granstream notes for puri

ok, we already talked about rta timing, there is no reason to have the three minute cutscene bogging down the run, start timing when you skip the first text box

quick note on text skipping, I think you are skipping text at the correct speed but it's hard to tell from just watching.  as long as you are pushing two buttons your are skipping at max speed, I just put my thumb inbetween X and O or if there is  a lot of text I mash shoulder buttons

also, do you know what I need to run the japanese version of this game?  I am very interested in trying that out, if not for the fast but for the "better" voice acting

so i'm just writing these as watch through the run without really thinking too hard about them so I hope these all make sense.

when you set text speed to go fast go up from items to get you directly to options

oh, im also timing your run against my splits so I will include a screenshot of that with these notes.  my splits are a bit more random than yours so it's not easy to compare them.

ok, so the first two fights just ram your face into him, let go of the directional buttons/analog stick and mash x and you kill them plenty fast.  you can kill them slightly faster by doing an undirected and then attacking holding forward but there is a small chance they interrupt the forward attack and you lose time so I don't go for it

when in arona walking directly northeast puts you into the child abuse cutscene.  at this point I accidentally reset the splits and started over out of a mix of dedication/ocd/and wanting to take a bathroom break.  also, language of the blade is such a cool cutscene, I am super hyped for that

ok were back.  the fact that this split was so red shows me there is no way you were skipping the text quickly enough, or maybe my emulator is running too fast, who knows

talk to the drunk before you go into the church, you don't need to talk to the old lady at all.  although I didn't catch if you went back into the bar because doing that spawns the drunk guy also if you were using the lady to do that.

to grab onimaru just tap back once then tap left and you are in the perfect spot, no need to turn your camera or anything

alright, I see that you didn't use a potion so I don't know if you routed in using airlim return.  I use it when I am using the panther eye.  basically both times you talk to the old man in the old man house using airlim return immediately after talking to him saves time

wow rude, you didn't warn your chat that the shower scene was coming up, there could have been children watching!  speaking of, how weird is it you need to smell laramee's towel to advance the story?

oh god this fight, it hurts to watch...  at least you nailed the second one

you know, I never realized that somehow the wind orb gets smashed as well even though slazer never has it.  oh man, I saw those slick moves.  getting into that door is a pain and you nailed it

man, you were skipping the airlim text so fast, I don't even know, we need to compare emulator speeds or something.  I like your drunk guy dodging, I like to live life on the edge though so I run by him and hope he doesn't block me

don't heal, healing is slow and you are only ever at risk of dying four times in the run.  levante, the required slasher in the sideways castle, hergezod, and the vangel.

ok, egg on my face, I completely forgot the first floor shortcut exists.  I'll need to route it in and see if that slasher is dodge-able.

well you know that guy is their now, just hug the right wall when you get off the stairs.  super small optimization, it's faster to go around the top in the middle staircase room and you don't need to move to place the second stone

the fast way to do the windows is move left, then right, then down.  once again these are small things.

ok the shield guys, how to fight them is ram them and hit them once, then once they are down strafe around them and you can hit them on the unshielded side when they get back up

oh, you are picking up the lp.  this one takes 15 seconds to get so I never bothered but whatever.  there is one in the bottom barrel on the right of valos house and another in the ice caves in the room with all the skulls, it's the skull directly bellow the stairs.  those two were the only ones that were fast enough but I eventually stopped getting them because you don't need them.

so fun thing I found out about the games timer is it slows down when you are doing things, so the fastest way out of the love chamber is to hold still, the same is true when you are rescuing nerds on volcos.  I don't blame you for healing before boldrag, shit can go bad.

so I found the best way to fight boldrag is to kill or sidestep one of his hands and then just wail on that side of his head, the fight should take seconds.  you should be able to manipulate him into handing you by just side stepping diagonally towards him.  also I split like, five seconds late on boldrang

oh, you can say no by pressing O, you don't need to select it.  oh, and the correct pixam sequence is dude on right, church, cult dude, old lady, arcia, cult dude.  you shouldn't need the dried herb, just open your scepter forces, the one or two white crystals you end up with will be plenty and opening them is the same speed as storing them.

