Illusion of Gaia is the second Action RPG in the Quintet trilogy (Soul Blazer / Illusion of Gaia / Terranigma), which is loosely connected around the "restoration of the world" theme. The hero, Will, follows events which will carry him and his friends around the world, through some ancient civilizations' landmarks (Angkor Wat or the Pyramid) and some mythological ones as well (Mu or the Tower of Babel). Eventually, Will will have to vanquish the evil comet which is altering the normal course of humanity and evolution. The game is known as Gaia Gensouki in Japan and Illusion of Time in Europe.
Game objectives
- Emulator used: BizHawk 2.5.2
- Aims for fastest time without game-breaking glitches
- Takes damage to save time
- Uses death as a shortcut
- Manipulates luck
- Dashes around in silly ways
- Sacrifices a pig
About the run
This TAS corresponds to the Any% no Wrong Warp speedrunning category of Illusion of Gaia. Basically, it aims at beating the game as fast as possible without any large-skip glitches: no wrong warps, and no memory corruption (like the one demonstrated in SmashManiac's recent "save glitch" TAS).
After I finished my Soul Blader TAS a few years ago, this was the next logical project to undertake. I started it in 2019 and finished in August 2024, working on it on and off with a couple big stops. All in all, about a year's worth of effort was put into this TAS. Additionally, there has not been any full-game TAS of IoG since Halamantariel's TAS from 17 years ago, so this game really needed a good update. A lot has been discovered since then!
Illusion of Gaia is a fairly linear game, with no money/shops, and no experience system. Instead, you are supposed to receive an upgrade of either Strength, Defence or Total HP when defeating all enemies in a single room. This TAS will collect no such upgrade because the corresponding cutscene is too time-consuming; but especially, the upgrades aren't really worth it anyway because, when you defeat a boss, you will be caught up on all the upgrades missed from the dungeons. That is why all the hero's strats are significantly boosted after every boss fight. However, the game doesn't catch you up on the few stat upgrades hidden in towns, which the TAS also disregards anyway.
The game offers two control types to the player at the start of the game. RTA speedrunners typically prefer Type 2 because the A button can still be used to skip through text (without triggering any other action), and attacking with B instead of A is more in line with other games of the genre. However, Type 2 offers no benefit for the TAS, so I keep the default Type 1: attack with A and use items with B. Regardless of which control type is picked, either shoulder button (L or R) can be used to guard: this technique can block some enemy projectiles, and attract some objects like statues. The Select button brings the player to the inventory. Interestingly, it is possible to move items around, which is useful in the TAS! Indeed, you want quest items to be in the top-left spot most of the time to save cursor movements, so moving items out of the way can achieve that and save some frames.
There is no RNG associated to damage output. When you hit an enemy, the damage dealt will be the hero's attack power minus the enemy's defence (the result of this will be brought back to zero if it is negative) +1 for Will, +2 for Freedan and +3 for Shadow. Will also has a jump attack ability available from the start of the game, which adds one to the attack power. It is performed by pressing the direction Will is facing during an attack. The jump attack also makes Will invulnerable for the whole duration of the jump, which can be useful in some places (especially the fight against the Vampires).
There are Dark Spaces in every town and dungeon. In them, the player can save their game, and sometimes turn into Freedan or Shadow (depending on the location) to access different abilities. In some specific Dark Spaces, the player will receive a new ability for either Will or Freedan. Here are the abilities that they can acquire:
For Will:
- Psycho Dash: Will charges his power and then hurls himself forwards. This attack can break some walls and obstacles.
- Psycho Slider: When attacking while dashing, Will executes a slide. This is useful to pass through crawlspaces.
- Spin Dash: Will charges his power and then spins, which will boost him dramatically in any chosen cardinal direction. This is useful to climb up slopes.
For Freedan:
- Dark Friar: Freedan charges his power and releases a fireball. This is handy to defeat distant enemies or activate distant switches.
- Blue Barrier: Freedan charges his power and creates three protective barriers around himself. The barriers can block attacks and actually damage enemies.
- Earthquaker: When landing from a fall, Freedan stabs the ground with his sword, provoking an earthquake which stuns all enemies on the screen.
All those abilities (except Earthquaker) can deal damage and add five to the character's base attack stat. Also, all three of Will's abilities make him invulnerable during the whole animation of the ability. In this TAS, Blue Barrier and Earthquaker are skipped, but the other four are required.
The Psycho Dash and the Spin Dash require 159 frames of charging for Will, and Dark Friar and Blue Barrier require 139 frames of charging for Freedan. It is possible to release a Psycho Dash while running, and if the direction is still held, Will will keep running after the Psycho Dash is finished.
