I care?  I'm riding on Sylph, no matter how crappy it is in this version.
welcome to the machine
I have no idea, and the only way to find out would be to fight random matches and gain 10 or so levels twice.  But for one, you take the red savory at level 5 or so (after giving it long enough to tell if the TP you get per level up is random to begin with), and then compare the TP you get for the later levels.  Basically, do a scientific experiment.

Considering that you're vastly underlevelled already, it shouldn't be hard. Tongue