RPG Speedrun Anthology Project KadMony draft qui chemine. © who cares about Copyright. Qu’est-ce donc? This set of notes is supposed to be taken as an anthology of RPG speedrun, providing com- prehensive route explanation as well as being focused on both route/speedrun history and glitch explanations on each game it gets interest into. The main objective of the project is to provide a general class with good publication standards which will be useful to add more and more chapers through times (the present file contains already of thousands of lines of code) This version is a rough draft, we hope to get it public when the FF6 section will be filled. If you speedrun an RPG and would like to add one chapter about your game -wanting the same level of explanation and publication standards as already written chapters- feel free to contact me and take part into the project. iii Contents Qu’est-ce donc? iii 1 Xenogears 1 1.1 General information Xenogears’ speedrun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 1.2 Xenogears’ speedrun route . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 iv Versions History version 1.00 -> 2.00 -> 3.00 -> 3.10 -> only Xenogears. version 3.13, Xenogears only taking account of Bif and Petrole’s remarks. To be added : Elly Bloody combo management, Bart stalactite cave human management, Movement optimization (jumping tricks), Sufal Mass HP, Party Change p125, Battle Deus Radiance, Bledavik Petrole order, Dora Tr. v you shall be as gods. you shall be as gods. you shall be as gods. you shall be as gods. you shall be as gods. you shall be as gods. you shall be as gods. you shall be as gods. Deus ∼ Ω 1 1 Xenogears 1.1 General information Xenogears’ speedrun . . . . 2 1.2 Xenogears’ speedrun route . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 1 1.1 General information Xenogears’ speedrun 1.1.1 History of the run After contributing on Xenogears’ in several ways for some years -working mainly on script, hacking and translation- I began getting some interest into Xenogears’ Speedrun in June 2012. At that time a rather embryonic route of the game was held by several japanese runners. The first set of these notes -which were at that time solely dedicated to Xenogears- was written around 1 year and are the result of the study and enhancements of this japanese route. After some more unpleasant months of training I finally got a satisfying time. Surprisingly a topic was opened at the very same time as i was finishing the first version of the notes and route on SDA by Rudyxx ( www.twitch.tv/rudyxx ) in order to gather some information on an possi- ble community routing of the game. The first known Xenogears speedrun is attributed to M. Masahiro Kimura -reported in Famitsu Weekly of the 29th of May, 1998- with a segmented run of 18h50min. Note that due to the numerous dialog boxes, the run is around 3h30 slower in US version. The time remains still amazing, notably since the game was then released for a couple of months only. It took more than ten years for a consistent RTA route to emerge in the japanese community, the last contributor of the route being the runner UG. Considerable improvements were implemented in the 2013 notes, including the desert skip, enhanced strategies for almost all bosses, money route update, new Babel Tower route and emergence of camera optimization. There remain certainly new strategies discover and develop, lots of energy has been put on since 2014 but no substancial improvement has been brought up yet. 2 1.1.2 What’s next? Since 2018 we now know that there are some new game breaking techniques which allow to save several hours, and will require new general foundations for the route of this speedrun. This task is slowly worked out by my the teams. The present route is thus can be already seen as the legacy of a no major glitch category which will occur at some point. 1.1.3 Standard policies When bringing up Xenogears’ speedrun out of Japan I decided to follow the standards settled by the Japanese runners. The timer is started when hitting the New Game button in the main menu, and stopped once the Xenogears Episode V, the end has appeared, at the end of the game. This does not match with the standard poli- cies applied for RPG Speedruns outside of Japan, namely the usual New Game > last input set-up. Still this is what came out from Xenogears community and I like it, notably since the Did you know? Through the famous control panel i was using for my first modified runs, we know that the button is hit about around 450 000 times in a single Xenogears run. last screen of Xenogears The End