Game objectives
- Fastest completion
- Uses easiest difficulty (for speed)
Mechanics are mostly the same as in the first game. The two biggest changes are:
- You can move while attacking in midair (in MoS1 attacking would not let you move)
- Most attacks now cause hitlag
This changes the general strategy quite a bit. I can't kill enemies as I please like in MoS1, some more distinction is needed.
Another big change is the skill books. The leap skillbook lets me do a jumping leap attack that's extremely fast. It also deals the most damage, which I abuse in bossfights. By activating a spirit on the same frame you launch, it's possible to cancel the jump, and I stay on the ground.
Like in MoS1, by using spirits while in the air, I can control my jump trajectory. This is the same deal in MoS2 and it can be used while leaping to not lose speed.
Even though most attacks are lagful when they hit enemies, the leap is an exception: it has 1 frame where it will not lag. I abuse this in boss fights once again.
The other important skill books is the air spin. If you're falling, an air speed resets your vertical speed to 0, but this doesn't work if you're moving upwards. This is very useful for getting more distance out of Mic dashes.
Another use of the spin is as a general movement option. Even though it causes lag when it hits an enemy, it gives a small knockback that rises me forward, often enough to go above enemies.
Note that both of these moves can be cancelled when I use a spirit. This is important because we can cancel a spin with Chloe, the pendulum spirit. By going into the menu I can switch off Chloe, and her spirit is unique in that it stops the animation when canceled in this way, which lets me chain into another spirit. I call this glitch "spin cancelling" and it's useful in a variety of ways, from making impossible jumps to following enemies around in midair.
Pendulum glitching is still present in MoS2, but there's a few more tools to deal with it. Great Ogre in particular is extremely useful, because it resets my vertical speed to 0 unconditionnally. This makes it much easier to do vertical clips with Chloe without wasting too much time falling back down.
That's about it. I've included more stage-by-stage commentary in the encode, as CC commentary.
Because I get the fun and gamebreaking spirits (Mic for dashing and Chloe for hyperspeed) much earlier, this run is both much faster than the MoS1 one, and I hope at least as entertaining :)
Possible improvements
Some known improvements:
- Using lagless leap against Mic & Chloe. Could save a second or two
- After getting Silver Tail at 20 minutes, I could warp out with Grand Tao Dragon since this level was already cleared. Should save a few seconds
Possible improvements:
- Better menuing for equipping spirits
- Better spirit order would save many frames here and there. If two spirit decks are too far away it takes too long to switch between them
- Maybe not picking up Pascal Avaf is faster
Samsara: Wow. This game decided not just to give you the insanely busted movement stuff from the mid-to-endgame of the original very early on, but it also introduced even more busted movement options and upgrades all throughout just to make it that much more exciting. This is everything that was brilliant about
the first game's TAS, but double the intensity and almost half the length, which by my calculations (and, frankly, my direct observation) means this is at least four times more incredible than a run I already thought was incredible to begin with. With that TAS already teetering on the edge of being starred at an 8+ rating, I think it's safe to say that this one quite comfortably pendulum glitches its way over that edge and into the distant, beautiful horizon.
Accepting to Stars!