In the Pyramid, the second-to-last dungeon in the game, the player will unlock Shadow and receive the Aura from Gaia. When equipping the Aura, Shadow can temporarily become a liquid, making him invulnerable and able to seep through some floors; it is necessary to access some areas in the Pyramid.
In-depth game mechanics and speed tactics
Movement
The game's engine registers positions in units worth a quarter of a pixel. So 4 units are equivalent to one pixel.
When walking in a cardinal direction, the hero moves by 8 units per frame. When walking diagonally, he moves by 6 units per frame in both directions.
Dashing is performed by double-tapping the desired direction; there is no run button. When dashing, the player moves by 12 units per frame in the direction of the dash. And while dashing, the player can also input another orthogonal direction in order to move diagonally; in that case, he will move by 6 units per frame in that secondary direction. Optimally, you only need one empty frame between the two directional inputs to start a dash. So with Right, Nil, Right, the player will move 8 units, then 0 units, then 12 units because the dash has started.
Dashing
During a dash, the player has 7 frames in which they may not be holding the direction of the dash, and the dash will still be taking place. I call those "free" frames. For example, if the player dashes to the right, then stops holding Right for 7 frames, and then holds Right again, the character will still be dashing. Those 7 frames can be split up at any time during the dash, and this can be used for a variety of interesting effects. At the 8th frame when the directional input stops, the character will stop dashing. However, they need to wait yet another frame before a new dash can be initiated. It is possible to walk normally in any direction during that one frame though.
Slopes
When running down a slope, the hero's speed increases by 4 units per frame, every 4 frames he remains on the slope. Your speed can go by increments of 4 units per frame up to a maximum of 32 units per frame. When running up a slope, the opposite happens: your speed decreases by 4 units per frame, every 4 frames he remains on the slope. When your speed reaches zero, you can no longer climb up, so you start running down the slope automatically.
Damage
When the player takes a hit, they are sent away in the opposite direction of where the hit came from, and won't be able to move for the next 16 frames. Though, if the player was attacking when taking the hit, they will be able to attack again during the 16 frames of recovery; this is useful when you need to maximize your DPS (especially against the Vampires). Will and Freedan can attack every 17 frames, and Shadow can attack every 16 frames. Most enemies and all bosses have 16 frames of invulnerability after being hit, so you can only damage them once every 17 frames. For some enemies, it's once every 18 frames for some reason (like the bush enemies in Ankor Wat). You can pass through an enemy during their I-frames, which is abused quite a lot in the run.
There is a mechanic of bounce damage as well: if you hit an enemy, and then this enemy bounces on another enemy, then the other enemy receives reduced damage as well. This can be used to trigger chain reactions, which I do in the Moon Tribe challenge to finish the fight quickly.
RNG
In this game, RNG is regenerated at every RNG call (not every frame). It affects enemy/boss behaviour mostly, but also some other details such as explosions. Depending on the situation, the TASer's ability to manipulate RNG might be quite limited without sacrificing time (especially in Tower of Babel, because nothing apart from the bosses themselves can help you change RNG). This is fine for the major part of the run though because it is often possible to play optimally (or almost optimally) regardless of enemies' behaviours. Unfortunately, for some bosses (especially Vampires and Sand Fanger), you really want to manipulate certain patterns, so RNG manipulation really comes into play at some spots.
Lag management
Just like in any game of the era, Illusion of Gaia can get laggy if the game is too busy, with too many sprites on the screen for example. When the game gets busy, lag can sometimes be mitigated by avoiding diagonal movement, or refraining from attacking or guard-dashing. That's why I will prefer moving in straight lines in some areas, instead of doing fancier movements. Besides, I also have to be careful about menuing. Indeed, the number of lag frames occurring when coming back from an inventory access can vary depending on the area, so when I need to menu, I try to do so in a place which will result in the least possible amount of lag frames. In this game, some loading times can vary by one or two frames.
Movement techniques
Fast diagonals
The 7 "free" frames of a dash can be exploited to move faster in an orthogonal direction, to optimize diagonal movement. Indeed, when the main direction of a dash is not held, the player will move by 8 units in the secondary direction per frame, instead of just 6. This is used all throughout the run to achieve clean diagonal movement, or to avoid enemies and obstacles efficiently.
Corner-boost
When the hero is dashing towards an obstacle which blocks at most half of his hitbox's size, then the obstacle will not stop the dash. Instead, the hero will slide around the obstacle at the speed of 8 units per frame. Although, this can only happen if only the main dashing direction is held; if the player inputs another direction, the dash is immediately stopped. This is sometimes the fastest way around a corner.
