Here's my 2nd Half-Minute Hero speedrun, this time taking on Hero 30 mode. Before anything as always let me thank the following:

• mike for dealing with my questions on run timing, as well as for being awesome in general.
• nate for putting up with my tech-knowledge noobness about video quality, codecs and such, and his encoding work on SDA.
• the rest of the SDA team for keeping up the great work even with so much backlog.
• MAS8705 for starting the thread on SDA, as well as some early planning help.
• carosh for help on certain quests and route planning.
• StarsofViolence of YT for a couple of his vids on some quests.
• The Hall of Half-Minute Heroes leaderboards for being a great reference and foundation for getting fast times.

GENERAL INFO

• Hero 30 has a total of 52 stages with multiple split-paths/routes. A completed playthru only has 30 stages.
• The in-game clock starts when you exit the Load/Save menu, and stops when you enter the Load/Save menu.
• The in-game clock also stops during the 3 second countdown that starts up each stage, as well as the short (system dependent) loading screen from selecting Hero 30 and moving to the World Map.
• Because of how the in-game clock behaves, it is imperative to spend the least amount of time possible in towns, to skip every cutscene, (although that's already required by SDA) and to fastforward through the credits.
• The game only allows 5 save files, but since there are 26 segments I have to transfer the save data to my PC to make space every 5 segments. This is why you'll see me end up with 5 files on segment 5 but start with 1 file on segment 6 and so forth.
• this run was recorded with RemoteJoyLite. I set it up in such a way that will eliminate 99% of the in-game lag, at the cost of some screen flickering in some screens and menus; most notably in the stage clear results screen. Shouldn't be that much of a bother as it doesn't happen in the real gameplay.

Some people might think I'm cheating when I go from a random encounter into a town instantly without seeing the map, so I think I should elaborate on a trick I call "town warping." You can enter any town by holding/tapping X while you're positioned at least 1 tile away from it, or when you're 2 tiles away AND facing it. Because of this you can instantly bridge the 1 or 2 tile gap and "warp" into the town, which saves about 00"15 or so from the in-stage countdown timer. It's pretty small, but some stages have events that happen at certain times and you have to race against the clock to bypass them. I also use town warping as much as possible to have the best stage clear time possible. This technique is displayed perfectly in segment 12, among others. This doesn't work when entering castles or caves though.

My reason for putting almost every individual stage as their own segment is that there are alot of manipulation involved in most stages. Some segments contain 2 stages because there's little to no manipulation required. You'll see what I mean when you get there.

And here we go..

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Quest 1 - Hero's Departure

I walk exactly 8 spaces before entering the castle after beating the fiends so that I get a random encounter on the 9th walk step right when I exit from the west town. Thanks goes to carosh for pointing out that I don't need to buy the 2nd Herb during the first countdown. It made my route easier to deal with.

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Quest 2 - Continental Bridge

I was lucky to get that much crits on the boss, otherwise it would be my usual clear time of 22"xx. Another thanks to carosh for his route on this stage.

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Quest 3 - Caves & Forests

This stage doesn't require any manipulation so it goes with Quest 4 in the same segment. Town warping the west town isn't required for getting the best clear time; town warping the southwest town is what's crucial, and was done near perfectly here.

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Quest 4 - Firestarter

This is where you get the first path split in the game. I don't stop the fire so I end up with the Southern route, which has quests that are way faster to clear compared to the Northern route.

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Quest 5 - Thru the Cave

Pretty good timing for entering the cave. I usually miss the right time and either go in too early (obviously a reset) or too late. (wastes about 00"30 or so)

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Quest 6 - Castle over the Sea

Quite a tough stage to manipulate. I have to get 3 encounters of the Cactus+Bee pair to get enough cash and lv5 before the shore opens up.

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Quest 7 - Good ol' Days

ALL YOUR BASE R BELONG TO US! Move ZIG for great justice!