oh boy, slave labor.  I think the lp is unavoidable, anyways so for slave labor I still need to clean up the route but there are a lot of places where you can check multiple wall segments without moving, the correct route (which I will get around to making) is just the 10 that are closest to the guard.  you can get the lp and an obsidian from the same spot and I think it's worth it to keep mashing a spot until you get the obsidian rather than just move on.

ok magical labyrinth, I'm hyped. so I made a very detailed route for this section (and all the other dungeons) to avoid all the fights so I think I am just going to run some drills and highlight it.  something that is going to come up is something I call "sneezing"  if you have a stationary monster on screen but not in aggro range they will eventually do an idol animation, or sneeze.  when they do this you cna run by them without starting a fight.  triggering the sneeze on each enemy is different but all stationary enemies can sneeze.

so I thought the same thing when I made my first route but the yellow guard on arcia's floor is optional.  his key just opens the side cells so you can skip him (and he despawns after you fight the blue guard)

omg, the watch tower, I'm so hyped!  this is the best part of the game not close (not for speedrunning obviously).  HOW'S THIS FOR AN ANSWER?  man, this game is so good

ok, so I call these seal guys dewgongs.  be careful of them around corners.  their hitboxes are rectangles but they still need to touch you to trigger a fight so you can get into a situation where you think you can sneak around them but their dumb rectangle hit boxes will be blocking you while they slowly turn around and touch your butt.

my game does the duh duh duh duh duh thing too in the cave cutscene, also shoutouts to gandor literally punching through a cave.

btw, entering the labyrinth of punishment is one of the few times you should actually heal because levante can actually kill you and you don't lose time because you are waiting on the teleporter cycle anyway, admittedly I usually forget to heal there so I end up doing it before fighting the statues

wait, holy shit I never realized you can say no their.  that might be the only time it actually lets you.  that is so much faster.  your levante strategy seems legit though.  fun fact, if you take the framerate limit off the emulator it is literally impossible to damage levante.

you seem to be losing a lot of time to your camera, I only use the camera buttons to skip text in places with a lot of text for that reason.  DUUUUDE the funeral scene is one of my favorites, it is unbelievably optional and you shouldn't do it in the speedrun, but I like that scene a lot.

the beginning of volcos is pretty dull and I already mentioned the rescue scene so shoutouts to knee pads.  seriously why does everyone have knee pads?  I guess eon does spend a lot of this game on his knees

oh, don't make the old people turn around, it's faster to stand in front of them, then talk

also, how did the technology of this world develop where (heh, I went to get some water and we both got back at the same time) they have spaceships and disruptor torpedoes but they swordfight instead of use guns?

you will never have enough money btw.  ok the crabs will never block at the start of the fight so just immediately take a swing at them and then back up to ram the, and I see you notice they can't take damage from behind.  once again i'll highlight some granstream drills for you later, every fight in the lava cave is avoidable.

oh, I can explain the scepter forces.  you get them if you don't take damage in a fight, they give you one of three items and you can combo them to get better items.  the blue crystal will give 25 gems, a white crystal, or a fruit of ventwana.  the white crystals are handy and I need the money for my route to buy mana with.

oh man, the armor you picked up stopped you from getting bodied, that's cute.  seriously, that black slasher is brutal, he is the first enemy in the game that can actually kill you, harder than levante and hergezod imo.  I should give him a name.  maybe daddy

you don't have to talk to arcia?  man, I knew I probably missed some things when I routed this game but man, this is one per act so far.

