Notes might be a bit long but I enjoyed documenting stuff as I rewatched my run.

Thanks to myself, Cramer_ and DarkDevastat10n and all the information in the SDA thread for helping route this game (and getting me into it in the first place), since I started playing and gave Dark competition it went from basically no out of bounds or significant skips in the run to being a really broken game. We were joking about "Sub 1 hour run when" for a pretty long time when we were getting 1:05s~, then new skips and strats popped up all over the place. I got a sub 1 hour run once and thought I was going to take a break, then a week later I found another huge skip. The process of routing MGR has been a hell of a lot of fun.

Important run stuff

DIfficulty - Hard, most active runners play on Hard and all the competition I had when I picked up MGR was playing on Hard.

Levels are named R-00 through R-07.

Movement - Sprinting and Jumping consistently is marginially faster than straight up Sprinting.

Blade Mode - A main mechanic of Metal Gear Rising during standard play that doesn't see much use in NG+. By clicking the Left Trigger after a counter or while having a full FC you can manually aim sword slashes precisely cut specific portions of enemies.

Offensive Defence - Worded as dodge attack in these notes, as that's what it effectively is. If done between combos of the Pincer weapon, you can continue your combo in a different position.

Fuel Cell Gauge (FC) - Energy Bar used for Blade Mode and Ripper Mode that is unlimited for NG+ due to the use of Infinite Wig B.

Infinite Wig B - Allows unlimited use of the FC gauge, obtained by gathering collectables and completing the game. Used in NG+ from the R-01 onward.

Ripper Mode - When the FC is full, you can activate this for increased damage, and during Ripper Mode armoured enemies can be cut and most standard enemies are able to be killed in 1 attack if cut correctly. Can be activated / deactivated at will. Used from R-01 onward.

Polearm jumping - A vital part of running the NG+ Category. Throughout the entire run I do a glitch called Polearm Jumping to attain extra height on jumps, which in turn lets me jump over area barriers, skipping long sections of levels, cutscenes or conversations and other things. This glitch is performed by activing Ripper Mode at a precise time between the first and second attack in a mid-air Polearm attack combo. There are several different heights of Polearm Jumps depending on your timing, the higher the better obviously.

Codec calls - Other characters at various times through the game call Raiden to further the story, but most importantly to the run, slow down your movement to load sections of levels, despawn sections of levels, spawn collision, despawn previous collision etc.

Stealth - This game uses a pretty inconsistant stealth mechanic unlike Metal Gear Solids, which can sometimes mean you get caught doing nothing wrong. Regardless, generally enemies don't spot you when you're behind them, when they have their heads turned away from your direction and if you're walking or running, but not sprinting. Also Smoke Grenades.

General Combat - A lot of the combat is skipped in this run, but because this is NG+, all weapons, armour, skills etc. are unlocked and I can permanently have Ripper Mode enabled. The challenge then in all of the level combat I cannot skip comes from how I can effectively link together attacks to move between enemies quickly, and which weapons allow me to do that.

Bosses - Bosses in this game have specific health percentages where they will "change phases" and begin to take less damage for periods of their health bar. As I have all weapons and Ripper Mode enabled I can dish out damage extremely quickly, this is somewhat of a doubled edged sword regarding bosses though. Breaking those health percentages at the wrong time can lead to long counter attack animations, different attack patterns and reduced damage which lose time. Instead the strategy for bosses relies on which attacks can do exact amounts of damage to "break" those health points, controlling when they change phase or if they change phase at all. This is most evident in the Monsoon boss fight which I will detail in the level notes (R-03), but applies to every boss.

 

R-00 - The "tutorial" level of the game, before Raiden receives his upgrades / weapons, as such there are no out of bounds or the like during this level, all of the bosses are pretty RNG heavy on fastest patterns / animations so this level is pretty reset heavy. It begins with 3 standard Soldier enemies, which you counter attack on the first melee swing against you to initiate a Blade Mode, and cut all 3 of them in half, after which you run past the remaining area enemies into a boss fight.

BOSS FIGHT: Metal Gear Ray has only two attacks you care about, a headbutt and a charge, so you can block them and counter attack for 20% of his health at a time, for some reason the counter attack damage is applied when you initiate the counter and not actually when you attack so that speeds things up a lot. After 5 of these attacks, which are luck based, Ray will jump away and end the fight with a QTE.

The next section is just learning basic movement mechanics such as sprinting over terrain before another boss fight.

BOSS FIGHT: Metal Gear Ray 2, the first time health percentages and phase changes become important. I intentionally stop attacking at above 80% as not to phase change early, because the Blade Mode attacks do large amounts of damage, which lets me skip over a phase change and put his health point at another Blade Mode trigger after 1 attack, for another round of high damage, and so on. The rest of the fight is QTE stuff, but time can be lost by the missiles having a slow pattern as you jump across them.

BOSS FIGHT: Scripted fights that you have to lose. First fight ends when you take 50% damage and attack Sam once, second phase ends when Sam drops your health to 0.1% and knocks you down, third phase ends after Sam knocks you down with 2 attacks. By attacking Sam in the middle of his first swing during the third phase, he does his second attack faster, saving a few seconds of waiting.

