I needed an excuse to play more Tales of Vesperia, so naturally I decided to run it! Be sure to listen to the audio commentary for a more thorough overview of what all I did in this run. (nate's in it too!)

Special thanks:
Nathan for occasionally bringing Rita's god hand down upon the battlefield, being on Cockface Duty, and helping me slave away in the coliseum to get Cockface's fell arm to 9999/9999. (holy shit was that annoying) Also for taking down brilliant notes for me while I was practicing, capturing and encoding my run, and being generally supportive and helpful.
Michael for moral support and hanging out with us while I did practice runs and worked stuff out.
Yuri and Rita for existing
And you!

General notes: As you may already know, the ps3 version has cutscene skip, which is mostly the cause of the huge time improvement over the xbox360 run. I avoid actual save points for a while because it gives me a short, unskippable text tutorial for them when I hit the first one. I thought I could make it the whole way without using one at all, but I gave in later on when one segment would have been too ridiculous otherwise.

Segment 1: The most notable option I pick in the grade shop is a new one added for the ps3 version. It's at the bottom left, and it carries over your fell arm stats into the new game. Awwwww yeah. I equip Yuri, synth the winged boots, moon selector, and special flag, and turn on Yuri's skills (Combo Plus, Combo Plus 2, Glory, Super Chain, and Super Chain 2.)

Segment 2: The beginning of the segment is definitely the best place to deal with menus. The skills I turn on for Repede are Combo Plus, Dash, Quick Turn, and Holy Breath.
I equip Cockface; don't need any skills for him.
I get the petal after defeating the eggbear because my stink wears off at an inopportune time if I get it first. More of that to come!

Segment 3: Picking up Ritacchi :3 Sadly she doesn't get any action until later on in the game because Yuri is so fucking boss.

Segment 4: Dat Gattuso

Segment 5: Very awesome world of warcraft fight in here. Ragoo's shit doesn't get any less annoying no matter how many times I do it, and it doesn't help that it's longer in this version.

Segment 6: So I had to go back and redo this segment because lol you only need one password to proceed through Caer Bocram. I saved about a minute and a half after redoing it. The reason I use a holy bottle right before I save is because I made them match up with how many I had in segment 7. This was possible thanks to manual timing, yay!

Segment 7: Yuri acts like the Don was hard to kill because he's a nice guy.

Segment 8: The underground waterway is the first completely new area in this version. It's more annoying than anything but the music is great at least. I have to recharge my ~aer ring~ once because some albino directing traffics pop out and completely block my path if I don't. Ghasfarost is also in this segment, which makes it one of the most annoying ones I had to do.

Segment 9: Repede is a total bro.

Segment 10: Ghost ship and first Cypher fight. Also some fun with the Yurinator in the coliseum. Lol @ new shortest battle record followed by accidental surprise encounter.

Segment 11: I finally equip Ritacchi! Her main role until much later in the game is to ensure that battles end in a timely manner regardless of what happens. Kind of like an extremely beautiful time bomb. The skills I turn on for her are Light Magic and Speed Cast. A bunch were automatically turned on by the game.

Segment 12: Belius goes WRYYYYYYYYYYYY but it doesn't do anything. Rita thinks the battle is mondai nai.
Sailing~

Segment 13: Lots of annoying forced fights in Mt. Temza. Tison and Nan cooperated well though, which was great. I thought getting Bowel would speed things up, or help, or something, but he's so incredibly hard to steer that it made every segment after this one take longer than it would have if he wasn't around. You can't even save on him so it's just completely awful.

Segment 14: Definitely the hardest segment. A bunch of forced battles followed by a ton of Bowel flying, and then a bonus forced battle a ways through Baction. Not fun. This is the first time I use an actual save point because no way was I going to continue on and do Heracles after getting this far. I thought I could at first but I quickly realized it wasn't happening.