has a personal strong emotional aspect. Autofire and Gameshark are not allowed for RPG speedruns out of Japan without fur- ther notice, and Xenogears is no exception to the rule. The speedrun on the US version thus involves mashing with bare hands. The big amount of slow textboxes in the game makes a consistent mashing one of the key ingredients to get a satisfying run of the game. 3 1.1.4 Versions and categories Systems comparison The game was initially speedran on Playstation 2, as many Playstation RPGs. Surprisingly the Xenogears speedrun community was the first to brought up the non-trivial timing differences which can occur with the different versions of the Playstation 2. Indeed playing Playstation games on a Playstation 2 is done through a build-in emulator called PS-Driver which has several versions depending on the version of the Playstation 2 you are playing on. Many issues appear through the PS-Driver -notably the famous Deus glitch- and time difference between the fastes and the slowest models of PS2 is of several hours Even though it remains hard to determine accu- rately the pace of a system many researches have been done to determine the best version to run the game. Of course another important param- eter to determine on which system to run is the Deus glitch (see below for more detail). As for the build-in PS-Driver emulator of the Playstation 2, the platforms allowing to play the game through its PSN version (Playstation 3, PSP, PSTV) also US Version Version Differences The fastest system playing Xenogears’ US version is the old SCPH-7xxx version of the Playstation 2. It displays the game around 45 minutes faster than any other system each run! include a build-in emulator called the POPSloader. Fortunately the POPSLoader is quite easy to update through standard firmware updates, and thus the Deus Glitch was removed for the first time on the PSN Version of the game during 2013 and the 6.XX firmwares of the PSP. We refer to the upcoming Glitches section for a detailed account on the Deus Glitch appears and we 4 will display shortly the systems which prevent or allow this bug to appear. Here is a simplified list of all the known systems, ordered from the fastest to the slowest. The run of johannhowitzer ( www.twitch.tv/johannhowitzer ) revealed how fast SCPH-7xxx is, while Endy ( www.twitch.tv/endymion1744 ) ran the game on the very slow PS3 hard- ware. In the next table systems with * correspond to the ones on which the Deus Glitch occurs. PS2* SCPH-7XXX > PSTV > PSP 6.XX+ FW > PSP* old FW > PS2* SCPH-9XXX > PSX > PS3 Japanese vs. US version Speedrun-wise, the most important difference between the Japanese version of Xenogears and the US version is certainly the textboxes which are much slower and laggy in the latter version of the game. Apart from this some slight differences occur : • the camera angle is 45° more to the left on the Japanese version of the game when enter- ing for the first time Nisan’s Cathedral, for some reason. I conjecture that this is the first incarnation of the Margie Stairs skip which is not the same in the US and the Japanese version of the game : in the Japanese version of the game, the team is directly warped from the first floor of the cathedral to the second floor, skipping the stairs room. • several tiny bugs were fixed through localization to US (mainly equipment duplication Glitch, and Iron Mail glitch which roughly speaking allows to get as many Iron Mails as you want). Those tiny bugs are not used in the speedrun. 5 Categories One of the unique bugs in Xenogears is the No-Load Glitch (see below). Since the interest of this glitch -even in terms of pace- is quite low, the main category for Xenogears Speedrun is thus any% (no No-Load Glitch). A few Japanese runners produced some runs in the ’true any%’ category using the No-Load Glitch -whose times are roughly equivalent to the No-Load Glitch runs- but non-Japanese run- ners usually stick to the any% (no No-Load Glitch) category. Some new gimmick categories are likely to appear in the future : notably the 100% category which should not differ a lot from the standard category of the speedrun but will show-off many new parts of the game. 1.1.5 Game Mechanics Unfortunately the in-game mechanics of Xenogears are either hidden or not explained at all during the game, we thus gather here some of those which will be fundamental. Xenogears’ speedrun relies highly on abusing the game mechanics, notably through Ether manipulation and trying to outspeed ennemies as much as possible. Human mechanics and Ether manipulation Depending on the party, the human