R-01 - Where the run really begins. I start out going to the right hand side of the Beach and Polearm Jumping twice over 2 invisible barriers to skip a cutscene and a fight and enter the building. After the codec call a large out of bounds takes place by jumping out of the roof of the corridor and running across the roof tops of the buildings, I then jump across to the boss activation point on the small tunnel. This skips 3 codec calls, multiple enemy groups and opening a door, also several minutes of time.

BOSS FIGHT: Bladewolf opens the fight by either jumping at you or jumping backwards, but by throwing a Smoke Grenade as he ascends into the area he loses sight of me. This lets me set up to kill him in 2 hits without fear of counter attack using the Pincer weapon.

After a nice scripted sequence one of the Heli's stays around for a fight, which I can jump to using the Sai (a Dagger with a magnetic line to charge at enemies) almost killing it instantly. I run past some unnecessary enemies, cut down a door and again use the Sai to kill this group of Soldiers in a fast order to remove the Rocket Launcher wielders first (so they can't knock me down), unfortunately I did get stuck on a dying enemy for a couple of seconds though.

During the Carnival Wheel area, I run down the right side against the wall to not get caught by the second set of enemies around me, getting caught on the first set of enemies isn't a problem as they give up chase quite quickly and don't activate a barrier forcing you to kill them. I descend into the Refinery, killing a quick group of enemies, and then by avoiding the lasers without detection am able to smoke grenade the final 3 enemies to sneak into the Mistral Boss area.

BOSS FIGHT: Because the Pincer does so much damage on NG+, I can end the fight in 2 attacks. I open with a Charge Pincer attack, and then use a dodge attack so I can keep my combo going when Phase 2 starts, upon landing in Phase 2 I let rip the second Pincer attack which drops her HP to 0.1. Upon landing in Phase 3 she will do the QTE sequence to finish the fight and end R-01.

R-02 - Most of this level is stealthing past enemies except scripted encounters. The two Mastiffs I jump over turn their heads away just as I reach the end of the runway above them, meaning I can land basically next to them without them spotting me. I sprint past all the Mini-Gekkos and kill the 3 Raptors by using the Pincer and slashing the Mini-gekkos they spawn. I back attack the first Mastiff in this tunnel and stealth past the other 2 using the same "not looking in my direction" stuff as before. I smoke grenade the guards below me and after I push the button to open the door so I can stealth to the button below me. If I sprinted as I landed on this button I would have saved a second on the landing animation but I mistimed it.

After a small fight I take control of a Mini-Gekko, and jump up the scenery to stun the final Guard in the room, I stun this Guard as it's faster to stun him than it is to have to fight him in a moment as he needs to run around to get to me. One more fight sequence later of run slashing the enemies down, I arrive at the GRAD fight.

BOSS FIGHT: I approach GRAD from the right side after dodging his attacks so I can roll attack into him quickly, which pushes him back at the fastest rate to start Phase 2. Upon Phase 2 starting I dodge attack backwards so I can go straight into the Pincers second Combo attack to knock the GRAD down and finish him with a Pincer 3 / QTE attack.

R-03 - As with a lot of enemies in this game, I run slash the guards down and Polearm attack the heavily armoured guy, then moving onto the next set of enemies to bring the barrier down and continue. By taking the stairs and jumping across the gap that explodes beneath me, I can skip fighting the two GRADs that spawn in this area.

After ascending the Elevator, I jump across the two roof gaps to a spot where the run could die from 1 misclick. I jump across the seemingly unreachable gap, and Polearm jump at the end of it to gain height and land on the other roof. This skips a large fight section, and stops more enemies spawning on the second roof top. I then Polearm jump up the building, and fall behind the elevator shaft out of bounds to skip the dark tunnel section. Restarting from checkpoint at the end to get back in bounds.

I kill the 3 enemies and cut the bridge so I can reach the GRAD, then stealth past the enemies on the left of me. By using the Sai again in this section I can jump between these enemies at speed and have no risk of being knocked back by Rockets. Cue long scripted sequence until the Monsoon Boss fight.

BOSS FIGHT: Monsoon was an absolute travesty of a boss until a few weeks before this run was done, this was the fight I first noticed about boss health percentages and phase changes originally and how to control them. Monsoons specific health points are 63.6, 40% and 10%. As such I open with a combo that knocks him down, does large damage, and hits the exact health points I need. This took literal weeks of testing to get right because basically any deviation from these health points can completely ruin his pattern and cause huge time losses.

When Monsoon lands from his first round of long animation attacks, he has an immunity to all attacks (indicated by glowing purple) that I need to use EMP grenades on to remove. Upon being hit by an EMP grenade I knock his head off and set up for your next set of attacks. This is the most precise and irritating part of the fight. I have to time my Pincer charge attack to exactly when he jumps back up from the ground to take enough damage so I knock him down again, and so my NEXT attack drops him below 40% health. If he goes Purple before he drops below 40% health, it's basically a reset or a 30+ second time loss. After another EMP, head knock off and specific set of attacks, he drops to 10% health and will end the fight by jumping away and starting the QTE stuff.

