KH2 Master Form Route

Kingdom Hearts 2 Master Form Route (Beginner Mode)
By Bl00dyBizkitz



Disclaimer - Before you continue on to read and/or use this guide, there is one important thing you need to know. This is not THE route. My strats and theories are constantly changing, and some of my strats aren’t even the fastest or “best” strats to use in certain situations. A lot of my strats are also due to personal preference, so they may work for me and not work for you, which is fine. What I want to communicate is that you should not go on to read this guide thinking that my strats are THE strats and that you HAVE to use them to get the best time. Do NOT keep yourself trapped inside the box of the “standard run.” I would’ve never found half the strats I use today had I not wondered if doing something else was faster or worked better. I don’t believe in pastebins because when people use them, they forget to wonder whether or not certain strats could be faster or not. However, I do believe that pastebins help ease the process of speedrunning a new game, which is why I’m writing this one.

tldr – Don’t keep yourself trapped in a box. Keep thinking outside the box. Be creative, keep your mind active. Keep questioning which strats are the “best” strats and find the ones that work best for you.


Roxas

Day 1
-	Pick up the club on the right to get the +1 strength.
o	Note – Strength is HUGELY important in this run. You’ll continue to see this as we go along.
-	Seifer 1 - Run up to Seifer and do a ground combo. You could do an air combo if you want, but it’s riskier since you either mess it up or hit the ground before you complete the combo.
-	Seifer 2 - Full ground combo on Seifer. Full ground combo again, he’ll deflect the finisher, keep mashing X to have it hit. Move out of the way while he retaliates. Full ground combo to finish him off.
o	If you’re quick enough, you can hit him after he retaliates and before he deflects your first hit, but don’t be discouraged if he deflects your first hit, you only lose like 0.5 seconds.
-	Dusk fight - You’re unable to damage the Dusk with the struggle bat, but you can end the fight by “hitting” him 10-11 times. Lock-on to the Dusk. Do a 2-hit air combo and immediately use the Reversal RC. Do a full air combo. Dodge his retaliation by jumping, then do another full air combo and use the Reversal RC. Hit him a couple more times and the fight should end.
-	Now that you have the Keyblade, you can kill him. Do a 2-hit air combo, then a full air combo to kill him.
o	The air combo is much faster than the ground combo and just as powerful, so we’ll mostly be using it for the beginning of the run.

Day 2

-	Every new day of the Roxas’ section starts with a flashback cutscene that starts with a Piano note playing. That Piano note is an audio cue. Once you hear the Piano note, Skip Cutscene.
-	When you get to the Alleyway, there’s a skateboard behind you. Hold R2 and the analog stick at an 8 o’clock angle. Mash triangle to get on the skateboard. Use the skateboard to move to the next area.
-	The Mail Delivery is the fastest job to do and incredibly easy. Mash triangle to deliver mail to the first person, bird, and second person. Mash triangle next to the rail to deliver mail to the second bird. Deliver mail to the last person.
-	Use the skateboard after the Mail Delivery to go to the Station Plaza, and use the skateboard again to get to Hayner.
o	Try and keep some distance between the skateboard and Hayner when you get off. Both of them use triangle, so if you’re too close to the skateboard, you’ll get on it by accident instead of talking to Hayner.

Day 3

-	Use the skateboard in the Alleyway again.
-	Another Dusk fight with the struggle bat. Run up to the Dusk and mash triangle for Reversal. Do a full aerial combo. Jump over the Dusk’s retaliation, full air combo, Reversal. Full air combo, then do a ground hit. This should be exactly enough. Skip Cutscene.
-	The Sword gives you the best ability progression for the run. You get Combo Boost, Item Boost, Reaction Boost, Drive Boost, and Combination Boost, all of which are essential for the run.
-	3 Dusk fight. Each Dusk can be killed with 2 hits and a full combo. Mash triangle at the beginning to activate Reversal. Do 2 aerial hits and a full aerial combo. Avoid the other Dusk’s retaliations and repeat for the rest of them.
o	Sometimes you won’t even need Reversal for the last 2. Use your own judgment accordingly.
-	Twilight Thorn
o	The first section is just chains of RCs. After you go through all the RCs, he should be knocked out and you should be picking up your Keyblade.
o	Do as many air combos to his head as you can before he gets up. The most you can possibly do is 4, and that’s only if your air combos are very low to the ground.
o	Run to the back of the area. Twilight Thorn will move his head there for the rest of the fight. Keep yourself in the space between his head and the invisible wall behind you and keep doing air combos to his head. This makes it so when you get hit by the vines, you’ll get knocked back to the invisible wall and just continue doing combos.
o	Creepers will also interrupt your attacks when they turn into swords and spears. If you see a Creeper about to attack you in Sword form, use Reversal to go to the other side of Twilight Thorns head.

