Speed Recap 2025

1. Original 2025 Goal
2. Speedgames
3. 2026 Speedgoals

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1. Original 2025 Goal
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 O SH:FtNW PBs
 O Aria 24 + Portrait Stuff
 - Finish 1s PBs, then DQ3 1s PB will start
 - Pick up a FF + SMT game to grind but for real


- FtNW
2 whole PBs happened in February


- Aria 24 + Portrait Stuff
Aria (July/December) August this year :(
For Portrait, end up routing Maria Only very briefly then did a few runs.


- 1s PBs
There were more stuffs that I decided to do this year (Simple Series, Route/Grind, Casuals)
so it's alway a good thing this doesn't become the main focus.
You may notice there's been a decline of DQ3 Monthly since July.
That's because there's only a few games left to 1s. It can return for real anytime.

1s runs this year
 - Mother 3 ENG                         --- 7:19:41
 * Tetris DX                            --- 1:29 [40Line] + 4:13 [100Line]
 * Project Diva F 2nd All Extreme Great --- 2:23:49
 * Wario Land 3                         --- 1:24:02
 - Parasite Eve                         --- 3:06:35
 - Mega Man Zero 2                      --- 56:15 > 54:39
 - Mega Man Zero 3                      --- 48:19 > 46:37
 - Mega Man Zero 1-4                    --- 3:02:07
 - Fatal Frame                          --- 1:20:27
* = These runs's tape got corrupted so I had to redo

Remaining Runs
 - Dragon Quest III (After all 3 are done)
 - Dragon Quest V
 - Fatal Frame 2
 - Super Mario Galaxy


- Pick up a Mainline FF + SMT game to grind but for real
Out of all the games that looked appealing to me, they were FF9, FF12, X-2 and DDS2
but even then I didn't feel any attachment towards committing on learning.
The main complaints I had when I was browsing briefly the games were either
the strats looked wack (OP, abusable, scripted, straightforward...) and/or the length of the run

FF12 might've been a possible option if it wasn't for it's length
so it's all up to FF9 with CSR to save it but not anytime soon.

Star Ocean 3 and Super Touhou RPG were good times though :)

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2. Speedgames
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Main Runs
 - Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin
 - Shadow Hearts: From the New World
 - Super Touhou RPG
 - Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow
 - Star Ocean 3
 - Mega Man Zero 2
 - Radio Helicopter
 - Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow

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[Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin]
 N/A --> 38:35 /// Maria Only

When I look at the alt modes for Portrait and Dawn, it's very clear that
a character gets used so much more frequently compare to the other so
I end up wanting to route a solo character just to let them shine more.

The main challenge was to see how far you can exclusively use Maria
to get through the castle and there's only 1 spot in the entire game
where you have to switch for Ritcher's High Jump, which is
in Dark Academy from using the Owl Morph to climb up in the normal playthrough.

Outside of that, nothing is stopping you from maining Maria the whole way.

One thing I noticed is that Maria's Double Jump reaches higher
than the main characters. Some spots like Nation of Fools's 1st screen
now become accessible for Maria to reach

Death, Brauner and Dracula were the main culprits in term of dealing damage
due to Maria's normal bird attack barely doing anything, so you have
to use Guardian Fist as much as you can despite draining a lot of MP per usage.


I think trying to skip the Ritcher fight in Glitchless would be last thing
to do anything with Portrait but otherwise, I'm good with moving on from this game.

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[Shadow Hearts: From the New World]
 3:09:16 --> 2:59:05

It was looking pretty hard to beat the 3:09:16 without some major findings
even with the new route that saves over a minute. Was going to be a grind for sure.

And then the game exploded with a major finding in January,
literally and figuratively, oops.

It happened during a routing stream where I notice Slim Hilda's AGL stat
didn't match the correct number of 25 at LV18 by the time you get past Chichen Itza.
With the help of TheLCC, we checked through a bunch of different tapes just to see
that the AGL count also sometimes didn't match 25 and was at a higher value.