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Quest 8 - Change the Current

Here's another stage with alot of manipulation involved. The 2nd fight determines what enemies you should fight in the 3rd encounter. If you get the blob pair, you must fight the triple corals. If you get the blob+crab pair, you can settle with the triple hermit crabs.

Here I get the blob+crab, miscount my steps and miss the random encounter 1 tile to the left of the castle. (I hit the run button anticipating the encounter) Not much of a big deal (about 00"50 wasted) considering that fighting the corals takes much more time than the hermit crabs, so I still got a faster stage clear time than the usual.

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Quest 9 - Beautiful Evil Lord

Wasted about 00"30 when I stepped a tile further than needed while entering the castle. The lucky crit during the 2nd encounter covers up for that loss perfectly though.

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Quest 10 - Bandit Valley

One of the hardest stages to manipulate by far. There's the issue of having to fight 3 pairs of Bandits at the start, as well as fighting just the right amount of Bandits in the cave. The interval at which they appear is fixed, but I had to do some trial and error to get enough crits to kill them quickly AND get lv11 in the process. (crit manipulation is pretty hard at low levels)

Because of the extremely lucky amount of crits during the boss, I could have done without the time-reverse. About a second lost there, but since my usual clear time of this stage is at the 30-34 sec range, getting 29 sec is pretty great.

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Quest 11 - Road to Land or Sea

The 2nd path split, and the most important choice in the whole run. The land route splits up into Cleric and Devil route: Cleric quests are slow although the item rewards are great; Devil quests are fast but you get no items at all so the land route is out.

This quest is fastest when you don't get the ship, but since I'm going for the sea route, I had to backtrack and grab the ship anyway. Had to use some awkward "claw" hand movements here to use the herb while running down to the beetle. Killing the beetle is necessary otherwise it'll take alot more time grinding for the Mo battle.

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Quest 12 - Past the Ocean

Now for the path split on the sea route. The swim route is the fastest in the quest 11-17 splits, although sea quest 16 and 17 without the gear from the other paths are quite slow. Still, the items you gain from this route helps alot for the late-game quests.

This stage is full of manipulation: I have to get 7 fights with a pair of enemies in an area with 4 different types of random encounters (2 of which are pairs). It's a good 50% chance, but this stage really messed with me ALOT. I got an amazingly lucky crit streak on the boss which shaved almost a second off my usual clear time.

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Quest 13 - Dragon Island

I take the first town warp to preserve my HP for the run to the cave. This quest is fastest with the Quick Knife (+5 speed) from the Northern route, so I have to make do with the lesser Utility Knife. (+2 speed) This is a near perfect run of the stage with this setup though. (my best being a mere 00"05 faster lol)

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Quest 14 - Tiny Sailing Trip

No manipulations here so it goes with quest 13 in a segment. I can't prevent the slowdown during the castle run. It's the damn water current.

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Quest 15 - Flower in the Dusk

The only thing to manipulate here is the 1st and 3rd fight. The first must be the mushrooms and the 3rd must be the eagles. This stage has a bad habit of giving me the eagles for the 1st fight 1 out of 10 times so I couldn't join it with the previous segment. Thanks to some lucky crits in both the boss fight and the 3rd encounter, I get sub 15. :D

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Quest 16 - To the Snowy Country

Getting the eagle for the 3rd encounter was great, but it saves only about 00"20 or so. Could've been luckier with crits during the penguin fight but meh, the crits during the scorpion fight evened it out.

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Quest 17 - Avalanche Pass

Yet another hard stage to manipulate. I had to fight 2 mammoths after the avalanche and get to lv11 right when I'm about 2-3 tiles away from the town at 15 secs left. That's pretty tight. I got the 2nd mammoth late and got me 1 level higher than required, but that extra +1 in Attack worked wonders against the boss.