Soft corner-boost
In some areas in the game, there are "soft corners". They act as rounded edges, and running alongside them can sometimes boost the hero by either 4 or 8 units. It depends on what sub-pixels he is aligned. This only works when running horizontally. For some reason, running alongside a soft corner vertically can sometimes block the hero for one frame, so this is avoided when possible.
Counter-dash / Short dash
When dashing, if the player inputs the opposite direction during a free frame (which we can call counter-dashing), then this will "waste" two free frames instead of just one. Therefore, if they input 4 frames of the opposite direction, then the whole 7 free frames will be depleted and the dash will stop. Inputting a certain amount of opposite direction frames can be used to end a dash earlier than normal, effectively doing short dashes, which can be very useful to make quick turns.
Guard-dash
This technique is well-known by IoG speedrunners. When you release the direction of a dash, start guarding for at least two frames, then hold the dashing direction again (while still guarding), then the hero will be guarding and dashing at the same time. The effects of the guard still apply: you can block enemy projectiles and attract objects. This is sometimes useful for speed purposes, especially to keep moving while displacing an obstacle; but most of its uses in the TAS are for entertainment purposes. This technique consumes 2 free frames, so it is only possible to chain 3 guard-dashes during the same dash.
Input example to trigger a guard dash: dash to the right, then Right, R, R, Right+R, Right+R, etc.
Reverse guard-dash
If you release the dash direction, then hold the opposite direction and guard for at least two frames, then hold again the dashing direction, the hero will be guard-dashing in the opposite direction. Again, the effects of the guard are conserved, but in the opposite direction. This has very rare speed applications, so this technique is mostly used to entertain. It consumes 3 free frames, so only 2 reverse guard-dashes can be performed in a single dash.
Input example to trigger a reverse guard dash: dash to the right, then Right, Left+R, Left+R, Right+R, Right+R, etc.
Attack techniques
Dash-attack
When playing as Freedan or Shadow, it is possible to attack during a dash without cancelling the dash. You simply need to attack, then stop holding the dash direction for at least one frame, then hold it again. This only consumes one free frame, so technically you could chain 7 attacks in a single dash! This is a major technique of the speedrun because it allows the player to hit an enemy and dash through them without stopping. This can't be done as Will though, because it would result in a jump attack instead.
Input example to trigger a dash-attack: dash to the right, then Right, Right+A, Nil, Right, Right, etc.
Attack cancel
You can cancel an attack animation with any character by inputting an orthogonal direction 3 frames after the start of an attack (5 frames for Shadow). After cancelling an attack, you can start another attack immediately; chaining rapid attacks this way can be very efficient against the Vampires, or Castoth's hands.
Input example of an attack cancel for Will or Freedan: face right, A, Nil, Nil, Up (or Down).
Input example of an attack cancel for Shadow: face right, A, Nil, Nil, Nil, Nil, Up (or Down).
Freet-dash
This technique is named after Mr_Freet, who was the first runner to implement it in RTA runs. It is simply an attack cancel while dashing. When dashing, attack, and press an orthogonal direction 3 frames later (5 frames later for Shadow). The dash direction does not need to be released, but this technique still consumes 3 free frames, because attack frames count as non-dashing frames. Therefore, you can only perform it twice during the same dash. This technique is mostly useful for Will because it compensates for his inability to perform a regular dash-attack. However, you can no longer Freet-dash after receiving Psycho Slider (which is quite a bummer to be honest) because it would result in a slide instead.
Input example of a Freet-dash for Will: dash to the right, then Right, Right+A, Right, Right, Right+Up (or Right+Down), Right, and keep dashing.
Walk while attacking
It is possible to use the first 3 frames of an attack animation (or the first 5 frames as Shadow) to move in any direction. Your character will still be facing the original direction of the attack, and the attack animation will still take place. This will make you move by 8 units per frame in cardinal directions, and 6 units per frame in both directions if going diagonally, exactly like normal walking. Bear in mind that, on the 3rd frame after starting the attack (or 5th frame with Shadow), if you input a direction which is different from the one your character is facing, the attack will be cancelled. After that critical frame, you can still move only in the direction of the attack as Freedan or Shadow (any other direction will cancel it); but you can't do so as Will because you'll perform a jump attack instead.
Note that there are certain limits to this. Usually, if you hold a direction at the same frame as the attack, the next frame cannot be used to move, and possibly the next few frames as well. I'm not sure why.