fight strategies rely on outspeeding opponents as much as possible, while damage is dealt by elementary physical attacks or Ether. There is almost not any RNG in the starting ATB of the party members, making the use of Speed Rings powerful. • using the a priori defensive Ether abilities of Citan on Ennemies lower their elemental defenses. Assorted with the Items allowing attacks to become elemental, standard attack 6 become devastating (see the Grahf-Executioner fight); • as far as Ether based attacks are needed, the Etherstone and EtherDoublers equipment will be essential (in particular for Gears fights, through Ether Amplification). Even though almost no grinding is done during the run, some deathblow acquisition have to be achieved here and there. Learning combos in Xenogears does not rely on experience points but on the movements the character performed since the very beginning of the game. Getting new deathblows is not only important for the sake of humans fight, but also essential since hu- man combos determine the acquisition of Gears combos. A character learns a combo when he has performed a fixed number of actions since the be- ginning of the game (and if he has enough Ap/lvl). For example, Fei acquires his Raijin combo when having performed 30 x and 10 x There is some slight subtlety here : attacking with will not give 2 x but only two different : the must thus not all be counted together. The formulas which determine deathblow acqui- sition are quite complicated since each character as endowed with a coefficient which varies dur- ing the different sections of the game (see Elly’s Screamer learn in Bloody’s fight). The system is Combo Acquisition The present route of Xenogears’ Speedrun uses the following deathblows. Fei : Raijin - Senretsu Citan : Ukigumo - Jinrai Bart : Rythm Shock Elly : Screamer still well understood and in this run all the combo acquisition is optimized, you will only have to perform the actions as explained. Here is first a little list of all the combos which will be specifically acquired during the run, and then the time/actions related in the run which are now detailed. 7 Fei • Raijin : this is the most technical deathblow to learn during the game. Fei has to perform 30 x and 10 x to get Raijin and we want it to be learned before the Rankar fight to ensure Weltall’s first combo. Simply buffer and attacks on the way through the Mountain Path and the Black- moon Forest. Since the enemies encountered during the Blackmoon Forest forced fights are numerous and weak, i recommend getting out of the Mountain Path with 2 x and as much as possible. Stick to killing each Forest Elf with an assorted with somes more if needed and recall that if you did not get any random battle going to the four Hob Gob fight in the Blackmoon Forest, you still can trigger more fights versus Hob Gobs later. Did you know? Even if you escape from a fight or a character dies, the movements performed are still counted for deahtblow acquisition! You can thus for example grind the Screamer Combo while escaping in the Reapers’ Ship and unlock it at the end of the Bloody fight. • Senretsu : the combo is acquired in two steps : first add 1 x and 4 x in Black- moon Forest’s Rankar fight after getting the Raijin to dump Fei to 11 x , 34 x Then in the Cargo ship semi-forced fight (see Split 8-9) add three to learn Senretsu at the end of the fight, unlocking the Weltall’s Reppu combo for the next Bartholomew Gear fight. 8 Citan • Ukigumo : acquired in the semi-forced Cargo ship fight by attacking the right guards with , , , , . Acquiring it prepares for the pre- Bledavik combo grinding fight and also unlocks Heimdal’s Kentsui combo which will be needed during Bart’s hideout Gebler intrusion. • Jinrai : acquired in the combo grinding fight before entering Bledavik (adding 10 x and 12 x , see the route notes for more details). We want here Citan to acquire some combos, already preparing for the Redrum fight. Bart • Rythmn Shock : the combo is acquired in three steps. First, Bart does 2 x in the Stalactite cave. He then gets 3 x and 4 x in the combo grinding sequence preceeding the Bledavik phase (we refer to the route notes for more details). Finally Bart gets 4 x and 4 x in the unavoidable fights during Shakhan’s castle intru- sion and thus unlocks Rhythm Shock right before Ramsus fight, for which it is essential -notably for the first phase-. Elly • Elly unlocks her Screamer deathblow in only one turn, attacking Bloody with a in Reaper’s ship. It is essential to learn Screamer for the Elements fight in Ethos dig site, since combo attacks ensure 100% Sleep status rate on Seraphita. Note that due to Elly coefficient modification, performing the same actions before the Nortune phase will not allow Elly to learn Screamer. 