- Emulator used : Snes9x 1.51 v6
- Fastest completion of the game
- Use of luck
- Take damage to save time
- Use of a progaming error
- SOme entertainment trade-off
In Paladin's Quest, you play Chezni, a boy born with natural magical talent. Because of a bet, you "accidentaly" turn on an ancient machine of doom. Your goal is to stop this machine. You will meet many mercenaries, blue trees, green mountains, walk on clouds and fight pig-like creatures.
This is my third publication (of a different game). It was hard in many ways : the frame lag is hideous, making it hard to know which frame is right to press a button; the random battles are uglyly numerous, and there is little way to diminish this number ( I tried it many times); and before about half the game, those battles are necessary, if not to get quick enough to escape them!
On the bright side, rising stats is very easy, and so is the dropping of key items that raise stats of magic affinity. It was crucial to get +6 strength for Chezni until after Gabnid... Also, many times, you don't have to talk to key people (Karon, Mistuo) to go forward with your quest.
Here are the highlights
- Alornso is pretty straightfoward. I had to kill him before he killed me
- Jarmlu proved to be challenging. In the end, I let Tiger die and manipulated so Jarmlu would miss most of his hits. I saved 30-40 frames each time
- The caves of Hagubo were the worst part. Enemies are so quick, and before I get Smash, they are hard to kill. The programing error is here : even though I stopped the flow of magma, I am able to obtain medicine for free.
- Renegades must be frozen in order to optimize the fight. Also, Dan's kick is does slightly more damage than his punch. PLus, it's only one action.
- The inside of Strabo was one of the only places were I was able to gain level with ease. Wild was probably one of the most useful mercenaries...
- Freezing bosses is fun. Guardian couldn't resist it.
- In Rekuon, I included a Dragon Quest cameo. I was told that the priest resurects dead people in the game.
- I got really lucky inside the Karon tower : only 2 or 3 fights. The boss inside the city fell to freeze once again
- The boss inside the water shrine is also sensitive to freeze... by the para knife.
- Since I lost enough HP in the previous fight, it was easy for Lokiarn to finish us off. Otherwise, I need 2 rounds because Midia's defense is too high (or she has time to attack). During the 2nd fight, the +6 strenght got handy. And critical hits too
- Getting Nails was a blessing. He is so quick I can espace most battles without using preemptive strikes
- Admiral Alon is another easy target to freeze
- Gabnid was a hard fight. His explosion uses more frames, but this way I don't have to heal.
- I got lucky against Doth. In my tryouts, I sometimes failed to cast Spirit before his attack
- Finally, I took full advantage of Attack back (all attacks are considered physical) against Zaygos and Kaymat.
Possible improvements : restart altogether and pray for luck with respect to random fights; try to use less cards; fight less (if it can be done!)...
FractalFusion: Well done for an RPG. Accepting for publication.