This technique is useful for Will after getting Psycho Slider, to compensate for not being able to Freet-dash anymore. Indeed, you can dash towards an enemy, counter-dash to turn around and stop the dash close to the enemy, then attack, walk while attacking towards the enemy, which should hit it. The 3rd frame of walking will cancel the attack (because Will is facing the opposite direction), and then you can initiate another dash. This loses 40 units of movement compared to a Freet-dash (so a loss of a bit more than 3 frames).
Input example of this: dash to the right, deplete the 7 free frames and be facing left, then A, Right, Right, Right, Nil, Right (initiating a new dash), and keep dashing.
Attack into dash
I discovered this technique late into the run (in the garden of Ankor Wat). It is another way for Will to compensate for not being able to Freet-dash after getting Psycho Slider, and it allows to pass through enemies slightly faster that the "walk while attacking" technique discussed above. You can basically attack, and cancel the attack at the same time as initiating a new dash. The key to it is to walk two frames before starting an attack, walk while attacking, and cancel the attack and start a dash at the same time. This only loses 32 units of movement compared to a Freet-dash (so a loss of a bit less than 3 frames).
Input example of this, going to the right (without dashing): Right, Right, Right+A, Nil, Right, Right+Up (or Right+Down). This last input cancels the attack and starts a dash at the same time, so you can keep dashing to the right.
Charge without attacking
If you want to charge your power to perform one of Will or Freedan special abilities, you need to hold the attack button. And normally, the first attack input will force your character into an attack animation which you cannot cancel because you need to hold the button (trying to cancel the attack while holding A will make you start another attack immediately). There is a way around that though, allowing you to start charging while dashing. Here is an example of the corresponding inputs: run to the right for an even number of frames, then Left+A, Left, Right+A, Right+A, and keep dashing with the attack button held. This method is useful if the place where you need to use the ability is far enough that you can't reach it before the charge is ready. Although, if the place where you need to use the ability is close enough, it is preferable to start holding A right away, even if you have to sit through an attack animation, because that time still counts towards the charge.
Other techniques
Slope jump
In several places, you need to run down a slope to accumulate speed in order to progress. You can circumvent that by doing a jump attack with Will at the bottom of the slope. If done correctly, you'll get the full speed immediately after the jump attack is completed, which skips going around to the top of the slope.
If the slope is only one tile wide, then you can skip over it entirely with a well-timed jump attack. This is used to skip straight to the Crystal Orb chest in the third section of Sky Garden.
Quick climbing
When climbing up or down a ladder, instead of holding the desired direction all the time, it is faster to hold the direction for 4 frames, then release it for 1 frame, then hold for 4 frames, etc. This repeats the fast part of the climbing animation over and over, which saves significant time over climbing normally.
Quick crawlspaces
If Will is sub-pixel-perfectly aligned with the edge of the crawlspace when triggering a Psycho Slider, then the animation of the slider will be skipped. This saves around 15 frames, and it is done in every crawlspace in the TAS.
Left+Right/Up+Down oddities
Holding Left+Right will make the character moonwalk to the left (facing right), and holding Up+Down makes him moonwalk up (facing down). When dashing, if both the main direction and the opposite direction are held, the character will jitter but still effectively dash (alternating every two frames which direction he's facing). Those techniques are mostly useless for speed, but used extensively for entertainment.
Other general tricks
Overworld movement
When the player exits an area and is taken to the overworld, a prompt window appears so they can choose their destination. It is actually possible to move the cursor and select a destination before the textbox appears, which saves time. Also, when the destination is reached, the zooming out animation can be skipped by pressing Start.
Orb-cancel glitch
This is another famous glitch used in RTA speedrunning. The player often needs to kill a specific enemy in order to progress through a dungeon; that enemy will release an orb which will destroy a part of the scenery, revealing a passage. By pressing Select to access the inventory menu after the orb has been released, and then leaving the menu, the effect of the orb will already be carried out, so the player doesn't need to wait for the corresponding orb cutscene to finish. This saves a lot of time in many dungeons. Additionally, I will sometimes use those opportunities to equip an item for future use.
Aura glitch
With Shadow and the Aura equipped, if the player uses the Aura while attacking, the whole animation of melting will be constantly attacking. This is used in the Pyramid a couple times in order to push away enemies when seeping onto a lower floor.
Fanfare chest glitch
This only works on "big fanfare" chests, like the ones containing the first Mystic Statue, the Crystal Orbs or the Rama Statues. If a sprite (like an NPC or an enemy acting like a solid wall) is located near the chest, you can hold diagonally towards the chest and the sprite, and you will be able to open the chest by being a full 16x16 tile away from it.