9 Gear Mechanics Most Gear mechanics remain unexplained in the game. Among all Gear stats, only two have synergy with Human equipments : Ether Amplification and Evade. Attack notably is only af- fected with the Engine of the current Gear and cannot even be enhanced with most equipment. The main point in Gears physical fight is thus to get a good Accuracy stat to avoid misses and also as much Evade as possible. These two stats can be enhanced with the very powerful and unexplained Response statistic -which will be enhanced through Old Circuits, Resp. Circuit and Magneticoat during the run-. Talking about Magneticoat is a good opportunity to get to the hidden stats of Gears. One of the most important stat in Gears fight is not even mentioned in the game and is usually ref- ered as the Weight statistic. The way it works is quite simple : to each Gear equipment of the game is attached a Weight value, and each Gear of the game has its specific Weight itself. Once the Weigh value of a Gear added to the Weight of its equipment go over some fixed values the Agility of the Gear decreases drastically. It is thus essential to ensure getting first turns to give some modulation on the equipment of Gears, and notably when equipping heavy equipments, such as Magneticoats or Power Magics (we refer to Renmazuo’s fight during the Shevat Genera- tor sequence for a precise example of such manipulation). The key equipment of the run is of course the very expensive EtherDoubler which can be bought in the early shops in Nisan. We will get three of these on the way -fortunately without any Gold grinding with the sharp money route-. The main damage in the game is done with Ether attacks, and the Etherdoubler allows for the caster to use 2 times more EP and to deal 2 times much more damage. Assorted with Ether boosting equipments in both Human and Gears -mainly EtherStones and Power Magics- Ether attacks become devastating even at very 10 low level since those equipment stack. With proper Ether Manipulation it is even easy to beat Alpha Weltall near Raziel with a low-level party. Even better, there are lots of attacks in the game which are considered as Ether but don’t use EP ! These attacks include Billy’s Ether guns, and most of Gears Special Options. The game still applies all EtherDoubler, Power Magic and EtherStones effect to these even though there cost is not changed... We can thus abuse the battle system en destroy all bosses easily -see the Opiomorph fight-. These Ether manipulation becomes much stronger than any other strategy of the game, hence neither a System ID nor an Infinite Mode will be used during the run. 1.1.6 Glitches Although the run has far more skips than glitches/bugs, there are still some very important (and mainly negative) glitches which occur in a run. • The No-Load bug : The no-load bug is a very intriguing glitch which occurs on all Xenogears run. Since the game was not designed to be single segmented, some very strange things appear if you play through the game far enough without saving and reloading. The stats of the game get at one point completely screwed, some Gears stats decrease and equipment is also affected (Stier gets a 99999 Frame, other Gears equipment become useless...). The bug already appears in the first Rankar fight during the Blackmoon Forest phase and is even more visible in Bart’s hideout, where his colleagues get 0 attack if the no-load bug is not removed. Although we don’t have discovered all the effects of the no-load bug, many investigations have been already made, and the only known way to remove the bug is to Save the game, Reset the hardware and Load the game again. The usual place chosen 11 to do this swift soft-reset is usually in the stalactite cave, near Balthazar’s house. • Nisan’s Intrusion Guards glitch : During Nisan’s intrusion (see Splits 49-50) the party is being attacked by Shakhan’s guard. It appears that in some situation (e.g. if two guards are hit at the same time, or if their sprite clip together) finishing one fight actually makes the two sprites both disappear. It is thus possible to reduce the number of fights in this sequence. This certainly is an interesting gain of time, however there is no consistent setup known to get this glitch in each run. The glitch is in fact usually done by luck even on standard playthroughs. • RodG’s glitches : There are several glitches involving the Rods which can be equipped by Vierge. For example, if