This was the result of weeks of frustration to remove any elements of RNG in the fight after losing tons of runs here to RNG. Now this is a literal perfect strategy.

R-04 - Most of this level is fight routing with 1 major skip. I jump between enemies using the Sai on the first fight, sit through the 1 minute~ scripted event waiting for the elevator and jump between enemies using the Sai again once more. After another scripted running around corridors sequence and wall run, I enter the Japanese Garden. In here I kill the first round of enemies except the final Soldier, only cutting his legs off so he bleeds out slowly, which lets me use a Polearm Jump to get over the left hand side wall, and because the Soldier is still bleeding out, stops the second set of enemies spawning meaning I can just run through the area unhindered.

A strange mistake occurs as I approach the Freight Elevator control panel and I get caught with no enemies looking at me, 1 of them behind a wall and 1 of them dead, so I'm not sure how this happened still, I've not even been able to replicate it. Regardless, I lost 10 seconds having to kill them which sucked but I couldn't stop it. Another scripted sequence going up the Freight Elevator shaft that ends with a set of extremely quick kills, so fast that the enemy barrier came down before the Freight Elevator arrived at the top and I wasn't sure how to run toward the door while inside a wall, getting stuck for a second on a piece of scenery.

BOSS FIGHT: Round 2 of Mistral and Monsoon, I throw a Smoke grenade at Mistral to stop the Mini-Gekkos from grabbing onto me and quick kill her with the Pincer combos. I intentionally dodge into one of her attacks as it's actually faster to recover from the ground and restart the Pincer charge than it was to continue my current combo.
I stand against the wall during Monsoon 2 as he will only do do the ground attacks during his smoke phase allowing me to block everything and end that phase quicker. Basically everything about this Monsoon 2 was perfect combo wise, I don't think I will ever get a faster fight than that.

More scripted stuff and onto Sundowner.

BOSS FIGHT: Keeping with the theme of killing bosses quickly using the Pincer, Sundowner dies in 4 hits. He opened with the charge attack which lets me jump over him and set up for a quick kill without issue.

R-05 - Now a hilariously short level thanks to Dark finding a route to skip having to stealth past the Mini-Gekko enemies. I open by killing the surrounding Guards and stealthing past the Gekkos that spawn, apparently running behind a bus means you're stealthed. After 1 more small encounter I run past the Mini-Gekkos in such a way that they can't see me sprinting apparently, I use the Box to hide from the 2 flying enemies from above and then continue running past everything until the end of the level.

R-06 - BOSS FIGHT: Ah Sam 2, I hate you. I have a strategy for a quick kill that is about 35 seconds on average, but it's heavily RNG reliant on Sam's first attack pattern, it's about a 1 in 6 chance or something of getting the only pattern that loses you time and I unfortunately got it in this run. What I wanted to happen was Pincer 2 Charge, Pincer 3 Charge and then slide into him to knock him over and finish the fight, instead I had to chase him around for 10 extra seconds because his first attack was a dodge on my combo. Whatever.

R-07 - Home of an amazing out of bounds I found that saved 30 seconds on the previous route. By running to the right hand side, ignoring the enemies in front of the gate, and Polearm Jumping over the wall / barrier, the collision on the second half of the level does not load, meaning you can just sprint through the buildings straight to the final bosses and not need to fight anything. This is without doubt the hardest polearm jump in the game though, as you require the absolute maximum out of your jump to get over the barrier.

BOSS FIGHT: One of my favourite bosses. Using the high damage of the Pincer I can force phase changes really quickly on his first leg. During the laser phase I intentionally take damage down to around 32% health, for something I'll mention on the next boss. Using the lasers to kill the Gekkos that spawn I just wait for the sequence to end before killing the second leg, going through the QTEs and getting to Armstrong.

Armstrongs first phase ends when you do 5% damage to him, easy enough. His second phase ends when he knocks you down to 0.1% health, this is why I intentionally took the damage before on Excelsus as he will only need to hit me once to achieve this. After more QTE's the real final boss begins.

I open with re-activating Ripper Mode for more damage and doing a combo of attacks to chip some damage away which changes the way the next part of the fight plays out. The first combo I did means my Sky High attacks (Uppercuts) will knock him up faster and force Phase 2 to start without any danger of counter attack. When Phase 2 begins, represented by a green healing beam on his back, I quickly cut that, and go back to Uppercutting until 0.1% hp. The fight is basically in the bag when you dodge the first 2 Fire Line attacks he does to me, as I basically only need to conisistently hit 1 attack for the remainder of the encounter, so I knew in the first 10 seconds whether or not I had this run sealed or not. Like most of the other bosses, a sequence of QTEs follows and the game ends when you press the final B button to remove Armstrongs Heart.

Final Comments

There are still improvements to be made in this run, but for now I'm genuinely happy considering I don't have any competition. Pretty much everything I could control went well from the out of bounds, to bosses and combat and movement, there were no major mistakes on my part. Losing 20 seconds to RNG was a little painful but I'll live with it for now. I'm continuing to search for more skips and will do more runs when I find something substantial.

Thanks for watching and reading if you managed to get through this wall.

No author's comments provided.