Stage-specific tricks
Z-ladder skip
In Incan Ruins, you can take damage from a mudman during the animation of climbing onto a ladder. If performed correctly, you will be able to climb outside the ladder, downwards, into the lower ground, and reach a door there. That will take you much further into the dungeon, saving around 40 seconds. Technically, this glitch could be performed on any ladder with an enemy nearby, but unfortunately, this is the only place where it seems to be useful; indeed, you can't get out of the climbing animation on your own, so there needs to be a loading zone aligned with the ladder which you can reach. This trick was discovered by SO5Z.
Crow's nest trick
In the Golden Ship after Incan Ruins, when you have to talk to the NPC in the crow's nest, you would normally be unable to move before the end of the cutscene where the sky appears and the ship starts moving. Although, it is possible to start climbing down the ladder just as you finish talking to the NPC, which will give you control of Will during the cutscene. You can then reach the door earlier, but you should wait for the next textboxes to appear before doing so, otherwise the screen transition will be much slower. The old variant of the trick involved jumping down instead of climbing the ladder, which was slower. The current variant of the trick was found by Mr_Freet.
Earthquaker skip
In Ankor Wat, in the room after the garden, you are expected to get Earthquaker to stun a golem; if you don't, the golem acts as a solid wall blocking the way. There is a trick to skip getting Earthquaker though. It is possible to throw three Dark Friars at the golem without it activating. After the golem is killed, you can safely pass. And fortunately, Earthquaker is never required in the rest of the game, so you can completely skip it.
In this section, I will cover some particular aspects of the route which are not obvious when watching the run.
South Cape
After exiting the School, going to the right is actually faster than going down. In the hideout, during the cutscene with Will's friends, I start a dash downwards just before picking a card: then, the remaining 7 free frames of dashing will be carried out while I lose control of Will, which gets me closer to the exit. This kind of trick is used in several places in the run. Upon entering Will's house, there is normally a little textbox there, but it is skipped because I am dashing over the textbox trigger.
Edward's Castle
When starting the conversation with Kara, I make sure to be as far right as possible, because I'll need to go back to the right afterwards. The same goes for collecting the leg of yak after the dungeon. When talking to the king, you need to select the second text option "No" instead of "Yes"; both options will get you in jail, but the second one is faster. In the prison, I need to interact with the ball and chain, one of the two pieces of moss in the corners, and the prison door, in order to advance. There is a lot of waiting around, so I try to showcase many movement tricks to make it entertaining. After receiving the key from Hamlet, I move Lola's Melody to the bottom-right spot (reached in only one input from the top-left spot by pressing Left) to reduce cursor movement for the next key items.
Edward's Prison
I Freet-dash through as many enemies as I can without losing time, to make things fun. In the third room, I go further to the left than needed, before falling off the ledge. This is done to trigger the water worm as early as possible. Even if it doesn't show, spiked balls also have I-frames like regular enemies, so you can attack them and then pass through them unscathed. Turning into Freedan is necessary only to reach the switch which makes the bridge appear. Will cannot reach the switch, unfortunately.
Itory Village
After the first cutscene, I enter the house to the left and immediately leave; this avoids waiting for Kara and Lilly to get to their destination, so the next cutscene can be triggered sooner.
Moon Tribe
I managed to skip the textbox at the cave entry with perfect positioning and movement.
I tested a few RNG seeds (by changing the ending of Edward's Prison), but surprisingly, the very first one was by far the best, so I kept that one. I get 5 out of 6 worms killed, and the last one damaged, all with one single Psycho Dash. I just need to finish off the last worm with a jump attack.
Incan Ruins
After placing the Diamond Block, it is better to leave the room and come back to avoid waiting for the falling blocks. I hit the mudman and get hit at the same time to speed up the set-up for the Z-ladder skip. In the room with all the golden tiles, it is very well-known that you don't really need the Wind Melody because the correct tile is always the same. However, the actual square in which you must remain for 10 seconds is actually larger than a tile, which I demonstrate in the TAS.
For Castoth, I TAS'd both the fight as Will and as Freedan and, even though Freedan only needs one cycle, Will saves around 5 seconds just because the two transformations (from Will to Freedan and vice-versa) take too much time. This makes the fight interesting: I need to defeat the two hands quite quickly to make the first cycle of vulnerability of the boss. Otherwise, I would have needed to wait 12 more seconds for the next cycle.