As it turns out, it has to do with the fact that when you're prompting to select
a Seal of Agility/Luck while Hilda is in the party during a battle,
the stat value increases and when she levels up, it will match the amount of time
that you've done the prompt.

A few moments later, TheLCC found out that all you have to do after prompting
said Seal, moving the cursor is what actually influences it so you
end up doing a mini Plasma Mash like it's Kirby Super Star and all the sudden
you're seeing Hilda at Max Agility 99 very quickly when she levels up.

It's already somewhat of a struggle for the fastest character (Johnny) to be
able to act first before an enemy with the normal stat growth.
With an agility count that high, not only it's a free first turn but you end up
getting multiple actions for free especially by the time of the run you do this glitch.

A fun part from running this game is Stock Management (Think of Fightgame Meter Build)
where you want to ideally build 2 bars by taking random encounters before fighting an incoming area's boss. It's usually a bonus reward of 1 whole bar where you either defeat the enemies before
they act once or landing perfect rings all the way. You then have to consider the factors
of the enemy positions, turn order, stock usage to be able to get the bonus OR
you do a few actions to build a little bit of stock meter and then attempt to flee.

Now, it's Hilda doing everything :)


Despite the 99AGL, you still have to hit the rings to go fast and everyone
will catch up when it comes to the turn order as you progress through the game.
The run definitely got a lot more easier and appealing for newcomers
for the 2nd half of the run. It's not my Johnny anymore though...

Thankfully, my 3:09:16 avoided doing the glitch somehow, so there's at least
a surviving run without the 99AGL strats. When I return to this game,
it would either be a JP 99AGL run to reach the JP audience or do the run without the glitch.

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[Super Touhou RPG]
 N/A --> 1:39:44 /// NG+ Normal

I half-joked that I was going to pick up the game if it got accepted for RPGLB 2025
and it did so here we are. If you're familiar with Super Mario RPG,
imagine that game but with way less downtime :o

The NG+ components allow you to remove Reimu from your current party and you're able
to skip texts much quicker, that's about it (as far as we know).

I think the biggest things that seperate this compare to SMRPG, outside of downtime,
are that you don't have to do perfect timed hits/blocks all the time since it's pretty
tricky, although it helps if you're able to. Overworld Enemies have the same behavior
with the exception of some tracking enemies (if inconsistent movement),
so it's all on you if you messup and they gave Reimu a Hookshot to go even more faster.

You can wallclip too if you're a cheater but that's softbanned.


Like a couple games that I ran, I did my initial learning into doing a full run just
to get an understanding on what kind of strat changes that could be implement
and there's way too many specifics to list but will do the key points.
Let's just say having 2 people constantly routing does a little bit more work than alone.


Key Points
 - By far the biggest accidental (yet again) finding is being able to fight
   Prismrivers anytime you want after you talk to Nazrin by the time you beat Clownpiece 2.
   It's definitely an oversight from the dev's part because her dialogue says that you
   have to go and beat up Prismrivers but you can still trigger another event despite that.
   All Party Members get used at least once thanks to this.

 - Some fights were dependant on landing Fear with Koishi's Ancestor (and can still
   be faster anyway), so I tried to come up with a strategy that skips the status effect.
   Scarlets Fight is by far the most impactful where skipping Fear is more viable.

   Trying to skip Sakuya's World in some fights was another one too.
   A lot of rework has been done outside of these two components otherwise.

   I tend to go with consistency and Claude is rolling the Fear dice, so if you ever need
   to compare/learn a fight, there's your options.


 - Real (real) Star EXP Route to properly time HP/MP Heal and/or Spell learned for some fights.
   A previously unsolved oddity was shooting the Sewer Fairies would sometime cause
   the talisman counting as more than 1 enemy defeated but tl;dr, you just dix mash it.

 - Frog Gem count adjustment and long item pickups have been cut down pretty heavily.
   I already forgot the original double digit amount of Gems count but
   you virtually pick them up for only 1/2 fights.

 - Your standard less shopping, combined menu and better movement stuffs


All in all, pretty cool the run is this fast now with a proper route (previously
expected sub 1:50 to be a good run, how time have changed...). I would be interested
for an All Bosses run eventually (mostly for Mima tbh).

