Subtitles provided in the encode explain the run as it is playing. Its information is replicated below because I assume the subtitles won't stick around forever

Man, do I love jRPGs. These classic 2D 8-bit jRPGs, mm mm mm. But I knew there were games I'd never played that were never officially translated into English, right? So one day, I downloaded translation patches for all the NES games and started trying some at random, and found the Herakles no Eikou games, right away I knew they were my thing. "Data East makes Dragon Quest," awesome.

This is a TAS of the first Glory of Heracles game. Released in 1987, it was one of the very first jRPGs ever made, mimicking the runaway success called Dragon Quest but giving it a paint job of an ancient Greece mythology game. You play as Hercules and are tasked with completing twelve labors, kinda, in order to eventually rescue Aphrodite from the villainous Hades. The games aren't particularly interested in historical? accuracy and sometimes just make things up to fill space, but whatever.

To make this run, I looked at the top runs on speedrun.com for inspiration and then tried to cut everything I could. GoH's RNG is so simplified that even RTA players can practicing the timing and manipulate nearly-TAS-level randomness, however I was still able to find enough improvements to cut the run's length in half.

1. Around Athens
We start in Athens, naked. We leave town and purchase 6 Medicines from a street vendor. Medicines occupy a special slot in inventory, and you can carry up to 6 at a time. 6 is all we need to use in this run, thankfully. West of that street vendor and around a lake is Ares's Temple, and he gives us a special Silver Bow. This is the only weapon that can strike certain super-fast enemies. We then use a Deathwarp to quickly go back to Athens--dying gives a free warp and free HP refill in exchange for half our Gold, so properly managed Deathwarps are faster than using Travel Wings, the typical jRPG teleport item. South of Athens, we meet our first boss, the Iron Pig, who we run from. Running is very useful in this game, and it even works on boss fights, though many do still have to be properly defeated for game progress to occur. Nearby the Iron Pig is our next boss, the Golden Hind, who can outrun any weapon but dies to one strike of the Silver Bow. It gives us a Golden Horn when defeated, and we deathwarp back to Athens.
2. Sailing the Seas
Heading east of Athens, we pass through the towns of Selene and Hebe as we head to a shrine on a peninsula over the sea. It is surrounded by desert, which deals 4HP per step to us if we don't have the Water of Life we could pick up in Hebe, but using desert tiles for Deathwarping is far more convenient. In the Shrine, Poseidon takes our Golden Horn and tells us to search the docks in Athens. Once there, we discover a Ship and place it into our pockets. We can now set sail to and from any dock! In the far south of the map is a town called Tartar, and a house there contains the Magic Armor. We don't need the defensive boosts it provides, though--instead we intend to sell it later for 6,000 Gold. We eventually need 10k and this will skip a little grinding for us. From there, we head to an island east of there, where the docks were sunk to keep people safe. We raise the docks and explore the lava-covered island. Searching the ruined palace provides us Ares's Axe, which is both a necessary story item and a powerful weapon for bossfights. Then we die again and pop back to Athens.
3. Heading West
Back on our boat, we sell westward. There is a dock in a bay, guarded by a giant squid. We run from the squid and get on land, heading north. The Mirror of Etna is hidden in the trees, and we take it all the way south to a mountain blocking the waters. Hestia appears here and takes the mirror from us, and she sinks the mountain under the water so we can sail through. She also gives us the Fire Pillar Balls, which is a magical item that does heavy damage to water-based monsters. We use these Balls to kill the Giant Squid for some easy XP and Gold and sail into the western seas. Curving around to the south, we get off the boat and head into a shrine guarded by a new boss fight, Necron. An actual proper boss fight here, he has 200HP and we have to manipulate his attacks to always miss. He gives us the Cross when defeated, and we walk southeast away from the palace afterward.
4. Grinding the Ladies
The Amazon Kingdom is blocked off from outsiders, but a palace in the southeast is secretly a tunnel into town. While walking through the kingdom, we grind Gold from random encounters with specifically the Purple variety of amazons. 694 Gold per 1-shot battle is easily the fastest way to make money, and we have to come here anyway, so we defeat 10 amazons while here. We also run away from a boss fight again. Beyond the Amazon Kingdom, an old man blocks the bridge into the deserts, but he lets us by if we give him our Cross. Inside the desert, there are six pyramids, and only two of them contain anything but monsters. We need the Pentacle hidden in one of the pyramids, and then return to the old man to take the Cross back. In the meantime, we defeat 13 Frogsaurus monsters, who provide 220 XP when killed--no other random encounter in the game provides more than 23 XP per battle, so again it's lucky that we can grind while on the intended game path. We have to reach Level 14 before our stats allow us to survive later boss fights, even with TAS powers. Once we get the Cross back, we head to the Shrine of Popos, far southeast of the pyramids. It contains the Spring Drops, an item we must be holding after defeating the final boss--if we don't pick these up and defeat him anyway, we're forced to come all the way back here, grab the Drops, and then go all the way back to the final boss's room in order to finish the game, oops!
5. Going to Heaven so we can go to Hell
Deathwarping back to Athens and selling the Magic Armor, we now have 10,000 Gold. North of Athens are three survivors of the Paros Island disaster, and if we show them we rescued the Ares Axe, they will sell us the Silken Reins for 10k. They allow us to ride Pegasus, who we must now free. Sailing all the way west and then curving north, we enter the city of Leaneira. We defeat a Sea Devil boss on the way, who drops a Rainbow Ring, a story required item. Anyway, in Leaneira, popping into a secret tunnel, we appear outside of town and journey to the Shrine of Lapiths in the northwest corner of the game map. There are multiple treasures here, but mainly we're here to free Pegasus from a coffin, using our blessed Cross, and since we have the Reins, Pegasus flies us to Heaven, assumedly at the top of Mount Olympus. There, we are assaulted by a boss fight with a bird monster whose stats are *so* high that we can't even run away from him before Level 14. Since we grinded the frogs, though, we can. Using the Rainbow Ring, we can make a bridge to the Sun Tower, where Apollo gives us the Night Curtain, and we pick up Zeus's Sword from a secret room. It is both the strongest weapon in the game, and the only one that doesn't lose Durability. Yeah, that's in this game. Bossfights at this point love to cast Rust to destroy our equipment, but the Zeus Sword keeps our offensive powers rolling through the final fights. Holding the Night Curtain, we can enter the Moon Tower and talk to Diana, who gives us a Crystal and instructs us to talk to Athena. We ride Pegasus back to Athens.
6. Saving Persephon-er, Aphrodite
We don't bother talking to Athena, though. She would have given us a password to give to a sphinx in the town of Selene, but talking to Diana is all we needed to do to unlock the ability to talk to the sphinx, so we just head there directly. Entering the password lets us talk to Hera, and she gives us a Sea Lyre. Playing it on the docks of Selene opens the bridge to Hebe, allowing us to sail our boat through, and towards the island where the entrance of Hades is located. At the entrance, we meet Cerberus, who we just run away from, and into the depths we go. Six levels of dungeon delving later, we meet Hades himself. After dealing 180 damage, he changes into his final form, now with 255HP. We manipulate repeated max-damage crits + turn wasting by him casting Rust on us. Below 50 HP, he is programmed to heal himself every turn, and we can only deal 42HP per turn with our setup. His heal only restores 40HP exactly, though, so basically we spend 4 turns doing 2HP per round, until at 42HP remaining we can finally slay him. A giant clam shell appears, and sprinkling the Spring Drops on it opens the clam shell, and Aphrodite is freed! The end.