Gold Ship / raft sequence
After the crow's nest trick, I wait some frames for the next textboxes to appear, but also to manipulate RNG for the upcoming fishing sequence. Fortunately, all the little sparkles on the Gold Ship call RNG, so you can get different patterns with minimal waiting. When going to bed, I corner-boost around the ladder by dashing downwards, making Will jump in a silly way while going to sleep. This wastes one frame, but it also makes the following loading time one frame shorter, evening it out in the end. On the raft with Kara, I wait a few frames at the "march of time" texbox to manipulate good fish patterns. This sequence is quite long, to I try to make it as entertaining as I can by having Will act in a comical way.
Freejia
Not much to say here. In RTA runs, we usually get the HP upgrade and the herb from the trash cans, but I disregarded them here because they are useless for a TAS. After the Diamond Mine, I run upwards to Erik before playing the Memory Melody, to get the 7 free frames of movement towards Erik when the cutscene starts.
Diamond Mine
This is the first dungeon where I have to be careful about taking damage efficiently, because I need to prepare some deathwarps. Especially, I try to get hit by the strongest enemies (lizardmen here) such that they will push me in the desired direction.
In the second room, taking the hit from the worm before the switch at the bottom is faster than killing it with a Psycho Dash. In the room with the slopes, with a good combination of quick diagonals and corner-boosts, I managed to retain some of the extra speed from the slope all the way to the door. In the next room, I found that killing the required lizardman with 5 slashes was faster than waiting for another Psycho Dash to charge. After the elevator, collecting the key on the left first is just a few frames faster than doing the right one first. In the room on the right, Psycho Dashing the labourer is indeed the fastest way to get the key from him and go back. In the final room, jump attacking the labourer from the top instead of the right saved around 10 frames.
Sky Garden
At the end of the second section, I open the chest at the first possible frame; one frame earlier and the game would crash because of the orb's cutscene. I also collect the HP drop at the same time I die: this cost one frame but I kept it in for a comedic effect. It is one of the few speed-entertainment tradeoffs in this TAS. Turning into Freedan in the third section is faster than doing it in the fourth section; this was discovered years ago by Crawek. At the end of the fourth section, after a lot of trial and error in the previous room, I eventually found an RNG seed which makes the blue robot shoot to the left upon getting the Crystal Orb, so I can die earlier. Unfortunately, this fixes the RNG of Viper, which wasn't particularly great.
Seaside Palace
After getting the Pure Stone, you can move for several frames before Lilly catches up with you. I jump attack to maximize the distance reached, but I didn't go as far as possible with it so that Lilly wouldn't have too much distance to travel; yes, this matters! Optimizing this was about finding the right balance. In the room where you toss the Pure Stone, I tested several places to throw it from, and the left side of the pool was the fastest. It is again about the balance between the distance you need to travel to exit the room, and the distance that the stone travels to get to the center of the pool. On the entertainment side of things, I try to change the way Will runs every time he gets behind a pillar.
Mu
This is the most complex dungeon of all; it was so daunting that it made me quit the TAS for two years... There is indeed a lot of complex optimization regarding diagonal movement, damage management, and so many strats and ideas to test with the bouncy bubbles and all that. But in the end, I'm quite happy without how it turned out.
In the first room, you need to get close enough to the golem to get it to start moving. During that time, I take one damage from a blue jelly. For the next golem you need to kill, I tested quite a few strategies, and going around while hitting him proved to be the most efficient one. The damage strat I found in the second room is quite cool and happened unexpectedly! In the third room, you need to be in the correct subpixel for the spike damage to send you upwards instead of back to the left: this is faster than jump attacking over the spikes. To pass across the bouncy bubble, I attract it with Will's telekinetic power, and while it is moving up, I get very close to it and start doing a jump attack upwards. When the bubble reaches me, it is sent upwards because that's the direction I'm facing, and it doesn't bounce me away. After that, the path to the left is about half a second faster than the other path; this is also true on the way back. For the ramp trick with the golem on top, I also tested a lot of ideas, but the best one turned out to be quite simple: hit the blue jelly during the bounce from the bubble, then jump attack downwards through the golem. At the end of the room with the switch controlling the spikes, there is a wizzrobe changing RNG, so I wait there for about 10 frames to manipulate good patterns from the firebars two rooms after. Getting cleanly to 1HP just before the deathwarp is probably one of the neatest achievements of this TAS! After getting the Psycho Slider, I cannot Freet-dash through enemies anymore so I do the "walk while attacking" technique described above.
