Shenmue - 2:32.90 WR run breakdown

Commentary of "Shenmue 70 Man Battle speedrun in 2:32.90 by Richard Payne [New World Record!]"

2:32.90 by Richard Payne - New World Record: https://youtu.be/sj0FAxRiqDs
2:33.30 by Thats Me! Karl - Previous World Record: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYEQEYrXnlM
2:33.70 by Richard Payne - Previous Personal Best: https://youtu.be/9rqh681tAtA

=======================
||||| RUN SPLITS ||||||
=======================

||||| Old 2:33.70 VS Karl’s 2:33.30 VS 2:32.90 New WR Run |||||

・0:38.80 VS 35.03 VS 0:36.13 [20 defeated]
・0:49.63 VS 0:43.76 VS 0:45.23 [BOSS 1 defeated]
・1:22.16 VS 1:20.86 VS 1:23.60 [40 defeated]
・1:28.56 VS 1:26.36 VS 1:33.13 [BOSS 2 defeated]
・1:48.73 VS 1:46.66 VS 1:56.66  [53 defeated]
・2:09.00 VS 2:11:26 VS 2:20:23 [66 defeated]
・0:24.70 VS 0:22.04 VS 0:12.67 [VS Pedro & minions]
・2:33.70 VS 2:33.30 VS 2:32.90 [Final Time]
・0:00.80 from previous personal run; 0:00.40 from previous record [Time saved]

0-20 DEFEATED: Solid start. Not too much to report, other than the fact I’m still starting runs with Mistral Flash, which has become an habit of mine, but barely saves any time against the safer Brutal Tiger start.

BOSS 1: A smooth 3 Demon Drop Shingo KO is always a great sight, that’s what you want to see.
The first Demon Drop is definitely the harder of the three, as you need to blindly align towards Shingo, then input Demon Drop at the “right” moment (not too soon or too late), and on top of that, you need to hope Shingo doesn’t go for an early attack. If any of these conditions fail, the first Demon Drop won’t work and you’ll lose a couple of seconds.

21-40 DEFEATED: Not too bad of a segment, although that Brutal Tiger miss at 1:40 has to be a joke … In years of playing the game, I’ve only rarely had Brutal Tiger miss from that close. The guy did dodge sideways, but still… Brutal Tiger should have hit him from that close! Target aim glitch also joins the party at 1:43 but luckily doesn’t do damage.
I did make a genuine mistake at 1:54, where I let the guy push me forward, putting me in a very bad spot where it’s hard to hit anyone without getting hit in return. Normally, I preemptively press the Throw Button to escape his grab, but this time I decided against it, and lost time in a very silly way.

BOSS 2: This is where I got genuinely unlucky. The Wall Glitch strategy we execute here is, no joke, one of the most critical moments in the run, because positioning and precision are key for the strategy to work. Since the camera is badly positioned, I had to blindly nail the spot before Mr. Stick drop. Since I was still not sure where I was, I threw two punches instead of one in an attempt to buy me time and figure out if the alignment was correct, but the second punch misses and Mr. Stick instantly retaliates, which is enough to ruin the setup. I still go for the Wall Glitch, but the fight ends up costing me a lot of time.

41-53 DEFEATED: Not as good as it could have been. I miss Tiger Storm on the 42nd guy, and get hit a couple of times along the way. Execution was overall sloppy and cost me a few more seconds.

54-66 DEFEATED: Same as above. I’m forced to take a couple of hits, block a couple of attacks, and even waste time on purpose at 3:05. I get a bad pattern and, on top of that, I go for Tiger Storm when I’m too far from the hat dude, which forces a grab attempt instead. At this point, I have no idea what the hat dude is going to do. I could have attacked him immediately, but he could have blocked, so I go for a block, hoping he attacks me, but he stands still… he does go for an attack at the end, and I immediately punish him with Crawl Cyclone. Still, a major time loss yet again.
This run was such a train wreck up to this point! How could this possibly become the World Record run?! I was tempted to turn off the game and try some other day, but luckily I ended up continuing. The miracle was right behind the corner!

66-DEFEATED (PEDRO & MINIONS): At this point, I had zero hope of turning things around, and I was pretty sleepy too. As far as I could tell, the run was dead, so I decided to go for the ultimate strategy, a tactic so random and risky I would never dare to use it on WR pace… the DOUBLE WALL GLITCH!

This is a strategy I was only able to successfully replicate once in my entire time playing the game! In fact, you can view that recording in my “Pedro strats & best times” video. Yup, that’s the only time I’d got it right. Here’s how it works.
As soon as the cutscene ends, you get as close as possible to Pedro and immediately attack him with Cyclone Kick, then hope his AI “freezes” and use Dark Moon, hoping that doesn’t mess your alignment with Pedro, then input Tiger Storm and hope you get the damage glitch. Repeat the process a second time and Pedro is done. Sounds easy, right? Well, you’d be right. It’s not THAT hard to do. The problem is all the RNG involved into making this happen.

Pedro is one of the most unpredictable opponents in the game with high stats in all areas, so the chance you’re able to execute two Tiger Storm in a row with everything going perfectly, nailing the two damage glitches, and Pedro not dodging/blocing anything is ridiculously low, like a 0,1% chance. Don’t forget there are also a couple of thugs left, who can attack at any point and crash any hope of taking down Pedro like this.

As I said multiple times in the past, RNG and Pedro are the two entities that decide whether your run lives or dies. Somehow, someway… my ridiculous strategy went through! Not only that, I misinput Crawl Cyclone and get Thunder Kick instead, which conveniently gets rid of two nearby enemies (still have no idea how that Thunder Kick hit them!).

In short, Pedro went down in 8 seconds (even faster than the first time I did this!), and I was able to keep my cool and finish the last remaining opponent with a sloppy, but reliable chain of attacks.
When it happened, I was in complete disbelief. The whole thing caught me so off guard I stayed in silence for minutes, trying to comprehend what just happened. The run was horrible, and yet this crazy idea saved almost 15 seconds!

This is probably never going to happen again, I’m just glad it happened in an actual WR run! It’s not a SUB 2:30, but it feels like a reward for the all the amazing runs I lost due to bad RNG or a simple wrong input… You guys have no idea.
Well, I think that covers everything. If you have any questions, or just want to share your thoughts, feel free to let me know in the comments. Thanks for showing interest, until next time!