I spent a lot of time investigating a way to get stronger for the final fight in order to skip that phase where I could only get 2HP of progress per round, but nothing seems to save time in the long run. The closest I could think of is:
1. Buying 4 Medicines instead of 6 and buying a Carrot
2. Skipping the Magic Armor and the Ares Axe at first
3. Sailing to Leaneira ASAP, defeating the Sea Devil and setting a warp point for the Travel Wings, then deathwarping
4. Getting the Ares Axe at this time, then deathwarping back to Athens again.
5. Heading to the northwest of Selene and using the carrot so we can fight the Pelte Horse, who drops the Travel Wings, an infinite-use warping item.
6. Warping to Leaneira, sailing south to Necron/Amazons/Desert/Popos, then using the Travel Wings instead of a Deathwarp, saving grinding time by not losing half our gold!
7. Buying the Silken Reins, and then going to the lake NW of Athens and defeating Volk, taking his Venom away in order to increase our damage to the final boss and cutting that battle down to only 6 rounds!
8. Finishing the rest of the game from there, using the Wings to teleport around.
This is a massive new path that would require redoing literally the entire run, but all things considered I'm still confident it will be slightly slower. The Pelte Horse's stats are high enough that even with an extra level (defeating the Sea Devil early) and wielding the Ares Axe, it would still take at least 3 or 4 rounds of battle to defeat it, and I very much doubt that that's faster in the long run. But I could be wrong, I have not actually TASed this path to know for sure.