Vierge is equipped with a RodG which does some additional effect (element-based, abnormal status...) the effect is cancelled when saving and reload- ing the game, until the player launches a Gear Menu. Another important place where we must get rid of glitched RodG is the sequence of fights versus the Dominia and Kelvena in the Babel Tower (see Splits 51-53). At this point if Vierge is equipped with, say, the StoneRodG, Vierge will heal Marinebasher. The only RodG which is not affected by this bug is the FlareRodG, this is why we buy it in Shevat and equip it upon entering those fights. • Skips : The run is full of skips, whose gain of time is between few seconds and 10 min- utes. Here is a short list of those skips with a short description and the related section. – Moutain path warp (New Game ∼ Split 1) : warping optimization to get di- rectly into the Mountain Path from the other side of Lahan. 12 – Dazil Buggy (Splits 6 ∼ 7) : avoid the loading zone of the buggy to get directly to the rent room. – Aveh desert skip (Splits 6 ∼ 7) : warping optimization allows to get out of Aveh desert in three screens, usually with 0 or 1 random encounter. – Maison/Citan skip (Splits 12 ∼ 13) : in&out to avoid following grandpas Maison and Citan walking upon entering Bart’s hideout. – Elevator/kids skip (Splits 13 ∼ 14) : in&out when the kids use the elevator down to skip the cutscene and don’t wait for the elevator to come back up. – Bledavik enter skips (Splits 15 ∼ 16) : in&out upon entering Bledavik to avoid Bledavik introduction. Escape the load zone of the ‘free room’ cutscene thereafter. – Margie stairs skip (Splits 16 ∼ 17) : in&out to warp the little Maria on the top of Nisan’s cathedral stairs (works for first floor only on the US version). – Zzzz plan skip : launch a menu during Citan’s dialog box during the second part of the plan to be warped at the end of the sequence (see split 18). – Norturne box skip (Splits 28 ∼ 29) : jump over the boxes as good as possible to get directly on the other side of the room. – 11 monk HQ talk (Splits 37 ∼ 38) : talk 11 times in a row to the right Monk toggle Fei being healed (see Split 37 38 for more details). – Thames 2 skip (Splits 40 ∼ 41) : 10-15 min skip : while leaving Ethos HQ, don’t go to protect the Thames but head directly toward Ethos dig site. – Forced fight skip (Splits 41 ∼ 42) : avoid the load zone of the first forced fight in Ethos dig Site. Zeboim escape cutscene skip (Splits 42 ∼ 43) : right after ID’s fight, 13 get out of the room fast enough not to let the cutscene load. – Babel Tower rope skip (Splits 43 ∼ 44) : jumping far away in the water from the top of the first floor of the Babel tower, get into the warpzone toward the relay station. – Babel tower relay station cutscene skip (Splits 43 ∼ 44) : avoid the load- ing zone of the cutscene in front of the relay station’s door. – Babel tower train cutscene skip (Splits 43 ∼ 44) : avoid the load zone of the cutscene near the first ladder inside the train. – Babel tower Floor 2 first Level Skip (Splits 44 ∼ 45) : get on the right pixel floating in the air and jump to clip directly on the second floor. – Merkava short dialog skip (Split 76) : jump to avoid the dialog box when activating the switch. 1.1.7 les trucs de TAS avec Bif 14 1.2 Xenogears’ speedrun route We now describe the complete route of the game, each subsection corresponding to a split. 1.2.1 New Game The first cutscene is the only one which can be skipped during the whole game : be sure to mash even if it is lovely. Taking the control of Fei for the first time, hold to jump over the artistic tools and find Fei’s hidden money below his bed before getting out (do not rest, of course). On the upper floor hold to get next to the door and mash to be intercepted by Dan. Exit still holding and mashing and dodge the fence of the central place holding a little. The little kids playing in front of Alice’s house may interfere or even softlock the game if their hitbox overlaps either the hitbox of Alice’s Aunt or of the door... be careful! Hold inside Alice’s house and go upstairs to trigger the cutscene involving Alice. Once the cutscene is finished, hold while Mashing to exit the house with optimized movements. Did you know? To avoid safely that the hitboxes of the kids and the door overlap, you can jump on Alice Aunt’s head while she talks. She’ll drop you on the right spot when getting away from the door. Outside go in order to dodge the old woman and then hold . Get out of the village at the right spot to get warped to the mountain path directly (as shown in the next screenshots). 15