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Quest 18 - White Earth

The walrus didn't show up in any of the encounters so I got 1 level higher than needed, plus I mess up and hit the run button a bit late when getting back to the north town. The amount of crits against the boss as well as that +1 attack still brought my clear time to my goal of sub 23 though.

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Quest 19 - Great Plains

Epic stage, huh? This is where the items from Sea-Swim route really shine. Land route items won't cut it in this stage. I could've skipped the Red Bandana but it helps ALOT with the crit rate, so I take it.

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Quest 20 - Floodgate Panic

This is another fast stage with Swim route items. The 1st encounter can be skipped, but I needed the cash to buy the Spike Mace, which will help me clear the next 2 stages faster than the Knight Lance.

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Quest 21 - The Have-nots

The stage is about 16 seconds slower than its Floodgate route counterpart, Giant Evil Lord, but actually fixing the floodgate in the previous quest takes more than 30 seconds anyway so this is actually the faster route. There is a slight pause after getting paid in town where you can't move, can't do anything about that.

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Quest 22 - Fire Mountain

The death was necessary to get back to the first town instantly. The crit on the first bird was lucky and made my run to the first rock smoother than usual.

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Quest 23 - Turtle & Hermit

Getting lv18 from the Sage's training took a bit of practice to time properly. Sometimes I get lv17, sometimes I overshoot and get lv20 or so. I actually killed more fireballs than required, as you can see my exp bar is at 95% to lv19. Less than 00"20 wasted I guess, but still 1 second faster than my original best time for some reason.

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Quest 24 - Swamp & Witch

More "claw" usage here when I use the herb while running to the witch's lair.

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Quest 25 - Isolated Castle

Getting that many crits in the cave fight was extremely lucky, though it only saved about 00"50 off my usual time.

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Quest 26 - Grand Wings

I apologize for the lag in this stage. The scrolling animation of the map screwed up a bit of my originally lagless capture. Ah well, I hope it doesn't look that bad.

I take the time to obtain the Duel Greaves because it's a HUGE help for the following stages. I did some extensive testing with and without the greaves going from stage 26 to 30 and found out that NOT getting the greaves is faster by about 2 seconds, but due to some changes in the stage route it's actually slower by about 4 seconds in terms of overall game-clock time. Without the greaves there will be alot more healing in towns as well as an extra time-reverse in stage 30, so getting the greaves is optimal.

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Quest 27 - Farewell Bandit Trio

Had a bit of trouble with positioning when I bought the herbs, though once again it was overshadowed by the crits in the random encounters, letting me enter the cave as soon as it showed up.

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Quest 28 - Infinite Weapon Lord

Town warp frenzy, all so that the Evil Lord can't steal the Sea Spear from the East town.

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Quest 29 - Cursed Hero

Pretty straightforward stage. The Hero Sword would've made my quest 30 run easier and a bit faster, but it takes nearly 30 seconds to obtain it, plus Lamde doesn't get OHKO'd by it so I opt for the faster solution.

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Quest 30 - Last Battle

The only special trick in this stage is to clear the western tower with at most 20 HP left. This is enough HP to make the next few enemy encounters faster and reach lv25 right before the Porta-Statue takes effect. After that it's pretty straightforward with some fights and maneuvering.

I release the run button at certain points during the beetle and chimera fight so I don't drop down to 50/30 hp respectively, or else I won't have enough HP to run back to the town and thus get owned by an enemy encounter on the way. 1:44 was my original best when practicing this stage, but after polishing each tricky town warp, I was glad to get it down to 1:42. Although it's around 10 seconds slower than if I had the Hero Sword, it takes a bit more than 30 seconds to clear Quest 29 to obtain it, so it's not a bad trade at all.

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And that's it! This game was very fun to plan and speedrun, and I don't think I'm done with HMH just yet. I'm thinking of taking on Knight 30 in the future, or even an IL run of Hero 30 this time with all the items from each path available for some great setups, who knows.

If you read all the way here within 30 seconds, you win 2 intarnetz!

