This topic is for the purpose of discussing #4374: ForgoneMoose's PSX Castlevania: Symphony of the Night "pacifist, low level" in 21:08.62

the only dull thing here is alucard's sword... yes

For the curious, here are the "kills" in this run: Dracula Slogra+Gaibon Doppleganger10 Alraune Dracula I'm curious why the Alraune needed to die. I see you get a Heart Refresh there, but you already had one and a Duplicator, so what does another accomplish? I found this reasonably entertaining, but frankly there's very little here that's not in your 100% run, and that run also has a lot of cool stuff this one doesn't thanks to the greater availability of relics. Thanks for making it, though, and thanks for the excellent commentary!

For the curious, here are the "kills" in this run: Dracula Slogra+Gaibon Doppleganger10 Alraune Dracula I'm curious why the Alraune needed to die. I see you get a Heart Refresh there, but you already had one and a Duplicator, so what does another accomplish?

Only prologue and final Dracula are actually "killed" out of those on that list. All others are revenge teched; this makes said kills have "less impact", so to speak, though it should still be counted against the category, in my opinion. You need 2 HRs to be able to chain them. You cannot use one HR and chain it with itself because the input buffer is not cleared during screen pauses and you're still counted as holding the use button when it's over, and you cannot use it and pause and put it on the other hand because screen pauses lock pausing the frame they start. If anybody could figure out a way to get around this restriction, it would be a huge improvement to pacifist and probably other categories as well.

Notably in the PSP version of SotN you CAN chain a single item with itself using a PSP specific 'feature'/glitch: Link to video

Do you end up having more "kills" in the "0 boss" run?

Almost every boss skip in 0 boss involves killing something to open a shiftline/reverse shiftline off of its level up. There's no restriction on killing enemies in 0 boss, so you'll also kill a bunch of them to get them out of your way.

Do you end up having more "kills" in the "0 boss" run?

Do you mean as in the actual number of kills I got in the zero bosses TAS, or do you mean the total kills if you minimized extraneous kills? Because I need to do Slogra and Gaibon skip as well as Dopple10 skip in that category, it is impossible to avoid killing numerous enemies just at the start alone so I can displace room transitions with level ups, getting more kills than pacifist within the first couple minutes is mandatory even if you count revenged enemies as part of the list of pacifist kills. On a somewhat related note, I guess I never thought about the whole revenge tech thing until recently. Pacifist started as a concept on world beyond walls out of a desire to reach the final save with the lowest possible kill count, as a fun challenge playthrough. It was simply a kill counter of 1 or later 0 at final save (the latter of which this run achieves) and nothing else (all revenge techs were allowed and enemies that don't add kills but give exp were allowed to die), and was referred to as such. It just sort of mutated into a "pacifist-esque" category later, I guess, where somewhere along the lines the no exp stipulation was added to the category. Revenge tech "not counting" is just something that's ingrained into the community for this game, I guess. I could have skipped the large HR chain in the Library by taking a route that gets mist, but that would require an additional revenge tech or wasting lots of time getting more relics, enough that I didn't think it was worth the speed tradeoff. I'm sort of rambling here, but I'm just trying my best to give some insight into the mechanics of the category for people not as familiar with the game. Long story short, lowest kill counter was absolute number one priority, and everything else that makes it more of a literal pacifist run was a secondary goal added by my own personal preference. I guess you could also argue that pacifist could avoid hurting enemies as well, but that change wouldn't add anything meaningful to the run.

To get to the Alraune, could you have used RSL from Cerberus' room instead of getting the Demon Card?

To get to the Alraune, could you have used RSL from Cerberus' room instead of getting the Demon Card?

Nope. Unlike most of the bosses, entering Cerberus' room from what should be an "impossible" direction still triggers the fight, which means it loads up a new area if I try.

Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Then, is it possible to revenge tech Cerberus to change the room's state?

Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Then, is it possible to revenge tech Cerberus to change the room's state?