Segment 15: Schwann turned out to be fairly unpredictable, so it was extra good I saved there. Heracles is a bitch even during normal play, but I managed to actually kind of get the hang of it while doing this.

Segment 16: So, Baitojoh. The reason we got Cockface's fell arm to 9999/9999. Normally there's a one minute timer until Yuri & co. join the fight, but I figured killing him before the timer runs out would be faster. Turns out you can't completely kill him, but you can force the event to progress, saving like 40-45 seconds. Love how Rita mocks Baitojoh at the end.
Zaphias castle and part of Zaude follow.

Segment 17: Patty knocking Yeager on the head with a dish ftw.
Alexei has a ton of HP, but paper cuts hurt.
I go pick everyone up after the fake final boss fight (fuck Bowel), and then go play DDR with Estelle in Zophail. Pelicans, pelicans everywhere.

Segment 18: Overlimited to ensure I get the Nightbreaker quickly and neatly. Nathan takes care of Daybreaker. They like to Overlimit immediately, which was a reset.
This segment has a ton of Bowel flying, forced battles, and navigating the extremely annoying Relewiese Hollow. I make it all the way to the Crystallands before something strange happens. My stink decides to wear off at the absolute worst place possible - in the middle of all of the crystals you have to shoot down. When you shoot the ring, the stink disappears and takes a while to return for whatever reason. I was expecting it to run out at any second, so at one point I thought it had. Turns out it hadn't, and I saw it come back right when I hit the menu button. I immediately exit out and continue on, except now I have to graze a tortoise to pass it right after shooting the crystal that encases it. You can see that it finally does run out right before I pass the tortoise (it sees me), but it ends up not hitting me, so maybe it was good after all? Crazy.

Segment 19: We chase Patty and end up fighting Cypher again. He loves to move around, so it was difficult to catch him with enough Wallis pages to kill him.
Onward to Aurnion, where they added a small running sequence that times out after a few seconds. Nathan switches to Repede to kill things with his maxed fell arm and retargets a few times because we'd be on the same enemy all the time otherwise. Phlegm tries to help with his Moralfag Laser but it doesn't really work out.
Some more flying around (uoooooorghhhhh) and then I pwn Phlegm.

Segment 20: Tarq, Zagi, who is a little bitch who never stays still, and then Duke, who went perfectly.

Segment 1 - Good segment. Picked up Winged Boots for faster running.

Segment 2 - One of my least favorite segments. Estelle is a whore.

Segment 3 - Get Battle Book and Karol. Cut scenes mixed in there somewhere.

Segment 4 - One of my favorite segments. Artes, Equips, and Skills for various members.

Segment 5 - Boring segment in which Karol thinks he can heal a tree, and Yuri kills an Eggbear. Then go pick up Rita in Aspio.

Segment 6 - First real battle, Goliath, one of many easy battles. Eventually ended up in Ehmead Hill.

Segment 7 - Defeated Gattuso, not a hard battle. Got the horn from Rhybgaro.

Segment 8 - Killed the magical key bearing wolves, killed Zagi, and ended up at Caer Bocram.

Segment 9 - Found password and killed Dreaded Giant. This was the fastest we could kill him because we had to wait for everyone to enter the battle.

Segment 10 - Hated this segment mainly because it was so long. The three battles at the end really were a pain in the ass and if I didn't get lucky on at least one of them with how many enemies there was then I had to restart.

Segment 11 - Gigalarva was easy, rarely restarted because of a bad battle with him. The tower of gears did like to rape me, but only on the very last gear you had to shoot. I actually missed that one gear 7 times once. Still one of my favorite segments though.

Segment 12 - Barbos pretty much did whatever he wanted this segment which made it very difficult to get a good time, had to get lucky. This is also the segment where Karol thinks it's a good idea to create a guild.

Segment 13 - Judith in slut outfit, and fuck Yeager.

Segment 14 - Got ship from Kaufman and raped some sharks till we got to the ghost ship.