Some general notes:

--In Hero 3, random encounters happen every 2 steps, excluding steps spent walking on towns, bridges, and other terrain that do not spawn enemies.
--The RNG in HMH is not truly random. Similar to Fire Emblem, it is set to a certain predetermined value at the start of each level. Also like in Fire Emblem, there is a bizarre way to advance the RNG; here, it's by running. It doesn't matter whether this running happens on the overworld, in battle, or in town—it all counts. On the flipside, you can spend a good minute walking around in town without impacting the RNG whatsoever. This is why we spend time in towns running in place.
--For whatever reason, proper town warping is impossible on Hero 3. *shrug*

The route is pretty different than Raoh's, save for the end:
- We still start by killing a slime and buying the sword, but we then proceed to head west, take out a scorpion, and get inside the western town with one frame to spare.
- On the second set of 3 seconds, we take out two scorpions, then rush to the southern village. This leaves me with enough money to buy the sword and reset time.
- The third set is mostly identical. The only difference is that I enter into the first village, which saves a few frames.
- Fourth set is identical, with no crits on the boss. I honestly don't believe crits on the boss are possible at level 10, but anyone who wants to try to prove me wrong, feel free >_>

It should be noted that, due to version differences, this route is impossible on the Neo Climax versions. There is another sub-12 second route possible on both versions, but it's slower.

Special thanks:
--Xerugas and Raoh for their runs, without which I would never have been pushed to find this route.
--Toshihiko Takamizawa and everyone else who wrote the music in this game. Because it's amazing.
--Marvelous for making the game, and XSeed for localizing it.
--All the SDA people for hosting this run
-- Nate for writing Anri-chan, without which I'd probably still be trying to figure out how to encode things properly.

Thanks for watching!

Hero 30, single segment, Neo Climax (PC) version. Massively inferior to the PSP version, but also significantly easier to single segment. Let's get to it!

Some general notes:

--In HMH, random encounters happen every 9 steps, with steps spent running not decrementing the counter. The exception to this is any step on a square where there are no random encounters; these don't count towards the total. There's also something weird going on sometimes in Neo Climax where floors just won't have encounters for a frame, which messes up the count. This counter also resets after entering a boss or other fixed battle, so we generally want to run from the last random battle before a boss to the boss.

--The RNG in HMH is not truly random. Similar to Fire Emblem, it is set to a certain predetermined value at the start of each level. Also like in Fire Emblem, there is a bizarre way to advance the RNG: here, it's by running. It doesn't matter whether this running happens on the overworld, in battle, or in town—it all counts. On the flipside, you can spend a good minute walking around in town without impacting the RNG whatsoever. In NC, it's also affected by what language you play the game in! YAY!

--Town warping is worthless in a real-time run. Though we do still want to approach from an L-shaped angle whenever we are entering towns.

--Perfect Warping: whenever triggering a cutscene, town warp, or any other sort of scene change, 2 HP are spent if you're holding down the run button, but running doesn't actually save any time in this situation. So on a lot of stages, you have to walk that last step to save the HP for later.

--the time (in frames) to run one square is max(4, 6 - (SPEED-WEIGHT)/10). This decreases by an additional 1 if riding a horse or dragon. The time to walk one square is twice this value, plus one. This is universally one frame faster than on the PSP version, which also doesn't have the horse/dragon bonus.

--Evasion is basically a worthless stat, since crits have almost no knockback in this game and proper RNG manipulation means we can work around a little more damage.

We're going on a radical musical adventure, so we'll call our hero ♪. Unfortunately, we'll be going too fast to properly enjoy the music, but such is life in the fast lane.

Stage 1 – Hero's Departure

This stage is awful. You just finish the first untimed bit ASAP, and then the rest of the level plays itself. The dash onto the boat where the herb is saves about 5 frames. I got super unlucky with crits on the boss, losing almost a full second.

Stage 2 – Continental Bridge

It went almost perfectly, but I was slightly off on RN manips, costing me .5s on the boss.