ok, so the ropers, this isn't one of the sections I do drills of but I did route it.  some of the ropers you can just walk around although off the top of my head I don't remember which ones.  the rest of them you can sneeze by getting them to pop up, walking away until they are just off screen, then listen for them to make a "vvworp" sound, then you can walk right past them.  now that I have though about it the second roper on the first room and the fourth in the second room you can walk around.  I think the first in the third room as well.  you have to sneeze the first in the first room

you can trigger the sudoku cutscene for hergazod by getting I think three combos on his shield.  I don't know the exact amount but you can trigger it without taking damage (although damage is faster, hitting him is good for if he doesn't want to hurt you.)

ok, so hergzod you can manipulate a bit.  when his feelers are in the ground if you back up he will do his spikes attack, then you can ram him and he will pull his feelers out of the ground so he can't block.  this goes bad if the arena puts a wall behind you though, but rng is rng.  I did see you kind of sidesteeping his block though, that is something I will definitely look into, that could be strats.

hmmm, it looks like we were both doing the "gientz is an asshole" section wrong.  It looks like the correct way to go is talk to crater guy, talk to gientz about wise men, talk to mayor's son, talk to mayor, talk to gientz.

oh and if you have mana I like to use airlim return one more time to get to the gude faster after the lifting verse

alright, my fingers are crossed for the gude airship, I hope you found a faster way to do this than I did.  fuck, you do literally have to talk to everyone.  this is dumb.

the vangel is the last unrouted dungeon in the game.  I have rammed my head into it a lot and I have not found a consistent way to dodge everyone.  I still have it as part of my drills though because practice does help.  also I wasn't paying full attention, did you say something about skipping cutscenes?  don't tease me like that

ok, I am noticing you forward slashing a lot.  you have a few different swings that do different damages, but it doesn't matter with onimaru so don't hold any directions when you swing so you do the neutral swing (which is the fastest)

fruit of ventwana randomly heals you a small amount, to full, or does nothing.  it will do nothing most of the time so don't use it, it's slow anyway.  so even though you messed up the route for the vangel it looks like you do know it, so that's good.

mimics are noticeably lighter than normal chests btw, there's a part on I think the second level of the vangel (the second time) where there is a normal chest next to a mimic so you can see the difference.  although there are only like, two chests in the entire run worth opening anyway

so the vent maze is really simple, you just go up and if you cant go up you go right, also you can sneeze the roper at the beginning in the way I explained earlier

the chest in the room on the first floor where you fight has a life element in it, that is super worth grabbing

so I have started thinking about the different slashes, I really need to look into how they work as they might make a few of the later fights (when onimaru stops one shoting things) go faster

DAMN
IT ALL
TO HELL
IM
THE ONE
TO BLAME
FOR ALL THIS

so I heal before levante because it's free, before hergezod and gudelzepher because those fights require you to take damage, and during the air temple because I take damage to avoid scepter forces, and at the last green crystal in hades, those are the only times in the run I heal.  you should never really be taking damage elsewhere and you accumulate a small handful of healing items and have the healing spell for emergencies.

you don't need to get behind the dragons, just slap them in the face.  the pillars I remember being middle, left, top, and you talk to the part of it facing the middle of the room. you don't need to translate.

ok, the temples, I do air last because you can get scepter forces for those fights and I want the better normal drops, so I want the armor first so I can take damage without being knocked down.  you don't need to translate or talk to the pedestal in the air temple, you can just go.  oh yeah, and because you are doing them in a different order i'm just gonna skip these splits

oh wow, I have never failed being water in a run, how odd.  it must be because you didn't talk to the tablet immediately, it is a fixed cycle so there shouldn't be any rng.

so when I try to skip the flying around cutscene my game just freezes for the amount of time the cutscene would take anyway so...

ok, the fastest order for the fire temple rooms is east, south, north, west iirc.  each side room flashes the color of the corner you need to go to. also when you are in the corner rooms try to end the fight standing on the telaporter to save those frames

