Game Objectives
- Emulator used: Bizhawk 1.11.3
- Aims for fastest time
- Resets to save time
- Uses game overs to save time
About the Game
You are Ares and have fallen into a long lost kingdom which was cursed by a dragon. Ascend the Ruins and Cave networks in hopes of escape and earn your freedom. Purchase aid from fellow unfortunate souls while combating all manner of monster along the way.
This is a top down dungeon crawler RPG. Equipment, level ups, and story elements are all skipped. The camera instantaneously rotates around Ares and always faces North/South/East/West. Movement follows a grid system where Ares and monsters will stay within their square tiles and can only attack linearly (not diagonally.) To reach the end, you must traverse 40 odd floors. Bosses are varying degrees of skipped in this run.
About this run
The main glitches used are only available in the Japanese release of the game and are frame perfect. They save so much time that the Real Time speedrun uses them even with the lowish success rate of frame perfect tricks. This TAS was made to fix the success rate of those tricks and see what time I can get.
Skipping the Hydra boss was found during the making of the run and allowed for skipping the Ninja boss for level ups, and skipping invisibilty potions to save time.
Glitches
Map transition interrupt: Text boxes can be used to gain one frame of input when in a state of being between two floors.
Map Copy: Use the map transition interrupt to save the game. This transfers item locations, map revealed state, and floor artifacts from the previous floor to the next.
Item duplication: A byproduct of map copy.
Wrong Warp: Use the map transition interrupt to use warp magic. Select warp coordinates from the previous floor but apply to warp to the next floor, irregardless of collision.
Game Mechanics
Warp Magic: Select any walkable point on the revealed map and instantly teleport there, at the cost of a full mana bar.
Emergency Escape Operation: On the file select screen press l+r+select+a to warp as soon as you load into the game, at the cost of one level in all stats and a HP and MP (and luck) refill.
Resting: l+r to enter rest state, speeding up HP and MP refill rate but setting defense to zero and monsters move faster. l+r again to exit rest state.
Double magic: Double attack strength, except for the final boss where it is more like +2 damage per sword swing. Cost is based on knowledge level.
Auto Save: Each floor transition will save the game.
Jumping is faster than walking when you advance two tiles.
Walkthrough
- Strange movements are when I am revealing the map for future warps.
Ruins 1: Start by increasing game speed and message speed to speed up the game. Drop sword and ring for inventory management. Door opening animations have idle frames so do menuing there when possible. Hold jump to access the secret room.
Ruins B2: Take a slightly slower path to gain more map vision. Pick up warp magic here.
Ruins 1: Wrong warp to access the part of Ruins B2 that connects to Ruins 4.
Ruins B2: First Map Copy.
Ruins 4: warp to top right for map vision. Drop warp magic to duplicate it. After map copying to Ruins5, return to Ruins4 to pick up original warp magic. Pick up duped version on Ruins 6.
Ruins 5: reset so I can warp from file load as warp is disabled here.
Ruins 8: buy 3 stacks of mana potions by selling warp magic.
Foot of Tower: The Crab boss should not be here. After entering the tower, I save and reset to skip the cutscene.
Tower Top: After entering cave, save and reset to skip cutscene.
Cave 7: Map copy would crash the game here, so I lose all of my map progress. Wrong warp to the back entrance to the floor in preparation for Cave2.
Cave 1: Map copy replaces all doors with varying objects, in this case holes in the ground, and despawns the boss.
Dark Zone 2: Save and reset to skip the Fortress cutscene.
Fortress 7: Get Double magic here.
Top of Fortress: Warp is disabled here. I use game overs to warp around.
Backbone: Map copy would despawn the sword that is needed to beat the game. Use a game over and a reset to warp past the guardian and then warp out.
BTOWLS: The damage I deal is a set amount and not dependent on the character sheet. Double magic does 6-7 per hit, without it's 4-5. About 40 hits. Green circles teleport me to the back of the room. Fireballs and spikes are instant death.
Potential Improvements
- RNG manipulation for Crab boss and final boss.
- Gameover at headless should be a reset instead (5 second save.)
- Remaining game overs likely should be resets (need to time)
- Diagonal cursor movements would save frames on every warp screen.(up to 10 frames each)
- Ruins 1 side stepping left only once at the crossroads switch should save two movement actions and one cursor movement.
- Fortress 3 the jump before warping is unnecessary saving 1 movement, 2 turns, 1 cursor, and 1 hit.
- Fortress 7 should have warped into the stairs after picking up double saving 1 movement, adding 1 cursor.
- Cave 10 the step forward does not look necessary saving lag frames and one movement, adding one cursor and one movement.
- Can get two attacks in at beginning of final boss fight.(savings tied to rng)
- Double magic may be worth skipping.
- Ruins 9 buy a 4th mana potion stack may save frames on exhausted stack text boxes.
- Tower 4 bonked a guy (looks bad)
- Frame hunting.
Previous Publications
FatRatKnight's movie is still the fastest way of running the English release of the game as it does not have access to the major glitches. It is categorized as a "No Major Glitches" or "Natural Route" or "English Any%" speedrun now.
This is more than 26 minutes faster.