Stage 3 – Lord Hadears

Oh hey what's this level doing here? Slight messup on the RNs at the beginning costs me—the second and third encounters should be 100% crits—but not too bad. And then we get the merc shield, which is stupidly OP (or, rather, every other shield in the first half of the game is literally worthless). We'll be wearing that for a while.

Stage 4 – Caves and Forests

 bug swatter OP. Swapping equipment takes more time than it saves. Also, say hello to the horse. I call him Sonic.

Stage 5 – Fire Starter

This route shamelessly stolen from Xarugas... There's about a 50/50 chance of the boss killing you at level 8 with this route, but things went almost perfectly here. We also pick up the Barrel Helm, which is an OK helmet that we'll be stuck with for half the game.

Stage 6 – Through the Cave

zzz. Wheaties OP. Gotta get the rubber boots, because we're not getting better than boots10 for a long time.

Stage 7 – Castle Over the Sea

A few battles manipulated to get us 260 gold before going to the boss.

Stage 8 – Good Ol' Days

all our strats are belong to Mike Uyama. Slight error costs .5s

Stage 9 – Change the Current

sigh. I failed to run across both squares of the bridge, costing me 1s, and then I lost another 1s to early (and one frame-perfect) pauses. Yuck.

Stage 10 – Beautiful Evil Lord

the pause is frame-perfect. Other than that, the level was pretty much perfect.

Stage 11 – Bandit Valley

literally perfect. Lots of RNG manips to get through this stage without having to go back to base, but I love the resulting route.

Stage 12 – Road to Land or Sea

almost perfect. Missed three crits on the boss, but oh well.

Stage 13 – Past the Ocean

Again I failed to run both squares across the bridge, but I wound up at a really good spot in the RNG by pure luck so it turned out OK.

Stage 14 – Dragon Island

Perfect. Switching equipment again costs more time than it saves.

Stage 15 – Tiny Sailing Trip

Pretty much perfect again. You can get extremely unlucky on the boss, but it doesn't get much better than that.

Stage 16 – Flower in the Dusk

Lots of manips for the two 'shroom battles and lots of crits. I actually want to be at 15 after the second battle—I'll save a solid second if I do—but this is okay.

Stage 17 – To the Snowy Country

Lots of little errors costing a second, but solid overall. And yes stopping running at 4HP is very necessary.

Stage 18 – Avalanche Pass

oh boy. This went awful. This is the only stage in the game where the RNG is actually random, making it a nightmare. There's an alternative strat on this stage that can save time but is much riskier, so I went with the safe strat. Said safe strat then proceeded to give me absolutely troll luck—I have never failed to hit level 11 there before—and then the extra battle is against a yeti (entirely on me; they only spawn within two squares of the boss, but I was greedy and ugh). Easily the worst level of the entire run. Six seconds can be saved here. Six!

Stage 19 – White Earth

screwed up RNG manips—I should be level 9 fighting the boss.

Stage 20 – Great Plains

Almost perfect. Also, Sonic returns. He's pretty fast.

Stage 21 – Floodgate Panic

Bit of slow menuing and a few movement errors, but acceptable. Also why is this cutscene so lonnnngggggggggg. Oh, and I equip the bug swatter so I don't have to in the next level. Furthermore, this stage gives us the Silver Armor. In the PSP version, it states in the Goddess Room that the armor does not give your attacks OHKO-power against demons. This is a blatant lie; Silver Armor is by far the best armor in the game for precisely this reason.

Stage 22 – The Have-Nots

This is literally the worst-programmed level in the entire game, as there's a random chance that the eastern cave wrong warps you into the middle of the mountains, softlocking your game. Thankfully, whether or not this happens is determined on level load, so it's not like I'm rolling the dice four times. Also, the guy who gives you money in the eastern town's cutscene goes super-slow if you press enter too fast. Oh, and, if you press X to enter the town or the tunnel too fast, you can enter the wrong one.

