Game:

Vagrant Story (2000)

Duration: 48:17

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2

HP Cutoff: 100 (must not go below this number)

See Part 1 for run rules: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f31xB4mwLlM

As Vagrant Story is a very slow-moving game, I highly encourage you to watch this video at 1.5x speed.

This is about as close to perfect execution and perfect luck for this battle as anyone could reasonably expect under these conditions. My goal was to get Guildenstern 2 himself under an hour. Getting both 1 and 2 down to below 45 minutes (not counting setup time) feels miraculous.

The first three minutes here are all prep time. I originally planned on doing this at the end of the Nightmare segment, but he gave me so much trouble I wound up forgetting about it.

Guildenstern 1 is almost entirely luck. If he ever criticals or casts Last Ascension, he will kill me and there's nothing I can do to prevent it. Furthermore, I need end the fight with either low Risk or enough spare MP to cast Enlighten so I can survive G2's first casting of Apocalypse.

The best thing G1 can do is cast Stun Cloud, which only costs me 3MP to counter. Sometimes he seems to get hung up on this and he'll spend an entire battle casting nothing but Stun Cloud, which results in easy victory. That doesn't happen here.

3:15 I cast Herakles and Luft Fusion before the battle then wait for some of my MP to come back. Guildenstern is likely to cast Dispel when you have two buffs on, so I'm gambling here. I want to get a few attacks in at maximum damage and hope for an early crit, but since I don't think the spells are going to last the whole battle I let the majority of their duration burn down. This is never the optimal strategy for this fight but it seems to average out working pretty well. After Guildenstern Dispels me (which happens early here) I only put Luft Fusion back on. It's cheaper, raises my damage more, and I can't afford a casting war.

6:09 The first 10 minutes of the Guildenstern 2 battle are all about draining his MP. If you're standing in the middle of the battlefield, Apocalypse is the only spell he can reach you with. This means I need to maximize Dark defense. If I pick my position correctly he should never hit all 5 body parts, but he will often hit 4. That means I need to keep him doing 60 damage or less per hit.

I make a crucial mistake during this stage of the fight and let him get off a casting without my shield up around 10:20. Fortunately he chooses his positioning poorly and doesn't end me, though he easily could have.

You'll note that I'm using 2 shields for this fight. The S Round Shield (found between the Cathedral and Town Center East) is being used as my Dark shield, but the I Heater Shield (Abandoned Mines B2, off of Bandit's Hollow) is being used as my Evil shield. This is used to protect against Bloody Sin, which is more like a Break Art than a spell. It deals physical (type, not affinity) damage so Guildenstern's Evil Class is actually factored in. This makes a full set of gear with Prostasia extremely valuable, because it will add a few points of physical defense to every slot.

Both of these shields enter this fight with 0 PP, which is a change from my previous Minimalist runs. This way I prove that the final battle really can be performed under almost any run circumstances. The H Oval Shield found in the Cathedral might have been a better choice over the Heater in this specific run, but in most challenge runs the Heater is preferred as you'll already have full PP on it coming into the Cathedral, so I wanted to demonstrate this combination.

18:00 Once Guildenstern 2 is out of MP I switch to offense. I won't get into too much detail on the strategy here, as you can observe it in the video. The majority of the work involved is MP management, both mine and Guildenstern's. I have to make sure at all times I have enough MP left to protect myself from Bloody Sin, and I have to keep taunting him into doing debuffs to ensure he never recovers enough MP for casting a spell.

21:24 You'll see his first use of Bloody Sin. Second is at 37:00.

Finally, I would like to note that given my 51% hit rate the RNG is extremely merciful to me here. Not only does Ashley hit a vast majority of the time, but criticals frequently. This is the main reason this is the fastest I've ever finished this fight under these conditions.

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