Young Souls: Any% Speedrun in 1:11:50 (with loads) Relaxed Difficulty
18World Record for now...
Time starts from first input and ends when final blow hits the final boss.
The time is with loads by using an nvme drive to cut down loading times, PC runs usually are timed without loads and I'll try and figure that one out when I have the time but at least you get an idea on length for marathon runs.
Accessibility modifiers were toggled to default values as shown in the early part of the video.
Tricks:
Slash to Shield cancelling:
This is like Slash Dash cancelling from the PS1 era Mega Man X games where Zero can dish out huge amount of damage in a short time by cancelling his first slash with a dash and then stopping his dash to unleash his first slash again.
Slash to Shield cancelling is when the player has a one-handed blade with fast attack perk from either the player's shoes or weapon itself and a shield with Quick Parry perk. Perform a slash and then use a shield right afterwards to reset the player's single button combo. This prevents the user to perform a knockdown slash which means he can dish out a lot more damage in a few seconds than just single button mashing.
Rapid parry:
With both a fast attacking 1 handed blade and quick parry shield, it's possible to parry multiple of times from a single attack. This doesn't work with every attack in the game, probably the ones with long active frames I think. The reason why it works is because:
1) There is a white flash in front of the player's shield to indicate a parry attempt, if the parry fails there is a cooldown period for roughly 1-2 seconds to prevent parry fishing. If the parry succeeds, the parry flash will happen again immediately without cooldown when the player hits the shield button the second time. This is notable against the boss Dinkoy round 1 where the player parry a series of slow fireballs.
2) So a successful parry means another parry, what happens if you cancel your shield with a slash, you can get to shield again right afterwards and this is vital against certain attacks which allow rapid parrying.
Rapid parry not only reduces the parry resistance meter down super fast but you get a lot of mana for vital special attacks.
Parts which can be improved:
* Failed to stop Dinkoy (this is the first boss) using his slow giant fireball spell. This can be prevented by using a fully charged attack or a tag attack as he appears when casting the spell.
* I fell through the floor after going through the moon gate portal to the molten lava world segment. There is a technical issue where the objects are not fully solid when loading and this part perfectly shows that going out of bounds is really pointless at the moment.
* There are rooms where you are NOT required to kill all enemies to advance to the next segment. By completely forgetting, I killed a fair amount of ghost enemies in the 5th "room" of the ghost slaying segment, you'll notice which room I made that blunder.
Parts that are tough to beat (as in a faster time):
The boss Shinjo is frantic. Using both bombs and special moves helps big time stopping his attacks, this fight went amazing to be honest.
Fazmore loves to block and I usually perform a special move if he parries my normal attacks just so that I know what attack to use next. After each phase I switch to my secondary and send in my main via tag attack to interrupt his electric burst and gain a bit of mana meter at the same time.
Kah-koh is one of the easier bosses, the main gimmick is that he's powerful but very slow. Dying to get revived isn't a huge time loss because of his short time window where his attacks actually connect. His back-up goons are the bigger threat as they can mess up my plans.
The final boss has 4 phases.
Phase 2 will allow him to perform a counter reversal after getting combo'd and perform his teleport grab.
Phase 3 will allow him to cast an electric spell which I parry to dish out an easy 100 points of damage.
Final phase will allow him to charge up his vertical stab attack, this move has a vacuum effect.
The only attack you can rapid parry reliably is his double slash but that move is deceivingly fast if you react too late to that attack.
RNG drops that can save time in a speedrun.
1) Vorpal Sword: An early game sword drop which has more power than default sword, has 2 mana stocks, normal attacking speed and bleed effect. This is then replaced with Blood Thirst which is a guaranteed drop.
2) Healing Concoction: Saves me 50 Gold coins for each HP potion drop.
3) Hanzo's Finery: A random drop from regular dagger ninja foes. This gives the player electric resistance which is handy against both Tetcha and Fazmore. I change this back to Winter Viking before Shinjo to take advantage of extra HP but also Freeze immunity against Dark Tristan's Ice spell.
The interesting part is the pacing, it starts off slow in the first part but the last segments after Tetcha speeds up significantly thanks to stronger weapons and less zones to go through.
Key provided by The Arcade Crew