Day 4

-	Equip Guard, then talk to the referee.
o	Guard is a personal preference of mine. I have it for most of the run, but most people who run the game don’t use it. You don’t have to use it, it would save you a menu trip if you didn’t want to.
-	Hayner
o	The struggle fights are where you can save most of your time in the Roxas section. If you collect all 200 orbs, you end the fight immediately and save however much time was left.
o	Start the fight off with 2 ground combos on Hayner. Wait for his retaliation, then ground combo him. Repeat until Hayner has 0 orbs. Collect as many orbs as you can and if Hayner picks up any, combo him and pick the last few orbs.
o	The key to the fight is keeping Hayner in a corner. If he’s in a corner, he can’t collect any orbs while you keep combo’ing them off of him.
o	Hayner has a couple different retaliations. He has his 2 hit combo, his horizontal swing, and a lunge attack. For the 2 hit combo, dodge the 1st hit, then combo him before he pulls off his 2nd hit. For the horizontal swing, just stay away from its range and combo him after the attack. For the lunge attack, he will slide on the ground before he attacks. If you see the slide go right up to him and combo him.
o	If you save between 20-30 seconds off this fight, you’ve saved some good time.

-	Vivi
o	Start the fight off with 2 ground combos just like before. Immediately after the 2nd ground combo, move out of the way of Vivi’s retaliation. Ground combo him into the corner, then do 2 ground hits on him.
o	This is the really tricky part. Start running at the invisible wall next to Vivi. This will manipulate Vivi to circle around you and not circle towards the orbs. Vivi will either circle to the right of you, which is the corner, or to the left of you. You want Vivi to circle to the right of you so you can combo him. If he circles to the left of you, wait until you circles back to the right of you.
o	Once he circles back to the right of you, do 2 full ground combos. If he has less than 9 orbs left, knock them off of him and collect the rest of the orbs while he circles around for his DM (DM = Desperation Move). If he has more than 9 orbs, you’ll have to collect the rest of the orbs, wait until he finishes his DM, then combo the rest off of him.
o	You can save almost 35 seconds if this goes perfectly. This fight can also go horribly wrong and you might not save any time at all.

-	3 Dusks again, except this time they have more health than last time. If you fight them individually, they will take 3 individual hits and a full combo before they die. Mash triangle at the start of the fight, then do a full ground combo on the Dusk. The finisher should hit 2 or all 3 of the Dusks. Now the Dusk that you combo’d will die after another full combo, and the other Dusks that got hit by the finisher will die after 1 hit and a full combo. Dodge their retaliations and finish them off accordingly.
-	Axel I
o	He starts off the fight by doing his standard Chakram attack. Side-step it and do a full air combo, do this as quickly as possible. Follow this up with another full air combo and a ground combo. After the ground combo he will retaliate. You can either Guard the retaliation or try and side step it. After the retaliation, do 2 more air combos and he should be dead.

-	For the Setzer fight, you actually want to lose, because losing will give you a better item. If you win, you get the Champion Belt, which is completely useless in a speedrun. If you lose, you get the Medal, which gives you +1 strength, and is very useful in a speedrun. After you lose, skip cutscene. Mash X for the 2 Item Gets.

Day 5

-	Use the skateboard in the Alleyway, Market Street, and Station Plaza.
-	For this ball minigame, it goes in a set pattern. The first pattern is a ball on the left and right, a ball down the middle, 2 balls on the left and 2 on the right. Hold R2 and run forward past the first set, run towards the side to avoid the second set, then back down the middle to avoid the third set. Stay to the left and mash triangle to avoid being hit by the fourth set still coming out of the wall, as their hitboxes may still be active. Skip cutscene.
-	For the Vivi clone minigame, The 3 clones will always circle to your left. Go to the left, wait for them to circle, then attack to do a horizontal slash that takes out all the clones. If you lunge instead, you’ll get hit unfortunately. After this, go to the middle of the arena and hit the clones as they spawn. Their spawning is completely random, so do the best you can. Do NOT attack clones that have just circled, you’ll get hit. The fight ends when all the clones are defeated. Skip Cutscene.
o	It might not be a bad idea to equip Aerial Recovery and the Medal here if you want, but I like to keep Guard on for later and take my chances.
-	Equip the Medal before the Shadow Roxas minigame.
-	Shadow Roxas minigame. Combo him 3 times (basically mash X, you’ll deflect all of his attacks anyways), then wait for his retaliation after the 3rd combo, and combo him a 4th time to finish him off.
-	Bag minigame. Just mash triangle to win.
-	Use the skateboard in the Market Street and Tram Common.