Segment 15 - Chose parties, and then killed monsters from ship, went to Nordopolica to go see Belius.

Segment 16 - Fought in coliseum and dominated, Kill Zagi, and then fought some more, fun segment overall.

Segment 17 - Killed Pteropus before he could transform and then saved in the inn.

Segment 18 - Made my way through the desert (hate the desert), killed Outbreaker (love raping flying jellyfish), and then went to Yormgen and skipped having to talk to everyone by sleeping at the inn (found this one out by myself :) ).

Segment 19 - Too many cut-scenes --> Fuck this segment

Segment 20 - Good segment, just hated the segment. The minions were always a pain and Belius was easy. The cut-scenes and running were a pain as well.

Segment 21 - Fuck that bridge, there is always somebody there trying to fuck you up. Don kills himself for obvious reasons --> Karol. Karol is a fucking douche; nobody likes him so he starts to cry in the corner.

Segment 22 - Easy segment, just had to restart a lot to get lucky with the number of enemies.

Segment 23 - Got Belius. Flew around and talked to people. Ended up at Egothor Forest.

Segment 24 - Lots of fighting in the beginning. Took less tries than you would think. Ended up at Yormgen.

Segment 25 - Talked to Flynn. Flew and went into Baction just to be greeted by Flynn's bitch, Sodia, Yuri smacks that hoe around and then goes through Baction and save before Schwann.

Segment 26 - Defeated Schwann and then went through Heracles. Good segment.

Segment 27 - Killed Zagi again. Got out of Heracles and went to Blade Drifts, least favorite place in the whole game.

Segment 28 - Running away with Karol was the fastest, timed it multiple times. Went to Halure and then walked to the capital and saved on world map. Beginning of segment was annoying, but the end was easy.

Segment 29 - Went into the capital, lit the moons in the right order, and then saved before Estelle.

Segment 30 - Defeated Estelle, then talked to everyone in the capital and made my way to Zaude, gotta love the way Yuri swims, he one hands that shit, and saved before Yeager.

Segment 31 - Killed Yeager and made my way through Zaude. Fought soldiers and then saved.

Segment 32 - Raped Alexei. Thinking she knows what's best for everybody, Sodia stabs Yuri for no reason because she fucking feels like it, what a bitch. Duke saves Yuri. Got everybody back in the party except for Karol and Raven which are still in Dahngrest. Saved before Dahngrest.

Segment 33 - Did a mini-game with Estelle and got the Water Spirt.

Segment 34 - Went back to Nordopolica and killed the Day and Nightbreaker again. Went to Phaeroh and got the fire spirit. Headed towards Rellewiese Hollow and saved inside.

Segment 35 - Basically just kept doing this segment till we got one turtle.

Segment 36 - Defeated Khroma and got the Wind Spirit and saved outside.

Segment 37 - Basically just kept doing this segment till everything went right with the battles and then saved outside Erealumen Crystallands.

Segment 38 - Made my way through the Crystallands and then defeated Gusious for the last spirit. Then flew to Cap Nor and saved outside.

Segment 39 - Of course Sodia wants to know why Yuri didn't tell anybody about what she did, It's because he's not a fucking bitch like you are Sodia. Then Yuri, Flynn, and Repede fight a bunch of monsters together.

Segment 40 - Went to Dahngrest and Nordopolica go convince some people to meet in Aurnion, then went back to battle Flynn (not my best fight, but we did get a short cut-scene at the end, which is what I was going for). Save next to the inn.

Segment 41 - 5 minute cut-scene and then flew to Tarqaron, made my way through and then smacked some orbs with my sorcerers ring, and saved outside that room.

Segment 42 - Killed Zagi for the last time and then went through the end of Tarqaron and saved before Duke.

Segment 43 - Yuri had the shortest cut-scene. Killed Duke.