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[Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow]
 N/A --> 1:08:32 /// Glitchless

Compare to Aria's movement where you have to wait the length of your backdash to cancel it,
in Dawn, you instantly cancel it with a jump (or still wait it out but cancel with a crouch, although it's harder to save time consistently) so it feels more active in this game.
You also start with a slide too like Portrait.

Later on, you have access to not only a divekick but you can combine it with Flying Armor,
which is something that you don't see at all in Aria.

Cancelling Soma's weapon, notably a katana, is pretty challenging since it's a bunch
of repeated backdash into crouch input while praying that you don't do your attack
in the middle of these two actions. You attack much more quicker this way compare
to doing jump slashes and it is your main source of damage throughout the run.

On top of that, you get the Devil soul 1/3 of the run that
increases your STR drastically at the cost of a drained HP/MP
and the bosses aren't like Portrait, so it's a bit more trickier to get through the game.

By far, what really displeases me from improving my time is there's currently
no known manip for soul drops and you have to get 3 (4 with Devil) of them
to be able to complete the game in glitchless format.
I already knew what I was getting into and I was still sad about it.

Unless that gets solved at one point, the combination of how tricky it is
to get used to katana cancelling and it's not exactly the easiest run to do
because of Devil soul is what prevents me from continuing to run this category.


Yoko Only could be an option.

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[Star Ocean 3]
 N/A --> 3:22:26 /// Galaxy

Alway wanted to learn this run in some capacity since it's a childhood game
but never did until I saw the future of Dawn Glitchless then immediately
decided to play another game where you have to win the lotto (Item Creation) which is SO3.

There's a couple routes that you can choose from. It seems unclear
which one is actually the fastest, so I just went with feel and characters. I decided
on Maria/Cliff/Sophia. It is faster to turn off the voices
since it skips the enemies's dialogue after defeating them but I will
never do it since I want to hear everyone talk over each other.

You mostly end up using one character and let the others do nothing but position to tank
damage + stun the enemies and/or avoiding your bonus battle gauge getting broken
by switching to them last sec if you think you're about to get hit by the enemy.
It's pretty important to keep your bonus gauge since you need the Triple EXP for some skills, although you can get away by just having Fayt learn Blazing Sword at all, kinda.

The general flow of the characters for this route are Fayt's Blazing Sword
against many early game enemies that have low MP since it does damage towards that.
Afterward, you main Cliff for a bit by giving him a good weapon from Item Creation
and start bullying using Hammer of Might + Charge.

Finally, just before the end of Disc 1, another Item Creation happens by dumping
as many Orichalcums (+500ATK) to Maria's weapon and then she starts blasting
everyone with Scatter Beam + Magnetic Field. Maria but mostly Sophia end up being a Power Up caster.

Modified a strat against Mudman where normally you go in with Cliff only so he
can have the maximum EXP gained but it can get out of control If I wasn't careful
which I didn't like. I added Nel as a dummy character and can switch to her
to prevent losing my bonus gauge.


Although you end up steamrolling the fights for the most part, the challenging part
is not taking forever on trying to deal damage while avoiding your bonus gauge getting broken. There's a bunch of unexpected actions that the enemies can do to throw you
off so being able to react accordingly is what I like about this run.

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[Mega Man Zero 2]
56:15 --> 54:39

Only needed to wait more than a decade to have as many updates strats available, heh.
In 2013, EXP Route used to be a bit more stingy on taking the time
to get them in the first 4 stages in order to learn charged saber, especially in Panter's
where you would take the lower path detours to get points.

Turns out you don't need to do that at all and continue on
going fast anyway, even if you don't go for double/triple slashes against Phoenix.
That's a ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Learning Rainbow Devil manip, despite lasting the whole stage, was surprisingly
not as bad as it looks so that's neat. Grinded a little bit after the
initial 1s PB but it doesn't look that hard to get a 53 and beyond
so hopefully it happens eventually by anyone.

