Hello, I'm a speedrunner of Breath of Fire II Any% and Glitchless. I was also the one that discovered the weapon glitch (both the original herb glitch and then the improved version which janus used in the newer TAS) I have done a lot of work with re-routing the Any% speedrun with the glitched weapons and have speedran
I have not watched much of either TAS to be honest. There were a few points of interest that I was curious to see how janus approached them. My guess is that xujhan mentioned these to janus.
#1 - In the any% speedrun we glitch about 1.7 mil coins (zenny) into our inventory at the start of the game (in hometown when the first weapon glitch is done)
This allows us to avoid the trip to get an uparupa (2:04:30 in janus video) Instead you can pay MC Tusk 900k coins and avoid the trip altogether. There is also a text glitch that we do to leave mc tusk's room and re-enter it, which saves us a trip of going through the circus again.
Based on the walking time for the cave, this can be about a 3 minute time save and is something glitchless can't do.
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#2 - No need to chase after Patty. This is done in both speedrun categories. At (4:02:30 for janus video and at 4:01:25 in xujhan's video) They are leaving Cotland to go find Patty. The game sends you on a wild goose chase, but in reality the flag is set at this point to talk to Patty in township.
Avoiding the extra detours will save janus about 90 seconds.
At 3:57:00 in janus also moved the township to help with "finding Patty" but since you can cut that part out, there is no need to move the Township which saves another 60 seconds.
In total this will save janus a little over 2 minutes and 30 seconds.
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As for the weapon glitches. There are 9 glitched weapons in total. The moondrop is what janus used. all 9 weapons have 64 attack power. The moondrop (item 06) and van ext (item 04) have the unique property to attack twice and have the holy element. Nothing resist holy and spirit enemies take double damage from holy,so it works out wonderfully. In the vanilla game only 1 weapon has twin attack and that is Bow's twinbow.
As for the 7 other weapons, again they also have 64 attack power but only attack once and have the fire property.
The herb glitch (item 01) was the original discovery. This was a huge discovery because 64 attack power is a LOT for the early game. With the discovery of the other weapons and gaining a weapon that attacked twice made it that much better.
For the speedrun, the glitched weapon starts to have diminishing returns because characters start to lack a high enough strength to keep up with the enemies defense. This is even more true for the TAS because your level is much lower thanks to maniping no enemy encounters. Sadly when you ask for what is the entertainment value for glitched weapons vs not having them it is harder to see because random encounters are skipped in the TAS.
In the speedrun, Rand's strength gains allow him to become a dps machine in the late game with the glitched weapon, since the developers gave him weak attack power weapons. The glitched weapon has more than all of his weapons accept for one irc.
Again, since battles are skipped it's hard to see the value (in great significant's) because the boss battles are handle over so fast in both TAS versions.
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In conclusion. I feel you do have a hard choice ahead of you, but I feel that the entertainment value is the right question to ask. I wanted to lay out some of the time saves that would set janus apart from xujhan, and I also wanted to try to help and educate where those differences are in the two runs.
IMO the runs will still look very similar. For where to go from there, I would leave it to the community and what values you guys place first.