So after Mark finished playing through Tales of Vesperia and told me that he wanted to do a multiplayer NG+ run, my first thought was "Hey, that'll be really easy!" I mean really, how hard could it be? Basically Rita just Overlimit spams and Tidal Waves everything in sight right? Wrong. First, we tried doing a four-human run with the Symphonia group, except with Mark doing the running this time instead of me. Unfortunately, we realized roughly 30 segments in that Rita had been unequipped automatically nearly 20 segments earlier without our noticing. Our only option was to scrap the run, as we wouldn't have time to go back and finish otherwise. Mark and I decided afterwards that we would start over and do it ourselves, since Marcus and Tyler aren't accessible while we're at college and Mark and I are roommates anyway so availability wasn't an issue. Our first concern was that if Mark played Yuri and I played Rita, then we'd have to gamble with bad computer AI. That's when I remembered something Enhasa posted in the Symphonia verification topic:

"...it's much more mind-blowing to see one person controlling multiple guys (a fave thing of mine)"

It occurred to me that if I could hold two 360 controllers that I could conceivably play as Rita and another character. Long story short, that is what we decided to do. I played as two different characters depending on which two we needed. And so by the time the semester ended, Mark and I had nearly caught up with the old run and were gaining momentum. One small hitch in the run was that the save screen was loading us further and further from the slot we wanted to save on. The solution was seemingly simple-go through the Xbox dashboard and delete the save files we had already finished so that we could save at the top of the screen again. Just one problem, we accidently deleted our most recent file and backed ourselves all the way back to segment 12. Once we finished mourning, we decided to carry on from that point with my little brother Marcus controlling the fourth player.

At that point it was just a matter of grinding every possible moment for the next few months to finish out the run. As far as the run goes, I'm proud of our final product. Hopefully we'll get a chance soon to make some audio commentary for all three of you who actually want to watch this run. All in all, not as easy as I thought, but well worth the effort.

Hey, this is the spare speaking. Originally, I wasn't even supposed to help with the run. In fact, I'm not even used until segment 12, but then I was given the job of being the MVP of the run, Repede, and things got a lot easier. This is why they called me the spare the entire time during the run. They believed I wasn't needed, even though I made things much much easier. But fuck them, I'm awesome.

Repede is definitely the best character in the game. Firstly, he's a fucking dog. Can your dog wield a dagger in its mouth and cut intruders to shreds? I think not. Secondly, he is really really fast and amazingly strong. Basically, his/my job the entire run was to run around the back and destroy all of the enemies back there. But for Repede, it was as easy as pie. Just rip them up using a Lightspear, and that's it. Done. Thirdly, he only has one eye. AND YET HE'S STILL BETTER THAN FUCKING KAROL. WHY DON'T YOU SUCK ON THAT KAROL? Lightspear could rape his shit any day of the week. And lastly, it's just awesome every time I use Sonic Fang and completely destroy whoever is unlucky enough to be in my path.

But enough about Repede, I'll go ahead and give a worthy mention to the other characters. Yuri is almost as good as Repede, Karol only has Reaper Knock, Rita has BLAHBLAHBLAHTIDALWAVE hax, Estelle completely sucks, and Judy and Raven never get used. Basically, the entire game could be beaten just as fast only using Repede and Rita, but whatever.

Now I would like to take the time to talk about the many inappropriate conversations we had in the game. I cannot tell you how many times I heard the words "Fuck, I just got an Apple Gel", or whatever item we may have acquired during the game, and would thus mess up where to find the holy bottles. Also, whenever we happed to see Droight and Gauche, Mark would go on to say how he would "Hike that shit up and fuck the shit out of her." Sadly, this is all I can really remember, but it was a very hilarious experience nonetheless.

The run was fun, if not very tedious. Many interesting things were said, and done, and we had a good time. I only hope that we'll be able to do some audio commentary at some point, but seeing how I live three hours away, it could be a little difficult. Still, I'm glad we got this run done, and I'm glad it was successful. We may not be at the very top of the leader board, but we probably are the highest ones that didn't cheat, and have video proof. Yeah!