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[Radio Helicopter]
 N/A --> 39:53

To celebrate making through the Simple 2000 Series, I decided to pick at least
a game from it and it was this one.

As you might imagine from the game title itself, you play as an RC helicopter
travelling around your house, a town and at school in SM64 style and help the people with
their task (Stars, literally) by using your almighty chopper.

A few examples on what kind of tasks you'll be doing can be ranged from
spraying water on idling cats hanging out at the backyard to
saving a bunch of people stuck in a fire building by not actually
grabbing them but by picking up gas masks on the floor and throw it
to their window, despite a firetruck being present in the scene.


Like Portrait Maria Only, I spent 1 stream routing since there weren't any tapes available
that wasn't a longplay and it was much more low effort compare to that game.
You usually end up following a general path for the Stars or you can freeform it.

The 2 things I had to worry about the routing process were the shopping route
on which parts I'm upgrading (Speed / Battery) for my RC which doesn't sound as bad
consider you get your currency from clearing the tasks but it takes
a long time to travel to the shop at all. Unsure if a money grind would be
faster or not but I end up skipping that and stuck with a very ok mediocre RC till the end.

Secondly, learning how to control my RC (never figured this part out in one day).
If you go in one direction, you will constantly stay in this lane for a bit
despite hitting the break and trying to shift your position. Speaking of breaking,
decelerating isn't instant either so it's easy to overshoot where you want to go.


I'm sure there's a secret JP VHS tape run hidden at some host club's basement
but it was fun trying to come up with something within a day.

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[Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow]
25:52 --> 24:27 /// Glitchless

Originally was going to call it with a 24 (last year, I said it was going to be
the last minute barrier without divekick. Just play better xd) but JupiterClimb
recently started picking up the category again, which is why it got lowered
a bit more than usual. 23 reserved for next October!!!

Compare to last year, movement techs like cutting the corner
by jumping instead of letting the backdash rip, using hippogryph by barely
grazing the ceiling so it doesn't cause the bonking animation, initiating a
bigger jump height to drop faster and simply do more backdashes
than usual are starting to matter a lot more.

For the new findings, with the work of Claude for this incoming manip,
the entirety of Top Floor, which includes Final Sword, Succubus and Graham fight,
is now done with only 1 sleep.

Fast forward to November, there's now a setup to consistently dropping down
the cogs in Clock Tower by initiating a backdash relatively close to the apex of the cog
and you have a large window to press Down+A. There's four of them and you
save a second per successful attempt so it's a nice timesave.

Another one is squeezing and extend as many Manticore usages as possible
to cut down some travelling time. There were a lot of ups and downs when
I was testing a bunch of possible rooms since your MP isn't the greatest
but the main ones I implement were during the Black Belt manip and the 4x Tritons screen.


And finally, attempting to avoid taking damage during Lubicant + Muramasa Manip
while only using Manticore once. There were a ton of trial and error that
usually end up with some wack 1 frame fake setup to be able to get both drops.
Lubicant's behavior supposely has their own RNG timer seperated, so starting the manip
at an earlier spot would cause inconsistent results.

I was ready to pull the plug when the best I could find involved using Flame Demon.
Also found a way to start the manip in the Beam Skeleton room that unequips
Silk Robe but it didn't alway give both drops.

It took a bit to realize but what if I just do the same movement everytime
for the latter manip and it sure did solved all my problems.


One of the main reasons Silk Robe is obtained was for the later manips
like this one since they were done using Elfin Robe. Now that this iteration
has been discovered, Soma is keeping the Casual Clothes all the way through
until defeating Graham, which ideally saves 8 seconds.

It's a little unfortunate since Great Armor and Death are back to being
a longer fight and you have to use a Tasty Meat to heal Soma
during the Top Floor manip. There's no more healing left past that point.


I feel confident with a 24:1x but lower than that and it gets
a bit more difficult especially with Julius waiting to kill the runs constantly
but surely 23 isn't that bad, right?

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3. 2026/Forever Speedgoals
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- Aria 23
- Finish 1s PBs, then DQ3 1s PB will start
- Pick up another RPG