This is a human theory TAS of Fireseal mode. The RNG to get this is possible for humans but very difficult. This is one of the highest damage roles possible for the Devil card in this situation and it is rare for the Valkyrie to both go first and not miss. That said, it is definitely doable for us fleshes.

There are other ways to achieve this 2 card 1 action route but this is probably more likely for humans to achieve.

With PS1 loads: 133.80 = 2:13.80 With corrected PS2 90k loads: 126.93 = 2:06.93

I'll link a copy of the TAS in resources.

No I'm not interested in doing a non-human version.

Great work! Seem Tarot cards do more damage in PSX than SNES. On SNES I can't do more than 118 with Devil and a high 115 STR on Ianuki Lord from Strength on the bonus card.

I figured I'd calculate then prove via simulate the odds of starting Tarot card hands from Warren to help the cause. Wasn't all that hard: aus101/OgreBattle (github.com)

RNG bias aside:
Fool + 1 other card you need: 9.09%
Fool + at least 1 of 2 other cards you need: 15.90%
Fool + at least 1 of 3 other cards you need: 20.93%

I was able to kill with Fool + (Devil, Chariot or Hermit) + 1 daytime Tigerman attack. Hermit and usually Chariot needed tactics on Weak for the +4 damage and that takes a fraction of a second. I think 1 in 5 rolls to have a plausible run is really good.

I saw 105 STR was also possible, so the bonus card isn't super critical.

Ooh neat! I'll have to play with that.

It's occasionally possible to get into the 120s with Chariot on SNES (without changing tactics) though the in battle RNG and the Stage RNG windows are very unfavorable on the seeds I've explored. There's some possible rolls with magician too, but again the windows are way too tight for humans I'd think. We're talking a SINGLE pixel to avoid the witch and keep a good in battle seed in the ones I explored.

There's also two hop manipulations to the boss that are fairly timeloss neutral, but they tend to make things harder to manipulate when you're TASing for good in battle RNG. I had a human theory TAS that's better than what my current time on SNES is, but I found I was actually much less consistent when I did runs with it because it was harder to judge the distances with two hop. I also very much doubted it was feasible for me to do - the windows were too tight for what little time it saved.

Cursor position is hard for me specifically. Even my current fully manipulated time on SNES I consider a fluke, and a lot of the manipulation was designed to cater to me making movement mistakes. I messed up zooming in to my cursor position, was sure I blew the run, and got so flustered I forgot to move the cursor down. I got lucky and moved down in time when my unit was still barely in RNG range. I have a trick from my fighting game days where for the second part of my unit movement I hadouken the cursor in position and I messed that up as well, but my position ended up being close to where it should be.

I think there's about 3-4 pixels on stage x and y where the RNG is the same, in some situations, like terrain changes, it feels like less.

I overhauled the code to also give optimal answers for each lord type. COMBIN(22,6) = 74613 Tarot card combinations are brute-forced in under 1 second to allow exact, optimal answers for the desired lord type. Of course, if you're manipulating the seed to answer 1 for every question then none of that matters. XD

This is my routed two hop solution. Certainly reaches the boss castle faster than one hop but then the human reaction time and difficulty to draw the extra point have to be considered like you're saying.

I think Fool + Albeleo Acid Cloud + Justice + 1x Weretiger attack is the fastest way but I haven't tried maniping the boss fight. Magician might also work with good RNG rolls. PSX can attempt Tower + Muse + Chariot, with Tower being faster than Fool and Chariot being faster than Devil.