full script/text guide:

Introduction:

Hello, my name is xLiliAUS, or Lilian, and welcome to my Golden Ending speedrun guide. This guide will assume you already know how to speedrun the All Stages category of the game, if you don’t I have linked a tutorial in the description of this video. Additionally, this guide will contain major spoilers for Katana ZERO. With that out of the way, lets get into the guide.

Golden Ending is an alternative category to the much more popular All Stages. Where All Stages tasks the player with completing Factory through Bunker-2, and ending time when using the retinal scanner. Golden Ending instead tasks the player with completing Factory through Chinatown, and ending time when Zero dies during the confrontation with the Masked Men and the police squad.

Settings:

Although these settings ultimately do not matter much for the speedrun, as proper mashing and quick option selects make these settings unnecessary, it’s still advised to have response time set to x1 and text speed x2 in your game settings. Response time influences how long you have to make dialogue choices, it does not affect how long you have to make interruption choices however. x1 shortens the response time and x2 extends the time. Text speed is fairly self-explanatory, it speeds up the text, x1 is slower and x2 is faster.

Unlike All Stages, language choice does matter here, although no one language is considerably faster when mashing dialogue, four languages have freezes during dialogue which costs a lot of time. These languages are Korean, Japanese, Simplified and Traditional Chinese, and French. The Asian languages all freeze in Casino while Spinny Ricky spins the roulette, and French freezes during the V interrogation. Any other language is perfectly fine to run with.

For your settings in speedrun mode, you’ll want the same settings as All Stages, however you want to turn off “Action Only” as this is what enables you to have access to the dialogue necessary to meet your final death in Chinatown.

Factory:

After navigating Factory-Entry you’ll find yourself in a short hallway instead of Factory-1, this is the first dialogue sequence. Zero will receive a phone call after automatically running halfway through the hallway, so be ready to mash to pick up the phone call. For this dialogue sequence you’ll want to let the Psychiatrist finish what he is saying, if you try to hang up, he will call over and over until you finish this dialogue. You want to select the second option down, “I’m almost there.” And then mash to select the two interruption choices as fast as possible, both will read “Get on with it.” After two more text boxes to mash Zero will hang up and automatically run to the right.

Factory-2 will play a short cutscene of a Terry turning on the lasers and another Terry being vaporised, during this cutscene the lasers will move while Zero can’t. As a result, the lasers will have a different pattern when you can move as opposed to All Stages, if you just roll through you have a chance of dying due to the different pattern, it may be easier to quickly reset the room in this case, this will allow you to roll through the same way as All Stages.

In Factory-4 when interacting with the scientist you will have dialogue to mash through, choose the interruption choice “We need to go. Now.” You will have two more boxes to mash through before the scientist falls over and dies, the camera will pan to V and you’ll have another two dialogue boxes to mash through before you can play the rest of the room as usual.

Hotel:

Instead of going straight to Hotel-1 there is a Hotel-Entry screen to complete first. Hold right as soon as you exit Factory to prepare for Zero needing to walk right. Dialogue will automatically begin with the receptionist once you are close enough, you will need to select every interruption choice, so just mash here. The choices will read “Stare blankly”, “Could I please go?”, “Stop talking to me.”, “Shut up.”, “Shut up!”. There will then be an additional box to mash, as you mash you should begin holding right again, because you can begin walking to the right again after this dialogue.

After completing Hotel-Target and taking the elevator, there will be another screen, Hotel-Exit. You will have two dialogue boxes to mash before you will have to kill two shotgun enemies. After killing them simply roll to the left to finish Hotel.

Club:

Club is played almost exactly the same as All Stages, however, after Club-5 instead of going straight to Club-Exit there is an additional screen and cutscene in between, Club-Target. You will get a phone call, you will immediately hang up for this one by selecting the interruption option, and roll to the door and interact to enter. Here you will meet DJ Electrohead, once again select the interruption choice of “Kill him”. You will then get unmashable dialogue before Zero finally kills him and exits. From here Club-Exit is completed as normal.

Prison:

Upon entering Prison, Zero will get yet another phone call, once again choose to hang up right away and complete the first half of Prison without the enemies as usual.

After entering Fa Yuan’s cell at the end of Prison-4, you will enter an additional screen, mash the interact button on entry to initiate three dialogue boxes to mash through, then exit the room, the rest of Prison is played as usual.

