Game:

Castlevania: Harmony of Despair (2010)

Duration: 4:13

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16

I thought this stage was going to be awful to run, but it's actually quite fun. There is essentially no randomness at all except Ryukotsuki, which is fantastic. There are a lot of elevators I need to ride so there's a lot of flexibility in the timing. I hit every time-consuming elevator as early as possible except for the second elevator (after hitting the Ox switch in the blue area). After killing all three minibosses, my time to the elevator was my fastest ever. I think I might've been able to make it to the 27:19 elevator instead of waiting for the 27:16, but I've never done so.

My fights went really well. Ox could've been done faster if I BDC'd faster but I wasn't prepared for the bottom sword. If he throws the top swords first, I can keep doing my whip special to finish him before I get hit. Decap and Chimyriad went really well. I hit a load of corner boosts in the beginning but didn't hit a single boost at the top of the screen, which is regrettable. There are some really significant boosts up there. I also had a few close calls with the Hellmonts up there. Somehow survived it all.

Ryukotsuki is an interesting boss. He has three forms. The first two are extremely trivial as long as the first form doesn't jump (as seen here). Simon just stomps them. The third form, however, is ridiculously hard as Simon. My MP is very limited and I have to have crosses in motion as he becomes vulnerable or else I won't hurt him much. I had AMAZING luck in this run. He used double punch at the very beginning, and didn't waste much time with the fireballs. I've only ever killed this boss twice with Simon, because I usually run out of MP trying to anticipate his vulnerability.

This run is quite strong. Definitely improvable, but Ryukotsuki is far too random for me to spend more time optimizing this. Too frustrating. For perspective, I've finished this stage exactly twice. The other time was 4:12.19 and also had above-average Ryukotsuki luck.

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