None of that happened in this run, which is amazing.

Stage 23 – Fire Mountain

pretty much perfect. Some minor movement mistakes, and awful boss luck, but I'll take it. We also buy the Metal Helm—pretty much the worst helmet in the game—for later. Yeah, this route avoids all the good helmets. A pity.

Stage 24 – Golem Valley

Perfect. Manip the double-rat battle, then run through the rest of the stage.

Stage 25 – Treasure Land

We manip the three battles against the double demons, then run to the boss. A few minor mistakes, but no biggie.

Stage 26 – N/A

stage 26 is afraid of stage 27 because 27 28 29.

Stage 27 – Grand Wings

Or, the first of the dreaded dragon levels. As you can see, there's about .6s of leeway here. I'm really proud of this strat >_>

Stage 28 – Farewell Bandit Trio

Fighting a third battle after entering town is unnecessary, but safer. Costs about .4s. Oh, and this and the next stage are why I get the Metal Helm.

Stage 29 – Infinite Weapon Lord

Fighting the second demon after slaying the whale wastes 2 seconds, but if I don't, I die in the boss battle if I'm not frame-perfect. I decided to play it safe.

Stage 30 – Cursed Hero

The glitch that lets me get into a battle immediately after checking the tombstone is so cool. Not much else to say here.

Stage 31 – Last Battle

I throw away about a second equipping the duel grieves because safe strats, and am a little slow with the cutscene skip in the tunnel. Also, as you can see, entering the boss with less than 5s on the clock makes him super weak, which is so dumb but I'll take it!

Thanks to Xarugas and Mike Uyama for various strats, to Nate for Anri-chan, and for everyone who made the original game. You guys who were responsible for the port, I'll see you after class.

269 levels were gained in the making of this run.

Some general notes:

--In HMH, random encounters happen every 9 steps, with steps spent running not decrementing the counter. The exception to this is any step on a square where there are no random encounters; these don't count towards the total. This counter also resets after entering a boss or other fixed battle, so we generally want to run from the last random battle before a boss to the boss.

--The RNG in HMH is not truly random. Similar to Fire Emblem, it is set to a certain predetermined value at the start of each level. Also like in Fire Emblem, there is a bizarre way to advance the RNG: here, it's by running. It doesn't matter whether this running happens on the overworld, in battle, or in town—it all counts. On the flipside, you can spend a good minute walking around in town without impacting the RNG whatsoever.

--Town Warping, which as Xarugas says above allows you to enter a town from two squares away as long as you're moving towards it. This saves a nice bit of time even if we don't have anything to do in the town.

-- Kamikaze: Enemies in this game fly off the screen slightly faster than the player character. You also are not awarded gold and XP until the last enemy finishes flying off. This means that when death warping, if you can set things up so that an AI companion kills the last enemy immediately after the hero dies, you will receive all the gold and XP from the fight while still warping to start. Unfortunately, there are very few situations where this is usable.

--Perfect Warping: whenever triggering a cutscene, town warp, or any other sort of scene change, 2 HP are spent if you're holding down the run button, but running doesn't actually save any time in this situation. So on a lot of stages, you have to walk that last step to save the HP for later.

Special thanks:

--Xarugas for his run, which was a great starting point, and for the times he posted. They were old times, but because the PSP version's leaderboards were down by the time I started running, they were fantastic to have as a reference.

--Toshihiko Takamizawa and everyone else who wrote the music in this game. Because it's amazing.

--Marvelous for making the game, and XSeed for localizing it. Now give us HMH2 please :)

--All the SDA people for hosting this run

--Mike for the strategy on Good Ol' Days, and Nate for writing Anri-chan, without which I'd probably still be trying to figure out how to encode things properly.