I don't know of any way to get it into the revenge tech vulnerable "stunned" state, as none of its actions have any affect on it and stopwatch doesn't affect it enough to help either. I probably would have ended up forgoing said revenge tech in keeping with the fewest revenge techs stipulation I put on the run, but it still would be nice if that RSL were possible somehow.

I never played this before, but does this mean you can kill things without getting XP? Wouldn't just "low level" make more sense than "Pacifist" then?

Can you explain what "revenge teching" is? I'm not really up to speed on SOTN speedrunning/TASing.

I'm not familiar with thech revenge either, but here's a transcript of the part he explains it;

Revenge Tech is strange, and nobody really even has an idea of what it is or why it works. It's essentially just killing enemies in strange ways while inside their hitbox, but it requires having the enemy either stopwatched or in a special "stunned" state, and not every enemy can be stunned. It is only used here when no other option works.

If I remember correctly, revenge tech is a way to kill enemies without having it count as a kill and without gaining EXP. Theoretically, you can kill an infinite number of enemies and still have it count as a 0-kill/low level run if you revenge tech all of them. And that's why I love SotN.

Might not be the best place to ask, but would anyone be willing to make a "no glitch" TAS? Shield dashing I am not sure if that could be counted as a glitch, but a TAS where the game is played fully as the developers intended. Regardless, This was a rather fun watch.

Might not be the best place to ask, but would anyone be willing to make a "no glitch" TAS? Shield dashing I am not sure if that could be counted as a glitch, but a TAS where the game is played fully as the developers intended. Regardless, This was a rather fun watch.

I've considered it. I'm only willing to make it if it includes a "no major skips" stipulation, as there are many huge breaks that are just done by manipulating natural game mechanics.

Right, that is what I was trying to get out. I am just horrible putting my thoughts into words.

Voted meh on entertainment, but this run should definitely be published. I just don't know enough about SotN to be entertained, I think.

I really enjoyed this. The pace was good throughout, and the variety of tricks used to work around the restriction against both killing enemies normally and killing them via the revenge-tech led to some novel solutions. Yes vote.

While I understand the academic interest in reducing the kill-counter, the resulting run felt pretty boring. There's a lot of slow movement, evading enemies, there's a lot of backtracking, and when a boss comes around, the best you can hope for is a clever skip that doesn't take a full minute of heart-refreshing. Those that are fought look unimpressive due to the requirements of revenge-teching. And then he takes a long detour just to kill that poor defenseless plant and OMG HOW IS THAT PACIFIST? Choosing good secondary goals to make a run more interesting is more of an art than a science, and it's always influenced by the viewer's taste and the target audience (e.g. hardcore fans vs. casual viewers). But there are two properties that I'd consider universally bad: * Instead of choosing a goal, choosing to satisfy a broken ingame counter of that goal, thus sidestepping the actual goal. * Choosing a goal that is invisible to the player, like a counter in a menu that's never accessed. Aiming for a kill counter of 0 was a great vehicle for the sotn community to research glitches and break the game in new ways. But showing off that it can be done does not require a TAS; and a TAS cannot show off the true potential of tool assistance when being restricted by this particular goal. Voting no due to dullness. I think it's a good thing to have this submission, since 0-kill-runs are a part of sotn research history, but I consider the run too dull to be frontpage-worthy, and too confusing in its goals for casual viewers.

This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [2657] PSX Castlevania: Symphony of the Night "pacifist, low level" by ForgoneMoose in 21:08.62

Well, congrats on the publication, ForgoneMoose! The description ought to note that there are kills that aren't "official" kills and thus traditionally don't count against the pacifism concept. I suggest this text: "This run beats the game at level 1 with 0 experience, and the only official (recorded in the bestiary) kill being Dracula. A few other enemies are killed using a glitch to avoid the kill being recorded or experience being awarded."

You know, I do have a problem with this run. It uses previously saved data to allow the player to skip all cutscenes and buy items that wouldn't normally be available as early as they are. But this isn't classified as a "uses passwords/save data" or "Replay Mode" run? Why? And why has nobody mentioned this before now...?