IMPORTANT NOTE: The ending credits theme, "Simple and Clean", is a copyrighted song. So in any encodes of this run, you will need to either mute the song or replace it with something else. I personally just removed the credits entirely, since they're like 7 minutes long and really freaking boring.
Time: 1:41:02.94
Rerecord count: 81,386
amount of "HAH"s: too many to count
This was originally my first TAS, but I stopped it so I could get better at TASing in general. I went through Kingdom Hearts 358/2, to Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin, to Adventure Time: Hey Ice King!, to Ikachan, to Legend of Princess, to Jenka's Nightmare, and to Shantae before finally looping back around to this. It was a long road, but it was a road worth taking.
This run beats the game over an hour quicker then the RTA run, and features many tricks never before seen.
Run comments
World 1: Destiny Islands
-At the very beginning I choose the Sword and give up the Shield in order to change what my starting commands are. This gives me a Sliding Dash and a Quick Blitz, which both skip combo lag when used.
-The third wave of Shadows in Dive to the Heart require at least one Clock Finisher to beat. Elsewise they'll just loop forever.
-I pause in the first system sector in order to spawn the enemies faster. I only do this when I need to travel a short distance to where they spawn, elsewise I don't usually bother.
-Tidus normally takes three rounds in order to kill, but I managed to manipulate a critical hit here to reduce it to two rounds.
-Throughout the first phase of the Darkside fight, I need to make sure Sora doesn't activate his Clock Finisher before the end of the fight. Elsewise, phase two would take longer.
-Phase three of Darkside takes a fixed amount of damage at any level, so it's all about attacking as fast as possible. (Just like every fight o.o)
World 2: Traverse Town
-Immediately as this world starts I pick up a Blank Chip and a Thunder. Via command fusion the Thunder is used as a Thundara, which is very helpful. The Blank Chip is used to get a Command Expansion in the Stat Matrix, which increases the amount of commands I can equip from 3 to 4.
-Occasionally there are certain cutscene triggers that wait until Sora is standing still before activating. By walking into the cutscene trigger in the side alleyway I save time.
-After the first fight I use a very accurate Slide Dash to skip a cutscene. Saves a few seconds.
-The autoscrolling section is pretty straightforward. The only notable thing is a slight glitch with the physics. If Sora rolls into a gap being filled by a Blox, he'll actually warp above the block. This saves a tiny bit of time in the second section, but is elsewise just entertaining.
-The second boss, Guard Armor, is manipulated based on how far away Sora is to him. I wait a specific distance for him to use his arm throw attack, which is easy to dodge and takes a while, and then destroy him.
World 3: Alice in Wonderland
-In order to advance the game and reach the boss, I need to collect certain Inklings to get Alice to remember where the Keyhole is. The needed Inklings are: the Queen of Hearts, the Cheshire Cat, the Peculiar Hole, and the Red Roses. All other ones are skipped.
-The shooter section is boring and takes forever. Not much else to say about it.
World 4: Olympus Coliseum
-I equip the Aerial Sweeps I collected in Alice in Wonderland in order to use useful abilities in the turn based area. A magic command followed by two Aerial Sweeps essentially acts as a field nuke.
-I also go ahead and equip the Power Armlet I got in the first world. More on that later.
-Similar to most RPGs, waiting a certain amount of frames changes the RNG. I abuse this to get critical hits, finishers, and shorter attack animations.
-Before fighting the end of world bosses you're supposed to pick up Cloud as a party member. However, it takes nearly two minutes to get him, something that's terribly slow in a TAS. So I just leave him to die or whatever.
World 5: Agrabah
-The Olympia keyblade converts my standard combos into slower, stronger ones. It also allows me to move during a loading screen, which is pretty helpful since the first hit of the combo acts like a Slide Dash.
-When I'm at it, I go to the Stat Matrix to unlock Combo Master, which allows me to continue a combo without hitting anything first. Very helpful.
-The first Jafar fight is rather complicated. In order to manipulate him to where I want him to go, I need to stand in a specific spot at the start. I also attack two bloxs during his invincibility phases in order to prevent him from wasting time warping around.
-The green Bandits in the first system sector here aren't stunned by my attacks, similar to red enemies. I use Magnera to fix that easily.
-The elevator fight is essentially the same strategy as the green Bandits: Magnera then kill.
-Jafar 2 is exactly the same as the first one, only he has a bunch of clones shooting at me.
-Genie Jafar is all about stunning Iago so he doesn't get away. This is actually pretty easy to pull off in a TAS, so I manage to kill him much faster then normal.
-Oh, and I deliberately take damage into critical range (where it starts beeping) in order to activate my Power Armlet. Power Armlet gives me an attack boost when my HP is below 25%. This helps when dealing with the damage curve later on.
World 6: Hollow Bastion
-I lose my keyblade for most of this world, so expect lots of dodging.
-Manipulating my AI allies to do what I want is a gigantic pain.
-Right before the end of world boss fights, I finish synthesizing a Judgement Triad. Judgement Triad sends three spinning blades after enemies, which are all very powerful.
-Pete can easily be manipulated via my attacks to do what I want. I manipulate him at the start to get me into critical range, so I can deal more damage.
-Pete 2 automatically starts with the lightning vortex, so I just Judgment Triad his face beforehand. He's supposed to use the lightning vortex again once he reaches low HP, but I kill him too fast for that.
-Riku can somewhat be manipulated with his attacks, but it's mostly jumping and attacking.
-Riku 2 is the same, but with a warping ability you never see.
-Riku 3 is the same as Riku 2, but with a very easy to dodge 'Desperation Move'.
World 7: Inside Riku's Data
-Beating the 6th world grants me the Oblivion keyblade, which is essentially the Kindom Key with automatic Attack Haste. It also has Two-Edged Blade, which means I deal increased damage at the price of HP. Combined with the Power Armlet, I'm literally unstoppable.
-I also get Dodge Roll LV2 and a Finishing Plus. Dodge Roll LV2 has more invincibility frames and travels farther, which the Finishing Plus gives me a second finisher to my combos.
-Not much to say about the world revisits.
-Riku 4 is the same as Riku 2, but with some silly fire nonsense. I managed to loop him into doing his guard move.
-Another sidescroller section, only this time it's determined by how fast I go. How nice.
-Dragon Maleficent automatically does attacks after a certain number of hits. Pretty simple.
-What you do in Sora's Heartless 1 changes what Sora's Heartless 2 does. In order to prevent him from doing an instant death move I can't dodge, I manipulate it away here.
-Sora's Heartless 3 and 4 are exactly the same, in that he'll automatically do his finishing move once the clones die.
-Sora's Heartless 5 is the hardest boss battle in any game ever.
World 8: Castle Oblivion
-After already revisiting worlds, let's revisit worlds again!
-Roxas automatically does his Faith attack at certain HP points. That's why he does it twice. When he reaches low HP he can do a final version of it, which takes much longer. I managed to kill him before that though.
Known Improvements
-I discovered in Hollow Bastion that you can press Select in the Stat Matrix to move around it faster. Would save a few seconds.
-Blue Rhapsodies in the Wonderland system sector can drop Aerial Sweeps. Would save about 20 frames over getting them earlier.
Thank you to Spikestuff, solarplex, and ForgoneMoose_ for showing a lot of interest in this project. Gave me the motivation to finish it.
Also thanks to the Kingdom Hearts speedrunning community. Without them I probably wouldn't have even started TASing.
feos: Accepting to Moons.
Spikestuff: Publishing... Correction, this is going to take some time to upload...