Some general notes:

--In HMH, random encounters happen every 9 steps, with steps spent running not decrementing the counter. The exception to this is any step on a square where there are no random encounters; these don't count towards the total. This counter also resets after entering a boss or other fixed battle, so we generally want to run from the last random battle before a boss to the boss.

--The RNG in HMH is not truly random. Similar to Fire Emblem, it is set to a certain predetermined value at the start of each level. Also like in Fire Emblem, there is a bizarre way to advance the RNG: here, it's by running. It doesn't matter whether this running happens on the overworld, in battle, or in town—it all counts. On the flipside, you can spend a good minute walking around in town without impacting the RNG whatsoever.

--Town Warping, which as Xerugas says above allows you to enter a town from two squares away as long as you're moving towards it. This saves a nice bit of time even if we don't have anything to do in the town.

-- Kamikaze: Enemies in this game fly off the screen slightly faster than the player character. You also are not awarded gold and XP until the last enemy finishes flying off. This means that when death warping, if you can set things up so that an AI companion kills the last enemy immediately after the hero dies, you will receive all the gold and XP from the fight while still warping to start. Unfortunately, there are very few situations where this is usable.

--Perfect Warping: whenever triggering a cutscene, town warp, or any other sort of scene change, 2 HP are spent if you're holding down the run button, but running doesn't actually save any time in this situation. So on a lot of stages, you have to walk that last step to save the HP for later.

Special thanks:

--Xerugas for his run, which was a great starting point, and for the times he posted. They were old times, but because the PSP version's leaderboards were down by the time I started running, they were fantastic to have as a reference.

--Toshihiko Takamizawa and everyone else who wrote the music in this game. Because it's amazing.

--Marvelous for making the game, and XSeed for localizing it. Now give us HMH2 please :)

--All the SDA people for hosting this run

--Mike for the strategy on Good Ol' Days, and Nate for writing Anri-chan, without which I'd probably still be trying to figure out how to encode things properly.

So, Evil Lord 30. Unlike in Hero 30, there's no RNG manipulation-based silliness. Just calm, cold strategy. And by strategy I mean running up to bosses and one-shotting them.

We get three types of summons: Brutes, which one-shot most things; Nimbles, which are weaker but faster; and Shooters, which are worthless. Brutes beat Nimbles, Nimbles beat Shooters, and Shooters would beat Brutes if they could hit them with their shots, but they can't. Because they're worthless. There's also a Wandering Jelly hidden on every level, which is super effective against everything. This is occasionally useful.

XP gain throughout the run basically boils down to "kill Nimbles whenever practical", since they're the only enemy class which can be killed effectively. Everything else, we just run past.

Also, for those more familiar with the PSP version, they're almost identical. The only interesting difference is that the girl on Stage 8 is much better at tag on PSP than on PC.

Stage 1: At Violet Castle (7.42)

This stage isn't timed for some reason. Enemies also don't have HP bars and can only be damaged by Brutes—even the Wandering Jelly on this stage can't damage them. So we just send Brutes forward and hope the enemy AI decides to run into our brutes. This stage went OK in this run; the AI didn't suicide quite as fast as I would have liked, but it's not horrible.

Stage 2: Village at the Base (3.16)

There's some enemies guarding a Noire statue. We need to destroy the Noire statue. There is roughly a 10% chance the enemies decide to run straight forward, in which case we cannot get past and we have to reset. Usually, though, we can run straight down and let a Brute one-shot the statue.

Stage 3: Path (11.55)

So the objective on this stage is to kill all of the enemy Brutes. As covered earlier, Brutes are weak to Shooters; however, Shooters are worthless and can't hit anything for beans. There is a Jelly we can and do use to kill a number of the brutes, but it can't kill all of them, meaning we have to summon a bunch of Shooters and hope they actually hit something. Occasionally they do. This level can be done in sub-10 seconds, but it's pure luck. 11.55 is actually a little on the slow side, but we make up for it later.

I do, however, have some good news: we will get through the rest of the game without summoning another Shooter. Yay!