Studio:

Just like in Hotel, there is a Studio-Entry screen before Studio-1, also like in Hotel, you’ll want to hold to the right so Zero doesn’t just stand still, you’ll have three dialogue boxes to mash through before this though. After walking far enough to the right more dialogue will automatically trigger, mash through two more boxes before mashing your attack button to get through the following gun pause as quick as possible. After the gun pause there is one more dialogue box to mash before V knocks you down, after that, mash interact to enter Studio-1. In the Studio-Lobby room with the elevator you’ll have one more box to mash before V runs away and you can play Studio normally until you complete the V fight.

After defeating V an additional cutscene will play before Snow dashes into the room, this leads to a conversation between V and Snow. Mash Snow’s initial text box and she will dash toward you, continue mashing to pick the top interruption choice “Battle stance”. You will then need to mash through seven dialogue boxes, on the seventh dialogue box the screen will go black, after mashing this dialogue you will need to exit the room to the left. Keep in mind you can move while the screen is still black, so holding left and roll to buffer it is best.

Mansion:

Mansion can be played normally until after Mansion-6 and Replay Skip, you will be greeted with the longest dialogue section of the run, V’s interrogation. There are three cycles to this sequence.

For the first cycle you will want to just mash the entire time. Choose the top two options of “Open Eyes” and then “…My head.” Mash through the two following dialogue boxes and interrupt V by saying “Fuck you.” This will prompt V to kill Zero after three dialogue boxes and begin the second cycle.

The second cycles begins the same as the first, however, you’ll notice that the “Fuck you.” dialogue choice is crossed out, do not select it and wait for V to finish what he is saying, then choose the top option, “I want answers, V.” mash through two dialogue boxes and let V finish what he is saying before selecting the top option of “Let me go.” If you interrupt V you will have to complete this cycle again. This will prompt V to kill Zero after a dialogue box yet again.

The third cycle begins the same as the first two, once again do not interrupt V by saying “Fuck you.”, wait for him to finish and select the top option “Don’t be late for your date, V.” From here you just mash and pick every interruption choice. There are twenty three dialogue boxes and four interruption choices in total to mash through. The interruption choices are “Your tape was kid shit.”, “You honestly thought you were in my league.”, “It’s sad, watching you grovel for my approval.”, and “I’m tied up and you still want my approval.” After all the dialogue, Kissyface will say “Hey guys check this out.” and the boss fight will start.

After the Kissyface boss fight there are another sixteen dialogue boxes to mash through before the Motorway bike chase can begin. After the highway section and the helicopter boss fight, there is more dialogue to mash. Select the interruption option of “It’s over, V.”, mash through V’s dialogue and once again select the interruption choice “End it, V.” Following this will be five more dialogue boxes before the level ends.

Chinatown:

Just like Hotel and Studio before it, Chinatown has an entry screen and you must hold right as the stage begins. Unlike Hotel and Studio though, the dialogue with Spinny Ricky does not automatically begin, you have to interact to begin the dialogue, so just mash your interact button. You can’t interrupt him, so select all the top dialogue options, “Thanks…”, “What’s the game?” and “All in.” This begins the gambling part of the dialogue, you need to choose black, red and red again in that order, black is the bottom option and both reds are the top option. After successfully gambling you have one dialogue box to mash, hold right as you do so to move to the Terry as quick as possible, interrupt him with “Show Chips” and mash his dialogue to continue to the next room.

In the next room we see Headhunter and Fifteen talking, there are nine total dialogue boxes here to mash. When Headhunter says “Whoever you are… You just made a huge mistake.” the miniboss fight will start abruptly, so be ready. Roll toward her twice and slash her to “defeat” her. If you miss the slash, she will jump off the wall and land behind you, so you can slash her then. Leave the room to the left and prepare to mash your replay eject button, because there’s a replay here that saves a lot of time if you get the skip. If you miss the skip Headhunter will have two boxes of dialogue, you’ll have to pick up the tapes on the table and mash through one more dialogue box and kill the police officers that run and leave through the left for real this time. The rest of Chinatown can be played normally until after the last room, China-8.

After China-8 you’ll be in an additional room, China-Exit, there are four dialogue boxes to mash here, but be careful as soon after the fourth box an interruption choice appears which you don’t want to select. After the masked man finishes his dialogue, select the bottom option “Back off or I’ll kill you.” Wait for the masked man to finish once more and again select the bottom option “Time to die.” This prompts Zero to slash at the masked man and for the police to open fire, causing Zero to meet his final death, and ending the run.

Closing:

Congratulations, you now know how to run Golden Ending, so go on and pb, maybe even record your run and submit to speedrun.com. We’d love to have you join our community, I’ve left some links in the description for the speedrun.com page and an invite link to the official speedrunning discord server invite for you to join in if you haven’t already.