Vampires
This is definitely the most complicated part of the TAS. I TAS'd this fight for almost 10 different RNG seeds, amongst all the seeds which were available with reasonable waitings in earlier parts of Mu. I eventually settled on a seed which only requires about 10 frames of waiting before exiting the room with the second Rama statue. This seed has most things I could ask for: both Vampires joining up frequently, and staying mostly at the top part of the arena. This is important because, when they make their huge energy ball (this cannot be avoided), you want to lure the ball outside of the screen as quickly as possible to avoid a dramatic amount of lag. I managed to finish the fight with an 124 on the bomb timer, which exceeded my expectations. Fun fact: I kill off both vampires with the same attack, and they both die in two consecutive frames!
Angel Village
This dungeon is full of soft corners everywhere so I try to exploit them as much as I can. In the windy room, I tested another strat using only sliders, and it turned out to be exactly as fast! I chose to keep the strat with jump attacks because it is further away from the usual RTA strat.
Watermia
After talking twice to Lance and once to his father, you can skip Lance's next conversation by running precisely to the exit from the left side. After getting Lance's letter, I move it to the bottom-left spot of the inventory before equipping it; you actually need to read it so that the Great Wall becomes an available destination.
After coming back from the Great Wall, you need to wait for the lilypad, which is why I waste a lot of time guard-dashing through the village.
Great Wall
Near the end of the first screen, I waste some frames around the fire enemies to manipulate an egg pattern from Sand Fanger. This time is actually not lost at all because I need to wait for the spears' cycle anyway. At the end of the first two screens, I do a very precise jump attack to get speed from the slope and exit the room much faster (having Psycho Slider makes this trick much more complicated than a regular slope jump). At the beginning of the third screen, you can quickly enter the door during the jump with sub-pixel-perfect positioning. In the room where you need to maneuver around a lot of statues, when you move a statue, the tile it occupied still remains solid for 16 frames, so you have to account for that. Fortunately, manipulating a perfect 5/5 egg fight on Fanger wasn't too difficult, because you only need to manipulate the first egg pattern. When you get it, the little fangers which are spawned also call RNG, so you can manipulate the next egg patterns by choosing when to kill them.
Mount Temple
This was a difficult dungeon to TAS because there are many turns to optimize (some corners are soft and some are not, and it's sometimes hard to predict), and also because I need to take a lot of damage to prepare a deathwarp. Indeed, after beating Fanger, I have 26HP, and the biggest damage source is the flute fairies which only deal 4HP worth of damage. So I try to use them a lot to damage myself, which influenced some strat choices. For example, using a Spin Dash through the four golden skulls in the room with the second Mushroom Drops would have been faster, but I preferred to take two hits from flute fairies instead. In the room with the third Mushroom Drops, I still needed to take one hit from spiders, which was a bit inconvenient because that part was quite laggy.
Natives' Village
I enter the cabin and exit it to avoid waiting for Kara and Erik's movement.
After coming back from Ankor Wat, I revive the three petrified girls from right to left, and I buffer a downward dash just before reviving the left one. This makes me move down for 7 frames during the cutscene, bringing me close enough to Kara such that I can speak to her without needing to move at all.
Ankor Wat
In the first half of the dungeon, I was pleasantly surprised when I discovered that I could prepare the deathwarp without wasting a single frame! When fighting the required beetle statue, I take a hit from the other statue without hurting my DPS. When the statue dies, the crawlspace becomes available immediately without having to do an Orb-cancel glitch, for some reason (this is the only instance of this oddity). Then I take a hit from the pink head at the same frame I jump down the ledge. The garden was quite a pain to optimize because of unpredictable enemies and soft corners everywhere... I managed to get decent patterns though. In the next room, I take damage from the golem while charging the Dark Friars during the Earhquaker skip, leaving me with 1HP. I later kill myself with a beetle statue projectile (those only deal 1HP worth of damage) after triggering the next checkpoint: the point of this is to get Will back because I need to slide through a crawlspace later. The game expects you to go to a different Dark Space later to transform back into Will, but deathwarping accomplishes that much faster. The garden on the way back is quite difficult as well because of those pesky bush enemies: they can only be moved when you hit them the second time, but if they receive damage from a bounced enemy, it will not count... so I had to be smart about this: this is where I discovered the "attack into dash" technique which was quite useful.
Pyramid
The doors are visited in the order 3, 5, 6, 4, 2 and 1 (numbered from left to right) because:
- 3 and 5 are the only ones which cannot be done as Will,
- you want to abuse deathwarping to travel between doors faster, and this will force you to play as Will,
- 5 is faster to deathwarp out of than 3,
- 6, 4, 2 and 1 are done in a nice right-to-left sweep, and 1 is the slowest one to deathwarp out of, so this is the one where we teleport to the top area instead.