Stage 4: Large Town (10.51)

This time, there's two Noire statues to kill. We can also finally start gathering XP in the form of coins; we need to get 100 of them in this stage in order to hit level 2.This is why we do the weird little dance off to the right—this aggros all of the Nimbles, which we can then kill with Brutes who will go on to kill the eastern Statue while we run off to deal with the western one. There is a Jelly due south of our starting position, but getting it saves no time and makes it harder to get the ten coins.

Stage 5: Small Fort (6.79)

This time, the enemy decides to send Shooters at us. Fortunately, enemy Shooters are just as worthless as allied Shooters, and we can just run through them. One-shot the statue for good measure and call it a day.

Stage 6: Spirit Path * (6.08)

Use a Brute to cut off any Nimbles from that first line that try to get in our way, then run straight at the defenseless boss. Oh wait—he summoned a bunch of enemies. And by enemies I mean Shooters. The only real danger is accidentally running into them.

Stage 7: Cobbled Bridge (9.08)

The boss of this stage is weak to Shooters. Unfortunately, Shooters are still worthless, so instead we'll run past the boss, grab the Jelly, and then position ourselves so that the Jelly winds up on top of the boss, causing him to explode. Weeeeee~

Stage 8: Coastline * (10.20)

Just damage boost past all the shooters. Though for some reason, this seems to make it more likely they actually hit you with arrows. *Shrug.* Anyways, we get through cleanly and then take advantage of the girl's poor AI in the PC version to quickly tag her. (In the PSP version, you're forced to lose a second because, if you go too fast, the girl goes "nope" and starts running around a circle on the right side of the map really fast.)

Stage 9: Large Fort (7.59)

More enemy Brutes. Again, these guys are basically impossible to kill because Shooters are worthless and I refuse to summon more Shooters anyways, so we'll just dodge past everyone in order to get to the Noire statue faster.

Stage 10: Town Square (9.83)

Ooh Nimbles! We need to kill a bunch of 'em for XP, but if we kill too many we can't quick-kill the boss anymore. Balance is key. I would have rather gotten the kill a little earlier, but this is fine.

Stage 11: Maze Fort (9.19)

The only thing standing between us and Noire himself is a single line of Shooters. I'm sure you know where this is going...

Stage 12: Castle Town (15.96)

There's five Noire statues on this stage, plus tons of Nimbles to kill for XP. Pretty straightforward; we just charge Brutes towards some of the more distant statues in order to keep things fast. I lose about a half-second when I miss the angle when I'm in the NE corner, but 15.XX is still pretty much perfect.

Stage 13: Castle Gates (8.13)

There is a big giant gate in the way. We will kill it with Brutes. Also, we finally hit Level 3 yay!

Stage 14: Great Hall (8.48)

There's a few enemies on this stage we have to dodge, but luckily enough there's a safe spot right next to the Shooters where we can stand for a second or so while waiting for enemies to get out of our way. Yeah, they're still worthless. I actually misstime the charge at the end—I want the Nimble to land on the boss, rather than doing that 2-hit combo—but it only costs a fraction of a second.

Stage 15: King's Room (8.63)

Run up, kill the King, call it a day.

Stage 30: Noire Castle (11.16)

Noire is weak to Nimbles this time, so we just sort of send Nimbles up to him until he dies. Occasionally you get unlucky and he doesn't die, which sucks. We don't run forwards because that causes a full row of statues to spawn. You can run past them, but the Nimbles frequently decide to be stupid and suicide into the statues rather than killing Noire, so... yeah.

Special Thanks:

--To Xarugas and MAS8705 for their previous attempts, which gave me lots of good strategies

--To all the composers, especially whoever thought it was a good idea to have a song that's basically a guy screaming BULL SHIT. Which just happens to play on the most RNG-dependent levels.

--To SDA, for hosting this.

--Marvelous for making the game, and XSeed for localizing it.

Thanks for watching!