Day 6

-	Alleyway nobody fight. Starts off with 2 Dusks, then a single Assassin. Reversal the first Dusk and take out the Dusks as normal. When the Assassin appears, you can either jump over his attack and combo him, or Guard the attack. The Assassin also takes 2 full combos to kill.
-	After leaving the White Room, jump off the 2nd floor to the 1st floor and take the stairs up to the next room. Theoretically saves a second as opposed to running around the top balcony.
-	Basement nobody fight. Starts off with 4 Dusks, then 2 Assassins will appear after 3 Dusks have been killed. You can either kill the Dusks individually, or you can do full combos and hope that the finisher hits multiples Dusks, either strat works well. When the Assassins spawn, focus on the Assassins. You should have gotten a Strength boost at this point, so the Assassins will die after 2 hits and a full combo. One of the Assassins will most likely sink into the ground, so you need to either Guard or deflect their attack from the ground in order to damage them. If you are waiting for this to happen, focus on killing the 4th Dusk.
-	Axel II
o	While Axel is creating the Fire Floor, you can run around to him and combo him.
o	When you do combo him, do a full ground combo, then a full air combo. Do NOT use the RC. He will jump into his Fire Wall. Use the RC when he attacks from his Fire Wall. Repeat. If he isn’t dead after the 2nd RC, do an air combo to finish him off.
o	Axel has this really annoying problem where he decides sometimes not to jump into his Fire Wall after your air combos. This is probably due to the finisher of your air combo not hitting him fully because he’s too high. To deal with this, I make sure to jump before I air combo just to try and insure that the finisher will always hit.

Twilight Town I

-	Take Donald’s ether and turn off Summon Effects. Keep going until you get to the Station Plaza nobody fight.
-	This fight ends either after you take enough damage or after approximately 90 seconds. It’s HIGHLY recommended you try and get as much experience here as possible, otherwise you’ll be pretty underleveled for the early section of the game. There are 4 waves, the first is 6 or so Dusks, the second is 4 Creepers and 1 Dusk, the third is 4 Dusks, and the fourth is an infinite wave of Creepers that spawn until time runs out. Try and stay in the middle of the area as much as possible, it makes it easier to move from 1 enemy to the next. Use air combos, even on the Creepers. It’s still much faster than ground combos at this point. If you get to Level 6 and you have under 100 XP until Level 7, I’d say you had a decent fight.
-	Talk to Donald to head to Yen Sid’s Tower, and head toward Pete.
o	You CAN get the Ether to the left before going to Pete, but it is kind of unnecessary, so I don’t pick it up anymore.
-	1st Heartless fight. Shadows are heavily RNG based whether or not they pop underground as soon as they pop back up, making them one of the greatest trolls in the entire run. Luckily Donald can 1 shot groups of them with Donald Thunder. Locking-on to enemies seems to make Donald Thunder more often, but that’s all completely theory. The only strategy for this fight is to focus on the Shadows that aren’t underground, because there’s always one that’s not underground.
-	Pick up the Ether in the chest to your right then head upstairs to the next fight.
-	2nd Heartless fight. More Shadows. Pray to the RNG gods for a decent fight. :P
-	Continue upstairs for the 3rd and final fight in TT1.
-	3rd Heartless fight. The first wave is a few Shadows and 1 Soldier, and the second wave is 6 or so Soldiers. If you’re Level 7 at this point, the Soldiers can be killed in 1 combo, and if not, they take 1 extra hit. Don’t get stuck in tunnel vision and be aware of the Soldiers actions. Once they’re low on health, they’ll start throwing out more annoying attacks, so evade and have the Tornado RC at the ready.
-	Head upstairs. Talk to Yen-Sid, go into the next room and talk to the Fairy Godmothers to get Valor. Head through the door to get your Gummi Ship back.