In area 3, there is a lot of waiting time, so I goof around with the enemies and their dropped gems. In the second room of area 5, you could seep down to the floor below but going around turned out to be faster by a few frames. At the end of area 4, crossing that big corridor with all the slopes was quite difficult in only one Spin Dash: it required precise positioning to avoid losing too much speed climbing up slopes. In the cutscene with the Jackal, after playing Lola's Melody, I carefully move such that I will be as close as possible to the hieroglyph wall without making Kara waste frames when she walks towards me. Yup, that also matters. You can interact with the hieroglyph wall without facing it, so I place all hieroglyph tiles while moving towards the exit. I also buffer a downward dash before placing the last tile, to benefit from the 7 free frames of movement as I lose control of Will.
The Mummy Queen is pretty annoying to TAS because there is a lot of waiting around, but I can't move too much because I need to stay at the center of her circle of spirits as much as possible: that makes her reform more quickly. There is RNG to it, but you don't want the spirits to be too spread out or you'll lose time on the Mummy Queen's reforming. That's why I chose to stay on the top floor for the whole first phase. On the second phase, I needed to wait around 40 frames before hitting her to avoid a bad pattern. Fortunately, I only needed to do this once to get the optimal 6 out of 6 rings of spirits.
Tower of Babel
What a horrible place to end this TAS! I'm saying this because there is nothing you can do to influence RNG outside of the boss fights, which severely limits your options. I waited before attacking Castoth's hands to manipulate a better pattern from Viper. Vampires were pretty fast, but unfortunately I couldn't get egg patterns from Fanger. However, that turned out not to be so bad! Indeed, with a lot of patience, I managed to get the boss killed in two horizontal patterns, hitting him 9 times in the first phase! It is still a bit slower than getting two egg patterns, but so much cooler. Also, getting 7 and 7 hits instead of 9 and 5 was three frames faster, but I decided to keep the 9 and 5 fight because it looks nicer. This is another speed-entertainment tradeoff. When Will gets transported by the friendly Viper, you want to talk to her from the left side by being as low as possible to minimize her slow downward movement when she drops you. Mummy Queen started with the brick summoning pattern which isn't perfect, but at least I got the clean 6/6 rings without needing to waste any time. When talking to the friendly vampire, the optimal position is the one which requires no movement from him to pick you up. In the last cutscene before the Comet, I talk to the last soul from the top to minimize the travel time of the other souls towards Will. This actually matters quite a lot.
In the Comet phase, you can spam a lot of firebirds before the game starts lagging, so I have some fun with them. You want to hit the Comet as soon as possible everytime, because the next opening is always exactly 529 frames after the previous hit. I unfortunately had to delay the last hit by 93 frames so that Dark Gaia would open her mouth about 200 frames earlier, so it was worth it. The first mouth opening from Dark Gaia isn't the fastest it could have been, but again, I was quite limited in my options to manipulate RNG. The next two mouth openings are the fastest possible (1378 frames apart).
Known mistakes and improvement ideas
In a TAS this long where RNG is sometimes difficult to manipulate (especially in Tower of Babel), you will have to make compromises. I wasted around 10 frames to manipulate firebars in Mu, 10 frames to manipulate Vampires, and there are some other pain points (Mummy Queen and Dark Gaia) which also required some deliberate waitings. It's certainly possible to do better, but that would require more looking ahead, and for the TASer to be more willing to go back and re-do areas to test a lot of possible seeds.
Damage management isn't always perfect either. I think it went excellently in Mu and Ankor Wat, but not so well in Diamond Mine and Mount Temple. If one could get better enemy patterns, they might be able to get more efficient damage-boosts and reduce lag.
I discovered the "attack into dash" technique pretty late, and it could have saved some frames here and there in Mu, Great Wall and Mount Temple. It probably wouldn't amount to more than 20 frames in total though.
Mr_Freet notified me of an optimization I missed in Will's house after Edward's Prison: you can buffer a dash downwards before talking to Kara. I tried it and it indeed saved 4 frames, but those frames ended up being lost in some random loading times. I eventually scrapped the idea.
Shoutouts
- Halamantariel, the original TASer of Illusion of Gaia. I hope to be his worthy successor.
- Mr_Freet, who discovered a ridiculous amount of strategies and optimizations for this game. He is certainly the greatest Illusion of Gaia speedunner to date.
- The Illusion of Gaia speedrunning community, which has supported my TASing efforts during those five years. Thanks a lot guys!
Enjoy the run!
