Duration: 59:36

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Game: Sengoku Rance
Platform: PC
Category: Any% No Bonus
Ending: Official History
Time: 59:23 (from Start Game after selecting bonuses until The End appears) (Technically 59:22 by frame count, but who cares?)

AGAIN. Every time I'm about done running this game, a new category catches my interest and I'm back to it. This one, however, won't hold my interest in its current state. My goal was at least sub-hour, and that's good enough for me. (I drop safety saves here and there, so you can tell that I'm not overly concerned about optimization.)

If you're not familiar with this category, it's essentially a New Game speedrun. You can't take any New Game+ bonuses to start, so you don't have access to Omachi or the Takeda guys. My solution to this was to replace Omachi with Rizna for AoE magic purposes. It works surprisingly well, but requires hefty investment.

Speaking of investment, this route calls for Inukai. This means a lot of time is spent grinding Rance up to level 58 with a proper skill set to win the duel. His main purpose is to help with the Honnoji battle, because my testing suggested that winning that battle is essentially impossible without some sort of help. I tried recruiting Nozomi instead, but she's just not enough on her own.

While it sucks to slog through so many turns grinding Rance to a proper level, it pays off in various ways beyond Honnoji. Inukai and a stronger Rance helps make the final boss fight cleaner, and you need to have a high turn count for the automatic conquer of the Monster Army territories anyway. (Still, I would LOVE to remove Inukai from the route. I just don't see it happening currently.)

As for the investment in Rizna, it's obvious that I overdid it. I haven't nailed down exactly what she needs stat-wise, and with all the mid-game repetition, I'm not eager to look into it. At the very least, I think buffing her speed is probably not necessary. Dropping Absolute Magic Defense for something else might also be wise.

Putting Dungeon Scouter on the generic ninja might also be a good idea, but the time save would be small (only six dungeon floors). I thought about doing this, but I didn't want to test it mid-run.

Finally, the Xavier battle at the end is very different than other runs. I had changed this to a (minimum) two-man team, but it's volatile. If Xavier uses two AoE attacks, you've lost the battle even if he's at level 20. To counter this, I recently tried adding a third character. In testing, I think I had mostly decided on Seigan as the third team member. Inukai was also an option, but I think Seigan seemed safer overall. I kind of made a snap decision mid-run to go for Inukai this time. Luckily, it worked out well.