I think I might start doing water first, then fire and air and just never equipping the shield, shields don't do much anyway, at least all of the ones but the black shield don't do anything

you don't need to talk to korak, you can just put the tablet in place, it looks like korky is blasting off again.  shoutouts to the 420 blaze it field protecting the town.  you will be missed

laramee's feelings is the best voice acting in the game, not close.  you can tell that thq recorded the english voiceovers in order and ran out of money really quick

the disintegrating was you accidentally casting genocide, which is a super useful spell that you can totally ever use ever at any point

ok, the public cemetery, I have only only seen two patterns but there could be more.  I really need to get around to mapping them out, or at least finding  a walkthrough that has them written out.  good news is the map you made isn't useless, it's just one pattern

I think in my wr I accidentally said yes and had to fight the old lady.  oh, and when you get the lifting verse for the public cemetery there is a chest on the left that has a life stone that I grab.  i think it is public anyway, it's whichever spawns a chest on the left

this is also the point in the run where I start reassuring myself that it is almost over,  I never get bored of this game but four hours is a long run no matter how you slice it

did you know jeal spawns the enemy with the keycard?  stupid game just wont let us skip the story.  I found the golemns take awhile to turn so sidestepping while they are downed helps make the fight go smoother

oh, while you are doing the little wise man circle the northmost part of the main room is a chest that has an lp, if you want to collect those.  you don't need them but if you aren't confident or in a marathon or something it is pretty quick to grab

after the volcos wiseman you should equip the black armor and shield because 1: they give a damage boost, and 2: being a demon samurai is swag.  the west room ( zone x) is where granstream is btw, it's the east end of the room on the top level.  I stand by getting it and the extra mana saves time in the last three fights, although if we figure out a better way to kill the dragons it could be taken out of the route.  honestly I don't want to because lasers are sweet

rip ganondorf, you were the bravest cable I ever met.  ok, gudelzepher...  basically you want to stand to the side of the egg so when he shoots his laser you get pushed to the side (the laser stops when you are out of it) but not too far to the side so you can still back out straight, there is a sweet spot.  also you can manipulate him to do a wide sweep by standing at the end of the little ramp.  it actually looks like you have the technique down, although you did let him push you a few times (it is faster to back up when he sweeps).  equipping the black armor speeds the fight up.

I like the angle you talked to arcia, that was cute.  I shop on my way out of town here because mana.  as the hades nonsense happens I find it to be a fun game to try to explain it to chat.  it is a hard but rewarding challenge. oh, also I usually let chat decide the waifu war so I start hyping it up around now.

awww shucks slazer, I couldn't do that.  seriously though, do you know what I need to get the japanease version running?  there are plenty on amazon for reasonable prices

so you know that crit you got on the first shield guy?  it knocked him down to one and an 8th of a health bar.  if you had the black armor and shield equipped that crit kills.  you did a pretty good job of ending the fight close to the door so kudos for that

are you paying attention to these notes?  you must hear them ALL you must REMEMBER them ALL.  ok the dragons, granstreaming them down does seem to be faster, the really reason I don't sword them is they have a move where they can heal, and if they decide to do that a lot then the fight can take a very long time.  yeah seem your black dragon did it a few times but you got some sweet crits

in my pb my black dragon gave me a lot of sas and I was short on mana so sweet gold split.  oh and for the record, I like laramee's ending better, but if the vote is close enough to even I will choose arcia because she gets to the credits faster

ok, demaar I just hold still in the center with my shield up because it gives me the best chances to hit him when he comes down.  also, if his current health bar is full it is faster to let the red thing catch you than to wait it out, obviously you don't let it get you if it can heal him though.  make sure you are using neutral slashes because you need to get your hits in.  final  shoutouts to the black armor.  if you do use granstream make sure you only use it right after breaking his guard, he can block it or if you don't hit him square in the face he can just go back in the air during the cast.  all and all not a bad first run.  I think on these splits you lost 10ish seconds due to the video lagging but sub 4:20 hype.